Chapters 12
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1 01 - President Lincoln's second inaugural speech 6:10
Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln. March 4, 1865. Fellow countrymen, at this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, During which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation. Little that is new could be presented.
The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself. And it is, I trust. Reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured. On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it. All sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, Devoted all together to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war, seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish.
And the war came.
One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest. was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war, while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease.
Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and prayed to the same God, and each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. Woe unto the world because of offenses, for it must needs be that offenses come. But woe to that man by whom the offense cometh. If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which Having continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war, and as the woe do to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to him?
Fondly do we hope. Fervently do we pray. That this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether, with malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right. Let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow.
And his orphan. To do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
End of Lincoln's second inaugural address by Abraham Lincoln. Recording by John Stamper. February 16, 2014. voice.johnstamper.com
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2 02 - The Story of the Kearsarge and the Alabama 42:07
K. Brown San Francisco, Henry Payot & Company, Publishers, 1868. Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1868 by Edward Boskey & Company. In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the District of California. Edward Boskey & Company, Printers, 517 Clay Street, San Francisco.
The author is induced to publish this narrative of the Kearsarge in Alabama from the want that exists of a popular, detailed, and yet concise account of the engagement between the two vessels.
The Story On Sunday, June 12, 1864, the U.S. steamer Kearsarge was lying in anchor in the Scheldt, off Flushing, Holland. Suddenly appeared the cornet at the fore, an unexpected signal that compelled absent officers and men to repair on board. Steam was raised, and immediately after a departure made. When all hands being called, the nature of the precipitate movement became apparent. Captain Winslow, in a brief address, announced the welcome intelligence of the reception of a telegram from His Excellency Mr. Dayton. Minister resident at Paris. To the effect that the notorious Alabama had arrived the day previous at Cherbourg, France. Hence the urgency of departure, the probability of an encounter, and the confident expectation of her destruction or capture.
The crew responded by cheers. The succeeding day witnessed the arrival of the Kearsarge at Dover, England, for dispatches, and the day after, She was a beautiful specimen of naval architecture, eliciting encomiums for evident neatness, good order, and a well-disciplined crew, indicative of efficiency in any duty required. The surgeon of the Kearsarge proceeded on shore and obtained pratik for boats. Owing to the enforcement of the neutral 24-hour regulation to anchor became inexpedient. The result was the establishment of a vigilant watch, alternately at each of the harbor entrances, which continued to the moment of the engagement. On Wednesday, Captain Winslow paid an official visit to the Admiral commanding the Maritime District and the U.S.
commercial agent. Bringing on his return the unanticipated news that Captain Semes declared his intention to fight. At first, the assertion was hardly credited, the policy of the Alabama being regarded as in opposition to a conflict, but even the doubters were speedily half-convinced when the character of the so-called challenge was disclosed. Feast.
CSS Alabama. Cherbourg, June 14, 1864. To A. Bonfils, Esquire, Cherbourg. Sir, I hear that you were informed by the U.S. Consul that the Kearsarge was to come to this port solely for the prisoners landed by me, and that she was to depart in twenty-four hours. I desire you to say to the U.S. Consul that my intention is to fight the Kearsarge. I beg she will not depart before I am ready to go out. I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant, R. Sims, Captain. This communication was sent by Mr. Bonfils to the U.S. Commercial Agent, Mr. Liay. With the request that the latter would furnish a copy to Captain Winslow for his guidance. There was no other defiance to combat. The letter that passed between the commercial agents was the challenge about which so much has been written.
Captain Sims indirectly informed Captain Winslow of his desire for a combat. Captain Winslow made no reply, but prepared his ship to meet the opponent, thereby Tacitly acknowledging the so-called challenge and its acceptance. Requisite preparations were immediately instituted for battle, with no relaxation of the watch. Thursday passed. Friday came, and yet no Alabama appeared. According to report, important arrangements were being effected. A zell was displayed in the reception of coals, the transmission of valuables on shore. And the sharpening of swords, cutlasses, boarding pikes, and battle axes. To the observer, this preparation confirmed the assurance of the certainty of a fight. An intended surprise by Knight was suggested, and measures precautionary taken.
Dispatches were brought from Mr. Dayton, minister at Paris, by his son, who with difficulty had obtained permission from the admiral commanding to visit the Kearsarge. To preserve a strictly honest neutrality, the French authorities had prohibited all communication with the respective vessels. Mr. Dayton expressed the opinion that the Alabama would not fight. Though acknowledging the prevalence of a contrary impression at Cherbourg, he departed for the shore with intention to proceed immediately to Paris. In taking leave of the Admiral, the latter mentioned the fixed determination of Captain Sims. Mr. Dayton consequently deferred his departure, witnessed the action, telegraphed to Paris the result, and was one of the first to repair on board and offer congratulations.
He passed a portion of Saturday night, endeavoring to procure a boat, To dispatch to the Kearsarge the information acquired, but so securely was the coast guarded by the enforcement of the Admiral's orders that all his efforts were useless. At a supper in Cherbourg on Saturday night, several officers of the Alabama met sympathizing French friends, the impending fight being the chief topic of conversation. In confidence of an easy victory, They boastingly proclaim the intention either to seek the Federal or gain another Corsair. They rise with promise to meet the following night, to renew the festivity as victors, are escorted to the boat, and separate with cheers and wishes for a successful return.
Sunday the 19th comes. A fine day. Atmosphere somewhat hazy. Little Sea. Moderate westerly wind. At 10 a.m., the crew are inspected at quarters and dispersed to attend divine service at 11 o'clock. Seemingly no one thought of the Alabama, for so long awaited and not appearing, speculation as to her probable advent had ceased.
At 10.20, the officer of the deck reports a steamer coming from Cherbourg. A frequent occurrence, and consequently creates no excitement. Soon, by the aid of a glass, he decries the enemy and shouts, The Alabama! Instantly, all hands are called and the ship cleared for action. The position of the Kearsarge was off the eastern entrance to the harbor. At a distance of nearly three miles, the Alabama approaching from the western entrance, escorted The freighter was sent by the French ironclad frigate La Corone and followed by a fore-and-aft rigger steamer flying the English yacht flag, the Deerhound. The frigate, having convoyed the Alabama outside the limit of French waters with characteristic neutrality, steamed back into port without delay.
The yacht remained in proximity to the scene of action. To avoid a question of jurisdiction, And to prevent an escape of the Alabama to neutral waters in the event of a retreat, the Kearsarge steamed to sea, making final preparations, the last being the sanding of decks, sufficiently suggestive of sober thoughts, followed by the enemy, until a distance of about seven miles from the shore was attained. When at 10.50 the Kearsarge wheeled, bringing her head in shore and presented starboard battery, Being one and a quarter miles from her opponent, the Kearsarge advanced rapidly, and at 1057 received the first broadside of solid shot at a distance of 1,800 yards from the Alabama. This broadside cut away a little of the rigging, but the shot chiefly passed over or fell short.
With increased speed, the Kearsarge advanced, receiving a second and part of a third broadside, With similar effect. Arrived within 900 yards of the Alabama, the Kearsarge, fearing a fourth broadside with evident raking results, sheared and broke her silence by opening with a starboard battery. Each vessel was now pressed under a full head of steam. Each employing the starboard battery, and to obviate passing each other too speedily, And to maintain the bearing of the respective broadsides, the circular method of fighting was necessitated, each steering around a common center from a quarter to half mile apart. The action was now fairly commenced. One of the shot of the first broadsides of the Kearsarge carried away the spanker gaff of the enemy and caused his ensign to come down by the run.
This incident was received as a favorable omen by the fortunate crew, who cheered vociferously and went with increased confidence to their work. Wild and rapid was the firing of the Alabama, that of the Kearsarge being deliberate, precise, and almost from the commencement productive of death, destruction, and dismay. The Kearsarge gunners had been cautioned against firing without direct aim. Advised to elevate or depress the guns with deliberation, and those subjected to an incessant storm of shot and shell proceeded calmly to their duty and faithfully complied with the instructions. The effect upon the enemy was readily perceived. Nothing restrained the enthusiasm of the crew. Cheer succeeded cheer.
Caps thrown in the air or overboard. Jackets discarded. One encouraging the other, sanguine of victory, shouting as each projectile took effect. That is a good one. That told, give her another. Down, boys. Give her another like the last. And so on, cheering, exulting, joyous to the end. After exposure to an uninterrupted cannonading for 18 minutes without casualties. A sixty-eight-pound Blakely shell passed through the starboard bulwarks, below the main rigging, exploded upon the quarter-deck, and wounded three of the crew of the after-pivot gun. With these exceptions, not an officer or a man of the Kearsarge received the slightest injury. The unfortunates were speedily taken below, and so quietly was the action performed that at the termination of the fight, A large portion of the crew were unaware that any of their comrades were wounded.
Two shot entered the ports occupied by the .32s, where several men were stationed, and yet none were hit. A shell exploded in the hammock netting and set the ship on fire. The alarm calling to fire quarters was sounded, and persons specially detailed for a like emergency promptly extinguished the flames, while the remainder of the crew continued at the guns Without an eruption. Terrific was the effect of the 11-inch shell upon the crew of the doomed ship. Many were torn asunder by shell direct or horribly mutilated by splinters. Her decks were covered with blood and the debris of bodies. One gun, after pivot, had its crew renewed four times, 14 out of 19 men being disabled during the action. The carnage around this gun was more frightful than elsewhere.
So great was the accumulation of blood and fragments of limbs that a removal was required before the gun could be worked. A man upon the bowsprit is struck in the abdomen by a shot, staggers aft holding up his entrails, and near the main hatch falls dead. Another is cut in twain. One half of the body going down the engine hatch The other half remaining on deck. A poor wretch, paralyzed by fear, leaves his station and vainly seeks safety by a plea of indisposition. He is ordered to resume his position at the gun, and not obeying, is killed by a pistol shot from the officer commanding the division.
It is truly wonderful that so few casualties should have occurred on board the Kearsarge, with so large a percentage To her adversary, the first having fired 173 shot and shell, and the second nearly double that number. Probably no future similar combat will occasion like results. The fight continues. The 11-inch shell tell with astounding precision. One penetrates a coal bunker, and immediately a dense cloud of coal dust rises. And like a pall hovers over the faded ship. Others strike near the waterline, between the main and mizzenmasts, explode within board, or passing through burst afar off. Crippled and torn, the Alabama moves less quickly and begins to settle by the stern, yet relaxes not her fire, but returns successive broadsides, ever without disastrous effect.
Captain Sims witnesses the dreadful havoc made by the shell, especially by those of the after-pivot gun, and offers a reward for its silence. Soon his battery is turned upon the particular offending gun with endeavor to compel its abandonment, in vain, for its work of destruction goes on. Captain Sims places sharpshooters in the quarter boats to pick off the officers, in vain. For none are injured. He views the surrounding devastation, a sinking ship, rudder and propeller disabled, a large portion of the crew killed or wounded, while his adversary is apparently but slightly damaged. He has completed the seventh rotation on the circular tract and is conscious of defeat. He seeks to escape by setting all available sail.
Four trisail and two jibs, leaves the circle and heads for the neutral waters of the French coast. The speed of his vessel is lessened. In Winding, she presents the port battery with only two guns bearing and exhibits gaping sides. The Alabama is at the mercy of the Kearsarge. Captain Semmes calls his officers aft, briefly states the condition of the two vessels. And orders a surrender to prevent further loss of life. The colors are struck, and the Kearsarge ceases firing. Two of the junior officers of the Alabama swear they will never surrender to a damned Yankee, but rather go down in the ship. In a mutinous spirit, they rush to the two port guns and open fire upon the Kearsarge. Captain Winslow, amazed at this unwanted conduct of an enemy, Who had hauled down his flag in token of surrender, exclaimed, He is playing us a trick.
Give him another broadside. Again the shot and shell go crashing through the bulwarks, carrying death and destruction. The Kearsarge is laid across the boughs for raking, and in position to employ grape and canister with deadly effect. Over the stern of the Alabama is displayed a white flag. Her ensign half-masted, Union down. Captain Winslow, for the second time, orders a cessation of firing. Captain Sims, in his report, says, Although we were now but 400 yards from each other, the enemy fired upon me five times after my colors had been struck. It is charitable to suppose that a ship of war of a Christian nation could not have done this intentionally. He had not the generosity to afford the explanation.
He is silent as to the renewal of the fight after his surrender, an act which in Christian warfare would, in severe justice, have authorized the Kearsarge to continue firing until the Alabama had disappeared beneath the waters, nay, even to have refused quarter to the survivors. Thus ended the fight after a duration of one hour and two minutes.
Boats were now lowered from the humbled Alabama. A master's mate, an Englishman, Fulham by name, came alongside the Kearsarge with a few of the wounded, reported the disabled and sinking condition of his vessel, and asked for assistance. Captain Winslow demanded, does Captain Sims surrender his ship? Yes, was the reply. Fulham then solicited permission. To return to the Alabama with his boat and crew to assist in rescuing the drowning, pledging his word of honor that when this act was accomplished, he would come on board and surrender himself a prisoner. Unhappily, Captain Winslow granted the request. With less generosity, he could have detained the rebel officer and men, supplied their places in the boat from his own ship's company, secured more prisoners, The generosity was abused, as the sequel shows.
Fulham pulled to the midst of the drowning, rescued several officers, proceeded to the Deerhound, cast his boat adrift, and basely violated his proffered word of honor. The Deerhound, after the conclusion of the fight, appears upon the scene and plays an important part. This yacht was built by Messrs. Laird at the same yard with the Alabama. Coming under the stern from the windward, the deerhound was hailed, and her commander requested by Captain Winslow to run down to the Alabama and assist in picking up the men of the sinking vessel. Or, as Mr. Lancaster reported, the fact is that when we passed the Kearsarge, the captain cried out. For God's sake, do what you can to save them. And that was my warrant for interfering in any way for the aid and succor of his enemies.
The Deerhound steamed towards the Alabama, which sank almost immediately after, lowered her boats, rescued Captain Sims, thirteen officers, and twenty-six men, leaving the rest of the survivors to the boats of the Kearsarge, and departed directly for Southampton. Captain Winslow permitted the yacht to secure his prisoners, anticipating their subsequent surrender. Again was his confidence in the integrity of a neutral misplaced. The assistance of the yacht, it is presumed, was solicited in a spirit of chivalry, for the Kearsarge, comparatively uninjured, with but three wounded, possessed of a full head of steam, was in condition to engage a second enemy, instead of remaining at the distance of about 400 yards from the Alabama, and from this position sending two boats, others being unserviceable, the Kearsarge by steaming close to the settling ship and in the midst of the vanquished could have captured all—Sims, officers, and men.
The deer hound steams rapidly away. An officer approaches Captain Winslow and reports the presence of Captain Sims and many officers on board the English yacht. Considering the information authentic as it was obtained from certain prisoners, he suggests the propriety of firing a shot to bring her to, and asks permission. Captain Winslow chivalrously replies in the negative. Declaring that no Englishman who flies the royal yacht flag would act so dishonorable a part as to run away with his prisoners while he had been asked to save them from drowning. Meanwhile, the Deerhound increases the distance from the Kearsarge. Another officer addresses Captain Winslow in language of similar effect, but with more positiveness, that Sims and his officers We're on board the yacht endeavoring to escape.
With undiminished confidence in the honor of the English gentleman, with continued chivalric spirit, Captain Winslow refuses to have a shot fired, not crediting the flight, saying that the yacht was simply coming round and would not go away without communicating. I could not believe that the commander of that vessel Could be guilty of so disgraceful an act as taking our prisoners, and therefore took no means to prevent it. Without this trust and chivalry, Captain Winslow might have arrested the yacht in her flight, if only as a prudential move, reserving final action as to the seizure of the passengers when time had been afforded for reflection. No shot is fired. The deerhound finally disappears with the great prize, Sims, and thus passed an opportunity of making this brilliant engagement one of the most complete and satisfactory in naval history.
Captain Winslow erroneously thought that the deerhound would not run away with the rescued persons. In this opinion, he was probably alone. An excitement occurred as a consequent. An expression of regret for the escape of the yacht and her coveted prize, after being, as it were, within reach of the victors. The bitterness of the regret was manifest. The famed Alabama, a formidable ship, the terror of American commerce, well-armed, well-manned, well-handled, was destroyed, sent to the bottom in an hour. But her notorious commander had escaped. The eclat of victory seemed already lessened.
At 1224, the Alabama sank in 45 fathoms of water, at a distance of about four and a half miles from Cherbourg Breakwater, off the west entrance. She was severely hulled between the main and mizzenmasts, and commenced settling by the stern Before the termination of the conflict, her crew had jumped into the sea, supporting themselves by portions of the wreck, spars, and other accessible objects. The water swept over the stern and upper deck, and when thus partially submerged, the mainmast, pierced by a shot, broke off near the head. The bow lifted from the waves, and then came the end. Suddenly assuming a perpendicular position caused by the falling aft of the battery and stores, straight as a plumb line, stern first, she went down, the jibboom being the last to appear above water.
Down sank the terror of merchantmen, riddled through and through as she disappeared to her last resting place. Not a cheer arose from the victors. To borrow the language of the Liverpool Courier, down under the French waters, resting on the bed of the ocean, lies the gallant Alabama, with all her guns aboard and some of her brave crew, waiting until the sea yields up its dead. Mounted on the summit of an old church tower, a photographic artist obtained a good negative of the contest. An excursion train from Paris arrived Sunday morning, bringing hundreds of pleasure-seekers who were unexpectedly favored by the spectacle of a sea fight. The events of the day monopolized the conversation of Parisian society for more than a week.
This grand artillery duel, or Sunday gladiatorial combat, occurred in the presence of more than 15,000 spectators. Among them were the captains and crews of two merchant ships burnt by the daring rover a few days before her arrival at Cherbourg. Their excitement during the combat was intense, and their expressions of joy to the victors at the result. Such as only those who had suffered from the depredations of the Alabama could give utterance to. Many were desirous to go on board the Kearsarge to participate in the action, but so strictly was the neutrality law observed, no intercourse was allowed. The Alabama's wounded were brought on board the Kearsarge for surgical attendance. Seventy persons, including five officers, The conduct of Dr.
Llewellyn, native of Wales, assistant surgeon of the Alabama, deserves mention. He was unremitting an attention to the wounded during the battle, and after the surrender, superintended their removal to the Kearsarge, nobly refusing to leave the ship while one remained. This humane duty performed, with inability to swim, He caused two empty shell boxes to be attached to his waist. An improvised life preserver, and thus prepared, leaped overboard. In the hurried adjustment of the shell boxes, sufficient care was not taken to maintain the center of gravity. The unfortunate gentleman failed to keep his head above water, and before aid could be derived from his struggling comrades, he was dead.
At 3.10 p.m., the Kearsarge anchored in Cherbourg harbor. The wounded were transformed the same evening to the Opital de la Marine, and all the prisoners officers accepted were paroled and set on shore before sunset. The crew of both vessels harmonized after the fight, the conquerors sharing their clothes, supper, and grog with the conquered.
The total casualties of the Alabama are not known. Estimated at 47, a striking contrast to the three of the Curesarge. Two of these three recovered. One, the brave Gowan, died in hospital. The behavior of this gallant sailor during and after the battle, as described by the executive officer and surgeon, is worthy of the highest commendation. Stationed at the after-pivot gun, by the explosion of a shell, he was seriously wounded in the left thigh and leg. In the agony of pain, and exhausted from the loss of blood, he dragged himself to the forward hatch, concealing the severity of injury that his comrades might not leave their stations for his assistance. Fainting, he was lowered to the care of the surgeon, whom poor Gowan, in acuteness of suffering, Greeted with a smile, saying, Doctor, I can fight no more, and so come to you.
But it is all right. I am satisfied, for we are whipping the Alabama. And subsequently, I will willingly lose my leg or my life if it is necessary. Lying upon his mattress, he paid strict attention to the progress of the fight. As far as could be elicited by the sounds on deck, His face beaming with satisfaction whenever the cheers of his shipmates were heard. With difficulty, he waved his hand over his head and joined in each exulting shout with a feeble voice. At times, he would comfort the other wounded by an earnest assurance that victory is ours. Directly after the fight, he desired the surgeon to render him no further attention, for he was doing well. Requesting that all his time should be devoted to the poor fellows of the Alabama.
In the hospital, he was resigned, thankful for being the only victim, proud of his ship and shipmates, frequently asserting his willingness to die after so glorious a victory. This man, so interesting by his courage and resignation, wrote the French Surgeon-in-Chief, with uniform patience and cheerfulness, enlisted General sympathy. All anxiously desired his recovery and sincerely regretted his decease. Certainly one of the most interesting events of the action is the heroic conduct of the brave Gowan. An incident that ever occasions gratification in its relation was the singular coincidence of the lowering of the rebel colors by an early shot from the Kearsarge. And the unfolding of the victorious flag by a shot from the last volley of the Alabama, prior to surrender.
At the main peak of the Kearsarge, the colors were stopped, that they might be displayed if the ensign was carried away, and to serve as the emblem of victory in case of a happy success. It will be remembered that the Alabama's colors were brought down by a shot. From one of the first broadsides of the Kearsarge, an auspicious omen for the sailor at the commencement of battle. A shot from the last broadside of the Alabama passed high over the Kearsarge, striking and carrying away the halyards of the colors at the main peak, and in so doing pulled sufficiently to break the stop, thereby unfurled the triumphant flag at the moment the Rebel ensign was struck. The Alabama was destroyed, the Kearsarge being so little damaged that if required could have engaged another enemy.
It is surprising that the Alabama's fire should have produced so moderate an injury, for, according to report, over 300 shot and shell were discharged. Of these, 13 took effect in the hull and 15 in sails Luckily, 110-pounder rifle shell, which lodged in the stern post, raising the transom frame, and a 32-pounder shell that entered forward of the forward pivot port, crushing waterways, did not explode. Captain Sims, in his official report, says, At the end of the engagement, it was discovered by those of our officers who went alongside the enemy's ship with the wounded, that her midship section on both sides was thoroughly iron-coated. This planking had been ripped off in every direction by our shot and shell, the chain broken and indented in many places, and forced partly into the ship's side.
The enemy was heavier than myself, both in ship, battery, and crew. But I did not know until the action was over that she was also ironclad. The chain plating of the Kearsarge, the ironclad of Captain Sims, consisted of 120 fathoms of sheet chains covering a space amidships of 49 1⁄2 feet in length by 16 feet 2 inches in depth, stopped up and down to eyebolts with marlines. Secured by iron dogs and employed for the purpose of protecting the engines when the upper part of the coal bunkers was empty, as happened during the action. The chains were concealed by inch steel boards as a finish. The chain plating was struck twice by a 32-pound shot in starboard gangway, which cut the chain and bruised planking, and by a 32-pounder shell, Which broke the link of the chain, exploded, and tore away a portion of the deal covering.
Had the shot been from the 110-pounder rifle, the result would have been different. It was a cold morning, and if sent through the side, would have cleared the machinery and boilers. It is proper, therefore, To assert that in the absence of the chain armor, the result would have remained the same, notwithstanding the common impression at the time of an ironclad contending with a wooden vessel. The chains were attached to the ship's side more than a year previous to the fight, while at the Azores. In subsequent visits to European ports, they had attracted notice and caused repeated comment. Strange that Captain Sims did not know of the chain armor before the fight. Supposed rebel spies had been on board.
There was no attempt at concealment. The same pilot was employed by both vessels and visited each during the preparation for battle. 163 was the number of the crew of the Kearsarge, including officers. That of the Alabama not definitely known. But from the most reliable information estimated at nearly the same. The tonnage of the former, 1,031. Of the latter, 1,044. The battery of the Kearsarge consisted of seven guns, two 11-inch pivots, smooth bore, one 28-pounder rifle, and four light 32-pounders. That of the Alabama Five guns were fought by the Kearsarge. Seven by the Alabama, both with starboard batteries. The Kearsarge had made thirteen and one-half knots an hour under steam. The Alabama never exceeded thirteen, and at the time of the action, The contest was only equal to ten.
The vessels were not unequally matched in size, speed, crew, and armament, displaying a similarity not often witnessed in naval battles. This was decided by the superiority of the 11-inch Dahlgrens over the Blakely rifle and smoothbore, in connection with the greater coolness and accuracy and aim of the gunners of the Kearsarge. So ends the story of the Alabama, quoting again from the Liverpool Courier, whose journal would be the most interesting volume of ocean literature, whose ubiquity scared the commerce of America from the seas, whose destructive powers have ruined property belonging to the Northerns, valued at upwards of three millions of money, whose actions very nearly involved these countries in war, The Americans are indignant that the ship was built by British hands, of British oak, armed with British guns, and manned by British sailors.
Numerous inaccuracies, suppressions, exaggerations, and discrepancies exist in most of the accounts of this renowned naval engagement. The first reports published in Europe The skeptic who called history a matter-of-fact romance should have lived in our day, when a naval action is fought off Cherbourg on a Sunday, and reported to the London and Paris newspapers on the Monday morning, no two reports agreeing in a single fact. Except in the result. In our enlightened epoch of incessant, instantaneous, and universal intercommunication, the difficulty of getting at the simple facts of any passing incident, in which conflicting sympathies are concerned, increases in proportion to the increasing celerity and certainty with which the materials of history are gathered.
Some allowance, no doubt. May be made for eyewitnesses on shore of a naval engagement seven miles out to sea. Their powerful glasses are liable to that peculiar inaccuracy of sight which distance, excitement, and smoke produce. A French gentleman, for instance, who from Cherbourg Breakwater looked on at the American duel on Sunday last, wrote a graphic letter to the Debats. With a postscript to the effect that he had just discovered that the account in his letter was entirely wrong. Here ends the present story of the Kearsarge in Alabama. It is the truth told honestly.
Voice.johnstamper.com.
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3 03 - All Quiet Along the Potomac (Poem) 3:09
All quiet along the Potomac, they say, except now and then. A stray picket is shot as he walks on his beat to and fro by a rifleman hid in the thicket. "'Tis nothing. A private or two, now and then, will not count in the news of the battle. Not an officer lost, only one of the men, moaning out all alone the death rattle. All quiet along the Potomac tonight, where the soldiers lie peacefully dreaming. Their tents In the rays of the clear autumn moon, or the light of the watch-fire are gleaming. A tremulous sigh of the gentle night wind through the forest leaves softly is creeping, while stars up above with their glittering eyes keep guard, for the army is sleeping. There's only the sound of the lone sentry's tread as he tramps from the rock to the fountain.
And thinks of the two in the low trundle bed, far away in the cot on the mountain. His musket falls slack, his face dark and grim, grows gentle with memories tender. As he mutters a prayer for the children asleep, for their mother may heaven defend her. The moon seems to shine just as brightly as then, that night when the love yet unspoken leaped up to his lips. When low-murmured vows were pledged to be ever unbroken. Then drawing his sleeve roughly over his eyes, he dashes off tears that are welling and gathers his gun closer up to its place, as if to keep down the heart's swelling. He passes the fountain, the blasted pine tree, the footstep is lagging and weary, yet onward he goes through the broad belt of light.
Toward the shade of the forest so dreary. Hark! Was it the night wind that rustled the leaves? Was it moonlight so wondrously flashing? It looked like a rifle. Ha! Merry goodbye! The red lifeblood is ebbing and plashing. All quiet along the Potomac tonight. No sound save the rush of the river. While soft falls the dew on the face of the dead, the picket's off duty forever.
End of All Quiet Along the Potomac by Ethel Lynn Beers.
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4 04 - What I saw of Shiloh 43:33
What I Saw of Shiloh by Ambrose Bierce. 1. This is a simple story of a battle. Such a tale as may be told by a soldier who is no writer, To a reader who is no soldier. The morning of Sunday, the sixth day of April 1862, was bright and warm. Reveille had been sounded rather late, for the troops, wearied with long marching, were to have a day of rest. The men were idling about the embers of their bivouac fires, some preparing breakfast, others looking carelessly to the condition of their arms and accoutrements against the inevitable inspection. Still others were chatting with indolent dogmatism on that never-failing theme. The end and object of the campaign. Sentinels paced up and down the confused front with a lounging freedom of mien and stride that would not have been tolerated at another time.
A few of them limped unsoldierly in deference to blistered feet. At a little distance in rear of the stacked arms were a few tents out of which frowzy-headed officers occasionally peered, languidly calling to their servants to fetch a basin of water, dust a coat, or polish a scabbard. Trim Young mounted orderlies bearing dispatches obviously unimportant, urged their lazy nags by devious ways amongst the men, enduring with unconcern their good-humoured raillery, the penalty of superior station. Little Negroes of not very clearly defined status and function lolled on their stomachs, kicking their long bare heels in the sunshine, or slumbered peacefully, unaware of the practical waggery prepared by white hands for their undoing.
Presently, the flag hanging limp and lifeless at headquarters was seen to lift itself spiritedly from the staff. At the same instant was heard a dull, distant sound, like the heavy breathing of some great animal below the horizon. The flag had lifted its head to listen. There was a momentary lull in the hum of the human swarm. Then, as the flag drooped, the hush passed away. But there were some hundreds more men on their feet than before, some thousands of hearts beating with a quicker pulse.
Again the flag made a warning sign, and again the breeze bore to our ears the long, deep sighing of iron lungs. The division, as if it had received the sharp word of command, sprang to its feet, and stood in groups at attention. Even the little blacks got up. I have since seen similar effects produced by earthquakes. I am not sure, but the ground was trembling then. The mess cooks, wise in their generation, Lifted the steaming camp kettles off the fire and stood by to cast out. The mounted orderlies had somehow disappeared. Officers came ducking from beneath their tents and gathered in groups. Headquarters had become a swarming hive. The sound of the great guns now came in regular throbbings, the strong, full pulse of the fever of battle.
The flag flapped excitedly, shaking out its blazonry of stars and stripes with a sort of fierce delight. Toward the knot of officers in its shadow dashed from somewhere, he seemed to have burst out of the ground in a cloud of dust, a mounted aide-de-camp, and on the instant rose the sharp, clear notes of a bugle. Caught up and repeated and passed on by other bugles until the level reaches of brown fields, the line of woods trending away to far hills, and the unseen valleys beyond were telling of the sound. The farther fainter strains half drowned in ringing cheers as the men ran to range themselves behind the stacks of arms. For this call was not the wearisome general before which the tents go down.
It was the exhilarating assembly, which goes to the heart as wine, and stirs the blood like the kisses of a beautiful woman. Who that has heard it calling to him above the grumble of great guns can forget the wild intoxication of its music.
Two.
The Confederate forces in Kentucky and Tennessee had suffered a series of reverses, culminating in the loss of Nashville. The blow was severe. Immense quantities of war material had fallen to the victor, together with all the important strategic points. General Johnston withdrew Beauregard's army to Corinth in northern Mississippi, where he hoped so to recruit and equip it as to enable it to assume the offensive and retake the lost territory. The town of Corinth was a wretched place, the capital of a swamp. It is a two days march west of the Tennessee River, which here and for a hundred and fifty miles farther to where it falls into the Ohio at Paducah runs nearly north. It is navigable to this point, that is to say, to Pittsburgh Landing, where Corinth got to it by a road worn through a thickly wooded country seamed with ravines and bayous, rising nobody knows where, and running into the river under sylvan arches heavily draped with Spanish moss.
In some places they were obstructed by fallen trees. The Corinth Road was at certain seasons a branch of the Tennessee River. Its mouth was Pittsburgh Landing. Here in 1862 were some fields and a house or two. Now there are a National Cemetery and other improvements.
It was at Pittsburgh Landing that Grant established his army, with a river in his rear and two toy steamboats as a means of communication with the east side, whither General Buell, with 30,000 men, was moving from Nashville to join him. The question has been asked, Why did General Grant occupy the enemy side of the river in the face of a superior force before the arrival of Buell? Buell had a long way to come. Perhaps Grant was weary of waiting. Certainly Johnston was, for in the gray of the morning of April 6th, when Buell's leading division was in Bivouac near the little town of Savannah eight or ten miles below, the Confederate forces, having moved out of Corinth two days before, fell upon Grant's advance brigades and destroyed them.
Grant was at Savannah, But hastened to the landing in time to find his camps in the hands of the enemy, and the remnants of his beaten army cooped up with an impassable river at their backs for moral support. I have related how the news of this affair came to us at Savannah. It came on the wind, a messenger that does not bear copious details.
III. On the side of the Tennessee River over against Pittsburgh Landing are some low bare hills, partly enclosed by a forest. In the dusk of the evening of April Sixth, this open space, as seen from the other side of the stream, whence indeed it was anxiously watched by thousands of eyes, to many of which it grew dark long before the sun went down, would have appeared to have been ruled in long, dark lines, with new lines being constantly drawn across. These lines were the regiments of Buell's leading division, which, having moved up from Savannah through a country presenting nothing but interminable swamps and pathless bottomlands with rank overgrowths of jungle, was arriving at the scene of action breathless, footsore, and faint with hunger.
It had been a terrible race. Some regiments had lost a third of their number from fatigue, the men dropping from the ranks as if shot, and left to recover or die at their leisure. Nor was the scene to which they had been invited likely to inspire the moral confidence that medicines physical fatigue. True, the air was full of thunder, and the earth was trembling beneath their feet, and if there is truth in the theory of the conversion of force, these men were storing up energy from every shock that burst its waves upon their bodies. Perhaps this theory may better than another explain the tremendous endurance of men in battle, but the eyes reported only matter for despair. Before us ran the turbulent river, vexed with plunging shells and obscured in spots by blue sheets of low-lying smoke.
The two little steamers were doing their duty well. They came over to us empty and went back crowded, sitting very low in the water, apparently on the point of capsizing. The farther edge of the water could not be seen. The boats came out of the obscurity, took on their passengers, and vanished in the darkness. But on the heights above, The battle was burning brightly enough. A thousand lights kindled and expired in every second of time. There were broad flushings in the sky, against which the branches of the trees showed black. Sudden flames burst out here and there, singly and in dozens. Fleeting streaks of fire crossed over to us by way of welcome. These expired in blinding flashes and fierce little rolls of smoke, attended with the peculiar metallic ring of bursting shells.
and followed by the musical humming of the fragments as they struck into the ground on every side, making us wince but doing little harm. The air was full of noises. To the right and the left, the musketry rattled smartly and petulantly, directly in front, it sighed and growled. To the experienced ear, this meant that the death line was an arc, of which the river was the cord. There were deep, shaking explosions and smart shocks, the whisper of stray bullets and the hurdle of conical shells. The rush of round shot. There were faint, desultory cheers, such as announce a momentary or partial triumph. Occasionally, against the glare behind the trees, could be seen moving black figures, singularly distinct, but apparently no longer than a thumb.
They seemed to me, ludicrously, like the figures of demons in old allegorical prints of Hell. To destroy these and all their belongings, the enemy needed but another hour of daylight. The steamers in that case would have been doing him fine service by bringing more fish to his net. Those of us who had the good fortune to arrive late could then have eaten our teeth in impotent rage. Nay, to make his victory sure, it did not need that the sun should pause in the heavens. One of the many random shots falling into the river would have done the business had chance directed it into the engine room of a steamer. You can perhaps fancy the anxiety with which we watched them leaping down. But we had two other allies besides the knight.
Just where the enemy had pushed his right flank to the river was the mouth of a wide bayou, and here two gunboats had taken station. They, too, were of the toy sort, plated perhaps with railway metals, perhaps with boiler iron. They staggered under a heavy gun or two each. The bayou made an opening in the high bank of the river. The bank was a parapet behind which the gunboats crouched, firing up the bayou as through an embrasure. The enemy was at this disadvantage. He could not get at the gunboats, and he could advance only by exposing his flank to their ponderous missiles, one of which would have broken a half-mile of his bones and made nothing of it. Very annoying this must have been, these twenty gunners beating back an army because a sluggish creek had been pleased to fall into a river at one point rather than another.
Such is the part that accident may play in the game of war. As a spectacle, this was rather fine. We could just discern the black bodies of these boats, looking very much like turtles. But when they let off their big guns, there was a conflagration. The river shuddered in its banks and hurried on, bloody, wounded, terrified. Objects a mile away sprang toward our eyes as a snake strikes at the face of its victim. The report stung us to the brain, but we blessed it audibly. Then we could hear the great shell tearing away through the air until the sound died out in the distance. Then, a surprisingly long time afterward, A dull, distant explosion and a sudden silence of small arms told their own tale.
IV.
There was, I remember, no elephant on the boat that passed us across that evening, nor, I think, any hippopotamus. These would have been out of place. We had, however, a woman. Whether the baby was somewhere on board, I did not learn. She was a fine creature, this woman, somebody's wife. Her mission, as she understood it, was to inspire the failing heart with courage, and when she selected mine I felt less flattered by her preference than astonished by her penetration. How did she learn? She stood on the upper deck with the red blaze of battle bathing her beautiful face, the twinkle of a thousand rifles mirrored in her eyes, and displaying a small ivory-handled pistol, she told me in a sentence punctuated by the thunder of great guns that if it came to the worst she would do her duty like a man.
I am proud to remember that I took off my hat to this little fool. 5. Along the sheltered strip of beach between the riverbank and the water was a confused mass of humanity, several thousands of men. They were mostly unarmed. Many were wounded, some dead. All the camp-following tribes were there, all the cowards, a few officers. Not one of them knew where his regiment was, nor if he had a regiment. Many had not. These men were defeated, beaten, cowed. They were deaf to duty and dead to shame. A more demented crew never drifted to the rear of broken battalions. They would have stood in their tracks and been shot down to a man by a provost-marshal's guard, but they could not have been urged up that bank.
An army's bravest men are its cowards. The death which they would not meet at the hands of the enemy They will meet at the hands of their officers, with never a flinching. Whenever a steamboat would land, this abominable mob had to be kept off her with bayonets. When she pulled away, they sprang on her and were pushed by scores into the water, where they were suffered to drown one another in their own way. The men disembarking insulted them, shoved them, struck them. In return, they expressed their unholy delight in the certainty of our destruction by the enemy.
By the time my regiment had reached the plateau, night had put an end to the struggle. A sputter of rifles would break out now and then, followed perhaps by a spiritless hurrah. Occasionally a shell from a far-away battery would come pitching down somewhere near with a whir crescendo, or flit above our heads with a whisper like that made by the wings of a night-bird, to smother itself in the river. But there was no more fighting. The gunboats, however, blazed away at set intervals all night long. Just to make the enemy uncomfortable and break him of his rest. For us, there was no rest. Foot by foot we moved through the dusky fields. We knew not whither. There were men all about us, but no campfires.
To have made a blaze would have been madness. These men were of strange regiments. They mentioned the names of unknown generals. They gathered in groups by the wayside, asking eagerly our numbers. They recounted the depressing incidents of the day. A thoughtful officer shut their mouths with a sharp word as he passed. A wise one coming after encouraged them to repeat their doleful tale all along the line. Hidden in hollows and behind clumps of rank brambles were large tents, dimly lighted with candles, but looking comfortable. The kind of comfort they supplied was indicated by pairs of men entering and reappearing bearing litters, by low moans from within, and by long rows of dead with covered faces outside.
These tents were constantly receiving the wounded, yet were never full. They were continually ejecting the dead, yet were never empty. It was as if the helpless had been carried in and murdered, that they might not hamper those whose business it was to fall tomorrow.
The night was now black-dark. As is usual after a battle, it had begun to rain. Still we moved. We were being put into position by somebody. Inch by inch we crept along, treading on one another's heels by way of keeping together. Commands were passed along the line in whispers. More commonly, none were given. When the men had pressed so closely together that they could advance no farther, they stood stock still, sheltering the locks of their rifles with their ponchos. In this position many fell asleep. When those in front suddenly stepped away, those in the rear, roused by the tramping, hastened after with such zeal that the line was soon choked again. Evidently, the head of the division was being piloted at a snail's pace by someone who did not feel sure of his ground.
Very often we struck our feet against the dead, more frequently against those who still had spirit enough to resent it with a moan. These were lifted carefully to one side and abandoned. Some had sense enough to ask in their weak way for water. Absurd. Their clothes were soaking, their hair dank, their white faces dimly discernible were clammy and cold. Besides, none of us had any water. There was plenty coming, though, for before midnight a thunderstorm broke on us with great violence. The rain, which had for hours been a dull drizzle, fell with a copiousness that stifled us. We moved in running water up to our ankles. Happily, we were in a forest of great trees heavily decorated with Spanish moss, or with an enemy standing to his guns the disclosures of the lightning might have been inconvenient.
As it was, the incessant blaze enabled us to consult our watches, and encouraged us by displaying our numbers. Our black, sinuous line, creeping like a giant serpent beneath the trees, was apparently interminable. I am almost ashamed to say how sweet I found the companionship of those coarse men. So the long night wore away, and as the glimmer of morning crept in through the forest, we found ourselves in a more open country. But where? Not a sign of battle was here. The trees were neither splintered nor scarred, the underbrush was unmown, the ground had no footprints but our own. It was as if we had broken into glades sacred to eternal silence. I should not have been surprised to see sleek leopards come fawning about our feet, and milk-white deer confront us with human eyes.
A few inaudible commands from an invisible leader had placed us in order of battle, but where was the enemy? Where, too, were the riddled regiments that we had come to save? Had our other divisions arrived during the night and passed the river to assist us? Or were we to oppose our paltry five thousand breasts to an army flushed with victory? What protected our right? Who lay upon our left? Was there really anything in our front?
There came, borne to us on the raw morning air, the long, weird note of a bugle. It was directly before us. It rose with a low, clear, deliberate warble, and seemed to float in the gray sky like the note of a lark. The bugle calls of the Federal and the Confederate armies were the same. It was the assembly. As it died away, I observed that the atmosphere had suffered a change. Despite the equilibrium established by the storm, it was electric. Wings were growing on blistered feet. Bruised muscles and jolted bones, shoulders pounded by the cruel knapsack, Eyelids leaden from lack of sleep. All were pervaded by the subtle fluid. All were unconscious of their clay. The men thrust forward their heads, expanded their eyes, and clenched their teeth.
They breathed hard, as if throttled by tugging at the leash. If you had laid your hand in the beard or hair of one of these men, it would have crackled and shot sparks.
Six. I suppose the country lying between Corinth and Pittsburgh Landing could boast a few inhabitants other than alligators. What manner of people they were, it is impossible to say, inasmuch as the fighting dispersed or possibly exterminated them. Perhaps in merely classing them as non-sorian I shall describe them with sufficient particularity, and at the same time avert from myself the natural suspicion attaching to a writer who points out to persons who do not know him the peculiarities of persons whom he does not know. One thing, however, I hope I may without offense affirm of these swamp-dwellers. They were pious. To what deity their veneration was given, whether, like the Egyptians, they worshipped the crocodile, or, like other Americans, adored themselves, I do not presume to guess.
But whoever, or whatever, may have been the divinity whose ends they shaped, unto him or it they had builded a temple. This humble edifice, centrally situated in the heart of a solitude, and conveniently accessible to the supersylvan crow, had been christened Shiloh Chapel, whence the name of the battle. The fact of a Christian church, assuming it to have been a Christian church, giving name to a wholesale cutting of Christian throats by Christian hands, need not be dwelt on here. The frequency of its recurrence in the history of our species has somewhat abated the moral interest that would otherwise attach to it.
Seven.
Owing to the darkness, the storm, and the absence of a road, it had been impossible to move the artillery from the open ground about the landing. The privation was much greater in a moral than in a material sense. The infantry soldier feels a confidence in this cumbrous arm, quite unwarranted by its actual achievements in thinning out the opposition. There is something that inspires confidence in the way a gun dashes up to the front, Shoving fifty or a hundred men to one side as if it had said, Permit me. Then it squares its shoulders, calmly dislocates a joint in its back, sends away its twenty-four legs, and settles down with a quiet rattle which says as plainly as possible, I've come to stay.
There is a superb scorn in its grimly defiant attitude, with its nose in the air. It appears not so much to threaten the enemy as deride him. Our batteries were probably toiling after us somewhere. We could only hope the enemy might delay his attack until they should arrive. "'He may delay his defense if he like,' said a sententious young officer, to whom I imparted this natural wish. He had read the signs aright. The words were hardly spoken when a group of staff officers about the brigade commander shot away in divergent lines as if scattered by a whirlwind, and galloping each to the commander of a regiment gave the word. There was a momentary confusion of tongues. A thin line of skirmishers detached itself from the compact front and pushed forward, followed by its diminutive reserves of half a company each, one of which platoons it was my fortune to command.
When the straggling line of skirmishers had swept four or five hundred yards ahead, "'See,' said one of my comrades, "'she moves!' She did indeed, and in fine style, her front as straight as a string, her reserve regiments in columns doubled on the center, Following in true subordination. No braying of brass to apprise the enemy, no fifing and drumming to amuse him, no ostentation of gaudy flags, no nonsense. This was a matter of business. In a few moments we had passed out of the singular oasis that had so marvelously escaped the desolation of battle, and now the evidences of the previous day's struggle were present in profusion. The ground was tolerably level here, the forest less dense. Mostly clear of undergrowth, and occasionally opening out into small natural meadows.
Here and there were small pools, mere disks of rainwater with a tinge of blood. Riven and torn with cannon-shot, the trunks of the trees protruded in bunches of splinters like hands, the fingers above the wound interlacing with those below. Large branches had been lopped and hung their green heads to the ground, or swung critically in their netting of vines as in hammock. Many had been cut clean off, and their masses of foliage seriously impeded the progress of the troops. The bark of these trees, from the root upward to a height of ten or twenty feet, was so thickly pierced with bullets and grape that one could not have laid a hand on it without covering several punctures. None had escaped. How the human body survives a storm like this must be explained by the fact that it is exposed to it but a few moments at a time.
Whereas these grand old trees had had no one to take their places, from the rising to the going down of the sun. Angular bits of iron, concavo-convex, sticking in the sides of muddy depressions, showed where the shells had exploded in their furrows. Knapsacks, canteens, haversacks distended with soaking and swollen biscuits gaping to disgorge, blankets beaten into the soil by the rain, rifles with bent barrels or splintered stocks, waist belts, Hats, and the omnipresent sardine box. All the wretched debris of the battle still littered the spongy earth as far as one could see in every direction. Dead horses were everywhere. A few disabled caissons or limbers reclining on one elbow, as it were.
Ammunition wagons standing disconsolate behind four or six sprawling mules. Men? There were men enough. All dead, apparently, except one who lay near where I had halted my platoon to await the slower movement of the line. A Federal Sergeant, variously hurt, who had been a fine giant in his time. He lay face upward, taking in his breath in convulsive, rattling snorts, and blowing it out in sputters of froth which crawled creamily down his cheeks, piling itself alongside his neck and ears. A bullet had clipped a groove in his skull above the temple. From this the brain protruded in bosses, dropping off in flakes and strings. I had not previously known one could get on, even in this unsatisfactory fashion, with so little brain.
One of my men, whom I knew for a womanish fellow, asked if he should put his bayonet through him. Inexpressibly shocked by the cold-blooded proposal, I told him I thought not. It was unusual, and too many were looking.
Eight.
It was plain that the enemy had retreated to Corinth. The arrival of our fresh troops and their successful passage of the river had disheartened him. Three or four of his gray cavalry vedettes moving amongst the trees on the crest of the hill in our front and galloping out of sight at the crack of our skirmishers' rifles confirmed us in the belief. An army face to face with its enemy does not employ cavalry to watch his front. True, they might have been a general in his staff. Crowning this rise, we found a level field a quarter of a mile in width. Beyond it, a gentle acclivity, covered with an undergrowth of young oaks, impervious to sight. We pushed on into the open, but the division halted at the edge.
Having orders to conform to its movements, we halted too, but that did not suit. We received an intimation to proceed. I had performed this sort of service before, and in the exercise of my discretion deployed my platoon, pushing it forward at a run with trailed arms to strengthen the skirmish line. Which I overtook some thirty or forty yards from the wood. Then, I can't describe it, the forest seemed all at once to flame up and disappear with a crash like that of a great wave upon the beach, a crash that expired in hot hissings and the sickening spat of lead against flesh. A dozen of my brave fellows tumbled over like tenpins. Some struggled to their feet only to go down again and yet again.
Those who stood fired into the smoking brush and doggedly retired. We had expected to find, at most, a line of skirmishers similar to our own. It was with a view to overcoming them by a sudden coup at the moment of collision that I had thrown forward my little reserve. What we had found was a line of battle, coolly holding its fire till it could count our teeth. There was no more to be done but get back across the open ground, every superficial yard of which was throwing up its little jet of mud provoked by an impinging bullet. We got back, most of us, and I shall never forget the ludicrous incident of a young officer who had taken part in the affair, walking up to his colonel, who had been a calm and apparently impartial spectator, and gravely reporting, "'The enemy is in force just beyond this field, sir.' Nine.
In subordination to the design of this narrative as defined by its title, the incidents related necessarily group themselves about my own personality as a center, and, as this center, during the few terrible hours of the engagement, maintained a variably constant relation to the open field already mentioned. It is important that the reader should bear in mind the topographical and tactical features of the local situation. The hither side of the field was occupied by the front of my brigade, a length of two regiments in line, with proper intervals for field batteries. During the entire fight, the enemy held the slight wooded acclivity beyond. The debatable ground to the right and the left of the open was broken and thickly wooded for miles, in some places quite inaccessible to artillery, and at very few points offering opportunities for its successful employment.
As a consequence of this, the two sides of the field were soon studded thickly with confronting guns which flamed away at one another with amazing zeal and rather startling effect. Of course, an infantry attack delivered from either side was not to be thought of when the covered flanks offered inducements so unquestionably superior, and I believe the riddled bodies of my poor skirmishers were the only ones left on this neutral ground that day. But there was a very pretty line of dead continually growing in our rear, And doubtless the enemy had at his back a similar encouragement. The configuration of the ground offered us no protection. By lying flat on our faces between the guns, we were screened from view by a straggling row of brambles, which marked the course of an obsolete fence.
But the enemy's grape was sharper than his eyes, and it was poor consolation to know that his gunners could not see what they were doing so long as they did it. The shock of our own pieces nearly deafened us. But in the brief intervals we could hear the battle roaring and stammering in the dark reaches of the forest to the right and the left, where our other divisions were dashing themselves again and again into the smoking jungle. What would we not have given to join them in their brave, hopeless task? But to lie inglorious beneath showers of shrapnel darting divergent from the unassailable sky, meekly to be blown out of life by level gusts of grape, to clench our teeth and shrink helpless before a big shot pushing noisily through the consenting air, This was horrible.
"'Lie down there,' a captain would shout, and then get up himself to see that his order was obeyed. "'Captain, take cover, sir,' the lieutenant colonel would shriek, pacing up and down in the most exposed position that he could find. "'Oh, those cursed guns! Not the enemies, but our own! Had it not been for them, we might have died like men. They must be supported, forsooth, the feeble-boasting bullies.'" It was impossible to conceive that these pieces were doing the enemy as excellent a mischief as his were doing us. They seemed to raise their cloud by day solely to direct aright the streaming procession of Confederate missiles. They no longer inspired confidence, but begot apprehension. And it was with grim satisfaction that I saw the carriage of one and another smashed into Matchwood by a whooping shot and bundled out of the line.
X.
The dense forests, wholly or partly in which were fought so many battles of the civil war, lay upon the earth in each autumn a thick deposit of dead leaves and stems, the decay of which forms a soil of surprising depth and richness. In dry weather the upper stratum is as inflammable as tinder. A fire once kindled in it will spread with a slow, persistent advance as far as local conditions permit, Leaving a bed of light ashes beneath which the less combustible accretions of previous years will smolder until extinguished by rains. In many of the engagements of the war, the fallen leaves took fire and roasted the fallen men. At Shiloh, during the first day's fighting, wide tracks of woodland were burned over in this way, and scores of wounded who might have recovered perished in slow torture.
I remember a deep ravine a little to the left and rear of the field I have described. in which by some mad freak of heroic incompetence a part of an Illinois regiment had been surrounded, and refusing to surrender was destroyed, as it very well deserved. My regiment having at last been relieved at the guns and moved over on the heights above this ravine for no obvious purpose, I obtained leave to go down into the Valley of Death and gratify a reprehensible curiosity. Forbidding enough it was in every way. The fire had swept every superficial foot of it. And at every step I sank into ashes to the ankle. It had contained a thick undergrowth of young saplings, every one of which had been severed by a bullet, the foliage of the prostrate tops being afterward burnt, and the stumps charred.
Death had put his sickle into this thicket, and fire had gleamed the field. Along a line which was not that of extreme depression, but was at every point significantly equidistant from the heights on either hand, lay the bodies, half buried in ashes. Some in the unlovely looseness of attitude denoting sudden death by the bullet, but by far the greater number in postures of agony that told of the tormenting flame. Their clothing was half burnt away, their hair and beard entirely. The rain had come too late to save their nails. Some were swollen to double girth, others shriveled to manikins. According to degree of exposure, their faces were bloated and black, or yellow and shrunken. The contraction of muscles which had given them claws for hands had cursed each countenance with a hideous grin.
I cannot catalogue the charms of these gallant gentlemen who had got what they enlisted for.
Eleven.
It was now three o'clock in the afternoon, and raining. For fifteen hours we had been wet to the skin. Chilled, sleepy, hungry, and disappointed. Profoundly disgusted with the inglorious part to which they had been condemned. The men of my regiment did everything doggedly. The spirit had gone quite out of them. Blue sheets of powder smoke, drifting amongst the trees, settling against the hillsides and beaten into nothingness by the falling rain, filled the air with their peculiar pungent odor, but it no longer stimulated. For miles on either hand could be heard the hoarse murmur of the battle, breaking out nearby with frightful distinctness. or sinking to a murmur in the distance, and the one sound aroused no more attention than the other.
We had been placed again in rear of those guns, but even they and their iron antagonists seemed to have tired of their feud, pounding away at one another with amiable infrequency. The right of the regiment extended a little beyond the field. On the prolongation of the line in that direction were some regiments of another division, with one in reserve. A third of a mile back lay the remnant of somebody's brigade looking to its wounds. The line of forest bounding this end of the field stretched as straight as a wall from the right of my regiment to heaven knows what regiment of the enemy. There suddenly appeared, marching down along this wall, not more than two hundred yards in our front, a dozen files of gray-clad men with rifles on the right shoulder.
At an interval of fifty yards they were followed by perhaps half as many more, And in fair supporting distance of these, stalked with confident mien a single man. There seemed to me something indescribably ludicrous in the advance of this handful of men upon an army, albeit with their left flank protected by a forest. It does not so impress me now. They were the exposed flanks of three lines of infantry, each a half a mile in length. In a moment, our gunners had grappled with the nearest pieces, swung them half round. and were pouring streams of canister into the invaded wood. The infantry rose in masses, springing into line. Our threatened regiments stood like a wall, their loaded rifles at ready, their bayonets hanging quietly in the scabbards.
The right wing of my own regiment was thrown slightly backward to threaten the flank of the assault. The battered brigade away to the rear pulled itself together. Then the storm burst. A great gray cloud seemed to spring out of the forest into the faces of the waiting battalions. It was received with a crash that made the very trees turn up their leaves. For one instant the assailants paused above their dead, then struggled forward, their bayonets glittering in the eyes that shone behind the smoke. One moment, and those unmoved men in blue would be impaled. What were they about? Why did they not fix bayonets? Were they stunned by their own volley? Their inaction was maddening. Another tremendous crash.
The rear rank had fired. Humanity, thank heaven, is not made for this, and the shattered gray mass drew back a score of paces, opening a feeble fire. Lead had scored its old-time victory over steel. The heroic had broken its great heart against the commonplace. There are those who say that it is sometimes otherwise. All of this had taken but a minute of time, and now the second Confederate line swept down and poured in its fire. The line of blue staggered and gave way. In those two terrific volleys, it seemed to have quite poured out its spirit. To this deadly work, our reserve regiment now came up with a run. It was surprising to see its spitting fire with never a sound, for such was the infernal din that the ear could take in no more.
This fearful scene was enacted within fifty paces of our toes, But we were rooted to the ground as if we had grown there. But now our commanding officer rode from behind us to the front, waved his hand with the courteous gesture that says, Aprez vous, and with a barely audible cheer we sprang into the fight. Again the smoking front of Gray receded, and again, as the enemy's third line emerged from its leafy covert, it pushed forward across the piles of dead and wounded to threaten with protruded steel. Never was seen so striking a proof of the paramount importance of numbers. Within an area of three hundred yards by fifty there struggled for front places no fewer than six regiments, and the accession of each, after the first collision, had it not been immediately counterpoised, would have turned the scale.
As matters stood, we were now very evenly matched, and how long we might have held out, God only knows. But all at once something appeared to have gone wrong with the enemy's left. Our men had somewhere pierced his line. A moment later his whole front gave way, and, springing forward with fixed bayonets, we pushed him in utter confusion back to his original line. Here, among the tents from which Grant's people had been expelled the day before, our broken and disordered regiments inextricably intermingled, and, drunken with the wine of triumph, dashed confidently against a pair of trim battalions, provoking a tempest of hissing lead that made us stagger under its very weight. The sharp onset of another against our flank sent us whirling back with fire at our heels and fresh foes in merciless pursuit, who in their turn were broken upon the front of the invalided brigade previously mentioned, which had moved up from the rear to assist in this lively work.
As we rallied to reform behind our beloved guns and noted the ridiculous brevity of our line, as we sank from sheer fatigue and tried to moderate the terrific thumping of our hearts, As we caught our breath to ask who had seen such and such a comrade, and laughed hysterically at their reply, there swept past us and over us into the open field a long regiment with fixed bayonets and rifles on the right shoulder. Another followed, and another two, three, four. Heavens! Where do all these men come from, and why did they not come before? How grandly and confidently they go sweeping on like long blue waves of ocean, chasing one another to the cruel rocks. Involuntarily, we draw in our weary feet beneath us as we sit, ready to spring up and interpose our breasts when these gallant lines shall come back to us across the terrible field and sift brokenly through among the trees with spouting fires at their backs.
We still are breathing to catch the full grandeur of the volleys that are to tear them to shreds. Minute after minute passes, and the sound does not come. Then, for the first time, we note that the silence of the whole region is not comparative, but absolute. Have we become stone deaf? See, here comes a stretcher-bearer, and they're a surgeon. Good heavens, a chaplain! The battle was indeed at an end.
Twelve.
And this was, oh, so long ago. How they come back to me, dimly and brokenly, but with what a magic spell, those years of youth when I was soldiering. Again I hear the far warble of blown bugles. Again I see the tall blue smoke of campfires ascending from the dim valleys of wonderland. There steals upon my sense the ghost of an odor from pines that canopy the ambuscade. I feel upon my cheek the morning mist that shrouds the hostile camp, unaware of its doom, and my blood stirs at the ringing rifle-shot of the solitary sentinel. Unfamiliar landscapes, glittering with sunshine or sullen with rain, come to me demanding recognition. Pass, vanish, and give place to others. Here in the night stretches a wide and blasted field, studded with half-extinct fires, burning redly with I know not what presage of evil.
Again I shudder as I note its desolation and its awful silence. Where was it? To what monstrous in harmony of death was it the visible prelude?
Oh, days when all the world was beautiful and strange, when unfamiliar constellations burned in the southern midnights and the Mockingbird poured out its heart in the moon-gilded magnolia, when there was something new under a new sun.
Will your fine, far memories ever cease to lay contrasting pictures athwart the harsher features of this later world, accentuating the ugliness of the longer and tamer life? Is it not strange that the phantoms of a blood-stained period have so airy a grace and look with so tender eyes, that I recall with difficulty the danger and death and horrors of the time, and without effort all that was gracious and picturesque? Ah, youth, there is no such wizard as thou. Give me but one touch of thine artist's hand upon the dull canvas of the present. Guild for but one moment the drear and somber scenes of today. And I will willingly surrender another life than the one that I should have thrown away at Shiloh.
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5 05 - Lee's Last Campaign 51:34
Lee's Last Campaign by J.C. Gorman Chapter One. The condition of the Army of Northern Virginia in its last days. The lines in front of Petersburg. The battles around the city. The final struggle. Terrible fighting. The assaults on Forts Mahoney and Gregg. Thrilling scenes. The main bodies of both armies stand and look anxiously on. The Confederate army severed. The evacuation of Richmond and Petersburg. The Greetings of Petersburg Ladies to the Retreating Columns. The Retreat and Pursuit to Appomattox Court House.
When I returned to my command in the early part of March, after a long absence as a prisoner, I was greatly depressed at the sad state of feeling in which I found almost the whole army. The buoyant, hopeful tone that animated them during the bloody and heroic struggles in the wilderness, and at Sponsylvania, was gone. The men who followed the immortal Jackson in his historic and eventful campaigns, and endured every fatigue and hardship without a murmur, in the full hope of eventual victory, were dejected, crestfallen, and despondent. The wear and tear of a continuous campaign from the Rappahannock to the James, and the disasters of the valley struggle of the previous fall, together with the continuous marching and counter-marching on their present lines, without rest and with short rations, Longstreet's veterans, who had followed their old leader from the ensanguined fields of Virginia to Chickamauga in East Tennessee, and who had again been forwarded to their old fields of conflict, were thinned in numbers, and had lost much of the fierce fire of pluck that characterized them of old.
The lines were long, stretching from below Richmond on the north side of the James to Hatcher's Run, away beyond Petersburg on the south side. A countless host were just in front of them, watching an opportunity to strike where the lines were the weakest. The Confederate army numbered perhaps sixty thousand, all told, artillery, cavalry, and infantry, and with forty miles of defense, the battle line was thin as a skirmish, and the duty incessant and fatiguing in the greatest degree. On some parts of the line the crack of the rifle, the booming of artillery, and the bursting of the mortar shells were incessant. Desertions were very numerous, both to the enemy and to the rear, and I early found that the army had at last succumbed, not to the enemy in front, but to the discontent, the murmurings, despondency, and demoralization among the people at home, who infused their hopeless dejection by furloughed men returning to their commands, and by letters.
Longstreet commanded the Confederate left across the James, and his right division extended to within a few miles of Petersburg. Gordon came next with his three divisions, thinned by arduous and fatiguing marches and bloody battles in the Shenandoah Valley, to the dimensions of only respectable brigades. He commanded just in front of Petersburg, from the Appomattox to a small stream just to the right of the city, which, not knowing its correct name, I will call Silver Run. And it was along this line, almost its entire length, that a continuous struggle for months had been kept up, and in some places the opposing forces were scarce a dozen yards apart. A. P. Hill, with his three divisions, held the right, extending to Hatcher's Run, while the cavalry guarded either flank.
The Confederates had no reserves, and when a brigade was taken to assist at some threatened point, the position they left was endangered, and safety was only ensured by the unconsciousness of the Federals. There were dozens of times during the winter, had Grant only known it, when an assault could have been made with the same result of the last one, which caused the evacuation. In the last days of March, the 27th, I think, General Lee made his last offensive demonstration, which ended in failure, and demonstrated the condition of his troops. The assault I allude to was on Gordon's line, two miles south of the Appomattox, and just to the left of the crater. Robbing other portions of his line, he massed two divisions, and, early in the morning, dashed on the abatis of the Federals.
They were surprised, and the sharpshooters of Grimes's division, composing the advance, succeeded in driving them from their works, and Lee's troops occupied their breastworks for a distance of a quarter of a mile, with comparatively no loss, and with a loss to the Federals of one principal fort, Haskell, and some five hundred prisoners. Had this opportunity been taken advantage of, there is no telling the result, which would have ensued, but Lee's troops could not be induced to leave the breastworks. The Confederates were taken from their enemy and advanced beyond. They hugged the works in disorder until the Federals recovered from their surprise, and soon the artillery in the forts to the right and left began their murderous fire on them, and when fresh troops were brought up by the Federals, their advance was almost unresisted, and an easy recapture was obtained, the Confederates retiring under a severe fire into their old works.
Many of the men took shelter under the breastworks they had captured and surrendered when the Federals advanced, and the result was a Confederate loss trebled that of their foe. This affair demonstrated to all that the day of offensive movements on the part of the Confederates was gone. One more such disaster would have been irreparable. Comparative quiet reigned, after, along the whole line, for two or three days. When again the vindictive fire of Picket and Mortar was re-inaugurated, and the spiteful whiz of the many kept all cramped within the narrow limits of the trenches. Just before the final struggle, it appeared as if the scene of hostilities had been transferred from Gordon's immediate front.
On his front there was a painful lull in the firing, painful because it denoted that the Federals intended to operate elsewhere, and we were in suspense. The heavy booming of guns was heard way on our right, sounding like distant thunder. Again it would open on our extreme left, and the rattle of musketry and the lumber of the great guns would persuade us that the ball had opened for surety in that direction. But after a few impulsive volleys, strife would cease and a calm would prevail. The indications assured us all that the day and hour of the beginning of the spring campaign was near at hand. The increasing signs of activity inside the enemy's lines filled the air and caused it to vibrate with the buzz and hum of reinforcements, and the great addition to their drum corps and trumpeters, whose morning reveille shut out even the sound of firearms, gave ample evidence of it.
Clouds of dust away in their rear clearly showed that troops were moving. Each night, the Confederates unfolded their blankets and unloosed their shoestrings in uncertainty. A day or two previous to the decisive second, the cannonading on the extreme right grew fiercer and more continuous, and we all thought that the strategy of Grant was being uncovered. Every available man from the Confederate left and center was hurried to the right. Pickett's entire division was sent thither to the assistance of Bushrod Johnson. who occupied A.P. Hill's right, and Longstreet put in command. On the 30th of March, the left brigade of Hill's corps, McGowan's, whose left rested on Silver Run, was moved to the right, leaving only artillerists in the trenches and the picket in front.
Cox's brigade, of Grimes's division, held the right of Gordon's corps and extended to the left bank of the run. On the first of March and first of April, the battle seemed hotter on the right, and the heavy water batteries on the left boomed incessantly. It appeared as if our corps, Gordon'ss', which had become powder-blackened and sulfur-fumed with the baptism of battle for the several weeks previous, were to escape the assaulting might and vengeance of the Federals, and many an old soldier, while listening to the distant roar, congratulated himself and his command. that they were to escape this time, but they reckoned without their host. The battle opened on Gordon's front at three and a half o'clock on the morning of the second, and the conflict then seemed general along the whole line.
The earth shook under the jar and sound, the air was thick with death-dealing missiles, and the whole atmosphere lit up fluidly from the firing of cannon, the bursting of shell, and the flash of the rifle. In the darkness it seemed as if the hand of deity had let loose its hold upon the world. Its attraction was gone, and amid thunder and lightning and tempest, the chaotic masses of earth and sky were commingling together in grand confusion. But this was only the interlude, foreshadowing the tragedy of the dawn. Grant did not intend to surprise the Confederates by rushing madly and headlong at a given point, without warning or notice. He put them on the alert all along the entire line, but they were unaware where he intended to strike in deadly earnest.
At dawn, earnest charges, in double column, were made at different points on the line, but without success. Still, the continuous roar was kept up from fort and battery, by cannon and mortar, and one no longer knew how the battle was going, away from one's own immediate front, Except by the assurance given by the answering thunder of the guns. About noon, it seemed as if the battle raged fiercer, if possible. The god of war was reveling incarnately. Huge masses of sulfurous smoke hung over the scene of conflict. Every piece of artillery in the thickly studded forts, batteries, and mortar beds on both sides were at their best. And their reports, savagely, Terrifically crashing through the narrow streets and lanes of Petersburg, echoed upwards and made it appear as if invisible fiends of the air were engaged, like us, in bloody conflict.
It was at this moment that the Federals made their most determined effort on Gordon's line, and by heroic bravery and daring, and amid great slaughter, succeeded in taking a portion of the breastworks near the Appomattox. But they could not use the advantage they had struggled so hard to obtain. The works were so constructed that the men could retreat only a few yards to another line, while their old line was exposed to the raking fire from the artillery on the right and left. At this part of the line, the artillery fire, in a manner, ceased, and, from the construction of the works, an almost individual battle was kept up until dark. With no more advantage gained on the Federal side than the taking of the first line, which they were unable to hold in a body.
While this fierce battle was raging on the left of the crater, other parts of the line to the right were hotly engaged, but the Confederates succeeded in repulsing every effort. About 2 p.m., heavy masses of troops were concentrated by the Federals directly opposite the position which McGowan's brigade had left the day previous. It took place while a seeming lull had occurred in the battle. I saw them when they first came in sight, marching in line of battle, three columns deep, apparently by divisions, their guns glistening and sparkling in the sun, and their blue uniforms seemingly black in the distance. They drove the Confederate skirmishers before them with impunity, and when they reached point-blank range received the fire of the batteries and the breastworks.
Without staggering. Had infantry been there, perhaps another tale might have been told. But without their assistance, the Confederate batteries were carried in a moment, and the long line of breastworks was theirs, and of the few men that occupied them, some fled to the rear and others to the right and left. A loud huzzah that drowned the sound of battle on other parts of the line greeted our ears, and gave assurance to our right That a success had been gained by the Federals, and disaster had befallen the Confederates.
Just in rear, some two or three hundred yards, on many parts of our line, heavy forts had been erected to guard against just such results as had ensued. In rear of the line of works captured by the Federals were batteries, Mahoney and Gregg, but neither had guns mounted nor men assigned them. Mahoney was unfinished. and was simply an embrasured battery of three guns. Gregg was a large fort, with a deep ditch in front and its sally ports protected in rear, and was embrasured for six guns. These two forts were all that now prevented the enemy from completely cutting the Confederate lines in two to the Appomattox, and dividing A. P. Hill and Longstreet's forces on the right from the main body of the army.
As soon as the line of works were captured, the men from all the brigades which had been forced to retire were hurried into these works. Three guns, save from capture on the entrenchments, were put in Battery Mahoney, with a few men, and three also in Fort Gregg, with about three hundred infantry, mostly Mississippians. After reforming and getting in order, the Federals moved on these works, on Mahoney first, and they took it with a rush, Although the gunners stood to their guns to the last and fired their last shot while the Federal troops were on the ramparts. I was standing where I could view the whole encounter. The Confederate line to the left of the run was not attacked. The creek divided us, and the struggle was going on on one hill while we were on the opposite, about half a mile apart, anxious and breathless witnesses.
As soon as Mahoney fell, the Federals... In three lines, moved on Fort Gregg with cheers. In the immediate vicinity, all else was silent. How confidently, and in what beautiful lines, they advance. As they near the fort, their line curves into a circle. They are within fifty yards, and not the flash of a single rifle yet defies them. My God! Have the boys surrendered without a struggle? We look to see if the sign of a white flag can be seen. At this instant it seems to gleam in the sunlight, and sends a pang to all hearts. But no, it is the white smoke of their guns, while cannoneers and infantry simultaneously fire on the confident assaulters, who stagger, reel under their death-dealing volley, and in a moment the Federal lines are broken and they retreat in masses under cover.
A loud and wild cheer succeeds the breathless stillness that prevailed amongst us, and is answered exultingly by the heroic little garrison in Fort Gregg. But reinforcements have come to the help of the assaulters. I can see their long serpentine lines as they wind their way through the cleared fields in the distance and over the captured works. I turned and looked to our rear, but no reinforcements were seen coming to the succor of the garrison. Every man is needed at his post, and no reserves are at hand. The repulsed assailants, animated by the sight of reinforcements, reform, and, as their comrades come up in battle array, March forth again in unbroken ranks. As they gain the hilltop, two hundred yards from the fort, the artillery within the fort belches forth from the embrasures, and the effect of its canister can be plainly seen in the heaps of dead and dying that strew the ground.
But the check is only momentary. As the next line advances, they move forward in severed ranks, and soon the fort is canopied in smoke. We can see the artillery as it fires in rapid succession. And the small arms pop and crack in a ceaseless rattle. The conflict elsewhere ceases, and both sides are silent and anxious witnesses of the struggle at the fault. Thus the fight continues for half hour. The Federals have reached the ditch. They climb up the sides of the works, and, as the foremost reach the top, we can see them reel and fall headlong on their comrades below. Once, twice, and thrice have they reached the top. Only to be repulsed, and yet they persevere, and the artillery and the embrasures continue to fire in rapid succession.
But, at last, all is hushed. The artillery once more, and for the last time, fire a parting shot, and we can see the Federals as, with impunity, they mount the works and begin a rapid fire on the defenders within. Their ammunition is exhausted, and, unwilling to surrender, they are using their bayonets and clubbing their guns in an unequal struggle. At last, one loud huzzah proclaims the fort lost, and with it, the Confederate army cut into two parts. Generals Heth and Wilcox were in the fort, cheered the men to the last, and, at the minute of its surrender, mounted their steeds, dashed through the sally port, and retreated to the rear. I have since learned that 280 of the garrison of a little over 300 were killed and wounded.
As soon as the fort was captured, the Federal Signal Corps were at work, and the cannonading and sharpshooting was renewed on the other parts of the line. In a moment, heavy bodies of cavalry were seen emerging from the Federal's former lines, poured rapidly over the captured works and galloped in squadrons towards the Appomattox, which was some four or five miles off. Their track could be traced by the heavy columns of black smoke that rose from the various farmhouses on their route, which had been set on fire. The infantry, which had succeeded in capturing the fort, formed line fronting the Confederate's right flank, and looked as if they intended marching by the rear into Petersburg. New dispositions were also made along the Confederate line.
Regiments were detached from their positions along the line, Whose place had to be filled by deployment by those who remained, and sent to the right flank and rear, confronting the new line of the Federals. Artillery galloped into position, and soon Fields' division, with the Texans in the lead, joined the right flank and formed a defensive line to the rear towards the river. A narrow creek only divided the opposing forces, but the Federals seemed satisfied with their success now, and did not advance. A heavy artillery fire was, however, kept up from the new lines until dark. This fire enfiladed the position of our brigade on the right, as we occupied the angle of the line, and annoyed us a great deal, and we all awaited with eagerness the coming of night and the setting of the seemingly dilatory sun.
All now felt that Petersburg was gone, and that tomorrow would find the Confederates, if permitted. On the north side of the Appomattox. From the fall of Gregg, huge columns of smoke burst from numberless depots and warehouses of Petersburg, where Confederate supplies were stored, and when not closed in, the air was luminous with the steady glare of burning buildings in the city, and to the right. All night long, at intervals, all along the line, cannonading was kept up. And at twelve o'clock, the Confederates began their retreat. By three a.m., Gordon's whole corps, except a few pickets and stragglers, were safely across the river, and the bridge on fire. The Confederates passed through Petersburg in silence and dejection.
Huge bolts from the enemy's batteries were crashing through the buildings, but they marched heedlessly on without hurry or trepidation. No one but soldiers were in the streets, and but few houses gave evidence of being inhabited. Sometimes females would approach at the windows of different houses and ask, in a plaintive and supplicative tone, "'Boys, are you going to leave us?' And you could see signs of sorrow and distress in their countenances. Some two or three were disposed to be merry, and changed our sympathies and fears in their behalf into carelessness. As they would tell us, goodbye boys, we'll drink pure coffee with sugar in it tomorrow. Hard times come again no more.
My command was one of the last to cross the Pocahontas Bridge, and by the time we had ascended the bluff and stood upon high ground, the bridge across the Appomattox was in flames. Rockets were ascending high in the air along the Federal lines, and loud hizzas from the trenches made the Welkin ring. At that time, none knew or could guess at the intentions of General Lee, and the darkness prevented us from knowing that the balance of our forces were already on the march up the Appomattox. We rested a short while by the roadside in the vicinity of the bridge, and at the signal gun from a piece of artillery nearby, which startled us by its suddenness and proximity, we were called to attention and followed our comrades who had preceded us up the river.
That signal gun was a notice to others besides ourselves. By the time we had got underway, the heavily charged magazine of Cummins' battery of siege guns blew up, first lighting up the deep darkness of the night with its fierce and vivid glare, and then shaking the earth under our feet like the shock of an earthquake.
Fort Clifton's magazine in a moment followed, and then it was taken up all along the line to Richmond. The scene was the fiercest and most imposing I ever witnessed. We left the light and pierced the midnight darkness of the rear. At each step we took, some new explosion would occur, seemingly severer than the one that preceded it. The whole heavens in our rear were lit up in lurid glare that added intensity to the blackness before us. It was as if the gases, chained in the earth, had at last found vent, And the general conflagration of the world was at hand, while we were retreating into the blackness of uncertain gloom and chaos. We then knew that Richmond had been left to the fate of Petersburg, and we were on a retreat to a new base.
On leaving Petersburg, Gordon's Corps took the River Road, Mahoney with his division, and all other troops on this side of the James, the Middle Road, and Ewell and Elsie with the Richmond garrison and their troops, the Road, nearest the James River. During the day following the evacuation of Petersburg, the Confederates made good progress, their route unimpeded by wagons and artillery. But after the junction of Gordon's Corps with Mahoney and Early, with thirty miles of wagons containing the special plunder of the post-doctors, quartermasters, and post-commissaries of Richmond, they went at a snail's pace. And it would have been no trouble. for an enterprising enemy to have overtaken them. Until they arrived at Amelia Court House on the 4th of April, although a body of the enemy had followed them up, no attack had been made, and it was only after leaving the Court House that the first dash by Sheridan's cavalry was made on their wagon trains.
At Amelia Court House they were joined by the remnants of A. P. Hill's, Pickett's and Longstreet's commands, which, on the right, by disastrous fighting, demoralization and desertion, had dwindled from thousands to hundreds. I have never yet seen an account of the operations of this part of the Confederate army. On the fifth, the Confederates entered the land of hills, and as they left the main road and took the road that led through them, it was thought that they were safe, as the hills present so many splendid positions of defense. But how wearily they went along, averaging hardly a half mile an hour. On the night of the fifth, the Confederate army marched all night long, and it was with intense satisfaction that the army saw the heavily laden quartermaster, doctors, and commissary wagons begin to cast up their plunder.
The jaded horses and mules refused to pull, and for miles the roads were strewn with every convenience, comfort, and luxury that Sunday soldiering could devise. There is no doubt but... That for these wagons, Lee's escape would have been ensured. But they had to be protected, and the army dallyed day and night by the roadside. On the morning of the 6th, it became evident that the Federals were near, and as the head of the Confederate column emerged from a dense piece of woodland and struck across an elevated opening, the first gun of the day was opened on their marching column by a battery of artillery placed on a hill about a mile off. The fact was the Federals had caught up in the Confederate rear, and were pushing them on their flank, and were striving to head them off.
Here began a scene that no pen can accurately describe. The wagons were hurried forward, regardless of their contents, which, whether it remained in or was spilled out, was a matter of perfect indifference to the demoralized and badly scared drivers, who, with straining eyes and perspiring bodies, The infantry and some of the batteries of artillery were halted, and a line of battle formed to the rear and on the left flank, and hardly was the formation made before the Federals were upon them. Our lines checked them long enough to enable the wagons to move ahead, and then began a retreating fight, a mode of battle I morally detest, as it is fight and run. It will demoralize the best troops in the world.
At every hill, divisions would alternately halt and form lines of battle and check the pursuers. As soon as proper disposition had been made on the next line of hills, the rear division would move off and pass the others, only to form again at the next suitable defensive position. Thus the Confederates progressed until midday. By which time, the Federals had come up in full force and began to attack impetuously in the Confederate rear, and on their left flank. Before nightfall, the battle seemed raging on their flank for miles in the direction they were going, and in the rear the Federals were steadily pushing them, and, by the time the Confederates reached a high range of hills in the vicinity of the high bridge, Over the Appomattox, it became necessary to abandon over a hundred wagons and several batteries of artillery.
After reaching the summit of the hill, the pursuit ceased. During the day, the fight at times was bloody, and many were killed and wounded on both sides. The Confederate wounded were left on the field. Late in the evening, General Ewell, with the larger portion of his command, were cut off and forced to surrender. The Confederates also took several hundred prisoners.
The Confederate army, except Longstreet's command, crossed the river during the night, Gordon's troops at the high bridge, going into Bivouac on the opposite side, while Longstreet occupied the hills at the river near the town of Farmville.
In the vicinity of Farmville, on the morning of the 7th, the haversacks of many of the men were replenished for the first time since leaving Petersburg.
At early dawn, the Federals made an attack on Gordon at the bridge, and on Longstreet on the hills near Farmville. Setting the bridge on fire, and leaving one brigade to check the enemy, the balance of Gordon's corps took the railroad track to Farmville, leaving the brigade skirmishing sharply. Gordon's route was down the river, and nearly all the time inside of the opposite bank, which was crowded with masses of the foe. But they pursued the even tenor of their way without hurry, and in fact devilish slow to my anxious mind. On the high hills on the upper side of the Appomattox, just beyond Farmville, it looked as if the Confederates intended to give battle. The artillery was placed in position, and active skirmishing had begun with the Federal advance, who had crossed on the heels of the Confederate retreating rear guard.
The lines of infantry were formed in order of battle. But it was only done to cover the movement of the wagons on another road than the one that leads along the railroad to Lynchburg, which latter was in the possession of Grant. That portion of the Federal army which had crossed dashed on recklessly, and seemed to think they had only a demoralized mob to contend with. By dash and recklessness, they drove the Confederate wagon guard in and cut the train in two. On the road the wagons were traversing. But Grimes's division... Happening to be near at hand, advanced at a double quick, attacked and charged the assailants, and without serious opposition routed them and captured two hundred prisoners.
This seemed to teach the assailants a lesson, and that charge assured them that they were mistaken in supposing the whole army demoralized. For after that, whenever their infantry would approach the Confederate column, they did so cautiously. The fact was... Every man in the army was disgusted and sick of the fire and fallback fighting of the day previous, and had rather stopped and risk an old-fashioned battle than continued the retreat. After repulsing the Federals, Grimes's division followed the balance of the army, as rearguard, for the day. Just as they entered the road, they met General Lee and his staff. He stopped, took off his hat, and saluted them for the lesson they had just given the pursuers.
And he received, in return, a rousing yell that demonstrated plainly that it mattered not how the balance of the army felt. There was the same old metal in that division still. The Confederate army marched slowly on during all the day of the seventh and during the entire night, but they were no longer molested in the rear. Occasionally, the Federal cavalry would dash in on a portion of their wagon train, kill a few horses, frighten drivers and quartermasters, and then scamper away. But no serious impediment was offered their march. The whole army had left the main road and were traversing an out-of-the-way path through dense thickets of oak and pine, and the natives on our way seemed wonder-stricken and frightened at our approach.
The Confederates continued to march steadily on during the eighth, and in the middle of the day struck a better road and made rapid progress till dark, when the rear were within four miles of Appomattox Courthouse. The head of the column had reached Appomattox Courthouse. We had begun to congratulate ourselves that the pursuit was over and felt sure that we would make the trip to Lynchburg, as it was only twenty-four miles off. Not a gun had been fired during the day, and we went into camp early in the evening. But this was necessary, for the continuous marching of the two days and nights previous had produced much straggling, and some of the brigades were reduced to skeletons from this cause.
One fact. A strange one, too, it appeared to me, was that our higher officers did not try to prevent this straggling. They seemed to shut their eyes on the hourly reduction of their commands and wrote in advance of their brigades in dogged indifference. We went into camp without restraint. No enemy seemed near. The bands of the divisions enlivened the departing hours of day with martial music and were applauded with the usual cheers of the troops. The old spirits seemed to be returning. Before dark, all had partaken of their food, and were resting after a forty-eight hours' march. As for myself, I had emptied my haversack that night, and wrapped my blanket around me, and was in sound slumber before darkness set in, intending to have one more good nap, sure, as I did not exactly like the appearance of things.
The general officers were consulting together, and their looks plainly indicated a depressed state of feeling. Besides, before we had completed our meal, the rumbling of distant cannonading sounded warningly in front, and I closed my eyes and went to sleep to its music. The fact was, the enemy's cavalry, in heavy force, at Appomattox, had disputed our advance. Had cut off a train of wagons and artillery who were unsuspectingly feeding, and orders had been given for all the extra artillery to be cut down, and the commands disbanded. However, I slept in blissful ignorance of this state of things.
On the morning of the Ninth, Gordon's Corps were roused at two o'clock and hurried forward, passing the entire wagon and artillery train of the army. When they arrived at Appomattox, they found the whole cavalry force drawn up in mass, and the troopers, apparently asleep, mounted. The fields, gardens, and streets of the village were strewn with troops, bivouacking in line of battle. The corps marched through and to the west of the village, and there formed a line, and the sharpshooters were ordered to advance and relieve the pickets of Bushrod Johnson's division, who were in front. The careless positions of things as they approached the front did not seem alarming, and I was not prepared to believe an enemy was so close, when the picket informed us that the Yankees were in that woods, some two hundred yards in front.
But they were there. When day broke, I began to see the real state of affairs. The Federals held possession of our only road to Lynchburg and disputed our passage. After reconnoitering, they were discovered to be dismounted cavalry and heavy forces. Dispositions were made to attack them, and about ten o'clock the line was ordered forward. With ease they were routed and the whole force driven fully two miles, and had they been all the Confederate line had to contend with, the exit would have been ensured. The Federal cavalry was driven upon its own infantry, who were hastening forward and had just formed to advance. There the Confederate advance was stopped, and in return were forced back again to the courthouse.
Just as the divisions had formed anew to resist the advance of the enemy, while the skirmishers were engaged in the Richmond howitzer battery, which fired the first gun at Bethel, having already discharged one volley, was loading for another, the order was given to cease firing, and the flag of truce which terminated in our surrender was sent in. Twenty-three thousand men were surrendered by General Lee, of which number only a fraction over eight thousand were armed infantry.
Chapter Two. Official Correspondence Concerning the Surrender. The Interview between Generals Lee and Grant. Appearance of General Lee. Scenes between the two armies under flag of truce. The Surrender. General Lee's farewell address to his army. While the pursuit of Lee's army by Grant's overwhelming forces was still in progress, the following correspondence ensued between the two commanders.
April 7th, 1865. General R. E. Lee, Commanding, Confederate States Army. General, the result of the last week must convince you of the hopelessness of further resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia in this struggle. I feel that it is so and regard it as my duty to shift from myself the responsibility of any further effusion of blood by asking of you the surrender of that portion of the Confederate Southern Army known as the Army of Northern Virginia. Very respectfully, your obedient servant, U. S. Grant, Lieutenant General Commanding Armies of the United States.
April 7th, 1865. General. I have received your note of this day, though not entirely of the opinion you express of the hopelessness of further resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia. I reciprocate your desire to avoid the useless effusion of blood, and therefore, before considering your proposition, ask the terms you will offer on conditions of its surrender. R. E. Lee, General. Lieutenant General, U. S. Grant, Commanding Army of the United States. April 8, 1865. to General R. E. Lee, commanding Confederate States Army. General, your note of last evening, in reply to mine of same date, asking the conditions on which I will accept the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia is just received.
In reply, I would say, that peace being my first desire, there is but one condition that I insist upon, viz., that the men surrendered shall be disqualified for taking up arms against the government of the United States until properly exchanged. I will meet you, or designate officers to meet any officers you may name, for the same purpose, at any point agreeable to you, for the purpose of arranging definitely the terms upon which the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia will be received. Very respectfully, your obedient servant, U. S. Grant, Lieutenant General, Commanding Armies of the United States.
April 8, 1865. General, I received, at a late hour, your note of today in answer to mine of yesterday. I did not intend to propose the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, but to ask the terms of your proposition. To be frank, I do not think the emergency has arisen to call for the surrender. But as the restoration of peace should be the sole object of all, I desire to know if your proposals tend to that end. I cannot, therefore, meet you with a view to surrender the Army of Northern Virginia, but so far as your proposition may affect the Confederate States' forces under my command and tend to the restoration of peace, I should be pleased to meet you at 10 a.m. tomorrow on the old stage road to Richmond, between the picket lines of the two armies.
Very respectfully, your obedient servant, R. E. Lee, General, Commanding Confederate States Army. To Lt. Gen. U.S. Grant, Commanding United States Armies. April 9, 1865. Gen. R. E. Lee, Commanding Confederate States Army. General, your note of yesterday is received. As I have no authority to treat on the subject of peace, the meeting proposed for at 10 a.m. to-day could lead to no good. I will state, however, General, that I am equally anxious for peace with yourself. And the whole North entertain the same feeling. The terms upon which peace can be had are well understood. By the South laying down their arms, they will hasten that most desirable event, save thousands of human lives and hundreds of millions of property not yet destroyed.
Sincerely hoping that all our difficulties may be settled without the loss of another life, I subscribe myself, very respectfully, your obedient servant, U.S. Grant, Lieutenant General, United States Army.
April 9th, 1865. General, I received your note of this morning on the picket line, whether I had come to meet you and ascertained definitely what terms were embraced in your proposition of yesterday, with reference to the surrender of this army. I now request an interview in accordance with the offer contained in your letter of yesterday for that purpose. Very respectfully, your obedient servant, R. E. Lee, General. To Lieutenant General Grant, Commanding United States Army. April 9th, 1865. General R. E. Lee, Commanding Confederate States Army. Your note of this date is but this moment, 1150 A.M., received. In consequence of having passed from Richmond and Lynchburg Road, I am, at this riding, about four miles west of Walter's Church, and will push forward to the front for the purpose of meeting you.
Notice sent to me on this road, where you wish the interview to take place, will meet me. Very respectfully, U.S. Grant, Lieutenant General.
Appomattox Court House, April 9, 1865. General R. E. Lee, Commanding Confederate States Army. In accordance with the substance of my letter to you of the eighth inst, I propose to receive the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia on the following terms. To wit, rolls of all the officers and men to be made in duplicate, One copy to be given to an officer designated by me, the other to be retained by such officers as you may designate. The officers to give their individual parole, not to take arms against the government of the United States until properly exchanged, each company or regimental commander to sign a parole for the men of their commands. The arms, artillery, and public property to be parked and stacked and turned over to the officers appointed by me to receive them.
This will not embrace the sidearms of the officers, nor their private horses or baggage. This done, each officer and man will be allowed to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by the United States Authority, so long as they observe their parole and the laws in force where they may reside. Very respectfully, U.S. Grant, Lieutenant General.
Headquarters, Army, Northern Virginia. April 9, 1865. Lieutenant General U.S. Grant, Commanding United States Army. General, I have received your letter of this date containing the terms of the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, as proposed by you. As they are substantially the same as those expressed in your letter of the 8th Inst, they are accepted. I will proceed to designate the proper officers to carry the stipulations into effect. Very respectfully, your obedient servant, R. E. Lee, General. General Lee and General Grant met at the house of Mr. Wilmer McLean. General Lee was attended only by Colonel Marshall, one of his aides. With Grant, there were several of his staff officers.
The two commanders greeted each other with courtesy. General Lee immediately alluded to the conditions of the surrender, and said he would leave the details to General Grant's own discretion. General Grant stated the terms of the parole, that the arms should be stacked, The artillery parked, and the supplies of munitions turned over to him, the officers to retain their side-arms, horses, and personal effects. General Lee promptly assented to the conditions, and the agreement of the surrender was engrossed and signed by General Lee at half-past three o'clock in the afternoon.
A Northern correspondent thus described the appearance of General Lee in this memorable interview. General Lee looked very jaded and worn, but nevertheless presented the same magnificent physique for which he has always been noted. He was neatly dressed in gray cloth, without any embroidery or insignia of rank, except three stars worn on the turned portion of his coat-collar. His cheeks were very much bronzed by exposure, but still shone ruddy underneath it all. He is growing quite bald, and wears one of the side-locks of his hair thrown across the upper portion of his forehead, which is as white and fair as a woman's. He stands fully six feet one inch in height, and weighs something over two hundred pounds, without being burdened with a pound of superfluous flesh.
During the whole interview, he was retired and dignified to a degree bordering on taciturnity, but was free from all exhibition of temper or mortification. His demeanor was that of a thoroughly possessed gentleman, who had a very disagreeable duty to perform, but was determined to get through it as well and as soon as he could. It is to be fairly and cheerfully admitted that General Grant's conduct, with respect to all the circumstances of the surrender, exhibited some extraordinary traits of magnanimity. He had conducted it with as much simplicity as possible, avoided sensation, and spared everything that might wound the feelings or imply the humiliation of a vanquished foe. Such conduct was noble.
Before the surrender, General Grant had expressed to his own officers his intention not to require the same formalities as are required in a surrender between the forces of two foreign nations or belligerent powers, and to exact no conditions for the mere purpose of humiliation. While the interview with reference to the surrender was taking place between the commanders, a strange scene was transpiring between the lines of the two armies and occupied the period of the armistice. An informal conference and mingling of the officers of both armies gave to the streets of the village of Appomattox Court House a strange appearance. On the Federal side were Generals Ord, Sheridan, Crook, Gibbon, Griffin, Merritt, Ayers, Bartlett, Chamberlain, Forsyth, and Mitchie.
On the Confederate side were Generals Longstreet, Golden, Heth, Wilcox, and others. The conference lasted some hour and a half. None but general officers were allowed to pass through the skirmish line. There were mutual introductions and shaking of hands, and soon was passed some whiskey, and mutual healths drank. Gradually, the area of the conference widened. The parties filled the streets, and before this singular conference closed, some were seated on the steps, and others, for better accommodations, chatted cozily, seated on a contiguous fence.
Between the skirmish lines of the two armies there was a great suspense, for it was felt that great interest were at stake between them. Skirmish line confronted skirmish line. Lines of battle confronted lines of battle. Cannon confronted Cannon. Eager hopes hung on the interview between the opposing great commanders of the two armies. Peace might follow this interview. It might end in resumption of hostilities, in fiercest battle, in terrible carnage. The two armies were plainly visible to one another. The Confederates skirted a strip of woods in rear of the town. Through the vistas of the streets might be seen their wagon-trains. The minutes Passed, but slowly. The approach of every horseman attracted an eager look.
Two o'clock had been appointed by Grant for the resumption of hostilities. It arrived, and the Federal skirmish line commenced to advance. The Confederate pickets were in plain sight and stationary. A moment more, and the crack of the rifle would indicate the resumption of carnage. But a clatter of hoofs is heard, and a flag of truce appears upon this scene, with an order from General Grant that hostilities should cease until further waters. After the interview at McLean's house, General Lee returned to his own camp, about half a mile distant, where his leading officers were assembled awaiting his return. He announced the result and the terms. They then approached him in order of rank, shook hands, expressed satisfaction at his course and their regret at parting, All shedding tears on the occasion.
The fact of surrender and the forms were then announced to the troops, and when General Lee appeared among them he was loudly cheered. At about four o'clock it was announced in Grant's army that the surrender had been consummated inside, and now the enthusiasm which had been restrained by uncertainty broke loose. The various brigade commanders announced the joyful news to their commands, and cheers of the wildest description followed. The men leaped, ran, jumped, threw themselves into each other's arms, and seemed mad with joy. The day after the surrender, General Lee bid farewell to his army in the following simple address, so characteristic of his plain and manly style of riding.
General Order No. 9 Headquarters, Army, N. V. April 10, 1865. After four years of arduous service marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources. I need not tell the survivors of so many hard-fought battles, who have remained steadfast to the last, that I have consented to this result from no distrust of them. But feeling that valor and devotion could accomplish nothing that could compensate for the loss that would have attended the continuation of the contest, I have determined to avoid the useless sacrifice of those whose past services have endeared them to their countrymen. By the terms of agreement, officers and men will be allowed to return to their homes and remain there until exchanged.
You will take with you the satisfaction that proceeds from the consciousness of duty faithfully performed. And I earnestly pray that a merciful God will extend to you His blessing and protection. With an unceasing admiration of your constancy and devotion to your country, and a grateful remembrance of your kind and generous consideration of myself, I bid you an affectionate farewell.
R.
E. Lee, General. July 28, 2014.
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6 06 - The Passing of the Armies, Chapter 6 1:02:25
Sunken feverish sleep by the roadside six miles away from Appomattox Station on the South Side Road. Scarcely is the first broken dream begun when a caberman comes splashing down the road and vigorously dismounts. Pulling from his jacket front, a crumpled note. The Sentinel, standing watched by his commander, worn in body but alert in every sense, touches your shoulder. Order, sir, I think. Your eyes on elbow, strike a match, and with smarting, streaming eyes read the brief, thrilling note. Sent back by Sheridan to us infantry commanders. Like this, as I remember. I have cut across the enemy at Appomattox Station, and captured three of his trains. If you can possibly push your infantry up here tonight, we will have great results in the morning.
Ah, sleep no more. The startling bugle notes ring out the general to the march. Word is sent for the men to take a bite of such as they have for food. The promised rations will not be up till noon. And by that time we shall be perhaps too far away for such greeting. A few try to eat, no matter what. Meanwhile, almost with one foot in the stirrup, you take from the hands of the white boy a tin plate of nondescript food and a dipper of miscaught coffee, all equally black, like the night around. You eat and drink at a swallow, mount and away to get to the head of the column before you sound the forward. They are there, the men, shivering to their senses, as if risen out of the earth, But something in them, not of it.
Now sounds the forward for the last time in our long-drawn strife, and they move. These men, sleepless, supperless, breakfastless, sore-footed, stiff-jointed, since benumbed, but with flushed faces, pressing for the front. By sunrise we have reached Appomattox Station, where Sheridan has left the captured trains. A staff officer is here to turn a square to the right to the Appomattox River, cutting across Lee's Retreat. Already we hear the sharp ring of the horse artillery, answered ever and anon by heavier field guns, and drawing nearer the crack of cavalry carbines, and unmistakably too the graver roll of musketry of opposing infantry. There is no mistake. Sheridan is square across the enemy's front, and with that glorious cavalry alone is holding at bay all that is left of the proudest army of the Confederacy.
It has come at last, the supreme hour. No thought of human wants or weakness now. All for the front. All for the flag, for the final stroke to make its meaning real. These men of the Potomac and James, side by side, hit the double in time and column, now one and now the other, in the road or the fields beside. One striking feature I can never forget. Burnie's black men, abreast with us, pressing forward to save the white man's country. We did not know exactly what was going on. We did know that our cavalry had been doing splendid work all night, and in fact was now holding at bay Lee's whole remaining army. I was proud to learn that Smith's brigade, our first main cavalry in the van, had waged the most crucial part of the glorious fight.
Ord's troops were in lead, pushing for the roar of the guns to bring relief to our cavalry before Lee's anxious infantry should break through. The Storm Center was now on the Lynchburg Pike, a mile or so beyond Appomattox Court House. The V Corps followed, Heirs' Division ahead, then our old 3rd Brigade of the 1st Division. Once mine since Bartlett's. Next my command, my own brigade and Gregory's, at the rear of the column, Crawford's fine division, but somehow unaccountably slow in its movements and march. I was, therefore, in about the middle of our fifth corps column. The boom of the battle thickened ahead of us. We were intent for the front. Suddenly I am accosted by a cavalry staff officer dashing out of a rough wood road leading off to our right.
General, you command this column. Two brigades of it, sir. About half the 1st Division, 5th Corps. Sir, General Sheridan wishes you to break off from this column and come to his support. The rebel infantry is pressing him hard. Our men are falling back. Don't wait for orders through the regular channels, but act on this at once. Of course, I obey without question, sending word forward to Griffin, in command of our 5th Corps, that he may understand and instruct Crawford to follow the main column and not me. I turned off my brigade in Gregory's, and, guided by the staff officer, pushed out to see if we could do as well on a cavalry front as we had at their heels. My guide informed me of the situation.
Ord's troops were holding Gordon's hard on Lynchburg Pike. The latter command was now a formidable force, having taken in the heart of Stonewall Jackson's and A.D. Hill's Corps, and what was left of Anderson's. But the rear of this column, pressing on, had made a demonstration, indicating that they were now about to try a final forlorn hope. to cut through near the court house, while the head of their column was engaging Ord. General Sheridan, to thwart this attempt, had taken Devin's cavalry division back to meet them, at least until our infantry could be brought up. The barrier of cavalry alone could not withstand the desperate Confederate veterans essaying their last hope, and in fact was slowly receding.
This explained the reason for our summons. Sharp work now. Pressing through the woods at cavalry speed, we come out right upon Sheridan's battle flag. Gleaming amidst the smoke of his batteries in the edge of the open field. Weird-looking flag it is. Forked-tailed, red and white, the two bands that composed it, each charged with a star of the contrasting color. Two eyes sternly glaring through the cannon cloud. Beneath it, that storm-center spirit, that form of condensed energies mounted on the grim charger, Rienzi, that turned the battle of the Shenandoah, both rider and steed of an unearthly shade of darkness, terrible to look upon, as if masking some unknown powers. Right before us, our cavalry, Devon's division, gallantly stemming the surges of the old Stonewall Brigade, desperate to beat its way through.
I ride straight to Sheridan. A dark smile and impetuous gesture are my only orders. Forward into double lines of battle, past Sheridan, his guns, his cavalry, and on for the quivering crest. For a moment it is a glorious sight, every arm of the service in full play. Cavalry, artillery, infantry. Then a sudden shifting scene, as the cavalry disengages by successive squadrons, rally under their bugle calls with beautiful precision and promptitude, and sweep like a storm cloud beyond our right to close in on the enemy's left and complete the fateful envelopment. Ord's troops are now square across the Lynchburg Pike. Harris and Bartlett have joined them on their right, and all are in for its sharp.
In this new front we take up the battle. Gregory follows in on my left. It is a formidable front we make. The scene darkens. In a few minutes, the tide is turned. The incoming wave is at flood. The barrier recedes. In truth, the Stonewall men hardly show their well-proved mettle. They seem astonished to see before them these familiar flags of their old antagonists, not having thought it possible that we could match our cavalry and march around and across their pressing columns. Their last hope is gone, to break through our cavalry before our infantry can get up. Neither to Danville nor to Lynchburg can they cut their way, and close upon their rear, five miles away, are pressing the Second and Sixth Corps of the Army of the Potomac.
It is the end. They are now giving way, but keep good front by force of old habit. Halfway up the slope they make a stand with what, perhaps, they think is a good omen, behind a stone wall. I try a little artillery on them which directs their thoughts toward the crest behind them, and stiffen my lines for a rush, anxious for that crest myself. My intensity may have seemed like excitement, for Griffin comes up, quizzing me in his queer way of hitting off our weak points when we get a little too serious, accusing me of mistaking a blooming peach tree for a rebel flag, where I was dropping a few shells into a rallying crowd. I apologize. I was a little nearsighted and hadn't been experienced in long-range fighting, but as for peaches, I was going to get some if the pitch didn't sit too hard on our stomachs.
In a few minutes, Griffin rides up again, in quite a different mood. General, he says, I want you to go back and bring up Crawford's division. He is acting in the same old fashion that got Warren into trouble at Five Forks. He should have been up here long ago. We need him desperately. He deserves to be relieved of his command. General, do you mean to relieve me of mine and make me a staff officer? It can't come to that. I mean to put you in command of that division, he answers. I will publish an order to that effect. General, pardon me, but you must not do that. It would make trouble for everybody, and I do not desire the position. It would make great disturbance among Crawford's friends, and if you will pardon the suggestion, they may have influence enough at Washington to block your confirmation as Major General.
Besides, I think General Baxter of the Third Division is my senior. That must settle it. This is a singular episode for such a moment, but it may be cited as showing the variety of commotions that occupied our minds. But now comes aboard with a positive order. Don't expose your lines on that crest. The enemy have massed their guns to give it a raking fire the moment you set put there. I thought I saw a qualifying look as he turned away, but left alone, you struggled with prudence. My troops were in a bad position down here. I did not like to be the underdog. It was much better to be on top, and at least know what there was beyond. So I thought of Grant, and his permission to push things when we got them going, and of Sheridan, in his last words, as he rode away with his cavalry, Smiting his hands together.
Now smash em, I tell you, smash em. So we took this for orders, and on the crest we stood. One booming cannon shot passed close along our front, and in the next moment all was still. We had done it. It exposed ourselves to the view of the enemy. But it was an exposure that worked two ways, for there burst upon our vision a mighty scene, fit cadence to the story of tumultuous years. Encompassed by the cordon of steel that crowned the heights about the court-house, on the slopes of the valley formed by the sources of the Appomattox lay the remnants of that far-famed counterpart and companion of our own in momentous history, the Army of Northern Virginia, Lee's Army. In the meantime Crawford's troops have begun to arrive, and form in between Gregory and Bartlett on our left.
It was hilly broken ground, in effect a vast amphitheater, stretching a mile perhaps from crest to crest. On the several confronting slopes before us, dusky masses of infantry suddenly resting in place, blocks of artillery standing fast in column or mechanically swung into part, clouds of cavalry great and small slowly moving in simple restlessness, all without apparent attempt at offense or defense, or even military order. In the hollow is the Appomattox, which we had made the deadline for our baffied foe, For its whole length, a hundred miles, here but a rivulet that might almost be stepped over Dryshod, and that the road crossing not thought worthwhile to bridge. Around its edges, now trodden to mire, swarms an indescribable crowd.
Worn-out soldiers struggling to the front, demoralized citizen and denzean, white, black, and all shades between, following Lee's army, are flying before these suddenly confronted terrible Yankees, pictured to them as demon-shaped and bent. Animals, too, of all forms and grades. Vehicles of every description and non-description. Public and domestic. Four-wheeled are two or one. Shedding and moving in every direction, a swarming mass of chaotic confusion. All this within sight of every eye on our bristling crest. Had won the heart to strike at being so helpless, the Appomattox would quickly become a surpassing red sea of horror. But the very spectacle brings every foot to an instinctive halt. We seem the possession of a dream.
We are lost in a vision of human tragedy, but our light twelve napoleon guns come rattling up behind us to go into battery. We catch the glitter of the cavalry glades and the brasses beneath the oak groves away to our right, and the ominous closing in on the fated foe. So with the fervor of devout joy, as when perhaps the old crusaders first caught sight of the holy city of their quest, with an up-going of the heart that was half-pay and half-prayer, we dash forward to the consummation. A solitary field-piece in the edge of town gives an angry but expiring defiance. We press down a little slope through a swamp over a bright swift stream. Our advance is already in the town. Only the narrow street between the opposing lines and hardly that.
There is wild work that looks like fighting, but not much killing, nor even hurting. The disheartened enemy take it easy, our men take them easier. It is a wild mile fusing. Earnest, but not deadly earnest. A young orderly of mine, unable to contain himself, begs permission to go forward and dashes in, sword flourishing as if he were a terrible fellow, and soon comes back, hugging four sabres to his breast, speechless at his achievement. We were advancing, tactically fighting, and I was somewhat uncertain as to how much more of the strenuous should be required or expected, but I could not give over to this weak mood. My right was in the air, advanced, unsupported, towards the enemy's general line, Exposed to flank attack by troops I could see in the distance across the stream.
I held myself on that extreme flank, where I could see the cavalry which we had relieved, now forming in column of squadrons, ready for a dash to the front, and I was anxiously hoping it would save us from the flank attack. Watching intently, my eye was caught by the figure of a horseman riding out between those lines, soon joined by another, and taking a direction across the cavalry front towards our position. They were nearly a mile away. And I curiously watched them till lost from sight in the near broken ground and copses between. Suddenly rose to sight another form, close in our own front. A soldierly young figure, a Confederate staff officer undoubtedly. Now I see the white flag, earnestly borne, and its possible purport sweeps before my inner vision like a wraith of morning mist.
He comes steadily on, the mysterious form in gray. My mood so whimsically sensitive that I could even smile at the material of the flag, wondering where in either army was found a towel and one so white. But it bore a mighty message, that simple emblem of homely service, wafted hitherward above the dark and crimson streams that never can wash themselves away. The messenger draws near, dismounts, with graceful salutation and hardly suppressed emotion delivers his message. Sir, I am from General Gordon. General Lee desires a cessation of hostilities until he can hear from General Grant as to the proposed surrender. What word is this, so long, so dearly fought for, so feverishly dreamed, but ever snatched away, held hidden in a loop, now smiting the senses with a dizzy flash?
Surrender. We had known no more of this from the messages that had been passing between Grant and Lee, for now, these two days behind us. Surrender. It takes a moment to gather one's speech. Sir, I answered, that matter exceeds my authority. I will send to my superior. General Lee is right. He can do no more. All this with a forced calmness, conveying a tumult of heart and brain. I bid him wait a while, and the message goes up to my corps commander, General Griffin, leaving me amazed at the boating change. Now from the right come forming up in cavalry fashion the two forms I had watched from away beyond. A white flag again, held strong aloft, making straight with a little group beneath our battle-flag, high-born also, the red Maltese cross on a field of white, that had thrilled our hearts long ago.
I see now that it is one of our cavalry staff in lead. Indeed, I recognize him, Colonel Whitaker of Custer's staff, and hardly keeping pace with him, a Confederate staff officer. Without dismounting, without salutation, the cavalryman shouts, This is unconditional surrender. This is the end. Then he hastily introduces his companion and adds, I am just from Gordon and Longstreet. Gordon says, for God's sake, stop this infantry, or hell will be to pay. I'll go to Sheridan, he adds, and dashes away with the white flag, leaving Longstreet's aid with me. The various accounts that have been since given of the reception of the flag of truce on this occasion might lead to the impression upon readers of history that we were all under great agitation of mind, and that our memories were somewhat confused, or possibly our habit of truth-telling.
But those who were acquainted with the facts will not be disturbed in their inferences or judgments. In accordance with Lee's instructions, several flags were sent out at important points along his own line, and several came in on our Appomattox front. The flag-bearers I referred to were Captain P. M. Jones, now U.S. District Judge in Alabama, and Captain Brown of Georgia. End of footnote. I was doubtful of my duty. The flag of truce was in, but I had no right to act upon it without orders. There was still some firing from various quarters, blowing a little where the white flag passed near, but I did not press things quite so hard. Then a last cannon shot from the edge of the town plunges to the breast of a gallant dear young officer in my front line, Lieutenant Clark of the Hundred and Eighty-Fifth New York, the last man killed in the Army of the Potomac, if not the last man in the Appomattox lines.
Not a strange thing for war, the swift stroke of the mortal, but coming after the truce was in, it seemed a cruel fate for one so deserving to share his country's joy, and a sad peace offering for us all. Shortly comes the order, in due form, to cease firing and halt. There was not much firing to cease from, but halt then and there. It is beyond human power to stop the men whose one word in thought and action through crimson years has been but forward. They had seen the flag of truce, and could divine its outcome. But the habit was too strong. They cared not for points of direction. It was forward still. Forward to the end. Forward to the new beginning. Forward to the nation's second birth. But it struck them also in a quite human way.
The more the captains cry a halt, the rebels want to surrender, the more the men want to be there and see it. Still to the front, where the real front is, and the forward movement takes an upward turn. For when we do succeed in stopping, it has been claimed That the last man killed in the Appomattox lines belonged to the Army of the James. That may possibly be so, as the reception of the flag began on our right, and probably did not reach the extreme left where the Army of the James was until some time after. So there may have been some firing and casualties after the truce had been received on our right. The honor of this last death, not a proper subject of quarrel. There have been, we cannot keep their arms and legs from flying.
To the top of fences and haystacks and chimneys they clamber, to toss their old caps higher in the air and leave the earth as far below them as they can. Dear old General Gregory gallops up to inquire the meaning of this strange departure from accustomed discipline. Only that Lee wants time to surrender, I answer with strange solemnity. Glory to God, roars the grave and brave old General, dashing upon me with an impetuosity that nearly unhorsed us both. To grasp and wring my hand, which had not yet had time to lower the sword. "'Yes, and on earth, peace could will towards men,' I answered, bringing the thanksgiving from heavenward to manward. "'Your legs have done it, my men,' shouts the gallant gray-haired oar, galloping up, cap in hand, generously forgiving our disobedience of orders and rash exposure on the dubious crest.
True enough, their legs had done it, had matched the cavalry, as Grant admitted, had cut around Lee's best doings, and commanded the grand halt. But other things, too, had done it. The blood was still fresh upon the Quaker Road, the White Oak Ridge, Five Forks, Farmville High Bridge, and Sailors Creek. And we take somewhat gravely this compliment of our new commander of the Army of the James. At last, after pardoning something to the spirit of liberty, we get things quiet along the lines. A truce is agreed upon until one o'clock. It is now ten. A conference is to be held, or rather colloquy, for no one here is authorized to say anything about the terms of surrender. Six or eight officers from each side meet between the lines near the court-house, waiting Lee's answer to Grant's summons to surrender.
There is lively chat here on this unaccustomed opportunity for exchange of notes and queries. The first greetings are not at all so dramatic as might be thought for so grave an occasion. Well, Billy, old boy, how goes it? asked one loyal West Pointer of a classmate he had been fighting for four years. Bad, bad, Charlie, bad, I tell you, but have you got any whiskey? was the response. Not poetic, not idealistic, but historic, founded on fact as to the strength of the demand, but without evidence of the questionable maxim that demand creates the supply. Most of the economic truth was manifest that scarcity enhances value. Everybody seems acquiescent. and for the moment cheerful, except Sheridan.
He does not like the cessation of hostilities, and does not conceal his opinion. His natural disposition was not sweetened by the circumstance that he was fired on by some of the Confederates as he was coming up to the meeting under the truce. He is for unconditional surrender, and thinks we should have banged right on and settled all questions without asking them. He strongly intimates that some of the free-thinking rebel cavalry might take advantage of the truce to get away from us. But the Confederate officers, one and all, Gordon, Wilcox, Heth, Rooney, Lee, and all the rest, assure him of their good faith and that the game is up for them. But suddenly a sharp firing cuts the air about our ears, musketry and artillery, out beyond us on the Lynchburg Pike, where it seemed Sheridan had sent Graves' command to stop any free-riding pranks that might be played.
Gordon springs up from his pile of rails with an air of astonishment and vexation. declaring that for his part he had sent out in good faith orders to hold things as they are. And he glances more than inquiringly at Sheridan. Oh, never mind, says Sheridan. I know about it. Let him fight. With two simple words added, which, literally taken, are supposed to express a condemnatory judgment, but in Sheridan's rhetoric convey his appreciation of highly satisfactory qualities of his men, especially just now. One o'clock comes. No answer from Lee. Nothing for us to do but to shake hands and take arms to resume hostilities. As I turned to go, General Griffin said to me in a low voice, "'Prepare to make her receive an attack in ten minutes.' It was a sudden change of tone in our relations, and brought a queer sensation.
Where my troops had halted, the opposing lines were in close proximity. The men had stacked arms, and were resting in place. It did not seem like war we were to recommence, but willful murder. But the order was only to prepare, and that we did." Our troops were in good position, my advance line across the road, and we stood fast, intensely waiting. I had mounted and sat looking at the scene before me, thinking of all that was impending and depending, when I felt coming in upon me a strange sense of some presence, invisible but powerful, like those unearthly visitants told of an ancient story, charged with supernatural message. Disquieted, I turned about, and there behind me, riding in between my lines, appeared a commanding form, Superbly mounted, richly accoutred, of imposing bearing, noble countenance, with expression of deep sadness overmastered by deeper strength.
It is no other than Robert E. Lee, and seen by me for the first time within my own lines. I said, immovable, with a certain awe and admiration, he was coming with a single staff-officer, Colonel Marshall Chief of Staff, for the great appointed meeting which was to determine momentous issues. Not long after, by another inleading road, appeared in other form, plain, unassuming, simple, and familiar to our eyes, but to the thought as much inspiring awe as Lee in his splendor and his sadness. It is Grant. He, too, comes with a single aide, a staff-officer of Sheridan's who had come out to meet him. Colonel Newhall. Sloughed hat without court. Common soldier's blouse, unbuttoned, on which, however, the four stars.
High boots, mud-splashed to the top. Trousers tucked inside. No sword. But the sword hand deep in the pocket, sitting his saddle with the ease of a born master, taking no notice of anything, all his faculties gathered into intense thought and mighty calm. He seemed greater than I had ever seen him, a look as of another world about him. No wonder I forgot altogether to salute him. Anything like that would have been too little. He rode on to meet Lee at the court house. What momentous issues had these two souls to declare? Neither of them in truth free nor held in individual bounds alone. No longer testing each other's powers and resources, no longer weighing the chances of daring or desperate conflict, instruments of God's hands, they were now to record his decree.
But the final word is not long coming now. Staff-officers are flying, crying least surrenders. Ah, there was some kind of strength left among those worn and famished men belting the hills around the springs of the Appomattox. who rent the air with shouting and uproar as if earth and sea had joined the song. Our men did what they thought their share, and then went to sleep, as they had need to do. But in the opposite camp they acted as if they had got hold of something too good to keep, and gave it to the stars. Besides, they had a supper that night, which was something of a novelty, for we had divided our rations with our old antagonists now that they were by our side as suffering brothers. In truth, Longstreet had come over to our camp that evening with an unwanted moisture on his martial cheek and compressed words on his lips.
Gentlemen, I must speak plainly. We are starving over there. For God's sake, can you send us something? We were men, and we acted like men, knowing we should suffer for it ourselves. We were too short rationed also, and had been for days. It must be for days to come. But we forgot Andersonville and Belle Isle that night, and sent over to that starving camp, share and share alike for all there, nor thinking the merits of the case diminished by the circumstance that part of these provisions was what Sheridan had captured from their trains the night before. General Gibbon, Griffin, and Merritt were appointed commissioners to arrange the detail of the surrender, and orders were issued in both armies that all officers and men should remain within the limits of their encampment.
Late that night I was summoned to headquarters, where General Griffin informed me that I was to command the parade on the occasion of the formal surrender of the arms and colors of Lee's army. He said the Confederates had begged hard to be allowed to stack their arms on the ground where they were and let us go and pick them up after they had gone, but that Graham did not think this quite respectful enough to anybody, including the United States of America, and while he would have all private property respected and would permit officers to retain their side arms, He insisted that the surrendering army as such should march out in due order and lay down all tokens of Confederate authority and organized hostility to the United States, in immediate presence of some representative portion of the Union Army.
Griffin added in a significant tone that Grant wished the ceremony to be as simple as possible, and that nothing should be done to humiliate the manhood of the Southern soldiers. I appreciated the honor of this appointment. Although I did not take it much to myself. There were other things to think of. I only asked General Griffin to give me again my old third brigade which I had commanded after Gettysburg, and with which I had been closely associated in the great battles of the first two years. Not for private reasons, however, was this request made, but because this was to be a crowning incident of history, and I thought these veterans deserved this recognition. I was therefore transferred from the first brigade, of which I had been so proud, to the third representing the veterans of the fifth corps.
The sole drawing bugle call, Lights Out, did not mean darkness and silence that momentous evening. Far into the night gleamed some irrepressible campfire, and echoed the irrepressible cheer in which men voiced their deepest thought. How different for each, no other knows. At last we sleep, those who can, and so ended that ninth of April, 1865, Palm Sunday. In that obscure little Virginia village, now blazoned for immortal fame. Graver destinies were determined on that humble field than on many of classic and poetic fame. And though the issue brought bitterness to some, yet the heart of humanity, the world over, thrilled at the tidings. To us I know who there fell asleep that night, amidst memories that can never be told.
It came like that Palm Sunday of old, when the rejoicing multitude met the meekly writing King and cried, Peace in Heaven, Glory in the highest. Morning dawned, and then in spite of all attempts to restrain it came the visiting and sight-seeing. Our camp was full of callers before we were up. They stood over our very heads now, the men whose movements we used to study through field-glasses or see close at hand framed in fire. We woken by force of habit started at the vision. But our resolute and much-enduring old antagonists were quick to change their mood when touched by appealing sentiment. They used their first vacation to come over and see what we were really made of, and what we had left for trade.
Food was what was most needed, but was precisely what we also most lacked. Such as we parted with was not for sale or barter. This went for old times, old comradeship across the lines, but tobacco, pipes, knives, money, or symbols of its shoes, more precious steel, and among the staff even saddles now and then and other more trivial things that might serve as souvenirs. made an exchange about as brisk as the bullets had done a few days ago. The inundation of visitors grew so that it looked like a country fair, including the cattle show. This exhibit broke up the order of the camp, and the authorities in charge had to interpose and forbid all visiting. All this day and part of the next, our commissioners were busy arranging for the reception and transportation of surrendered property, and the preparation of parole lists for the surrendering men.
It was agreed that officers should sign paroles for their commands. But it took work and time to get the muster rolls in shape, not for red tape reasons, but for clear and explicit personal and public record. On our part, most of us had time to think, looking backward, and also full. Most of all, we missed our companions of the Second and Sixth Corps. They were only three miles back, and were under orders to move back at once to Birkville. It seemed strange to us that these two corps should not be allowed that little three-mile march More to be participants of this consummation to which they, perhaps, more than any other, had contributed, many a longer detour had they made, for less cause and less good.
But whatever, of honor or privilege, came to us of the V Corps, was accepted, not as for any preeminent work or worth of ours, but in the name of the whole noble army of the Potomac, with loving remembrance of every man, whether on horse or foot, or cannon caisson, whether with shoulder-strap of office, or with knapsack. Of every man, whether his heart beat high with the joy of this hour, or was long since stilled in the shallow trenches that furrowed the red earth from the Antietam to the Appomattox. It may help to a connected understanding of these closing scenes if we glance at the movements of that close-pressing column for a day or two before. On the evening of the seventh, General Grant had written Lee a letter from Farmville and sent it through General Humphrey's lines, asking Lee to surrender his army.
Lee answered at once, declining to surrender, but asking the terms Grant would offer. The pursuit being resumed on the morning of the eighth, Grant wrote to Lee a second letter, delivered through Humphrey's skirmish line, and Fitzhugh Lee's rear guard, proposing to meet him for the purpose of arranging terms of surrender. To this Lee replied that he had not intended to propose actual surrender, but to negotiate for peace, and to ask General Grant what terms he would offer on that basis, proposing a meeting at ten o'clock on the morning of the ninth. between the picket lines, for discussion of this question. Grant answered, declining the appointment for this purpose, saying that, in effect, the only way to secure peace is for the South to lay down their arms.
General Grant must have felt that the end was fast coming, even without negotiations, and he seems quite earnest to impress this upon General Lee. For after all the solicitude about sparing further bloodshed, he in no wise permits his pursuing columns to remit their activity. The natural result of this must be a battle. A destructive and decisive one. Indeed, in the present situation of our second and sixth corps, this battle is imminent. Still, at this very juncture, Lee being now in his immediate presence, so to speak, close upon Humphrey's skirmish line, for reasons which he has not made fully apparent, but which we of the White Oak Road could without difficulty surmise, General Grant deems it proper to transfer his own personal presence, as he says, to the head of the column, or, as Badeau puts it, to join Sheridan's column.
This was now fighting Gordon's command and Lee's cavalry at Appomattox Court House accordingly. General Grant, having sent this suggestive answer to General Lee, took a road leading south from a point a mile west of Newstor. For a good twenty-mile ride over to Sheridan, leaving great responsibility on Humphreys and Wright, Lee was repeatedly sending word to Humphreys, asking for a truce pending consideration of proposals for surrender. Humphreys answered that he had no authority to consent to this, but on the contrary must press him to the utmost. And at last, in answer to Lee's urgency, he even had to warn General Lee that he must retire from a position he was occupying, somewhat too trustingly, on the road not a hundred yards from the head of the Second Corps column.
Lee's reason, undoubtedly, is that he was expecting the meeting with Grant, which he had asked for between the skirmish lines at Ten o'clock. Half an hour after the incident, and a half-mile beyond this place, the Second Corps came up to Longstreet's entrenched lines three miles northeast of Appomattox Court House. and the Sixth Corps closely following. Dispositions were made for instant attack. At this moment, General Meade arrives on the ground, and the attack is suspended, for Lee, in the meantime, has sent a further letter through Humphreys to Grant, asking an interview on the basis of Grant's last letter, and Meade, reading this, at once grants a truce of an hour on his own lines, awaiting the response from Grant.
But Grant had already left that front. Had he been here, matters could have been quickly settled. A staff officer is sent to overtake General Grant, and at noon, halfway on his journey, the general sends back answer to Lee that he is pushing forward to the front for the purpose of meeting him with the very queer advice that word may be sent to him on the road he is now on at what point General Lee wishes the meeting to be, that is, by a messenger out galloping Grant. There is not much choice for Lee now. Grant being on so long a road and at such a distance from both of the two columns, communications with him is for a time impracticable. In consequence of this necessary delay, Lee sent a flag of truce both to Meade in his rear and to Sheridan in his front to ask for a suspension of hostilities until he could somewhere meet General Grant, and himself took the shortest road for Appomattox Court House.
To resume my point of time and place, I was most of this day and the next. Adjusting relations in my changing commands, and with the part of my men, in picking up abandoned guns and munitions of value along the track of the Confederate march. I also had some thoughts which, as this is a personal narrative, it may be permitted to recall. For those who choose, the passage may be passed by. Some people have naturally asked me if I knew why I was designated to command the parade at the formal surrender. The same query came to my mind during the reflections of this day. I did not know or presume to ask those who, perhaps, would have not told me. Taking the assignment as I would any other, my feeling about it was more for the honor of the V Corps and the Army of the Potomac than for myself.
In lineal rank, a junior general on the field. I never thought of claiming any special merit, nor tried to attract attention in any way, and believed myself to be socially unpopular among the highboys. I had never indulged in loose talk, had minded my own business, and did not curry favor with newspaper reporters, did not hang around superior headquarters, and in general had disciplined myself in self-control and the practice of patience, which virtue was not prominent among my natural endowments. Some of my chief superiors had taken notice of this latter peculiarity, apparently, as when the recommendations for my promotion to Brigadier General after Gettysburg were ignored by the delegation at Washington.
I found myself very soon assigned to command of a brigade. When, after the sharp tests of the Bristow and the Culpeper Campaign, I was sent disabled to hospital from Rappahannock Station, and found on returning to duty that General Bartlett of the Sixth Corps, sent over to relieve the dearth of generals in the Fifth, had chosen to take my brigade. I cheerfully returned to my regiment, having in the meantime been applied for to command the regular brigade in Ayers Division. I declined the offer at the request of General Griffin, who desired me to remain with the First Division. So remaining, I was often put in charge of peculiarly trying ventures, advance and rear-guard fights involving command of several regiments from Spotsylvania to Cold Harbor.
Immediately after this, being still Colonel of the 20th Maine, I was assigned in special orders by General Warren to the command of a brigade of six Pennsylvania regiments made up of veterans of the I Corps, who had distinguished themselves at Gettysburg by their heroism and their losses with a fine new regiment of full ranks. Mostly veterans also. I devoted my very best energies to the perfecting of this command during the campaign before Richmond and the opening assaults on Petersburg. But in the first battle here was severely wounded, leading a charge After rather presumptuously advising against it. Here, General Grant promoted me on the field to Brigadier General, in terms referring to previous history.
Returning to the front, after months in Annapolis Naval School Hospital, I found my splendid brigade broken up and scattered, and its place is filled by two new regiments, one from New York and one from Pennsylvania, both of the finest material and personnel, but my command was reduced from the largest brigade in the Corps to the very smallest. Although offered other highly desirable positions, I quietly took up this little brigade with no complaints and no petitions for advancement, when forwarding my duty with the best that was in me. The noble behavior of these troops was the occasion of the revet of Major General. No doubt in consideration of meekness in small things, General Griffin placed under my orders for all active engagements of this campaign, the fine Second Brigade of the Division, thus giving me a command equal to my former one, or any other in the Corps.
So I had reason to believe that General Gripen had something to do with General Grant's kind remembrance, and negative merits appeared to stand for something. Tuvent a pois pour qui salitendre, everything comes in good time to him who knows how to wait. On the morning of the Ninth, our division had been moved over to relieve Turners of the Twenty Fourth Corps, Army of the James, near the Court House, where they had been receiving some of the surrendered arms, especially of the artillery on their front. While McKenzie's cavalry had received the surrendered sabres of W. H. F. Lee's command. Praises of General Grant were on every tongue for his magnanimity in allowing the horses of the artillery and cavalry that were the property of the men and not of the Confederacy to be retained by the men for service in restoring and working their little plantations, and also in requesting the managers of transportation companies in all that region to facilitate in every way the return of these men to their homes.
At noon of the 10th, the troops of the Army of the James took up the march to Lynchburg, to make sure of that yet doubtful point of advantage. Lee and Grant had both left. Lee for Richmond, to see his dying wife. Grant for Washington, only that once more to see Lincoln again living. The business transactions had been settled. The parole papers made out. All was ready for the last turn. The dissolving view of the Army of Northern Virginia. It was now the morning of the twelfth of April. I had been ordered to have my lines formed for the ceremony at sunrise. It was a chill, gray morning, depressing to the senses, but our hearts made warmth. Great memories uprose. Great thoughts went forward. We formed along the principal street, from the bluff bank of the stream to near the court house on the left, to face the last line of battle, and receive the last remnant of the arms and colors of that great army which ours had been created to confront, For all that death can do for life.
We were remnants also. Massachusets, Maine, Michigan, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York. Veterans and replaced veterans. Cut to pieces. Cut down. Consolidated. Divisions into brigades. Regiments into one. Gathered by state origin, this little line. Quintessence, or metapsychosis, of Porter's old corps of Gaines Mill and Malvern Hill. Men of near blood born, made nearer by bloodshed. Those facing us now, thank God, the same. As for me, I was once more with my old command. But this was not all I needed. I had taken leave of my little first brigade so endeared to me, and the end of the fighting had released a second from all orders from me. But these deserved to share with me now, as they had so faithfully done in the sterner passages of the campaign.
I got permission from General Griffin to have them also in the parade. I placed the 1st Brigade in line a little to our rear, and the 2nd on the opposite side of the street facing us, and leaving ample space for the movements of the coming ceremony. Thus the whole division was out, and under my direction for the occasion, although I was not the division commander. I thought this troubled General Bartlett a little, but he was a manly and soldierly man, and made no comment. He contented himself by mounting his whole staff and with the division flag, riding around our lines and conversing as he found opportunity with the Confederate officers. This sin no matter disturbed me. My place and part were definite and clear.
Our earnest eyes scanned the busy groups on the opposite slopes, breaking camp for the last time, taking down their little shelter tents and folding them carefully as precious things, then slowly forming ranks as for unwelcome duty. And now they move. The dusky swarms forged forward into gray columns of march. On they come, with the old swinging route step and the swaying battle-flags. In the van, the proud Confederate ensign, the great field of white, with canton of star-strewn cross of blue, on a field of red, the regimental battle-flags with the same escutcheon, following on crowded so thick, by thinning out of men, that the whole column seemed crowned with red. At the right of our line, Our little group mounted beneath our flags, the red Maltese cross on a field of white, erewhile so bravely borne through many a field, more crimson than itself, its mystic meaning, now ruling all.
The momentous meaning of this occasion impressed me deeply. I resolved to mark it by some token of recognition, which could be no other than a salute of arms. Well aware of the responsibility assumed, and of the criticisms that would follow, as the sequel proved, Nothing of that kind could move me in the least. The act could be defended, if needed, by the suggestion that such a salute was not to the cause for which the flag of the Confederacy stood, but to its going down before the flag of the Union. My main reason, however, was one for which I sought no authority nor asked forgiveness, before us in proud humiliations to the embodiment of manhood, men whom neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death, nor disaster, nor hopelessness, could bend from their resolve.
Standing before us now, thin, worn, and famished, but erect and with eyes looking level into ours, waking memories that bound us together as no other bond. Was not such manhood to be welcomed back into a union so tested and assured? Instructions have been given, and when the head of each division column comes opposite our group, our bugle sounds the signal, and instantly our whole line from right to left Regiment by regiment, in succession, gives the soldier's salutation from the Order Arms to the old carry, the marching salute. Gordon, at the head of the column, riding with heavy spirit and downcast face, catches the sound of shifting arms, looks up, and taking the meaning, wheels superbly, making with himself and his horse one uplifted figure with profound salutation as he drops the point of his sword to the boot-toe.
Then, facing to his own command, gives word for his successive brigades to pass us with the same position of the manual. Honor answering honor, on our part, not a sound of trumpet more, nor roll of drum, not a cheer, nor word, nor whisper of vain glorying, nor motion of man standing again at the order, but an odd stillness, rather, and breath-holding, as if it were the passing of the dead. As each successive division mass our own, it halts, The men faced inward towards us across the road twelve feet away, then carefully dressed their line, each captain taking pains for the good appearance of his company, worn and half-starved as they were. The field and staff take their positions in the intervals of regiments, generals in the rear of their commands.
They fixed bayonets, stack arms, then hesitatingly remove cartridge boxes and lay them down. Lastly, reluctantly, with agony of expression, They tenderly fold their flags, battle-worn and torn, blood-stained, hard-holding colors, and lay them down, some frenziedly rushing from their ranks, kneeling over them, clinging to them, pressing them to their lips with burning tears, and only the flag of the Union greets the sky. What visions thronged, as we looked into each other's eyes. Here passed the men of Antietam, the Bloody Lane, the Sunken Road, the Cornfield, The Burnside Bridge. The men whom Stonewall Jackson, on the second night at Fredericksburg, begged Lee to let him take and crush the two corps of the Army of the Potomac, huddled in the streets in darkness and confusion.
The men who swept away the 11th Corps at Chancellorsville, who left 6,000 of their companions around the bases of Culp's and Cemetery Hills at Gettysburg. These survivors of the terrible wilderness, the bloody Angle at Spotsylvania, the slaughter pen of Cold Harbor, the Whirlpool, The Bethesda Church. Here comes Cobb's Georgia Legion, which held the stone wall on Marie's Heights at Fredericksburg, close before which we piled our dead for breastworks, so that the living might stay and live. Here, too, come Gordon's Georgians and Hope's North Carolinians, who stood before the terrific mine explosion at Petersburg, and advancing, retook the smoking crater and the dismal heaps of dead, ours more than theirs, huddled in the ghastly chasm.
Here are the men of McGowan, Hunton, and Scales, who broke the V Corps lines on the White Oak Road and were so desperately driven back on that forlorn night of March 31st by my thrice-decimated brigade. Now comes Anderson's IV Corps, only Bushrod Johnson's division left, and this the remnant of those we fought so fiercely on the Quaker Road two weeks ago, with Wise as Legion, too fierce for its own good. Here passes the proud remnant of Ransom's North Carolinians, which we swept through Five Forks ten days ago, and all the little that was left of this division in the sharp passages at Sailors Creek, five days thereafter. Now makes its last front, A.P. Hill's Old Corps, half now at the head, since Hill had gone too far forward, ever to return.
The men who poured destruction into our division at Shepherdstown Fort Antietam in 1862, When Hill reported the Potomac running blue with our bodies, the men who opened the desperate first day's fight at Gettysburg, wherewithstanding them so stubbornly, our Robinson's brigade lost 1,185 men, and the Iron Brigade alone 1,153. These men of Hess's division, here too, losing 2,850 men. Companions of these now looking into our faces so differently. What is this but the remnant of Mahoney's division? Last seen by us at North Anna. Its ten ranks of worn, bright-eyed men recalling scenes of costly valor and ever-remembered history. Now the sad great pageant, Longstreet and his men. What shall we give them for greeting that has not already been spoken in the volleys of thunder and written in lines of fire on all the river-banks of Virginia?
Shall we go back to Gaines Mill and Malvern Hill, or to the Antietam of Maryland, or Gettysburg of Pennsylvania, Deepest graven of all. For here is what remains of Kershaw's division, which left 40 per cent of its men at Antietam, and at Gettysburg with Barksdale's and Simms Brigades, tore through the peach orchard, rolling up the right of our gallant III Corps, swooping over the proud batteries of Massachusets, Bigelow, and Phillips, where under smoke we saw the earth brown and blue with prostate bodies of horses and men, and the tongues of overturned cannon and caissons, pointing grim and stark, in the air. Then in the wilderness, at Spotsylvania, and thereafter, Kershaw's division again, in deeds of awful glory, held their name and fame until fate met them at Sailor's Creek, where Kershaw himself and Ewell, and so many more, gave up their arms and hopes, all indeed but manhood's honor.
What was strange emotion I looked into these faces, before which, in the mad assault on Reeves' salient, June Eighteenth, 1864, I was left for dead under their eyes. It is by miracles we have lived to see this day, any of us standing here. Now comes the sinewy remnant of Pierce Hood's division, which at Gettysburg we saw pouring through the Devil's Den and the Plum Run Gorge. Turning again by our left our stubborn Third Corps, then swarming up the rocky bastions of Round Top, to be met there by equal valor, which changed Lee's whole plan of battle, and perhaps the story of Gettysburg. Ah, is this Pickett's division? This little group left of those who, on the lurid last day of Gettysburg, breasted level cross-fire and thunderbolts of storm, to be strewn back, drifting wrecks, where, after that awful, futile, pitiful charge, we buried them in graves of furlong wide, with names unknown.
Met again in the terrible cyclone sweep over the breastworks at Five Forks, met now, so thin, so pale, purged of the mortal, as if knowing pain or joy no more. How could we help falling on our knees? All of us together, and praying God to pity and forgive us all. Thus, all day long, division after division comes and goes, surrendered arms being removed by our wagons at the intervals, the cartridge boxes emptied in the street when the ammunition was found unserviceable, our men meanwhile resting in place. Meanwhile, many men had been coming in late in the day, complaining that they had been abandoned by their officers, and declaring that they preferred to give their parole and surrender. Rather than encounter all the difficulties and hardships of an attempt to escape, there are incidents of that scene which may be worth repeating.
There was opportunity for converse with several Confederate generals. Their bearing was, of course, serious, their spirits sad. What various misgivings mingled in their mood we could not but conjecture. Levying war against the United States was a serious business. But one certain impression was received from them all. They were ready to accept for themselves and for the Confederacy any fate our government should dictate. Lincoln's magnanimity as grants, thoughtfulness, had already impressed them much. They spoke like brave men who meant to stand upon their honor and accept the situation. General says one of them at the head of his corps, This is deeply humiliating, but I console myself with the thought that the whole country will rejoice at this day's business.
You astonish us, says another of equally high rank, by your honorable and generous conduct. I fear we should not have done the same by you had the case been reversed. I will go home, says a gallant officer from North Carolina, and tell Joe Johnson we can't fight such men as you. I will advise him to surrender. I went into that cause, says yet another of well-known name, and I meant it. We had our choice of weapons and of ground, and we have lost. Now that is my flag, pointing to the flag of the Union. and I will prove myself as worthy as any of you. In fact, that was the whole drift of the talk, and there is no reason to doubt that it was sincere. Equally so, but quite different, was the strain of another.
I saw him moving restlessly about, scolding his men and being answered back by them, instead of ordering them. He seemed so disturbed in mind that I rode down the line to see if I could not give him a word of cheer. With a respectful salutation, Calling his attention to the bearing of the men on both sides. "'This promise is well for our coming goodwill,' said I. "'Brave men may become good friends.' "'You're mistaken, sir,' he turned and said. "'You may forgive us, but we won't be forgiven. There is a rancour in our hearts.' Here came an anatomical gesture, "'which you little dream of. We hate you, sir. Oh, we don't mind much about dreams, nor about hates, either.' "'Those two kinds of business are closed now,' was the quiet reply.
Then as if a little sorry for his opening, Pissing his gaze on two ungainly-looking holes in the breast of my coat, in a much-abused sleeve, he exclaimed in a milder tone, "'Those were ugly shots, General. Where did you get these?' Unfortunately, I had to admit that this happened on the first day of the campaign, and in an afternoon I had the honor of spending with him and his party on the Quaker Road, where there were plenty of Quakers and Shakers also, and some few runners who left me a parting souvenir. I suppose you think you did great things there," he burst in. I was ordered to attack you and check your advance, and I did it too with a vim, till I found I was fighting three Army Corps, when I thought it was prudent to retire.
I was really sorry to have to reassure him that there was no more than the third part of one Corps present on our side. I know better, he cries. I saw the flags myself. I think that he did not stop to count three before he left us, leaving his cap behind. But I could not resist saying, he saw the flags of three regiments. Steady eyes could see no more. One of his staff officers corroborates this, and for a moment he subsides. Then he breaks out again. It's a pity you have no lawyers in your army. I did not know what was coming now unless he wanted me to make his will. You don't know how to make out paroles. Who ever heard of paroles being signed by any but the party's parole? I tried to explain to him that this was a matter of mercy and humanity, for if we should keep all their men there till every individual could sign his parole, half of them would be dead of starvation before their turn came.
Nonsense, he rejoins. All that is sparge vos says, every lawyer knows, such a parole as this is mere brutum fulmin. Sir, I answer, if by brute thunderbolts you mean a pledged word to keep the peace accepted and adopted by the recipient of the favour, I don't believe your people need any lawyer to instruct them as to the word of honour. I was about to turn away. He catches a suggestion of the motion and issues a parting order. You go home, he cries. You take these fellows home. That's what will end the war. Don't worry about the end of the war, I answer. We are going home pretty soon, but not till we see you home. Home, he snatches up the word. We haven't any. You have destroyed them. You have invaded Virginia and ruined her.
Her curse is on you. You shouldn't have invited us down here, then, was the obvious reply. We expected somebody was going to get hurt when we took up your challenge. Didn't you? People who don't want to get hurt, General, had better not force a fight on unwilling Yankees. By this time, the thing grew comic. The staff officers in both blue and gray laughed outright, and even his men looked around from their somber service and smiled as if they enjoyed the joke. He turned away also to launch his brute thunderbolts, not waiting to receive my thanks for instruction in law and Latin. The wise man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself. But the foolish pass on and are punished, says the old proverb.
If there are no exceptions to this rule, then this gentleman was not rightly named. What this comedy ends in classic fashion, the stern drama of the Appomattox. A strange and somber shadow rose up ghost-like from the haunts of memory or habit, and rested down over the final parting scene. How strong are these ties of habit! How strange the undertone of sadness, even at the release from prison and from pain! It seems as if we had put some precious part of ourselves there, which we were loath to leave. When all is over, in the dusk of evening, the long lines of scattered cartridges are set on fire, and the lurid flames, wreathing the blackness of earthly shadows, give an unearthly border to our parting.
Then, stripped of every token of enmity or instrument of power to hurt, they march off to give their word of honor, never to lift arms against the old flag again, till its holders release them from their promise. Then their ranks broken, the bonds that bound them fused away by forces stronger than fire, They are free at last to go where they will, to find their homes, now most likely stricken, dispoiled by war. Twenty-seven thousand men paroled, seventeen thousand stand of arms laid down or gathered up, a hundred battle-flags, but regiments and brigades, or what is left of them, have scarce a score of arms to surrender, having thrown them away by road and riverside, in weariness of fight or hopelessness of heart, disdaining to carry them longer but to disaster.
And many a bare staff was there laid down from which the ensign had been torn in the passion and struggle of emotions and divided piece by piece. A blurred or shrunken star, a rag of smoke-stained blue from the war-worn cross, a shred of deepened dye from the rent-field of red, to be treasured for precious keepsakes of manhood's tests and heirlooms for their children. Nor blame them too much for this, nor us for not blaming them more. Although, as we believe fatally wrong in striking at the old flag, Misreading its deeper meaning in the innermost law of the people's life, blind to the signs of the times and the march of man, they fought as they were taught, true to such ideals as they saw, and put into their cause their best.
For us they were fellow-soldiers as well, suffering the fate of arms. We could not look into those brave bronze faces and those battered flags we had met on so many fields, where glorious manhood lent a glory to the earth that bore it, and think of personal hate and mean revenge. Whoever had misled these men, we had not. We had led them back home. Whoever had made that quarrel, we had not. It was a remnant of the inherited curse for sin. We had purged it away with blood offerings. We were all of us together, factors of that high will, which, working often through illusions of the human and following ideals that led through storms, evolves the enfranchisement of man. Forgive us, therefore, if from stern, steadfast faces, eyes dimmed with tears, gaze at each other across that pile of storied relics so dearly there laid down, and brothers' hands were fain to reach across that rushing tide of memories which divided us, yet made us forever one.
It was our glory only that the victory we had won was for country, for the well-being of others, of these men before us, as well as for ourselves and ours. Our joy was a deep, far unspoken satisfaction. The approval, as it were, of some voiceless and veiled divinity like the appointed angel of the nation, of which the old scriptures tell, leading and looking far, yet mindful of sorrows, standing above all human strife and fierce passages of trial, not making faults nor seeking blame, transmuting into factors of the final good, corrected errors and forgiven sins, assuring of immortal inheritance all pure purpose and noble endeavor, Humblest service and costliest sacrifice, unconscious and even mistaken martyrdoms offered and suffered for the sake of man.
Now, on the morrow, all over the hillsides and the peaceful sunshine, are clouds of men on foot or horse, singly or in groups, making their earnest way as by the instinct of the ant, each with his own little burden, each for his own little home, and we are left alone and lonesome. We miss our spirited antagonists in the game, and we lose interest. The weight is taken out of the opposite scale, and we go down. Never are we less gay, and when we took up the long roundabout march homeward, it was dull to plod along, looking only at the muddy road, without scouts and skirmishers ahead, and reckless of our flanks. It was tame to think we could ride up to any thicket of woods we pleased, without starting at the chirp of those little bluebirds whose cadence was so familiar to our ears, and made so deep a lodgment in our bosoms too, Sometimes it was dreary to lie down and sleep at night, and think there was no vigilant picket out on the dubious-looking crest around to keep faithful watch in war.
And it seems a sheer waste of opportunity and mark of military incapacity when we emerge from some deep wood or defile, and no battery belches destruction upon us from so advantageous a position as the commanding heights beyond. But slowly these lingering images of memory or habit are lost in the currents of a deeper mood. We wonder if that mysterious dispensation whereby the pathway of the kingdom of love on earth must needs be cut through by the sword, and why it must be that such things as we had seen and done and suffered and lost and won, a step is taken in the homeward march of man.
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7 07 - The Raid of John Brown at Harper's Ferry As I Saw It. 1:06:40
The Raid of John Brown at Harper's Ferry as I Saw It by Reverend Sammoor Van der Leep Leech D.D.
The town of Harper's Ferry is located in Jefferson County, West Virginia. Lucerne in Switzerland does not excel it in romantic grandeur of situation. On its northern front, the Potomac sweeps along to pass the national capital on the tomb of Washington, in its silent flow towards the sea. On its eastern side, the Shenandoah hurries to empty its waters into the Potomac, that in perpetual wedlock they may greet the stormy Atlantic. Across the Potomac, the Maryland Heights stand out as the tall sentinels of nature. Beyond the Shenandoah are the Blue Ridge Mountains, fringing the westward boundary of Lewton County, Virginia. Between these rivers, and nestling inside of their very confluence, reposes Harper's Ferry.
Back of its hills lies the famous Shenandoah Valley, celebrated for its natural scenery, its historic battles, And Sheridan's Ride. At Harpers Ferry, the United States authorities early located an arsenal and an armory. Before the Civil War, the Baltimore Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church was constituted of five extensive districts in Virginia. Stretching from Alexandria to Lewisburg and two great districts north of the Potomac, including the cities of Washington and Baltimore, the first three years of my ministerial life I spent on Shepherdstown, West Ludon and Hillsborough circuits being then all in Virginia. The state of West Virginia, now embracing Harper's Ferry, had not been organized by Congress as a war measure out of the territory of the Mother State.
Our Methodist Episcopal Church was theoretically an anti-slavery organization, but our Virginia and Maryland members held thousands of inherited and many purchased slaves. These were generally well cared for and contended. Being close to the free soil of Pennsylvania, they could have gotten there in a night had they wished to escape bondage, but then they could have easily reached Canada by that northern aid called the Underground Railroad. On the Sunday night when John Brown and his men invaded Virginia, I slept within half a mile of Harper's Ferry. That day, I inaugurated Revival Services at my westward appointment called Ebenezer in Loudoun County, two miles from Harper's Ferry. I was 22 years of age.
Three months before this raid, Captain John Brown and two of his sons, Owen and Oliver, And Jeremiah G. Anderson, calling themselves Isaac Smith & Sons, rented a small farm on the Maryland side of the Potomac, four miles from Harpers Ferry. It was known as the Booth Kennedy Place. They also carried on across the mountains at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, a small hardware store managed by John H. Carghee. It was a deeper for the munitions of war to be hauled to the Maryland farm. Another of Brown's men, John E. Cook, sold maps in the vicinity. He was a relative of Governor Willard of Indiana, who secured the services of Honorable Daniel W. Woohees, attorney general of Indiana, to defend Cook at his after trial in Virginia.
It was a time of profound national peace. Brown and his men represented themselves as geologists, miners, and speculators. They had a mule and wagon with which to haul their boxes from Chambersburg. A wealthy merchant of Boston, Mr. George Luther Stearns, Chairman of the Massachusetts Aid Society had financed Brown's Council's border warfare work as well as his approaching Harper's Ferry raid. Other northern friends assisted. Brown had completed his preparations and collected his 21 helpers early in October 1859. He had hidden in an old log cabin on the place. 200 sharps rifles, 13,000 rifle cartridges, 950 long iron pikes, 200 revolving pistols, 100,000 The children were a thousand pistol caps, forty thousand percussion caps, two fifty pounds of powder, twelve reams of cottage paper, and other warlike materials.
He organized his 22 men, himself included, into a military provisional government to superintend the possible uprising of the slaves of Virginia. Thirteen of these men had engaged in border warfare in Kansas in a successful effort to prevent Kansas from becoming a slave state. He, sixteen other white men, and five Negroes constituted his entire Virginia army. The white men were Captain John Brown, Adjutant General John H. Cargay, Captains Owen Brown, Oliver Brown, Watson Brown, Aaron D. Stephens, John E. Cook, Dauphine Alderfuss Thompson, George P. Tidd, William Thompson, and Edmund Coppock. The leftenants were Jeremiah G. Anderson, Albert Hazlett, and William Henry Lehman. The privates numbered eight.
Three of them were white men, and five were Negroes. The whites were Francis J. Merriam, Barclay Cobuck, and Stuart Taylor. The Negroes were Dangerfield Newby, Osborne P. Anderson, John A. Copeland, Sherrod Lewis Leary, And Shields Green. On Sunday morning, October 16, 1859, Brown assembled his men and informed them that on that night their invasion into Virginia would take place. They took the oath of allegiance to the provisional government. Arjutant General Kagey presented to each officer his commission. The contents of the armory, arsenal, and Hall's rifle works were daily open to public inspection. Captain John Brown well knew that Daniel Whelan was the only watchman during the night-time at the armory grounds.
He believed that if he could secure the arms and ammunition in these buildings, carry them into the fastness of the adjacent mountains, And then unfurl the flag of freedom for all slaves who would flock to his standard, the result would be a general uprising of the Negro population throughout the border states. A more idiotic and senseless theory never entered an American mind. In the superlative degree, it was unreasonable and ridiculous. I personally know of the general loyalty of the slaves to the masters in that locality, at that period in our national history. Federal generals were astonished at the devotion of the Negroes to their masters everywhere in the South after the war had begun.
This was especially true along the border states. But John Brown, honest, enthusiastic, An intensely fanatical on the slavery question issued his commands. On this Sunday, he assigned to each his earliest work. Captain Owen Brown, Barclay Coppock, and Francis J. Marion were to remain at the farm to guard the arms and ammunition. Hence, only nineteen left the Kennedy farm. They were to walk down the river road on the Maryland side to the Maryland end of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad bridge. The Virginia end was close to the depot, hotel, armory, and the arsenal. Captain John Brown was to ride in the wagon with the necessary guns, pistols, and tools. Captain Cook and Tidd were to go in advance and cut the telegraph wires on the Maryland side.
Captain Stephens and Arjunton General Carghee were to capture Mr. Williams, the guard of the bridge. Captain Watson Brown and Taylor were to hold up the passenger train due from the west at 1.40 a.m. It would be bound for Washington and Baltimore. Captain Oliver Brown and Thompson were to hold the bridges spanning the two rivers. Captain Dauphine Aldebus Thompson and Lieutenant Anderson, where to hold the first building in the Armory grounds, popularly known afterwards as John Brown's Fort. It was the engine room where Brown held his most distinguished prisoners. From the port holes of it that they made after his entrance, his men did their final fighting. Captain Copac and Lieutenant Hazlitt were to hold the arsenal outside and opposite the armoury gates.
Argentine General Cargay and Copeland were to seize and retain Holt's rifle works. They were half a mile up the western shore of the Shenandoah. Captain Stephens and such men as he might select were to go out to the home of Colonel Lewis W. Washington. The grand-nephew of General George Washington, and bring him and some of his adult male slaves to the engine house. They were also to secure the swords presented to General George Washington by Frederick the Great and by General Lafayette. For this object, Stephens selected as his helpers Captain Stead and Cook. And privates Leary, Green, and Anderson. Brown made the raid at 11.30 that night. Mr. Williams, the bridge guard, was captured by Stephens and Kagi.
The watchman of the armory, Daniel Whelan, refused Brown and his men admission to the grounds. They broke the locks with tools, captured Whelan, and took possession of the armory and also of the arsenal outside. The following prisoners were brought in early on Monday and placed in the engine house. Jesse W. Graham, who was Master Workman, Colonel Lewis W. Washington, Terence Byrne, John M. Alstadt, John Donahue, who was clerk of the railroad company. Benjamin F. Mills, the master armourer. Armstead M. Ball, the master machinist. Archibald M. Kitzmiller, assistant superintendent. Isaac Russell, a justice of the peace, George D. Shopey of Frederick, and J. Byrd, Arsenal Armourer. The white prisoners were to be held as hostages on the blacks were to be armed and placed in Brown's army.
Cook and Tid evidently mistrusted their surroundings. During the night, they made their way back to the farm and hastily escaped into Pennsylvania. Captain Watson, Brown, and Taylor held up the train bound for Baltimore, detaining it for three hours. The colored porter of the depot, Shepherd Hayward, went out on the bridge to hunt for Williams. He was brutally shot by one of Brown's bridge guards. Hayward managed to crawl to the baggage room, where he died at noon on Monday. Dr. John Starry He dressed his wounds and ministered to his every want. The physician was under the impression that a band of trained robbers had captured the depot. He told this to Mr. Kitzmiller before Kitzmiller's imprisonment.
Captain E.P. Dangerfield, clerk to the paymaster, entered the grounds and was hustled into the engine house quite early in the morning. Numerous arriving workmen were imprisoned in an adjoining building. Colonel Washington said that fully sixty men were imprisoned by eight o'clock on Monday morning, that citizens were hearing of the situation. Newby and Green, Negroes, were stationed at the junction of High and Shenandoah streets. Newby shot at and killed Captain George W. Turner, a graduate of West Point. Green shot and killed Mr. Thomas Bawley, a grocer. Dr. Claget attended Bawley, who also soon died. After the mulatto had shot Turner, a man named Bogut entered the residence of Mrs. Stephenson by a rear door.
Having no bullet, he put a large nail into his gun, went upstairs, and shot Newby, the nail cutting his throat. From year to year, he was also shot in the stomach by someone else. I saw him die in great agony with an infuriated crowd around him. About 10 o'clock in the morning, armed citizens crossed the Potomac and Shenandoah Rovers to prevent the escape by the bridges or by water of any of the raiders. Some walked down the Maryland River Road and wounded Captain Oliver Brown on the bridge. He reached the engine house but soon died beside his father. Citizens seized the uninjured prisoner, Captain Thompson, and put him under guard at the Galt Hotel. Captain Stephens tried to reach the hotel to propose, as he stated, terms of surrender.
George Chambers wounded him and then assisted him into the Galt Hotel, where his wounds were dressed. About eleven o'clock in the morning, the Jefferson guards from the Charlestown, commanded by Captain J. W. Rowan, arrived. A half-hour passed. On the Hamtrak guards under Captain William Butler came to the ferry. They were followed by the Shepherdstown mounted troop commanded by Captain Jacob Reinhardt. Then a military company from Martinsburg, 20 miles distant, reached the place under the command of Captain Albertus. Col. W. R. Baylor and John T. Gibson took the general direction of the military affairs. Some soldiers crossed the Shenandoah along with armed citizens to intercept the four raiders, Kagi, Leary, Lehman, and Copeland, When they should be driven out of Howell's rifle works.
These raiders also had in these works one of Colonel Washington's slaves pressed into their service. All of them ran out into the river to swim across the Ludon County shore. All were shot to death in the river with the exception of Copeland. He threw up his hands and surrendered. During the excitement, Hazlett and the Negro Anderson left the arsenal and undetected escaped into Pennsylvania. Early in the morning, Captain Owen Brown, Barclay-Kopak, and Miriam had deserted the Kennedy farm and gone north. Thus, seven of the 22 men fled to the north. Cook and Hazlett were captured. They were returned to Virginia, tried, and executed. By 2 o'clock p.m., the town and hills swarmed with militia and citizens.
Brown had barricaded the engine house doors with the engine and reel. Inside were Captains John Brown and his son Watson, also Captain Oliver Brown, who was soon dead, Shields Green, Captain Edwin Kopach, Lieutenant Jemaya G. Anderson, Captain Dauphin Aldofer Thompson, and Ten white prisoners. The numerous prisoners, mostly workmen, in the adjoining structure had all escaped from the grounds, Brown having no portholes on that side of his fort. The militia were afraid to fire into the portholes for fear of killing some of the prominent prisoners. About four o'clock, the mayor, Mr. Fontaine Beckham, aged 60 years, who was also a station agent of the railroad company, went out on the platform unarmed.
He was shot dead by the Negro Shields Green. Captain Watson Brown in the engine house received his death wound soon afterwards. Mayor Beckham was very much beloved by the people. A number of citizens hurried into the hotel and brutally seized Captain Thompson. threw him over the wall into the Potomac and riddled him with bullets. Mrs. Falke of the hotel and her colored porter went to the platform and brought in the dead body of the mayor. As night was settling on the excited city, a military company from Winchester, Virginia, commanded by Captain B.B. Washington, arrived by a Shenandoah Valley train. Shortly thereafter, A Baltimore and Ohio railroad train brought several companies of soldiers from Frederick, Maryland.
They were commanded by Colonel Shriver. Soon, several independent companies from Baltimore, accompanied by the 2nd Light Brigade, arrived under the general command of General Charles C. Edgerton. Colonel Robert E. Lee of the United States Army, Overtook these troops at Sandy Hook, a mile and a half below the ferry on the Maryland side. He had come from Washington with several companies of Marines. He was accompanied by Lieutenant J. E. B. Stewart, afterwards a famous Confederate Cavalry General, also by Major Russell and by Lieutenant Israel Green, who died several months ago in the West. All were regular Army officers. Colonel Lee regarded it as unwise to attack the engine house that night, fearing that Colonel Lewis W.
Washington or other prisoners might be killed. Early in the morning, he sent Lieutenant J. E. B. Stewart, who had once held Brown as a prisoner in Kansas, to demand an immediate and unconditional surrender. Brown refused to trust himself and men to the United States officers. About this time, Colonel Robert E. Lee got within range of Captain Kupak's rifle. Prisoners said that Mr. Graham knocked the muzzle aside. Lee's life was saved. Had he been then killed, who knows that the battles of Antietam, Gettysburg, And the final conflicts north of the Appomattox would have ever been fought. On the Confederate side, no abler general or more magnificent man ever sat on a saddle than Robert E. Lee. He was the son of Light Horse Harry Lee, a brave Major General of the Revolutionary War.
He was the father of William Henry Fitzhugh Lee, who became a major general of the Confederate forces of Virginia at a later date. General Robert E. Lee made a brilliant record in the Mexican War as chief engineer of the United States Army. After surrendering his decimated army to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, he accepted the political situation with dignity. He became president of the Washington University at Lexington, Virginia. The South lavished on him every possible honor. During the late summer, the Virginia legislature placed in the National Hall of Fame at the United States Capitol two fine statues of two representative men of their state. One was the statue of General George Washington.
The other, that of General Robert E. Lee. By the advice of Colonel Lewis W. Washington, all of Brown's prisoners mounted the fire engine and the reel carriage and lifted up their hands when the attack began. Three Marines undertook to batter down the doors with heavy sledgehammers. They were not successful. Then twelve Marines struck The men struck the doors with the end of a strong ladder. They opened. Lieutenant Green entered, first of all, amidst a shower of bullets. Discovering Brown reloading his rifle, he sprang on him with his sword and cut his head and stomach. The raider, Captain Anderson, rose to shoot Green. A Marine named Luke Quinn ran his bayonet through him. Another raider shot Luke Queen, who soon died.
Two other Marines were wounded. I saw Captains Anderson and Watson Brown as they lay dying on the grass after their capture. The dead body of Captain Oliver Brown lay beside him. Captain Watson Brown had been dying for sixteen hours. Captain John Brown, bleeding profusely, And Captain Stephens, from the hotel, were carried into the paymaster's office. Brown's long grey beard was stained with wet blood. He was bareheaded. His shirt and trousers were grey in colour. His trousers were tucked into the top of his boots. Captain Kupok and the negro green were also taken prisoners. They were not wounded. As Brown lay on the floor of the paymaster's office, he was very cool and courageous. Governor Henry A.
Weiss, United States Senator J. M. Mason of Virginia, and Honorable Clement L. Wallendingham of Ohio, plied him with many questions. To all, he gave intelligent and fearless replies. He refused to involve his northern financiers and advisers. He took the entire responsibility on himself. He told Governor Wise that he, Brown, was simply an instrument in the hands of Providence. He said to some newspaper correspondents and others, I wish to say that you had better, all you people of the South. Prepare for a settlement of this question. You may dispose of me very easily. I am nearly disposed of now. But this question is yet to be settled. This negro question, I mean. The end is not yet. Before thirteen months had passed, one of the greatest Americans of any century, Abraham Lincoln, had been elected President of the United States.
The Republican Party was for the first time dominating national affairs, and soon thereafter, the Civil War was begun, which culminated in the physical freedom of every slave in this republic. On Wednesday, Captains John Brown, Stephens, and Kupak Along with Copeland and Green, were removed to the county jail at Charlestown, ten miles south of Harper's Ferry. Being acquainted with the jailer, Captain John Avis, I was permitted to visit Brown on one occasion. Captain Aaron D. Stephens was lying on a cot in the same room. I was told that Brown had ordered out of his room a Presbyterian minister named Lowry when he had proposed to offer a prayer. He had also said to my first colleague, Rev. James H.
March, you do not know the meaning of the word Christianity. Of course, I regard you as a gentleman, but only as a heathen gentleman. I was advised to say nothing to him about prayer. He had told other visitors that he wanted no minister to pray with him who would not be willing to die to free a slave. I was not conscious that I was ready for Marchedom from Brown's standpoint. I have never been anxious to die to save the life of anybody. My life is as valuable to me and my family as any other man's is to him and his family. But young as I was, I hated American slavery. I was a boy minister of a great anti-slavery denomination of Christians. For more than a century, the Methodist Episcopal Church has carried in its discipline its printed testimony against slavery.
It is today the largest fully organized anti-slavery society on earth. I would have gladly offered prayer in Brown's room at Charlestown if an honorable opportunity had been afforded. At his preliminary examination before five justices, Colonel Davenport presiding, Brown said, Virginians, I did not ask for quarter at the time I was taken. I did not ask to have my life spared. Your governor assured me of a fair trial. If you seek my blood, you can have it. At any time, without this mockery of a trial, I have no counsel. I have not been able to advise with anyone. I know nothing of the feelings of my fellow prisoners, and am utterly unable to attend to my own defence. If a fair trial is to be allowed, there are mitigating circumstances to be urged.
But... If we are forced with a mere form, a trial for execution, you might spare yourself that trouble. I am ready for my fate. Two very able Virginia attorneys were assigned as a matter of state form as counsel for Brown. They were Hon. Charles J. Faulkner of Martinsburg, Afterwards, United States envoy extraordinary to France, and Judge Green, ex-mayor of Charlestown. The county grand jury indicted Brown on three separate charges. First, conspiracy with slaves for purposes of insurrection. Second, treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia. Third, murder in the first degree. Mr. Faulkner withdrew from the case, and Mr. Lawson Botts took his place. Mr. Samuel Chilton, a learned lawyer of Washington, D.C., and Judge Henry Griswold of Ohio, another distinguished attorney, volunteered the services as counsel for John Brown and were accepted.
Some of Brown's friends sent an excellent young lawyer named George H. Hoyt from Boston as additional counsel. These attorneys made an able defense, whatever may have been their private opinion as to Brown's guilt or innocence. The prosecuting attorney for the state of Virginia was Andrew Hunter, an exceptionally brilliant orator and able lawyer. He was a courtly and commanding speaker. He was gifted with a very rich and powerful voice. After the indictment of Brown by the Court of Justices, the prosecuting attorney of Jefferson County, Mr. Charles B. Harding, left the prosecution almost exclusively to Mr. Andrew Hunter, who represented the state. So, too, After the arrival of Brown's chosen outside counsel, Judge Green and Mr.
Lawson Botts withdrew, in good taste, from his defence. At the regular trial, Brown's counsel requested postponement on account of prisoner's health. But Dr. Mason, his physician, attested the physical ability of his patient to undergo the strain. The state was spending almost a thousand dollars a day for military guards and other items. When Brown's counsel presented telegrams from his relatives asking for delay until they could forward proofs of his insanity, Brown said, I will say, if the court will allow me, that I look on this as a miserable artifice. I am a trick of those who ought to take a different course in regard to me if they take any at all. I view it with contempt more than otherwise.
I am perfectly unconscious of insanity, and I reject, so far as I am capable, any attempts to interfere in my behalf on that score. On the last day of the trial, October 31st, after six hours of argument by Hunter, Chilton, and Griswold, the jury delivered the following verdict. Guilty of treason, and of conspiring and advising with slaves and others to rebel, and of murder in the first degree. On Wednesday, November 2nd, He was brought into court to receive his sentence. The court clerk, Robert H. Brown, asked, Have you anything to say why sentence should not be passed on you? Brown, leaning on a cane, slowly arose from his chair and with plaintive emphasis addressed Judge Parker as follows.
I have. May it please the court. A few words to say. In the first place, I deny everything but what I have all along admitted, the design on my part to free the slaves. I certainly intended to have made a clean thing of that matter, as I did last winter. When I went into Missouri and took slaves without the snapping of a gun on either side, moved them through the country, and finally left them in Canada, I designed to have done the same thing again on a larger scale. That was all I intended. I never did intend murder, or treason, or the destruction of property, or to excite or incite slaves to rebellion or to make insurrection. I have another objection, and that is that it is unjust that I should suffer such a penalty.
Had I interfered in the matter which I admit, And which I admit has been fairly proved, for I admire the truthfulness and candour of the greater portion of the witnesses who have testified in this case. Had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, Or in behalf of any of their friends, either father, mother, sister, brother, wife, or children, or any of that class, and suffered and sacrificed what I have in this interference, it would have been all right. And every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment. This court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed here, which I suppose is the Bible, or at least the New Testament.
That teaches me that all things, whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even unto them. It teaches me further to remember them that are in bonds as bound with them. I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say that I'm yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe. That to have interfered as I have done, as I have always admitted freely I have done, in behalf of his despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, And mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit.
So let it be done. Let me say one word further. I feel entirely satisfied with the treatment I have received on my trial. Considering all the circumstances, it has been more generous than I expected. But I feel no consciousness of guilt. I never had any design against the life of any person, nor any disposition to commit treason or excite slaves to rebellion or make any general insurrection. I never encouraged any man to do so, but always discouraged any idea of the kind. Let me say a word in regard to the statements made by some of those connected with me. I hear it has been stated by some of them that I induce them to join me. But the contrary is true. I do not say this to injure them but as regards their weakness.
There is not one of them but join me of his own accord, and the greater part of them at their own expense. A number of them I never saw, and never had a word of conversation with till the day they came to me, and that was for the purpose I have stated. Now I am done. Brown's statement was not exactly sustained by the facts. Why had he collected the sharps' rifles, the pikes, the kegs of powder, many thousands of caps and much warlike material at the Kennedy farm? Why did he and other armed men break into the United States armory and arsenal, make potholes in the engine house, Shoot and kill citizens and surround their own imprisoned persons with prominent men as hostages. But everybody in the courtroom has believed the old man when he said that he did everything with a solitary motive, the liberation of the slaves.
Judge Barker could, under his oath, do nothing else than to sentence him to be hung. He fixed the date for Friday, the 2nd of December. Brown's counsel appealed to the Supreme Court of Virginia. Its five judges unanimously sustained the action of the Jefferson County Court. Brown was hung on the bright and beautiful morning of December 2nd at 11.15 o'clock. At his request, Andrew Hunter wrote his will. He then visited his fellow prisoners, who were all executed at a later date. He rode to his death between Sheriff Campbell and Captain Abyss in a furniture wagon drawn by two white horses. He did not ride seated on his coffin, as some of his chief elogists have affirmed. The wagon was escorted to the scaffold by state military companies.
No citizens were allowed near to the jail. Hence, he did not kiss any Negro baby, as he emerged from his prison, as Mr. Vitia has described in a poem on the event, and as artists have memorialized in paintings. The utter absurdity of such an incident occurring under such surroundings any Virginian will see. Avis, Camel, and Hunter publicly denied it. But the story will doubtless.
In one of the companies of soldiers walked the actor John Wilkes Booth, the infamous assassin of Abraham Lincoln. At the head of the Lexington Cadets walked Professor Thomas Jefferson Jackson, who became an able Confederate general and is best known to the world as Stonewall Jackson. As the party neared the gallows, Brown gazed on the glorious panorama of mountain and landscape scenery. Then he said, This is a beautiful country. He wore a black slouch hat with the front tipped up. Reaching the scaffold, the numerous state troops formed into a hollow square. Brown mounted the platform without trepidation. Standing on the drop, he said to the sheriff and his assistants, Gentlemen, I thank you for your kindness to me.
I am ready at any time. Do not keep me waiting. The drop fell, and in ten minutes, Dr. Mason pronounced him dead. That evening, Mrs. Brown and her friends received the casket at Harper's Ferry. and accompanied it to the old home at North Elba, New York. His funeral, as reported by the Metropolitan Papers, took place there six days after his execution. An immense concourse was in attendance. The conspicuous and brilliant orator, Wendell Phillips, delivered the address. He closed it with these words. In this cottage, he girded himself and went forth to battle, fuller sexes than his heart ever dreamed of God had granted him. He sleeps in the blessings of the crushed and the poor. Men believe more firmly in virtue now that such a man has lived.
Personally, I remained in Virginia. On the day that Brown was hung, martyr services, as they were called, were held in many northern localities. At Concord, Dr. Edmund Sears read a poem in which are these tanzas. Not any spot six feet by two will hold a man like thee. John Brown will tramp the shaking earth. From Blue Ridge to the sea, till the strong angel comes at length and oops each dungeon door, and God's great charter holds and waves o'er all the humble poor. And then the humble poor may come in that far distant day, and from the felon's nameless grave will brush the leaves away, and gray old men will point the spot beneath the pine-tree's shade, as children ask with streaming eyes where old John Brown was laid.
Before he was executed, many threatening communications were received by the Virginia State and Jefferson County officers. Large numbers of E.C. Steadman's poem, entitled, John Brown of Osawatomi, were scattered about Charlestown. One stanza reads as follows. But Virginians! Don't do it, for I tell you that the flagon, filled with blood of old Brown's offspring, was first poured by southern hands, and each drop from old Brown's life weans, like the red gower of the dragon, may spring up a vengeful fury, hissing through your slave-worn lands. And old Brown, oh, so what army Brown, may trouble you more than ever when you have nailed this coffin down. Whether they be from the North or the South, fair-minded men who are thoroughly conversant with the history of this raid can hardly cherish any doubt concerning the turpitude of the invasion, the fairness of Brown's trial.
and the justice of his conviction and execution. He fell under the direction of a misguided conscience. The noble endowment that philosophers call conscience, that gives its verdicts as to the moral merit or demerit of actions and affections, was strangely warped in Brown's intense and brave character. The position of this faculty of conscience is the massive foundation of all human responsibility. Illustrations of the moral enormities that a perverted conscience can perpetrate or manifold along the pages of sacred and secular history. When Jesus looked down the aisles of the future, he said to his disciples that the men who would finally transfigure them into martyrs Paul declared that he regarded himself as meeting the divine approval when he was persecuting and murdering the primitive Christians.
When the officers of the Spanish Inquisition saw the agonies of the victims who refused to renounce their religious creeds, They joyfully exclaimed, Let God be glorified. Charles IX of France said he was conscientious in ordering the St. Bartholomew Massacre that resulted in the murder in French cities of tens of thousands of Christian Huguenots. The bloody Queen, Mary Tudor, said she had a pure conscience when she sent to the scaffold the learned and gentle young ex-Queen, Lady Jane Grey. Thousands of criminals have sheltered their crimes in the temple of conscience. The trend of Brown's constant defence was that he obeyed his conscience. His lawless conduct The death of many of his party and the murder of Virginia citizens gave him very little apparent intellectual unrest.
He sowed to the wind and reaped the logical harvest, if it is the appropriate word, the whirlwind. Brown's High Calvinism Bordered on Pharoahism. Oliver Cromwell Never believed more radically in the foreordination of all human actions than did he. When questioned concerning the failure of this invasion, he replied, all of our actions, even all of the follies that led to this disaster, were decreed to happen ages before the world was made. When Judge Russell visited him, he said, I know that the very errors by which my scheme was marred were decreed before the world was made. I had no more to do with the course I pursued than a shot leaving a cannon has to do with the spot where it shall fall.
It is when patriotic men read the story of John Brown's raid by the tortures of President Lincoln's early election, the Civil War and the emancipation of all American slaves, that they seem to become blind to the terrible criminal features of the invasion and look only at the national results and the magnificent courage, benevolent motives. And supreme self-sacrifice of this martyr. Multitudes of visionary men regard him as a divinely appointed John the Baptist, raised up to usher in the day of physical freedom for every slave on American soil, and their posterity to the end of time. They claim that in this instance, the end has justified the means. His raid made the North solid against the slave system and the South as solid against anti-slavery theories and agitators.
Before the Brown Raid, the vote for John C. Fremont, the Republican candidate for president, was 1,341,000. James Buchanan had 496,000 majority. The year after the raid, Abraham Lincoln received 1,886,000 votes for president and had 491,000 majority over Stephen A. Douglas when the South voted for another Democrat. Fremont had 114 votes in the Electoral College. Lincoln had 180. Under his presidency, the emancipation of every slave on the national soil took place. The nations of Europe learned for the first time the important lesson that the United States was able to maintain its national unity. This raid beyond question hastened the civil war. I have seen federal regiments marching on to battle enthusiastically singing.
John Brown's body lies a-moulding in the grave. But his soul is marching on. A few weeks after Brown's execution, Victor Hugo said, What the South slew last December was not John Brown but slavery. His statement developed into a colossal historical truth. The great statesman, orator, and senator John J. Ingalls of Kansas closed an oration. with these remarkable words. Carlisle says that when any great change in human society is to be wrought, God raises up men to whom that change is made to appear as the one thing needful and absolutely indispensable. Scholars, orators, poets, philanthropists play their parts. But the crisis comes at last through someone who is stigmatized as a fanatic by his contemporaries.
And whom the supporters of the systems he assails crucify between thieves or gibbet as a felon. The man who is not afraid to die for an idea is the most potential and convincing advocate. Already the great intellectual leaders of the movement for the abolition of slavery are dead. The student of the future will exhume their orations, arguments, and state papers. As a part of the subterranean history of the epoch, the antiquarian will dig up their remains from the alluvial drift of the period and construe their relations to the great events in which they were actors. But the three men of this era, who will loom forever against the remotest horizon of time as the pyramids against the voiceless desert, Or mountain peaks over the subordinate plains are Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S.
Grant, and old John Brown of Osawatomi. Senator Ingalls well knew that Brown had no such intellectual massiveness or splendid culture as had Webster, Clay, Jefferson, Sumer, and many other eminent Americans. He referred to the majesty of personal achievements. From this standpoint, men like Garibaldi, Morse, Harriman, Edison, Roosevelt, and Cook, the Arctic explorer, have been great. Brown's life was a perpetual sacrifice for the annihilation of American slavery. Very defective as a military leader, he was always ready to do, dare, and die to assist in his work. Even today, tens of thousands of educated men regard him as a monomaniac concerning the abolition of slavery. For many years in the state of Kansas, he had permitted his own life and the life of each of his sons to be in continual peril that they might assist in placing Kansas in the constellation of free states.
Men like Garrett Smith and John L. Stearns Financed schemes from their wealth. Men like Henry Ward Beecher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, George B. Cheever, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and Theodore Parker delivered elegies on Brown after he had been hung. They most eloquently denounced slavery from pulpits and platforms, but they lived in the limelight. of oratorical popularity and flourished amidst luxurious ease. To Brown's immortal credit, Beard said that he gave domestic security, his humble fortune, his perilous work, the lives of his cherished sons, and his own blood and life for the anti-slavery opinions that were anchored in his soul. His prison letters to many friends were full of interpredity, submission to the divine providence, and heroic anticipations of immortal blessedness.
Ten minutes after he left his jail cell for the gallows, he handed to a prison official a sheet of paper on which he had written these words. I, John Brown, am quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land Will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done. His surpassing bravery and self-sacrificing candour profoundly impressed eminent Virginians. Governor Henry A. Weiss said, He is a bundle of the best nerves I ever saw. Cut and thrust. and bleeding, and in bonds. He is a man of clear head, of courage, fortitude, and simple ingeniousness. He is cool, collected, indomitable. And it is but just to him to say that he was humane to his prisoners.
He's a fanatic, but firm and truthful and intelligent. Colonel Louis W. Washington. And Captain John E. P. Dangerfield bore testimony to his courage. Brown's wonderful moral heroism became resplendent after Judge Richard Parker had sentenced him to death. Many of his letters to his friends, collected and published by Mr. F. B. Sanford, would have done honour to the pen of Paul. He was exultant from the standpoint of a happy spiritual experience, and triumphant as he gazed beyond this mortal life. In one of his last letters, he wrote these words, I sleep as peacefully as an infant, or if I am wakeful, glorious thoughts come to me, entertaining my mind. I do not believe I shall deny my Lord and Master Jesus Christ in this prison or on the scaffold, but I should do so if I denied my principles against slavery.
Surely he must have been sincere as he faced eternity. As early as 1820, John Quincy Adams said of the overthrow of American slavery, the object is vast, In its compass, awful in its prospects, and sublime and beautiful in its issues, a life devoted to it would be nobly spent or sacrificed. John Brown, along illegal and criminal lines, placed before the world such a life and death. He saw clearly what American statesmen of his period saw. But dimly. Beyond all questions, he died as emphatically for the overthrow of slavery as Paul died for the honor of Christianity. Three of his favorite books were the life stories of men of great achievements. The Life of Oliver Cromwell, The Life of Marco Bazaris, and The Life of William Wallace.
Some years ago, in an oration delivered at Harper's Ferry, the distinguished freedman and orator, the late Frederick Douglass said, If John Brown did not end the war that ended slavery, he did at least begin the war that ended slavery. If we look over the dates, places, and men for which this honor is claimed, we shall find that not Carolina, but Virginia, not for Sumter. But Harper's Ferry and the United States Arsenal, not Major Anderson, but John Brown, began the war that ended American slavery and made this a free republic. Until this blow was struck, the prospect was dim, shadowy, and uncertain. The irrepressible conflict was one of words, votes, and compromises. When John Brown stretched forth his arm, the sky was cleared.
The time for compromise was gone. The armed hosts stood face to face over the chasm of a broken union, and the clash of arms was at hand. And let it be remembered that when Brown had told Douglas the details of his proposed invasion at Harper's Ferry, Douglas begged him to abandon his plans and assured him that they would end as they did in untold disaster. The chief authors who have written concerning John Brown and his invasion were not in Virginia during the 44 days intervening between the raid and his execution. They were destitute of any personal knowledge of the facts. They were bitter enemies of the South and most intense admirers of the intrepid men executed at Charlestown. Their narratives are replete with errors and contain They are generally saturated with misrepresentation of the Virginia people and are burdened with illogistic apologies for Brown's conduct in Virginia.
Because I was on the ground and saw things as they occurred, because I have kept in touch with Brown literature, and because I am in love with the truth, I believe that my story is worthy of public. Confidence. I have known Virginians personally for over 50 years. My long career as a minister of Christ was begun among them. They have not deserved the traduction Brown's elegies have heaped on them. His unfortunate execution was the logical result of his criminal and bloody raid. The Virginia people have been noble in chivalry. Bounteous in hospitality, sublime in kindness of heart and life, and models of high social and moral purity. Spartacus led the way for the destruction of Roman slavery. John Brown performed a similar service for the American slaves.
He mingled in a strange character, fanaticism and courage, eccentricity and a prophetical insight into future events. A warped conscience and a sublime martyr heroism. But whether in safety or peril, at home or in prison, the battle or on the scaffold, this mysterious man intensely cherished the conviction that Joanna Bailey embedded into poetry. The strength of man sings in the hour of trial. But there doth live a power that for the battle girdeth the weak. The De Sota, Washington, D.C., November 18, 1909. My dear sir, there has just been issued a small volume copyrighted entitled The Raid of John Brown as I saw it. From the pen of Rev. Samuel Vanderleep Leach, D.D., of Washington, D.C., who has been a Methodist Episcopal minister for 52 years.
For this book, the Morris Engraving Company furnished the latest portrait of Captain John Brown. The edition is limited to 400 copies. They are not sold at any store. The object of the publication It is to place on the shelves of libraries, colleges, universities, and historical societies, from the Southern standpoint, an accurate narrative of the raid and the events associated with it. I was twenty-two years of age, was preaching close to Harpers Ferry, saw the fighting and capture, and visited Brown in his prison. I was a witness of the events of the forty-four days intervening Between the raid and his execution. His partisan biographers were not in Virginia at that time. Their book contained historical errors and much romance.
Their abuse of the Virginians is unfair. I'm a Republican and have steadily voted for Republican presidents, but I think the time has come when a truthful version of this famous raid I think that you will agree with me. On receipt of a money order for forty-five cents, I will mail to you a postpaid copy of the small volume. With respect, S. V. Leach.
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8 08 - The Battle of Franklin, Tennessee: Section 1 28:44
The Battle of Franklin, Tennessee. Section 1. By Captain John K. Schellenberger. Preface. This monograph of the Battle of Franklin was read first at a meeting of the Minnesota Commandery of the Loyal Legion, December 9, 1902. Written after an exhaustive investigation begun many years before, the straightforward truth was told without fear or favor. The disgraceful and costly blunder with which the Battle of Franklin opened should have been investigated by a court of inquiry. The only action taken, however, was the deposing of General Wagner, the junior in rank and the weakest in influence among the generals implicated, from the command of his division, with the statement that the blunder was due to his disobedience of orders.
With this action, the matter was hushed up. I have no personal grudge against General Schofield, whose obstinate reliance on his ability to foresee what General Hood would do was the prime cause of the blunder. My feeling towards him is the same that any honest student will experience when he becomes convinced that an undeserved promotion was secured by dishonest methods. I began my investigation with no thought of him, but to secure evidence to disprove statements that I knew to be false, dishonoring the brigade to which I belonged. These had been made by General Cox in The March to the Sea, Franklin and Nashville, and by Captain Schofield. A member of Cox's staff, in a paper entitled, The Retreat from Pulaski to Nashville, published in the second volume of Sketches of War History, issued by the Ohio Commandery of the Loyal Legion.
Misery loves company, and these two officers of the 23rd Corps, undoubtedly working in collusion, sought to mitigate their misery by putting two brigades of the 4th Corps into the same class with their corps. Whose battle line had proved unequal to the strain of the two brigades passing over it when driven in from the front by the assaulting rebel army. That part of Cox's line broke in a panic at the sight of what was coming, and abandoned a good line of breastworks before firing a single shot. Cox and Schofield wished to make it appear that the two brigades also became panic-stricken, and that they never stopped running until they were stopped by the river. That they were both capable of deliberately bearing false witness needs no other proof than that furnished by themselves, by Cox in the contradictory statements made in his two official reports of the Battle of Franklin, and by Schofield in his false map of Spring Hill, which he claimed was drawn to scale, but which he had forged to uphold his claim for extraordinary services rendered by the regiment to which he belonged in the Battle of Spring Hill the day preceding the Battle of Franklin.
The discovery of the discreditable part played by General Schofield in the Battle of Franklin was the greatest find of my investigation. There is not a bit of doubt that he remained heedless at his headquarters in Franklin while the enemy was engaged in preparations for assault in plain sight of our front. If he had given the proper attention to the important reports of General Cox, delivered in person, and of Colonel Lane, delivered by Captain Whitesides, He would have ridden to the front, which he could have done in less than ten minutes, to see for himself what was going on there. One look must have convinced him of the mistake he was making as to General Hood's intention. He then might have remedied the blunder he made when he ordered Wagner's division into the position occupied by the brigades of Lane and Conrad.
Yet his blunder went on to its logical finish, and many hundreds of Union soldiers were needlessly killed, wounded, or captured. The army On the crumbling brink of destruction, was saved by the independent action of Colonel Opdyke, one of the brigade commanders. In 1890, the National Tribune published my article on the Battle of Franklin, containing the same charges against Schofield that are made in this pamphlet. Among many letters then received was one from General Stanley, in which he wrote that he was surprised at the accuracy with which I had stated my points. One of the most important of those points was the statement of Dr. Cliff, which is confirmed by General Stanley's official report.
From one o'clock until four in the evening, the enemy's entire force was in sight and forming for attack. Yet, in view of the strong position we held and reasoning from the former course of the rebels during this campaign, nothing appeared so improbable as that they would assault. I was so confident in this belief that I did not leave General Schofield's headquarters until the firing commenced.
The headquarters mentioned were at Dr. Cliff's house. In my personal interview with him, I found him a very reluctant witness. He was evidently proud of having entertained two major generals and showed no inclination to say anything against either of them. He had told his story to a few of his intimate friends, and one of them had repeated it to me. It was not until I had told him what I had heard and who my informant was that I could get him to talk. He then confirmed what I had already heard and added a few additional particulars, the most important one being his statement that Cox was at his house conferring with Schofield shortly before the battle began. A thousand copies of the Tribune article were obtained, and a copy was mailed to every member of the Ohio Commandery and to many others, including General Schofield.
Many members of the Ohio Commandery were residents of Cincinnati or Cleveland. At that time, Schofield was commanding the Army and was a resident of Washington City. He took notice of this article by getting Washington correspondents of Cincinnati and Cleveland papers to write letters in his praise. These letters contained nothing to refute the specific charges made in the Tribune, but dealt in glittering generalities about the important services rendered by Schofield during the war. Moreover, in his 46 years in the Army, while devoting many pages to the Battle of Franklin, Schofield has nothing to say about his failure to give some personal attention to the very extraordinary situation that developed right under his nose, so to speak.
The audacity he displayed in claiming credit for the victory, while in Washington soon after the battle, and finding that the administration was ignorant of its details, was a brilliant stroke of genius of its kind. Cox was with Schofield in Washington and must have rendered invaluable assistance. No doubt, each certified to the meritorious services of the other, and Cox got his share of the reward in his promotion to the command of the 23rd Corps. Is it any wonder that two such able but unscrupulous men, while working together, with no one present to question their claims, should score such a success in deceiving President Lincoln? Was it for the meritorious services Schofield rendered, while sitting idly in Dr.
Cliff's house, utterly indifferent to the reports coming to him of the preparations of the enemy for assault? And was it for the gallantry he displayed when he skedaddled to the fort across the river as soon as the firing began, thereby abandoning the conduct of the battle to his subordinates, that they claimed the promotion he was given? If he had received the award his conduct that day so justly merited, would it not have come in the verdict of a court-martial, such as he declares in his book ought to have been given to Wagner, Lane, and Conrad? According to the established rules of war, these three commanders, and Schofield and Cox, ought to have been tried by court-martial and, if found guilty, shot or cashiered for sacrificing their own men and endangering the army.
If any of the blame attached to General Stanley, he washed it away gallantly with the blood of his wound. John K. Schellenberger, Hampton, Virginia, November 5, 1915.
The Battle of Franklin.
Any facts or information concerning the Battle of Franklin coming my way has always been devoured with a greedy interest, and because of this interest, I have given far more research to this battle than to any other in which I was engaged. On account of the open character of the battlefield, the limited area where the fighting raged, and my presence in the midst of that area, the leading features of the battle came under my personal observation. But wherever that observation was wanting for giving a clear account, I have supplied the deficiency with information gathered from other reliable sources. I was commanding Company B, 64th Ohio Regiment, Conrad's Brigade, Wagner's Division, 4th Corps.
Wagner's Division was the rear guard on the retreat to Franklin, and about mid-forenoon on November 30th, 1864, arrived on top of the Winstead Hills, two miles south of Franklin. Halting there long enough to snatch a hasty breakfast, the division then hurried into battle line to delay the columns of the enemy, in close pursuit by compelling them to deploy. The position was held as long as possible without bringing on a battle, and then Wagner began to retire slowly towards Franklin. The town lies nestled in a little valley in a bend of Harpeth River. A stand was made to get the artillery and the long wagon train over the river. And while our commanding general, Schofield, was giving his personal attention to the facilities for crossing, the main body of the army, under the supervision of General Cox, was engaged in establishing our defensive line, which stretched across the river bend, in the arc of a circle enclosing the town.
As fast as the troops arrived and were placed in position, they hurried to cover themselves with breastworks. And by the time the enemy was ready to attack, Cox's line was well entrenched. The train got over the river in time for the troops to have crossed before the enemy appeared, but the opportunity thus offered for securing a much stronger defensive position with the river in front instead of in rear was not improved.
By one o'clock, Wagner had fallen back so close to Cox's line that he began a movement to withdraw his division behind that line. Conrad's brigade had been called in from the left flank and was marching in column of fours along the Columbia Pike, with the head of the column approaching the breastworks, when Wagner received an order from Schofield to take up a position in front of Cox's line. In obedience to this order, Conrad countermarched his brigade a short distance and then deployed it in a single line of battle, having a general direction nearly parallel with Cox's line. Five of the six regiments composing the brigade were posted on the east side and one on the west side of the pike, 470 yards in advance of Cox's line, as measured along the pike.
Lane's brigade, following Conrad's, was posted on Conrad's right, Lane's line trending backward on the right in general confirmation with Cox's line. When General Hood assaulted, Conrad's five regiments east of the Pike proved to be in the direct pathway of his assault, and they were overwhelmed before the line west of the Pike, which was greatly refused as to that pathway, became fully engaged. When Opdike's brigade, the last to withdraw, came up to the position occupied by Conrad and Lane, Wagner rode forward and ordered Opdike into line with them. Colonel Opdike strenuously objected to this order. He declared that troops out in front of the breastworks were in a good position to aid the enemy and nobody else.
He also pleaded that his brigade was worn out, having been marching for several hours during the morning in line of battle in sight of the enemy, climbing over fences and passing through woods, thickets, and muddy cornfields, while covering the rear of our retreating column, and was entitled to a relief. While they were discussing the matter, they rode along the pike together. The brigade marching in column behind them, until they entered the gap in the breastworks left for the pike, and finding the ground in that vicinity fully occupied by other troops, they kept along till they came to the first clear space which was about 200 yards inside the breastworks. There Wagner turned away with the final remark, Well, Opdyke, fight when and where you damn please.
We all know you'll fight. Colonel Updike then had his brigade stack arms on the clear space, and his persistence in thus marching his brigade inside the breastworks proved about two hours later to be the salvation of our army. When Conrad's brigade took up its advanced position, we all supposed it would be only temporary. But soon an orderly came along the line with instructions for the company commanders, and he told me that the orders were to hold the position to the last man, and to have my sergeants fix bayonets, and to instruct my company that any man, not wounded, who should attempt to leave the line without orders would be shot or bayoneted by the sergeants. Four of Conrad's regiments, including the 64th Ohio, Had each received a large assignment of drafted men, so recently that none of these men had been with their regiments more than a month, and many had joined within a week.
The old soldiers all believed that the harsh orders were given for effect upon these drafted men, as we never before had received any such orders on going into battle. We then began to fortify. On the retreat that morning, we had passed an abandoned wagon, loaded with entrenching tools, and by order, each company had taken two spades from the wagon, the men relieving each other and carrying them. These spades were the only tools we had to work with. The ground we occupied was a large, old cotton field, not under cultivation that year, and had been frequently camped on by other troops, who had destroyed all the fences and other materials ordinarily found so handy in building hasty breastworks.
So that on this occasion, our only resource was the earth thrown with the few spades we had. Under the stimulus afforded by the sight of the enemy in our front preparing for attack, the men eagerly relieved each other in handling the spades. As soon as a man working showed the least sign of fatigue, a comrade would snatch the spade out of his hands and ply it with desperate energy. Yet, in spite of our utmost exertions, when the attack came, we had only succeeded in throwing up a slight embankment. Which was high enough to give good protection against musket balls to the man squatting down in the ditch from which the earth had been thrown, but on the outside, where there was no ditch, it was so low that a battle line could march over it without halting.
The ground ascended with an easy grade from our position back to Cox's line, and all the intervening space, as well as the wide expanse to our left, was as bare as a floor of any obstruction. In our front was a wide valley extending to the Winstead Hills. This valley was dotted with a few farm buildings, and there were also some small areas of woodland, but much the greater portion of it consisted of cleared fields. As our line was first established, the 65th Ohio was on the left of the brigade, but it was afterwards withdrawn, leaving the 64th Ohio on the left, and three companies, H, K, and B, We're partially refused to cover the left flank. My position was at the refused angle. About the time that we began to fortify, my attention was called to a group of mounted officers in a field on the side of the Winstead Hills, to the east of the Columbia Pike, and about a mile and a half in our front.
This group undoubtedly consisted of General Hood and his staff. An officer who was present with Hood has stated that from their position they had a good view of Cox's line, and that after giving this line a hasty survey through his field glass, General Hood slapped the glass shut with an emphatic gesture and decisively exclaimed, We will attack! Staff officers then began to gallop forth from the group with orders for the troops to form for assault.
At the angle where I was, The view of the valley directly in our front and to our right was shut off by a piece of woodland a short distance in advance of our position, so that we did not see anything of the movements of Cheatham's Corps, which formed astride the Columbia Pike. Looking up the valley to our left front was a wide expanse of cleared fields, and in these fields we plainly saw the movements of a large part of Stewart's Corps. They first came into view from behind a body of timber over towards the river, deploying from columns on the right, by file, into lines on double-quick. As fast as the troops could be marched up from the rear, Stuart extended his lines over towards the pike. We could see all their movements so plainly, while they were adjusting their lines, that there was not a particle of doubt in the mind of any man in my vicinity as to what was coming.
Moreover, the opinion was just as universal that a big blunder was being committed in compelling us to fight with our flank fully exposed in the midst of a wide field, while in plain sight in our rear was a good line of breastworks, with its flanks protected by the river. The indignation of the men grew almost into a mutiny, and the swearing of those gifted in profanity exceeded all their previous efforts in that line. Even the green-drafted men could see the folly of our position, for one of them said to me, What can our generals be thinking about in keeping us out here? We can do no good here. We are only in the way. Why don't they take us back to the Breastworks?
The regiment contained a number of men who had not re-enlisted when the regiment had veteranized and whose time had already expired. They were to be mustered out as soon as we got back to Nashville, and, with home so nearly in sight after more than three years of hard service, these men were especially rebellious. First Sergeant Libby of Company H was a non-veteran and was also a fine specimen, mentally and physically, of the best type of our volunteer soldiers. When the enemy was approaching, he twice got up from the line and started for the Breastworks, vehemently declaring that he would not submit to having his life thrown away after his time was out, by such a stupid blunder. The little squad of non-veterans belonging to the company both times got up and started to go with him, and both times they all returned to the line on the profane order of their captain.
God damn you, come back here! A few minutes later, the sergeant was killed. While we were retreating to the breastworks. It took two hours, from two till four o'clock, for the Corps of Cheatham and Stewart to come up and get into position, and then they advanced to the assault and heavy lines of battle. We kept the spades flying until they had approached within range of our skirmish line, which fired a few shots and then began to retreat rapidly. Then the spades were dropped, and the men taking their muskets squatted down behind the low streak of earth they had thrown out to receive the coming onset. A little later, Company E, from the skirmish line, came scurrying back, the men, with very serious looks on their faces, settling down with the line like a covey of flushed birds dropping into cover.
All that has been related concerning Conrad's brigade took place in full view of that part of Cox's line extending from the river on our left to the Columbia Pike. And if there had been any previous doubt in the minds of any of these onlooking thousands as to Hood's intention, his determination to assault was as plainly advertised as it possibly could be during the intense minutes that it took his army to march in battle line from the place of its formation to our advanced position. General Cox has claimed that Wagner's division was ordered to report to him and that he was in immediate command of all the troops engaged in the battle. By his own statement, he was on a knoll in the rear of Stiles' brigade.
On the left of his line, where he had the best view of the whole field. From this knoll, he had been watching the preparations for attack, and all the time directly under his eyes was Conrad's brigade, busily engaged in fortifying to resist that attack. If Wagner was disobeying his orders by remaining in front too long, as was given out a few days later when he was made a scapegoat for the blunder of his position, Cox was watching him do it, and took no measures to prevent it. If it was Cox's expectation that Wagner would withdraw the two brigades at the last moment, he must have known better when he saw Conrad's brigade squat down behind their half-built breastwork preparatory to giving battle.
There was even then time, if prompt action had been taken, for a staff officer to gallop to the front before the firing began, with a peremptory order for Conrad and Lane to get out of the way. But Cox, fresh from a personal conference with Schofield, To whom he had reported the situation and whose orders he had received with reference to holding the position, looked quietly on and thereby approved of Wagner's action. It was a pleasant, hazy Indian summer day, and so warm that I was carrying my overcoat on my arm. When the line squatted down, I folded the coat into a compact bundle and placed it on the edge of the bank in rear of my company and sat on it, with my feet in the shallow ditch. By craning my neck, I could look over our low parapet.
The battle was opened by a rebel cannon, which, unnoticed by us, had taken position on a wooded knoll off our left front over towards the river. The first shot from this cannon flew a little high, directly over the angle where I was sitting. The second shot dropped short, and I was thinking with a good deal of discomfort that the third shot would get the exact range and would probably lift some of us out of that angle. But before it came, our line had opened fire on the approaching Rebel line, and I became so much more interested in that fire that I never knew whether there was a third shot from the cannon. Our fire checked them in front, for they halted and began to return it, but for a minute only, for, urged on by their officers, they again came forward.
Their advance was so rapid that my company had fired only five or six rounds, to the man, when the break came. The salient of our line was near the pike, and there the opposing lines met in a hand-to-hand encounter in which clubbed muskets were used. But our line quickly gave way. I had been glancing uneasily along our line, watching for a break as a pretext for getting out of there, and was looking towards the pike when the break first started. It ran along the line so rapidly that it reminded me of a train of powder burning. I instantly sprang to my feet and looked to the front. They were coming on the run, emitting the shrill rebel charging yell, and so close that my first impulse was to throw myself flat on the ground and let them charge over us.
But the rear was open, and a sense of duty, as well as a thought of the horrors endured in rebel prisons, constrained me to take what I believed to be the very dangerous risk of trying to escape. I shouted to my company, and gave an example of how to do it by turning and running for the Breastworks.
As the men were rising to go, the rebels fired, but so hastily and with such poor aim that their fire did not prove nearly so destructive as I had feared. Probably most of their guns were empty, although I did not think so just then. The range was so close that it seemed bullets had never before hissed with such a diabolical venom, and every one that passed made a noise seemingly loud enough to tear one in two. I had forgotten my overcoat. But had run only a rod or two when I thought of it, and stopped and looked back with the intention of returning to get it. But the rebels then appeared to be as close to the coat as I was, and, very reluctantly, for it was a new one, I let them have it. After running a few rods farther, I again looked back.
They were standing on the low embankment we had left, loading and firing at will. But just as I looked, some of their officers waved their swords and sprang forward. The fire slackened as they started in hot pursuit to get to the breastworks with us. Our men were all running with their guns in their hands, which was good evidence that there was no panic among them. While knapsacks or blanket rolls were frequently thrown away, I did not see a single man drop his gun, unless hit. The cry of some of our wounded who went down in that wild race, knowing they would have to lie there exposed to all the fire of our own line, had a pathetic note of despair in it I had never heard before. A rebel account has stated that the next morning they found some of the dead with their thumbs chewed to a pulp.
They had fallen with disabling wounds, and the agony of their helpless exposure to the murderous fire from our breastworks, which swept the bare ground where they were lying, had been so great that they had stuck their thumbs in their mouths and bit on them to keep from bleeding like calves. Many of the bodies thus exposed were hit so frequently that they were literally riddled with bullet holes. Our men were nearly all directed towards the pike, as if with the intention of entering the breastworks through the gap there. I reasoned, however, that the hottest fire would be directed where the crowd was densest, and I veered off in an effort to get away from there. While running rapidly with body bent over and head down, after the involuntary manner of men retreating under fire, I came into collision with a man running in a similar attitude, but headed towards the gap.
The shock was so great that it knocked him down and pretty well knocked the wind out of me. Just as we met, a rebel shell exploded close over our heads, and as his body was rolling over on the ground, I caught a glimpse of his upturned face and, in its horrified look, read his belief that it was the shell that had hit him. The idea was so comical that I laughed. But my laugh was a very brief duration when I found myself so much disabled that I was rapidly falling behind. With panting lungs and trembling legs, I toiled along, straining every nerve to reach the breastwork. But when it was yet only a few steps away, even with life itself at stake, I could go no farther, and thought my time had come.
My brave mother, the daughter of a soldier of 1812, and the granddaughter of a revolutionary soldier, had said, When I had appealed to the pride in her military ancestry so successfully that she had consented to my enlistment, well, if you must go, don't get shot in the back. I thought of her, and of that saying, and faced about to take it in front. While I was slowly turning, my eyes swept the plane in the direction of the pike. There were comparatively few of our men in my immediate vicinity, but over towards the pike, The ground was thickly covered with them, extending from the breastworks nearly a hundred yards along the pike, and in some places so densely masked as to interfere with each other's movements.
The fleetest footed had already crossed the breastwork, and all those outside were so thoroughly winded that none of them could go any faster than a slow-labored trot. The rear was brought up by a ragged fringe of tired stragglers, who were walking doggedly along, apparently with as much unconcern as if no rebels were in sight. The rebel ranks were almost as badly demoralized by pursuit as ours by retreat. Their foremost men had already overtaken our rearmost stragglers and were grabbing hold of them to detain them.
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9 09 - The Battle of Franklin Tennessee: Section 2 33:38
The Battle of Franklin, Tennessee, Section 2, by Captain John K.
Suddenly my attention was riveted so intently on the nearest rebel to myself that in watching him I became oblivious to all other surroundings, for I thought I was looking at the man who would shoot me. He was coming directly towards me on a dog-trot less than fifty yards away, and was in the act of withdrawing the ramrod from the barrel of his gun. When this action was completed, While holding the gun and ramrod together in one hand, he stopped to prime, and then, much to my relief, aimed and fired at a little squad of our men close on my right. I heard the bullet strike and an exclamation from the man who was hit. The rebel then started to trot forward again, at the same time reaching back with one hand to draw a fresh cartridge.
By this time, having rested a little, I looked back over my shoulder towards the breastwork. I noticed that there was a ditch on the outside, and the sight of this ditch brought renewed hope. With the fervent prayer, into which was poured all the intense longing for more life, natural to my vigorous young manhood, Oh, God, give me strength to reach that ditch! I turned and staggered forward. I fell headlong into the ditch, just as our line there opened fire. The roar of their guns was sweeter than music, and I chuckled with satisfaction. As I thought, now, Rebs, your turn has come, and you must take your medicine. I lay as I fell, panting for breath, until I had caught a little fresh wind, and then began to crawl around to take a peep and see how the rebels were getting along.
When my body was lengthwise of the ditch, I happened to raise my head and was astounded by the sight of the rebels coming into the ditch between me and the pike, the nearest of them only a few yards away. They were so tired that they seemed scarcely able to put one foot before the other, and many of them stopped at the ditch, utterly unable to go a step farther until they had rested. It was only the strongest among them who were still capable of the exertion of climbing over the breastwork. If the men behind that work had stood fast, not one of those tired rebels would ever have crossed that parapet alive. Transfixed with amazement, I watched them. Until the thought flashed into my mind that in an instant some of their comrades would come in on top of me, and I would be pinned down with a bayonet.
The thought of a bayonet thrust was so terrifying that it spurred me into a last effort, and with the mental ejaculation, I never will die in that way, I sprang on top of the breastwork. Crouching there an instant with both hands resting on the head log, I gave one startled look over my shoulder. The impression received was that if I fell backward they would catch me on their bayonets. Then followed a brief period of oblivion, for which I cannot account.
With returning consciousness I found myself lying in the ditch on the inside of the breastwork, trampled under the feet of the men, and with no knowledge whatever of how I got there. It is possible that I was taken for a rebel when I sprang up so suddenly on top of the breastwork. and that I was knocked there by a blow from one of our own men. I was lying across the body of a wounded man who had been hit by a bullet, which, entering at his cheek, had passed out the back of his head. He was unconscious, but still breathing. The breast of my coat was smeared with the blood from his wound. The press was so great that I could not get on my feet, but in a desperate effort to avoid being trampled to death, managed in some way to crawl out between the legs of the men.
to the bank of the ditch, where I lay utterly helpless, with burning lungs, still panting for breath. My first thought was of the rebels I had seen crossing the breastwork, and I looked toward the pike. I had crossed our line close to a cotton gin that stood just inside our works, and the building obstructed my view, except directly along the ditch, and for a short distance in rear of it. Our men were all gone from the ditch to within a few feet of where I was lying. A little beyond the other end of the building stood two cannon pointing towards me, with a group of rebels at the breach of each one of them, trying to discharge it. They were two of our own guns that had been captured before they had been fired by our gunners, and were still loaded with the double charges of canister intended for the rebels.
Fortunately, the gunners had withdrawn the primers from the vents, and had taken them along when they ran away. And the rebels were having difficulty in firing the guns. As I looked, they were priming them with powder from their musket cartridges, and no doubt intended to fire a musket into this priming. Just then I was too feeble to make any effort to roll my body over behind the cover of the building, but shut my eyes and set my jaws to await the outcome where I was lying. After waiting for some time and not hearing the cannon, I opened my eyes to see what was the matter. The rebels were all gone, and the ditch was filled with our men as far as I could see. If the rebels had succeeded in firing those two cannon, they would have widened the breach in our line so much farther to our left that it might have proved fatal, since the two brigades holding our line, from the vicinity of the Cotton Gin to the river, had each but a single regiment of reserves.
The men in the ditch at my side, when I first saw the cannon, The rebels were so busily engaged in keeping out the rebels who filled the ditch on the other side of the parapet that I do not believe they ever saw the two cannon posted to rake the ditch. Their conduct was most gallant. For a brief period, the rebels held possession of the inside of our breastworks along the entire front of Strickland's brigade on the west side and of Riley's brigade down to the cotton gin on the east side of the pike. And the ground in their possession was the key to Cox's entire position. This break in our line was identical in extent with the front covered by the great body of Wagner's men in falling back, and it was occasioned by the panic and confusion created by Wagner's men in crossing the breastworks.
Cox's men, along this part of our line, seemed to have lost their nerve at the sight of the rebel army coming. and on account of their own helpless condition. They could not fire a single shot while Wagner's men were between themselves and the rebels. The first rebels crossed the breastworks side by side with the last of Wagner's men. At some point a break started, and then it spread rapidly until it reached the men who were too busily occupied in firing on the rebels to become affected by the panic. Opdyke's brigade was directly in the rear of where this break occurred. At the sound of the firing in front, Opdyke had deployed his brigade astride the pike, ready for instant action, and as soon as he saw that a stampede was coming from the breastworks, without waiting for any order, he instantly led his brigade forward.
His brigade restored the break in our line, charging straight through the route, after a desperate hand-to-hand encounter, in which Opdyke himself, First firing all the shots in his revolver, and then breaking it over the head of a rebel, snatched up a musket, and fought with that for a club. It is true that hundreds of brave men from the four broken brigades of Conrad, Lane, Riley, and Strickland, who were falling back when they met Opdyke's advancing line, saw that the position would not be given up without a desperate struggle, and faced about and fought as gallantly as any of Opdyke's men, in recovering, and afterwards in holding our line. But if Opdyke's brigade had not been where it was, the day undoubtedly would have closed with the utter rout and ruin of our four divisions of infantry south of the river.
When General Cox met Opdyke on the field immediately after the break was restored, he took him by the hand and fervently exclaimed, Opdyke, that charge saved the day.
The front line of Strickland's brigade extended along the foot of the garden of Mr. Carter. the owner of the plantation on which the battle was fought. The reserve line was posted behind the fence at the other end of the garden, close to the Carter residence, where the ground was a little higher, and sixty-five yards in rear of the main line. This reserve line, with the fence for a basis, had constructed a rude barricade as a protection against bullets which might come over the front line. When Opdyke's demi-brigade charging on the west side of the pike, came to this barricade. It halted there, probably mistaking it for our main line. The rebels in the garden fell back behind the cover of Strickland's breastwork, and during the remainder of the battle, on this part of the field, the opposing lines maintained their relative positions.
Every attempt, made by either side to cross the garden, met with a bloody repulse. The body of one dead rebel was lying between the barricade and the carter house, And this body no doubt indicated the high-water mark reached by Hood's assault. It is only fair to the gallant rebels, who penetrated our line, to state that Opdyke's charge was made too promptly to give them any time to recover their wind, and that therefore, in the hand-to-hand struggle, they were laboring under the great disadvantage of the physical fatigue already described. Returning to my personal experiences, when I had rested enough to be able to sit up, I found at my feet a can of coffee, standing on the smoldering numbers of a small campfire, and beside it a tin plate filled with hardtack and fried bacon.
Some soldier was evidently ready to eat his supper when he was hastily called into line by the opening of the battle in front. I first took a delicious drink out of the coffee can, and then helped myself to a liberal portion of the hardtack and bacon, and while sitting there eating and drinking, Incidentally watched the progress of the fighting. By the time I had finished, I was so fully rested and refreshed that thereafter I was able to shout encouragement to the men fighting in my vicinity as loud as any other company commander.
Along that part of the line, only the breastwork separated the combatants. On our side we had five or six ranks deep, composed of the original line, the Reserves, and Conrad's men. All mixed up together, without any regard to their separate organizations. The front rank did nothing but fire. The empty guns were passed back to those in rear who reloaded them. The rear rank was kneeling with guns at a ready. If a rebel raised his head above the breastwork, down it would instantly go with one or more bullets through it, fired by these rear rank men.
In this close fighting, The advantage was all on our side, for our front-rank men, standing up close against the perpendicular face of the breastwork on our side, could poke the muzzle of a gun over the head log, and by elevating the breech could send a plunging shot among the rebels who filled the outside ditch, and expose for an instant only the hand and a part of the arm that discharged the gun. But on account of the convex face of the work on their side, the rebels could not reach us with their fire, without exposing themselves above the breastwork. They kept up the vain struggle until long after dark, but finally elevated their hats on the ends of their muskets above the breastwork, as a signal to us, and called over that if we would stop shooting, they would surrender.
When our firing ceased, many of them came over and surrendered. But many more took advantage of the darkness and of the confusion created by their comrades in getting over the breastwork to slip back to their own lines. Soon after the firing had ceased, the Sixty-fourth Ohio reformed its broken ranks a few steps in rear of the breastwork and just east of the cotton-gin. I did not learn all the facts that night, but when they came out later, it transpired that every man in my company, save one, who had escaped the casualties of the battle, fell into line. A thousand-dollar substitute had fled to the town, where he hid in a cellar. He went to sleep there, and awoke the next morning inside the rebel lines.
He was sent south to a prison, and when returning north after the close of the war, lost his life in the explosion of the steamer's sultana. I had lost my overcoat, but had never let go the grip on my sword. Some of my men had dropped their knapsacks or blanket rolls, but every one of them had his gun and cartridge box. They were all in high spirits over their own escape, and over the part they had played in the final repulse of the rebels, and were talking and laughing over their various adventures in the greatest good humor. The condition of my company was typical of the condition of all the other companies in the regiment, as I saw. While passing along the line, inquiring into the fate of brother officers and other friends.
I also learned in a conversation the next day with Major Coulter, who had been my old captain, and who was acting that night as Assistant Adjutant General of the brigade, that every other regiment of the brigade had reformed in rear of the breastwork in the same way as the 64th Ohio, and that the brigade as an organization had marched from the vicinity of the cotton gin When the order to retreat was executed that night.
I never heard from any source any intimation contrary to the truth as I have stated it, until I read in 1882, with the most indignant surprise, in Cox's book on this campaign, then recently published, his statement that the brigades of Lane and Conrad rallied at the river, but were not again carried into action. When Cox made that statement, he was more concerned in patching up the fatal gap in the battle line of his own command, without any outside assistance, than he was in ascertaining the truth, and he took that way to dispose of two entire brigades. In his first official report, for he made two reports, Cox went to the other extreme, for he then stated that on the approach of the enemy, The two brigades in front had retired in a leisurely manner inside his line.
Leisurely is so good in that connection that it always brings a smile whenever I recall the leisurely manner in which Conrad's brigade made its way back to Cox's line. Moreover, in a letter to General Wagner, written two days after the battle, and enclosing a copy of a letter to General Thomas, urging the promotion of Colonel Opdyke, Cox took occasion to express the opinion he then held, based on his personal observation of the conduct of Wagner's entire division. "'I desire also to express my admiration of the gallantry of your whole command. Indeed, an excess of bravery kept the two brigades a little too long in front, so that the troops at the main line could not get to firing upon the advancing enemy till they were uncomfortably near.' Soon after the regiment had reformed, one of the drafted men of my company was brought in from the ditch outside, mortally wounded.
No doubt he had reached the ditch, in too exhausted a condition to climb over the breastwork, and had lain out among the rebels where he had been repeatedly hit by our own fire. The pain of his wounds had made him crazy, for he would not talk, but kept crawling about on all fours, moaning in agony. There were a few men missing from the company, of whom their comrades could give no account. Moved by the fate of the drafted man, I crossed the breastwork to search outside, if perchance I might find one or more of the missing ones lying there wounded, and bring them aid. I went to a gun of the Sixth Ohio Battery, posted a short distance east of the cotton gin, to get over. And as I stepped up into the embrasure, The sight that met my eyes was most horrible, even in the dim starlight.
The mangled bodies of the dead rebels were piled up as high as the mouth of the embrasure, and the gunners said that, repeatedly, when the lanyard was pulled, the embrasure was filled with men, crowding forward to get in, who were literally blown from the mouth of the cannon. Only one rebel got past the muzzle of that gun. And one of the gunners snatched up a pick leaning against the breastwork, and killed him with that. Captain Baldwin of this battery has stated that as he stood by one of his guns, watching the effect of its fire, he could hear the smashing of the bones when the missiles tore their way through the dense ranks of the approaching rebels.
While I was cautiously making my way around one side of that heap of mangled humanity, A wounded man lying at the bottom with head and shoulders protruding begged me for the love of Christ to pull the dead bodies off him. The ditch was piled promiscuously with the dead and badly wounded, and heads, arms, and legs were sticking out in almost every conceivable manner. The ground near the ditch was so thickly covered with bodies that I had to pick my steps carefully to avoid treading on some of them. The air was filled with the moans of the wounded, and the pleadings for water and for help of some of those who saw me were heart-rending.
While walking along towards the pike to get in the pathway in which my company had come back, I passed two rebel flags lying on the ground close together. It did not occur to me that I would be entitled to any credit for picking up the flags under such circumstances, but I thought that if I did not find what I was looking for, I would return that way and take the flags in with me. I had passed on a few steps when I heard a man behind me exclaim, Look out there! Thinking he meant me, I turned hastily and saw him pitch the two flags over the breastwork. I presume that the men inside the work who got possession of the flags were afterwards sent to Washington with them and possibly may have received medals for their capture.
I felt so uneasy while outside. Lest the rebels should make some movement that would start our line to firing again, that I kept close to the breastwork. And as it was soon manifest that the chance and the darkness of finding a friend, where the bodies were so many, was too remote to justify the risk I was taking, I returned within our line.
From what I saw outside, I've always believed that General Hood never stated his losses fully. Those losses were, in some respects, without precedent. and either army on any other battlefield of the war. He had five generals killed, six wounded, and one captured on our breastworks, and the slaughter of field and company officers, as well as the rank and file, was correspondingly frightful. It was officially reported of Quarles' brigade that the ranking officer in the entire brigade at the close of the battle was a captain. Of the nine divisions of infantry composing Hood's army, seven divisions got up in time to take part in the assault, and at least six of these seven divisions were as badly wrecked as was Pickett's division in its famous charge at Gettysburg.
Our loss was officially stated as 2,326 men, and almost the whole of it was due to the presence of the two brigades in front of the main line. Casement's brigade, to the left of Riley's, sustained a very determined assault, which was repulsed with a loss of only three killed and sixteen wounded. But the action of Casement's men was not hampered by the presence of any of Wagner's men in their front, and they could open fire as soon as the rebels came within range. If the brigades of Riley and Strickland could have opened fire under the same conditions, they would have done just as well as Casement's brigade. A critical investigation of our losses will conclusively demonstrate that at Franklin, The violation of the military axiom, never to post a small body of troops in a way to hamper the action of the main body, was directly responsible for the unnecessary loss of more than two thousand of our soldiers.
That was the frightful butcher's bill our army had to pay for a bit of incompetent generalship. How was it possible for veteran generals of the Atlantic campaign to make such a gross blunder? In his official report, Cox states that at two o'clock the enemy came into full view, and he reported that fact and the position of the two brigades in front of his breastworks to Schofield, and received his orders with reference to holding the position. But he does not state what those orders were. Cox made that report and received those orders in a personal conference with Schofield, when they must have fully discussed the situation. And Cox's peculiar statement in this connection seems to carry a covert threat, as if he had said to Schofield, If you attempt to hold me responsible for the blunder, I will tell what those orders of yours were.
In a written account furnished me by Captain Whitesides, Wagner's assistant adjutant general, he states that about half past two o'clock, Wagner ordered him to see Colonel Lane. and find out what was going on in his front. From his position on the pike at the gap in the breastworks, Wagner could see for himself Stuart's corps forming in Conrad's front, as already described. But his view of Lane's front was obstructed by the large number of trees, and by the inequalities of the ground on the west side of the pike. Colonel Lane told Whitesides that Hood was forming his army in battle order, and that, without any doubt, It was his intention to attack in force, that the position occupied by the two brigades was faulty, being without any support on either flank, and unless they were withdrawn, they would be run over by the enemy, or compelled to fall back to the breastworks under fire.
On reporting Lane's statement to Wagner, Whitesides was directed to find General Stanley, the Corps commander, and tell him what Lane had said. He found Stanley with Schofield at the house of Dr. Cliff in the central part of the town, where they could see nothing of what was going on in front, and reported to them as stated above. He then returned to Wagner, who, so far as he knew, received no further orders. The report of Cox and the statement of Whitesides indicate that both Cox and Wagner believed that Hood intended to attack, but that neither of them would take the responsibility. with Schofield and easy communication, of withdrawing the two brigades without his sanction from the position to which they had been assigned by his order.
It reported to him the situation, and then waited, and waited in vain, for him to take action. In a personal interview, Dr. Clift told me that Schofield came to his house about nine o'clock for breakfast, and afterwards kept his headquarters there until the battle began. That, after breakfast, He retired to a bedroom, where he slept until noon, or shortly after. That a short time before the battle began, Cox was there in conference with Schofield, and staff officers kept coming and going until the fighting began. That Stanley was there with Schofield, and they were waiting for their dinner. That they told him there would be no battle that day because Hood would not attack Breastworks, but that after dinner they would ride on to Nashville together.
and the army would follow after dark. Stanley and Cliff had been schoolboys together in Wayne County, Ohio, and as Cliff was a well-known Union man, it was supposed to be unsafe for him to remain in Franklin, and he was invited to accompany Schofield and Stanley on their ride to Nashville. General Schofield has claimed that he scored a great success in his campaign against Hood, and that this success was largely due to his intimate knowledge of Hood's character, gained while they were classmates at West Point, which enabled him to foresee what Hood would do, and then make the proper dispositions to defeat him. At Franklin, he relied so confidently on his ability to foretell what Hood's action would be, that he not only wholly neglected to give any personal attention to the preparations for assault, which Hood was making in plain sight of our front, But he would not give any heed to the reports brought him by those who had seen these preparations.
It was his belief, based on his intimate knowledge of Hood's character, that Hood was making an ostentatious feint to mask his real intention of executing a flank movement. For in a telegram to General Thomas, dated at three o'clock, Schofield informed Thomas that Hood was in his front, with about two corps. and seemed prepared to cross the river above and below. He has tried to escape all personal responsibility for the blunder by the weak statement that he was across the river when the battle began. Even if that statement were true, and it is directly contradicted by the disinterested statement of Dr. Cliff, as well as by an abundance of other reliable evidence, both direct and circumstantial, there is no possible escape for Schofield From the inexorable logic of the situation.
For two hours, Hood was engaged in preparations for assault in plain sight of thousands of our soldiers. What was Schofield doing those two hours? If he saw anything of Hood's preparations, he showed incompetence by his failure to promptly withdraw the two brigades from the blundering position to which he had assigned them. If he saw nothing of Hood's preparations, it was only because of a criminal neglect of his duty. At a time, When the perilous position of his army, with a greatly superior rebel army in its front and a river at its back, demanded his utmost vigilance.
It was said that General Stanley was sick, but he spent the day with Schofield, and he also, having had West Point experience of Hood's character, concurred fully in Schofield's belief that Hood would not assault. So great was their delusion in this respect, that it could not be shaken by the reports made by their subordinates, and nothing short of the loud roar of the opening battle was able to arouse them into giving any personal attention to the situation. Then, at last, when it was too late to do anything to remedy a blunder which already had gone so far that it must go on to its full culmination, Schofield and Stanley left the house of Dr. Cliff. Stanley hurried to the front, which he reached just as Opdyke's brigade was starting forward.
Spurring his horse to the front of this brigade, he personally led it in its famous charge. A little later, his horse was shot under him, and he got a bullet through the back of his neck as he was rising to his feet. It was a flesh wound that bled freely, but Stanley declined to leave the front until after the fighting was all over. He then went to the rear to have his wound dressed, and after his departure, Cox was the senior general on the battlefield. When Stanley started for the front, Schofield started for the rear, and the most charitable construction that can be placed upon his action is that he interpreted the sound of the firing to mean that the expected flank movement had begun, and that his duty called him across the river to provide against that flank movement.
His disturbed mental condition at that time is disclosed by the fact that he abandoned In the room of Cliff's house, where he had slept, his overcoat, gloves, and a package containing the official dispatches he had received from General Thomas. These articles were not reclaimed until our army returned to Franklin, after the victory at Nashville, and in the meantime Mrs. Cliff saved the coat from being taken by some needy rebel by wearing it herself, and she also safely kept the gloves and dispatches.
After crossing the river, Schofield rode to the fort that had been built the year before, on the high bluff which formed the north bank. From this elevated position, he had a good view of a large part of the battlefield, and the heavy guns in the fort were engaged in firing on the nearest flank of the enemy. But he was not only well beyond the range of every rebel bullet that was fired, but he was also so far away by the road, which a staff officer must take to communicate with the firing line, that he was wholly out of touch with the troops that were fighting the battle. His presence in the fort had no more to do with the repulse of Hood's assault than if he had been the man in the moon looking down upon the battlefield.
The only order that he sent from the fort was the order to retreat, after the army had won a great victory. When this order reached Cox, he made a manly protest against it. He explained the wrecked condition of the rebel army to the staff officer who brought the order. And giving his opinion that retreat was wholly unnecessary, he urged the officer to return to Schofield and persuade him to countermand the order. He also sent his brother, Captain Cox, of his own staff, to remonstrate with Schofield and to say that General Cox would be responsible with his head for holding the position. When Captain Cox reached the fort, he found that Schofield already had started for Nashville. The captain hurried in pursuit.
And, overtaking Schofield on the pike and delivering his message, was told that the order to retreat would not be recalled and must be executed. In Wagner's division we had been marching, or fortifying, or fighting, for more than forty hours continuously, and believed that we had reached the limit of human endurance. But we still had to plod the eighteen weary miles to Nashville before getting any rest. In January 1865, Schofield, with the corps that he was then commanding, was transferred from Tennessee to North Carolina. When he passed through Washington en route, he had the opportunity of giving to President Lincoln a personal account of his campaign in Tennessee. The President must have known in a general way that at Franklin, the rebel army had made a very desperate assault, which had been most disastrously repulsed.
But he certainly was ignorant of the details of the battle, and in the absence of any information to the contrary, his natural inference would be that Schofield, as our commanding general, was entitled to great credit for that repulse. At that time, the truth concerning Schofield's connection with the battle was known to a few men only, and those who would have exposed his pretensions, if they had had any knowledge of what he was claiming, were all far away. in Tennessee. The claim for distinguished services which Schofield succeeded in impressing upon honest old Abe may be fairly inferred from the very extraordinary promotion given him over the heads of many able and deserving officers. Namely, from Captain to Brigadier General in the Regular Army, to date, November 30, 1864, with a brevet as Major General.
for gallant and meritorious services in the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee.
End of The Battle of Franklin, Tennessee, Section 2 by Captain John K. Schellenberger. Recording by Malcolm Reynolds. March 13, 2014.
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10 10 - Somebody's Darling (Poem) 2:53
Somebody's Darling by Marie Lacoste. Into a ward of the whitewashed halls where the dead and the dying lay. Wounded by bayonets, shells, and balls, somebody's darling was born one day. Somebody's darling so young and so brave, wearing yet on his sweet pale face, soon to be hid in the dust of the grave, the lingering light of his boyhood's grace. Matted and damp are the curls of gold, kissing the snow of that fair young brow. Pale are the lips of delicate mold. Somebody's darling is dying now. Back from his beautiful blue-veined brow, brush his wandering waves of gold. Cross his hands on his bosom now. Somebody's darling is still and cold. Kiss him once for somebody's sake. Murmur a prayer soft and low.
One bright curl from its fair mate's take. They were somebody's pride, you know. Somebody's hand hath rested there. Was it a mother's, soft and white? Or have the lips of a sister fair been baptized in their waves of light? God knows best. He has somebody's love. Somebody's heart enshrined him there. Somebody wafted his name above, night and morn on the wings of prayer. Somebody wept when he marched away, looking so handsome, brave, and grand. Somebody's kiss on his forehead lay. Somebody clung to his parting hand. Somebody's watching and waiting for him, yearning to hold him again to her heart. And there he lies. With his blue eyes dim, and the smiling, childlike lips apart, tenderly bury the fair young dead, pausing to drop on his grave a tear, carve on the wooden slab over his head.
Somebody's Darling slumbers here.
End of Somebody's Darling by Marie Lacoste
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11 11 - The Battle of Spring Hill, Tennessee Section 1 41:01
by John K. Schellenberger. Section One. Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States. Commandery of the State of Missouri. The Battle of Spring Hill, Tennessee. Prepared by Companion Captain John K. Schellenberger. Read after the stated meeting. held February 2nd, 1907. Preface More than 25 years have passed since I began to collect the materials from which this pamphlet has been evolved. As a substantial basis, to begin with, I was an eyewitness of all the fighting in the vicinity of Spring Hill that amounted to anything, from the time Forrest attacked the 64th Ohio on the Skirmish Line until Cleburne's division recoiled from the fire of the battery posted at the village. Since I began collecting, I have neglected no opportunity to increase my stock of information by conversation, reading, or correspondence.
I have twice revisited the battlefield. I have the government volume containing the official reports, all of which I have carefully studied. Among my correspondents on the Union side have been Generals Stanley, Wilson, Obdike, Lane, and Bradley. Besides, many others of lesser rank. I am as confident from their letters that my paper would have the approval of those named, who are now dead, and I am sure it has the approval of General Wilson, to whom a manuscript copy was submitted for criticism. Among other Confederates, I wrote to General A.D. Lee, who referred me to Judge J.P. Young of Memphis, Tennessee, with a statement that he had exhausted the subject on the Confederate side. He was present at Spring Hill as a boy soldier in Forrest's cavalry, and for years has been engaged in writing a history of the Confederate Army of Tennessee, to which he has given an enormous amount of careful research.
To him I am indebted For much of the most valuable part of my information concerning the Confederate troops. From the materials thus gathered, I have tried to give, within the compass of Loyal Legion paper, a clear and truthful account of the affair just as it happened. That opinions will differ is shown by the fact that Judge Young holds General Brown responsible for the Confederate failure. While I believe That Cheetham, Stewart, and Bate were all greater sinners than Brown. He was acting under the eye of Cheetham, who could have easily have forced an attack by Brown's division if he had been equal to the occasion. By a curious coincidence, General Lee was present as the guest of the Missouri Commandery at the meeting when the paper was read.
And in commenting on it, General Lee stated that I had told the truth about as it had occurred. The deductions made from the facts stated all my own.
The Battle of Spring Hell It may be fairly claimed that the success of General Sherman's famous march to the sea hung on the issue of a minor battle fought at Spring Hill in Middle Tennessee the evening of November 29, 1864, when Sherman and his army were hundreds of miles away in the heart of Georgia. It will be remembered that when Sherman started from Atlanta for Savannah, his old antagonist, General Hood, was at Florence, Alabama, refitting his army to the limits of the waning resources of the Confederacy for an aggressive campaign into Tennessee. If Hood's campaign had proved successful, Sherman's unopposed march through Georgia would have been derided as a crazy freak, and no doubt the old charge of insanity would have been revived against him.
By how narrow a margin Hood missed a brilliant success, a truthful account of the Spring Hill affair will disclose. Much has been written by interested generals of both sides and by their partisan friends to mislead as to the real situation. With no personal friendships or enmities to subserve, it is the intention of this paper to tell the truth without any regard to its effect on the reputation of any general, federal or confederate. The administration gave a reluctant consent to Sherman's plan on the condition that he would leave with General Thomas commanding in Tennessee a force strong enough to defeat Hood. On paper, Thomas had plenty of men, but Sherman had taken his pick of infantry, cavalry, artillery, and transportation, leaving the odds and ends with Thomas, consisting largely of post-troops garrisoning towns, Bridge guards and block houses along the railroads.
New regiments recruited by the payment of the big bounties that produced the infamous tribe of bounty jumpers. Negro regiments never yet tested in battle. Green drafted men assigned to some of the old depleted regiments in such large numbers as to change their veteran character. Dismounted cavalrymen sent back to get horses. And convalescence and followed men belonging to the army which Sherman would come up too late to join their commands, organized into temporary companies and regiments. Moreover, Thomas's forces were scattered from East Tennessee to Central Missouri, where General A.J. Smith, with two divisions of the 16th Corps, was marching for St. Louis to take steamboats to join Thomas at Nashville.
The only force available for immediate field service The war consisted of the fourth and twenty-third corps, the two weakest corps of Sherman's army, which he had sent back to Thomas. These two corps, temporarily commanded by General Schofield, were thrown well forward towards Florence to delay Hood long enough for Thomas to concentrate and organize from his widely scattered resources a force strong enough to give battle to Hood. Passing over all prayer operations, we will take up the situation as it was the morning of November 29th. General Schofield had then well in hand on the north bank of Duck River, opposite Columbia, Tennessee, the divisions of Kimball, Wagner, and Wood, composing the IV Corps, and of Cox and Ruger of the XXIII Corps.
Rugers lacking one brigade on detached service. Across the river were two divisions of General S. D. Lee's Corps of Hood's Army. The preceding evening, Hood himself, with the Corps of Chatham and Stewart and Johnson's Division of Lee's Corps, had moved up the river five and one-half miles To Daviesford, where he was laying his pontoons preparatory to crossing. His plan was to detain Schofield at the river by fainting with two divisions, while he would lead seven divisions past the left flank and plant them across Schofield's line of retreat at Spring Hill. Twelve miles north of Duck River. As Hood greatly outnumbered Schofield, his plan contemplated the destruction of Schofield's army. During the evening of the 28th, General Wilson, commanding our cavalry, had learned enough of Hood's movement to divine its purpose, in view of its vital importance to ensure a delivery He sent a message in triplicate, each courier riding by a separate road, informing Schofield of what Hood was doing, and advising and urging him to get back to Spring Hill with all his army by 10 o'clock the 29th.
General Wilson has stated that his couriers all got through, the one riding by the shortest road, Reaching Schofield's headquarters at 3 a.m. of the 29th. From the report sent him by Wilson, General Thomas at Nashville had also correctly divined Hilt's intention, and in a dispatch dated 3.30 a.m. of the 29th, but by the neglect of the night operator not transmitted until 6 o'clock when the day operator came on duty, he ordered Schofield to fall back to Franklin. Leaving a sufficient force at Spring Hill to delay Hood until he was securely posted at Franklin. I was commanding Company Bay, 64th Ohio Regiment, Bradley's Brigade, Wagner's Division. The brigade was under arms that morning by four o'clock, and had orders to be ready to march on a moment's notice.
It is assumed that all the rest of the army received the same orders, and that this action was taken on account of the information brought by Wilson's career at three o'clock. But nothing was done until eight o'clock, when the movements began, which disposed of our army as follows. Wagner's division was sent to Spring Hill to guard the reserve artillery and the wagon trains, all ordered to Spring Hill, from any raid by Hood's cavalry. General Stanley, the corps commander, went with Wagner. Cox's division was posted along the river and was engaged all day in skirmishing with the two divisions under Lee, which kept up a noisy demonstration of forcing a crossing. Ruger's two brigades were posted four miles north of Duck River, The divisions of Kimball and Wood were aligned between Cox and Ruga, facing up the river towards Hood's crossing.
At nine o'clock, Post's brigade of Wood's division was sent up the river to reconnoiter, and before eleven o'clock, Post had reached a position where he could see Hood's column marching towards Spring Hill, and repeatedly Nevertheless, none of the four divisions near Duck River were started for Spring Hill until after four o'clock, when Schofield had heard from Stanley that Hood was attacking at Spring Hill. After the campaign, Schofield claimed that its success was due to his intimate knowledge of Hood's character, gained while they were classmates at West Point. Which enabled him to foresee what Hood would do under any given conditions, and then make the best dispositions for defeating him.
When two months later Schofield was in Washington, where they knew nothing about the details of the campaign, he so successfully impressed his claim on the administration that he was given the same promotion. With which General Sheridan had been rewarded for the victory at Winchester, jumping at one bound from the rank of captain to that of brigadier general in the regular army. But it is plain that after five hours of deliberation that morning, Schofield had reached a wrong conclusion as to Hood's intention. For if actions speak louder than words, There can be no question that Schofield's dispositions were made under the conviction that Hood would march down the river after crossing to clear the way for Lee to cross.
And so deeply infatuated was he with this self-imposed delusion that, disregarding the order of Thomas and the advice of Wilson, he cherished it for about five hours. After Post had reported that Hood was marching towards Spring Hill. Wagner's advance, double-quicking through Spring Hill at noon and deploying just beyond on a run, interposed barely in time to head off the advance of Hood's cavalry, Wagner arriving by the Columbia Pike from the southwest and the cavalry by the Mount Carmel Road from the east. General Forrest Commanding Hoot's cavalry had used his superior numbers so skillfully as to push back Wilson with our cavalry just north of Mount Carmel, which is five miles east of Spring Hill, before noon.
Leaving one brigade to watch Wilson, Forrest then crossed over to Spring Hill with all the rest of his three divisions of cavalry. If Wagner had arrived a few minutes later, he would have found Forrest in possession at Spring Hill. General Cox, in his book on this campaign, claims that General Wilson committed a grave error in not crossing over to Spring Hill in advance of Forrest with all our cavalry. But in justice to Wilson, it must be remembered that at Mount Carmel he acted under the belief that Schofield was following the advice he had given early that morning. If Schofield had been at Spring Hill at 10 o'clock, as Wilson had advised with all his infantry, what reason could there have been for the cavalry joining him there?
When Bradley's brigade, the rear of Wagner's column, was nearing Spring Hill, some of the cavalry approached the pike through the fields to reconniter, and the 64th Ohio was sent to drive them away. With the right wing deployed as curmishers on the left wing and reserve, the regiment advanced steadily, driving before it the cavalry, without replying to the harmless long-range fire they kept up with their carbines, but always galloping away before we could get within effective range. About a mile east of the pike, we crossed the Raleigh Hill Road. This was the road by which Hood's infantry column approached. It there runs north nearly parallel of the Pike to a point 500 yards east of Spring Hill, where it turns west to enter the village.
Leaving one of the reserve companies to watch the road, the rest of the regiment kept on in pursuit of the cavalry until our skirmishers were abreast of the Caldwell House, about 800 yards east of the road, when a halt was called. A few minutes later, at 2.30 o'clock, the left of our skirmish line north of the Caldwell House was attacked by a line of battle in front, while the cavalry worked around our left flank. At the time, we believed the battle line to be a part of Hood's infantry, and in a letter from General Bradley, he states that it caused great consternation at headquarters in Spring Hill when Major Coulter, off the 64th, came galloping back with the information that the regiment was fighting with infantry.
But investigation has disclosed that the battle line was composed of mounted infantry belonging to Forest Command. There were armed with Enfield rifles and always fought on foot like ordinary infantry, using the horses for traveling rapidly from place to place. The four reserve companies were thrown in on a run at the point of contact, but our line was soon forced to fall back by the cavalry turning our left flank, where they cut off and captured three of our skirmishers. One of the three was badly wounded that evening in trying to escape, a bullet entering from behind and passing through his mouth in a way to knock out nearly one half of all his teeth. We found him in a hospital at Spring Hill when passing through in pursuit of Hood's army after the victory at Nashville.
In relating his experience, he stated that when they were captured, they were taken before some general, name unknown to him, who questioned them closely as to what force was holding Spring Hill. The general was probably Forrest. For he was personally directing the attack on the 64th, but may have been Hood himself, for he was on the Raleigh Hill Road less than a mile away soon after the men were captured. They all declared that they knew the IV Corps was at Spring Hill, and they believed all the rest of the army. Their declaration must have carried greater weight on account of their own faith in what they were telling, for at that time the whole regiment believed that all the rest of the army had followed to Spring Hill, close on the heels of Wagner's division.
Eventually the 64th was driven back across the Rally Hill Road, Where a last stand was made and a large woods covering a broad ridge abutting on the road about three-fourths of a mile southeast of Spring Hill, while in these woods occurred a bit of exciting personal experience. A bullet coming from the right passed through my overcoat, buttoned up to my chin, in a way, to take along the top button of my blouse underneath the coat. That big brass button struck me, a stinging blow on the point of the left collarbone, and, clasping both hands to the spot, I commenced feeling for the hole with my fingertips, fully convinced that a bullet coming from the front had gone through me there and had inflicted a serious and possibly a mortal wound.
It was not until I had opened the court for a closer investigation that I found I was worse scared than hurt. Some of the enemy had secured a position on our right flank, where they opened an enfilidating fire, and it was one of their bullets that had hit me. To get out of that fire, the regiment fell back towards the interior of the woods, where it was so close to our main line that it was called in. It was then about 3.30 o'clock. And by that time, the situation of our army had become so critical that nothing short of the grossest blundering on the part of the enemy could save it from a great disaster, and there was a fine possibility for destroying it. Wagner's division had so much property to protect that it was stretched out on a line extending from the railway station, nearly a mile northwest of Spring Hill, Where two trains of cars were standing on the track, around by the north, east and south, to the Columbia Pike on the southwest.
Behind this long line, the village streets and the adjacent fields were crammed with nearly everything on wheels belonging to our army. Ambulances, artillery carriages, and army wagons to the number of about 800 vehicles. The nearest support was Ruga's two brigades, eight miles away, and it was about an hour later that Ruga had started for Spring Hill. Updaki's brigade was covering the railway station and the Franklin Pike on the north, and Lane's brigade, the Mount Carmel Road on the east. They had a connected line, but it was so long that much of it consisted of skirmishes only. They had in their front attachments of forest cavalry, feeling along their line for an opening to get at the trains.
Bradley's brigade occupied an advanced detached position on the ridge to the southeast that has been mentioned to cover the approach by the Raleigh Hill Road. There was a gap of half a mile between lanes right in front of Spring Hill and Bradley's left. Bradley had in his immediate front the main body of Forrest's three divisions of cavalry and the three divisions of infantry composing Cheetan's Corps, while four more divisions of infantry were within easy supporting distance. In brief, ten of the twelve divisions, cavalry included, composing Hood's Army, were in front of Spring Hill, and at four o'clock, Hood was attacking, with his infantry, Wagner's lone division, guarding all our trains, while Schofield was still waiting for Hood at Duck River with four divisions from eight to twelve miles away.
If Wagner's division had been wiped out, A very easy possibility for the overwhelming numbers confronting it while stretching out on a line about three miles long without any breastworks, the rich price of our ambulance train, six batteries of artillery, and all our wagons with their loads of supplies would have fallen into Hood's hands. And the retreat of our four divisions would have been squarely cut off, while having a short supply of artillery and no food or ammunition. Except what the men were carrying in their haversacks and cartridge boxes. The escape of our army from this deadly peril was largely due to the great skill with which General Stanley handled the situation at Spring Hill. But manifestly, no amount of skill on the part of Stanley could have saved us, where the disadvantages were so great.
If the enemy had improved with a very ordinary degree of vigour and intelligence, the opportunity opened to them by Scofield's delusion as to Hood's intention. General Hood rode with the advance of his column until after it had crossed Rutherford's Creek, two and one-half miles south of Spring Hill. It was then about three o'clock. There was no bridge, and his men had to wade the creek which caused some delay. A short distance north of the crossing, Hood met Forrest and got his report of the situation at Spring Hill as he had developed it during the three hours preceding. He had met with resistance on so long a line that no doubt he greatly overestimated The force holding Spring Hill, and as such an estimate, would agree with the story told by the captured 64th man.
On the other hand, a career had arrived with a report from Lee that Scofield's main body was still in his front at Duck River. And Lee's report was confirmed by the sounds of the heavy cannonading that had been coming from his direction. These reports disclosed that a part of Schofield's army was at Spring Hill and a part at Duck River. But they conflicted as to which position was held by his main body. In the uncertainty thus arising, Hood decided. As his dispositions clearly show, that his first move must be to plant Cheetham's Craw on the pike between these two parts. Developments would then determine his next move. Cleburne's division was the first to cross the creek, and marching up the road until his advance was close to the woods where Forrest's men were fighting with the 64th Ohio.
Cleburne halted and formed his battle line along the road facing west towards the Columbia Pike. If the intention had been to make a direct attack, his line would have formed facing north towards our line, the woods, where its position had been developed by Forrest. The intention, unquestionably, was for Cleburne Avoiding any encounter with our line in the woods. First, to cross over to the pike, and then change direction, and advance on Spring Hill astride the pike, while Bates' division, following Cleburne's, received orders, as reported by Bates, to cross to the pike, and then sweep down the pike towards Columbia. Hood himself gave the orders to Cleburne and Bates, And then established his headquarters at the Thompson Farm House nearby, about 500 yards west of the Raleigh Hill Road, and nearly two miles south of Spring Hill, where he remained till next morning.
To save time, Cleburne started for the pike as soon as he was ready, and Bate, then forming on Cleburne's left, followed. As soon as his formation was completed. While Cleburne and Bate were moving out, General Cheetham was at the crossing, hurrying over Brown's division. When Brown got over, he could support either Cleburne or Bate, as developments might dictate. Uncandid statements have been made that Cheetham's divisions were moved around in a disjointed manner and without any plan. There was not only a logical plan, but a successful plan, if it had been carried out in the orders given to Cheatham's divisions. The other four divisions were halted south of Rutherford's Creek, and fronted into line facing west towards the Columbia Pike.
This proves that it was then Hood's belief that Shofield's main body was still at Duck River. If it should march up the pike and attack bait, the 4th Divisions would be on its flank. If it should attempt to reach the fortifications at Moors Freebro by cutting across the country south of Spring Hill, the 4th Divisions would be in a position to intercept it. General Bradley had four regiments in line in the woods on the ridge. With the left towards the Raleigh Hill Road and the right, treading away towards the pike. They faced in a southeasterly direction. To cover more ground, there were short gaps between the regiments. The 65th Ohio was the right regiment of the four, and to the right, rear of the 65th.
The road was a gap of a couple of hundred yards extending out into Clearland, where the 42nd Illinois was posted, refused as to the 65th and facing south to cover that flank. To the front, right and rear of the 42nd was a broad expanse of rolling fields extending on the right to the back, about a thousand yards away, where two guns were posted. To sweep the fields in front of the 42nd with their fire. To the left of the 42nd, an extension of the woods ran out into the fields and concealed the 42nd from Cleburne until he had advanced almost abreast of its position. When the 64th came off the skirmish line, it was sent to the support of the 42nd. The 36th Illinois, Herb Dykes' only reserve, was hurried across on double-quick from the other side of Spring Hill to support the two guns of the pike.
As many guns of the reserve artillery as could be utilized were placed in battery around the south-easterly skirt of the village, looking towards Bradley's position. Bradley's men Very hastily had constructed weak barricades of rails or anything else they could lay their hands on. The 42nd had such protection as was afforded by a rail fence. Shortly before four o'clock, having completed his formation, Cleburne started to march across to the pike. His division consisted of four brigades, but one was on detached duty, and he had three in line. Loris on his right, Then Govan's, then Granbury's. First crossing a field in his front, Lorry entered the extension of the woods that has been mentioned, and when emerging on the other side, his right came in view within easy reach of the 42nd, and that regiment opened an enfilidating fire, Lorry's line being then almost perpendicular to the line of the 42nd.
It was this accident of Lorry's right Passing within range of the 42nd that led to the failure of Hood's plan, which up to that minute had been a great success. When the 42nd opened fire, the two guns at the pike also opened, their fire crossing that of the 42nd, and the 64th running forward and intermingling ranks with the 42nd poured in their fire. When our fire had thus developed our position, out in those wide fields they could see just what we had. They pulled down the rims of their old heads over their eyes, bent their heads to the storm of missiles pouring upon them, changed direction to their right on double-quick in a manner that excited our admiration, and a little later, A long line came sweeping through the wide gap between the right of the 42nd and the pike and swinging in towards our rear.
Our line stood firm, holding back the enemy in front until the flank movement had progressed so far as to make it a question of next to escape capture when the regimental commanders gave the reluctant order to fall back. The contact was then so close That as the men on our right were running past the line closing in on them, they were called on with loud oaths, charging them with a Yankee canine descent to halt and surrender, and not heeding the calls, some of them were shot down, with the muzzles of the muskets almost touching their bodies. By the recession of the two regiments on the flank, the rear of the four regiments in the woods became exposed. They were attacked at the same time by Forrest in front and by Cleburne on their right and rear, and were speedily dislodged.
The attack was pressed with so much vigor that in a few minutes after the 42nd had opened fire, Bradley's entire brigade was in rapid retreat toward Spring Hill, with Cleburne in close pursuit and pouring in a hot fire. In falling back, we had to cross the valley of a small stream, and I never think of our strenuous exertions to get out of a destructive crossfire while running down the easy slope leading to the stream without recalling the story of the officer who called to a soldier making the best time he could to get out of a hot fire. Stop, my man! What are you running for? Because I have no wings to fly with, called back the soldier over his shoulder while increasing his efforts to make better time.
As we descended into the valley, we uncovered our pursuers to the fire of the battery at the village, which opened with sharpener shells, firing over our heads. General Stanley, who was in the battery, Reported that not less than eight guns opened fire. As soon as Cleburne encountered that fire, he hastily drew back over the ridge, out of sight. All pursuit with its accompanying direct and crossfire having thus ceased, Bradley's men stopped running and walked on back to the vicinity of the battery, where a new line was formed without trouble or confusion. When coming down the slope towards the stream, Major Coulter, whose horse had been killed, was running a few feet in front of me, and I was just speculating whether my short legs could keep up with his long ones, when he called back over his shoulder, Rally at this fence, meaning a rail fence we were approaching.
I had a Poor opinion of the fence as a place to attempt a rally, for we would still be exposed to a crossfire. But wishing to obey orders, I made for the strongest-looking fence corner in my front, and, jumping over and stopping behind it, looked around to see if any concerted effort would be made to reform behind the fence. In my brief halt there, I had some opportunity to observe the effect of our artillery fire on the enemy. I saw by the smoke where a number of our shells exploded, and they all seemed too high in the air and too far to the rear, for I could not see any men knocked down by them. No doubt the fear of killing some of our own men caused our gunners to aim high, and it is probable.
That the noise made by so many guns and exploding shells had more to do with stopping the enemy than the execution that was done. Their after actions showed that they believed Bradley's brigade to have been an outpost, that our main line was where the battery was posted, and that so much artillery. must have a correspondingly strong infantry support. General Bradley reported a loss of 198 men in his brigade, nearly all of it falling on the three regiments on the exposed flank, the other three regiments falling back with light loss because their position had become untenable. He was disabled with a wound. And Colonel Conrad of the 15th Missouri then assumed command of the brigade. By the casualties in the 65th Ohio, the command of that regiment devolved upon the adjutant Brewer Smith, a boy only 19 years old, and possibly the youngest officer to succeed to the command of a regiment throughout the war.
A regiment of the 23rd Corps, which had come to Spring Hill as a train guard and was placed in support of the battery at the village, has persistently claimed that the salvation of our army was due to the heroic stand it made after all of Wagner's division had run away. In a historical sketch of the regiment occurs this statement. At Spring Hill, the regiment had another opportunity to show its block. A division that had been sent forward in charge of the trains was drawn up to resist any attack the rebels might make, while the regiment, being with the headquarters train, was ordered to support a battery so placed as to sweep an open field in front of the troops. The enemy, emerging from the woods, Marched steadily up to the national lines when the entire division broke and ran.
That is pretty strong language in view of the battle record of Wagner's division. Four of the four brigades out of all the brigades serving in all the Western armies, given prominent mention by Colonel Fawkes in his book on regimental losses, As famous fighting brigades, too, Obdikeys and Bradleys belonged to Wagner's division. To say nothing of the very awkward fact that the brigades of Obdikey and Lane were on the other side of Spring Hill, out of sight of Cleburne's attack, but it is seriously so stated. The entire division broke and ran. Leaving the regiment and the battery to resist the attack. Fixing bayonets, the men awaited the onset. As soon as the enemy came within range, they poured a well-directed fire into their ranks, which, being seconded by the battery, caused them to waver.
Portions of the retreating division having rallied, the rebels were compelled to betake themselves to the woods.
The Battle of Spring Hill, Tennessee by John K. Schellenberger
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12 12 - The Battle of Spring Hill Section 2 28:25
The Battle of Spring Hill, Tennessee. Read after the stated meeting held on February 2, 1907. Section 2. By John K. Schellenberger. And in a paper on this campaign by a captain of the regiment, he relates how the officers of the regiment tried to stop the flying troops and taunt their officers with the bad example they were setting their men, how the regiment opened a rapid withering fire from the little parapet of cartridges which the officers, breaking open boxes of ammunition, had built in front of the van, and how their fire proved so destructive at that close range that it stopped Cheatham's men, who then fell back and commenced building breastworks. In calling them Cheetham's men, did the captain wish to insinuate that Cheetham's whole corps was charging on the regiment?
He uses the words withering, destructive, and at that close range in a way to raise the inference that the contact was very close. The actual distance was shrapnel-shell range. For the battery stopped Claiborne with those missiles before he had crossed the little stream more than a thousand yards away. So that instead of a cool regiment of exceptional staying qualities delivering a destructive fire at very close range, as pictured by the captain, the truth discloses a highly excited, not to say badly scared, regiment, wasting ammunition at too long range to do any damage. That this was the truth is proved by the very significant fact not deemed worthy of mention in either accounts quoted, that the regiment did not lose a single man killed or wounded, not one, and it was not protected by breastworks.
With impressive mystery, the captain describes the regiment as what was left of it after the way it had been cut up in the Atlantic campaign with the same artful vagueness used in the matter of range, seeking to create the inference that the battle losses of the regiment had been very extraordinary. Again, to be specific, the regiment lost in its three years term of service two officers and thirty-seven men killed or died of wounds, less than one-third the average loss of the six regiments composing Bradley's Brigade, and it stands one hundred and ninth among the infantry regiments of its state in the number of the battle losses, or, excepting six regiments that spent most of their time in garrison duty, at the bottom of the list of all three years regiments sent from the state.
It would appear that the One Hundred and Third Ohio had become pretty well imbued with the spirit characteristic of the headquarters with which it was associated, to claim credit in inverse ratio to services rendered. When Claiborne changed direction, his left swung in so close to the pike that the two guns and the Thirty-sixth Illinois were driven away, and Claiborne could have extended his left across the pike without meeting with any further opposition. Lowry and Govan made the change in line of battle, while Granbury faced to the right and followed their movement in columns of four. Afterward, Granbury about faced and moved back some distance in column, then fronted in line and advanced to a farm fence paralleling the pike at a distance spuriously stated at from 80 to 100 yards.
His line there halted and laid down behind the fence. Claiborne and Granbury were both killed next day. And it is not known why Granbury did not go on and take possession of the Pike. The brigades of Lowry and Govan had become so badly mixed up in the pursuit of Bradley, and in the recoil from the fire of the Battery, that their line had to be reformed. When this was accomplished, the intrepid Claiborne was about to resume his attack towards Spring Hill, when he was stopped by an order from Cheatham. Who had brought up Brown's division on Claiborne's right, and had also sent a staff officer to recall Bate with an order for him to close up and connect with Claiborne's left. This proves that developments, probably the fire of so many guns opening on Claiborne, had convinced Cheatham that the force holding Spring Hill was strong enough to demand the attention of his entire corps.
His intention was for Brown to lead an attack, Claiborne to follow Brown, and Bate, when he got up, to follow Claiborne. But on getting into position, Brown reported to Cheatham that he was outflanked several hundred yards on his right, and that it would lead to inevitable disaster for him to attack. The Ninety-seventh Ohio of Lane's Brigade was to the left of the battery in front of Spring Hill, with the left of the Ninety-seventh extending toward Mount Carmel Road. The One Hundredth Illinois was on the other side of the road, several hundred yards in advance of the Ninety-seventh Ohio. And the two regiments were connected by a part of the Fortieth Indiana deployed as skirmishers. That was the force that paralyzed the action of Brown's veteran division.
Cheetham then directed Brown to refuse his right brigade to protect his flank and to attack with the rest of his division. But Brown, still hesitating, Cheetham then concluded that the force holding Spring Hill was too strong for his corps alone to attack, for he reported to Hood that the line on his front was too long for him, and that Stewart's corps must first come up and form on his right. But before Stewart could get up, night had come. It is notable that Brown's only excuse for not attacking was that he was outflanked on his right, for the claim has been made that Hood arrived in front of Spring Hill too late in the day to accomplish anything, and Schofield himself has stated that his action was based on a cool calculation made from his intimate knowledge of Hood's character, who had been deficient in mathematics as a cadet, and could make no accurate computation of the time required to overcome difficulties.
That Hood, marching by a muddy country road, would arrive in front of Spring Hill, tired, sleepy, and so much later than he had calculated that he would defer all action until next morning. Between shortly after daylight, when he started from the Duck River, and three o'clock, when he crossed Rutherford's Creek, Hood had rented about ten miles, too short a distance to tire him out, and too early in the day to become sleepy. He then sent forward Cheetham's corps with plenty of time before night came for Cheetham to have made a secure lodgement on the pike, or to run over Wagner's division, the way it was strung out. If Claiborne's attack had been promptly followed up with anything like the vigor with which he had jumped on Bradley's brigade, Hood's arrival in front of Spring Hill that afternoon was clearly a contingency unlooked for by Schofield, for it caught our army in a situation to leave no reasonable hope of escape without dire disaster.
And Schofield himself, as will appear, was thoroughly frightened by the situation. That his afterversion of the saving merit of his cool calculation was fully accepted by the administration is proved by the promotion he was given, when, in fact, his bad miscalculation was responsible for getting the army into a trap from which it escaped through the failure of the enemy to shut the door. Of the miracle of that escape, much remains to be told. When Wagner was coming to Spring Hill, the Twenty Sixth Ohio was detached from the column to guard the country road entering the pike more than a mile southwest of Spring Hill. Captain Kelly of the Twenty Sixth informed me that the regiment was driven off that evening by a line of battle so long as to extend far beyond either flank of the Twenty Sixth.
That was Bates Division, and after driving off the Twenty Sixth there was nothing whatever to prevent Bates from sweeping down the pike toward Columbia. If he had diligently obeyed that order, he would have progressed so far before Cheatham's recall order reached him that he would have met Ruger coming to Spring Hill, and then the cat would have been out of the back. Bate declined to obey Cheatham's first order because it conflicted with the order direct from Hood, under which he was acting, and Cheatham's order had to be repeated. When the second order reached Bate, he was still loitering where he had encountered the Twenty-Six Ohio. He had wasted more than an hour of precious time in doing nothing, for he had not only disobeyed Hood's order to sweep down the pike, but he had not even made a lodgment on the pike.
It was then about six-thirty o'clock after dark, and Ruger's advance was just coming along. First leaving orders for the other divisions to follow after dark, about four-thirty o'clock, Schofield had started with Ruger to reinforce Stanley. Ruger skirmished with bait at the place and time indicated. But as Bate was off to the east side instead of astray the pike, where, by Hood's order, he should have been, Ruger had no difficulty in pushing past Bate. Granbury's brigade was still lying behind the fence, close to the pike, and after passing Bate, Ruger had to run the gauntlet of Granbury's line. Granbury had been notified that Bate was coming from the left, and hearing Ruger marching along the pike in the darkness, he mistook him for Bate.
So that Schofield himself, with Ruger, rode along right under the muzzles of the muskets of Granbury's line, in blissful ignorance of the danger they were passing. Captain English, Granbury's assistant adjunct general, advanced toward the pike to investigate, but was captured by the flankers covering the march of Ruger's Column, belonging to the 23rd Michigan. Elias Bartlett, of the 36th Illinois, was on picket on the pike at the bridge across the creek, a half-mile south of Spring Hill. And he informed me that when Schofield came to his post he began eagerly to inquire what had happened, saying that he had feared everything at Spring Hill had been captured, that while they were talking a Confederate picket, near enough to hear the sound of their voices, fired on them, and Schofield then rode on.
A little later Bate came up through the fields. Granbury fell back from the fence, and Claiborne and Bate then connected and adjusted a new line with Bate's left brigade, refused so as to face the pike, and all the rest of their line running across the country away from the pike. Bate had utterly failed to grasp the significance of Ruger's passage, claiming that his flank was in danger, and his representations to that effect were so urgent that Johnson's division was brought up between nine and ten o'clock and posted on Bate's left. Johnson's line and the line of Bate's refused brigade paralleling the pike at a distance of not more than one hundred and fifty yards, Many contradictory statements had been made relative to the distance of that part of the Confederate line from the pike.
The owner of the land pointed out to me a small plantation graveyard as being just inside their line that night. He said that the position of the line was marked after they had gone in the morning by the rail barricades they had built, and by the remains of their bivouac fires, and he very positively asserted that no part of their line facing the pike was distant more than a hundred and fifty yards from the pike. All the intervening space was cleared land. When the divisions of Cox, Wood, and Kimball came up from the Duck River later in the night, they marched along unmolested within easy range of the Confederate line, and could plainly see the men around bivouac fires. A staff officer was stationed on the pike beyond Johnson's left, where the fires first came into view, to caution the troops as they came up to march by the fires as silently as possible.
Captain Bestow, of General Wood's staff, has related that when the officer told Wood, riding at the head of his division, that the long line of fires he could see paralleling the pike so closely on the right was the bivouac fires of the enemy, the veteran Wood was so astounded that he exclaimed, "'In God's name, no!' When they came abreast of the fires, one of Wood's orderlies, believing it to be impossible they could be the enemy, started to ride over to one of the fires to light his pipe. but had gone only a short distance when he was fired on, and came galloping back. A colonel of Johnson's division has stated that he held his regiment in line momentarily, expecting an order to open fire until his men, one after another, overcome with fatigue, had all dropped to the ground to go to sleep.
Some of Johnson's men, on their own responsibility, went out on the pike between the passage of the different divisions to capture stragglers for the sake of getting the constants of their haversacks. They were the men who made it unsafe, as reported by General Stanley, for the staff officer or an orderly to ride along the pike when a column of troops was not passing. General Hood had gone to bed in Thompson's house. When he was informed that troops were marching along the pike without getting out of bed, he directed Colonel Mason, his chief of staff, to send an order to Cheatham to advance on the pike and attack. But Mason admitted the next day, as stated by Governor Harris of Tennessee, who was serving as a volunteer aide on Hood's staff, that he never sent the order.
This strange neglect on the part of his own chief of staff affords a fitting climax to the rest of the imbecility that contributed to Hood's failure after he had personally led the main body of his army to a position where, by all ordinary chances, success should have been certain. There is a bit of Stanley's report that gives a clear glimpse of the situation as Schofield and Stanley believed it to be after they had met that night. General Schofield arrived from Columbia at seven o'clock in the evening with Ruger's division. He found the enemy on the pike, and had quite a skirmish in driving them off. My pickets had reported seeing rebel columns passing east of our position, as if to get possession of the hills at Thompson Station, and the anxious question arose whether we would force our way through to Franklin.
It was determined to attempt this, and General Schofield pushed on with Ruger's division to ascertain the condition of affairs. Another vivid glimpse is afforded in the statement of O. J. Hack, a conductor on the railroad who was also interested in historic Columbia. He came down the road that day on the last train southbound, having in charge some goods for the store, and at the Spring Hill Station met the last train northbound, and from the trainmen learned that the army was retreating. The two trains stood at the station that afternoon. Some time after dark, being anxious to save its goods, Hack went over to Spring Hill in quest of a guard to run the trains back to Franklin. On inquiring for headquarters, he was directed to a large brick house where he found Schofield and Stanley together.
Schofield, recently arrived from Duck River, had just been getting Stanley's account of the situation, and Hack said that Schofield was in a condition of great agitation, walking the floor and wringing his hands. When Hack was told what he wanted, Schofield sharply replied, that the enemy had possession of the road north of Spring Hill, and the trains could not move. The report of Stanley and the Statement of Hack concur in showing that it was then Schofield's belief that Hood had possession of the Franklin Pike, that the army was caught in a trap, that the only way out was the desperate expedient of forcing a passage-by-night attack And, failing in that, he must fight a battle next day, under so many disadvantages, that ruinous defeat, with the probable loss of the army, was staring him in the face.
It would be interesting to know what Schofield then thought of his intimate knowledge of Hood's character, and his cool calculation based thereon, for which he afterwards so unblushingly claimed so much credit. The two trains stood at the station until daylight, was beginning to dawn when the detail of men came and began to build fires to burn the cars, but the detail was driven away, and the fires were extinguished before much damage was done by the advance of the enemy. The two trains thus captured afforded the transportation to which Hood alluded in a letter to Richmond, written when he was in front of Nashville, wherein he stated that he had captured enough transportation to make use of the railroad in bringing up supplies.
But Schofield ignored the loss of the two trains, for in his official report he explicitly states that, with the exception of a few wagons and a few cattle that were stampeded, he arrived at Franklin without any loss. When Schofield pushed on with Ruger's division to ascertain the condition of affairs, on his arrival at Thompson Station, three miles north of Spring Hill, he found camp-fires still burning, but Brigade of Calvary that had been in possession there withdrew without making any resistance. This very considerate action on the part of the cavalry was another of those lucky fatalities that so notably contributed to the escape of our army, when such special fatalities were a vital necessity for its escape.
After posting Ruger there to hold the cross-roads, Schofield returned to Spring Hill, where he arrived about midnight at the same time with the advance of Cox's division. Coming from Duck River. With this division, he then hurried through to Franklin, picking up Ruger as he passed along, and thus saddling Stanley with all the risk of saving their artillery and the trains. If they had been lost, Stanley would have been the escape goat. But with the same skill with which that afternoon he had bluffed off ten-twelfths of Hood's army with a single division, Stanley that night saved the artillery and the trains. At three o'clock in the morning, when only a part of the trains had pulled out, the long column on the pike was brought to a standstill by the attack someplace in front.
The situation was so critical that General Wood, who was then with Stanley, believing it would be impossible to save both troops and trains, advised that the trains be abandoned. But Stanley persevered until the attack was beaten off and the column again in motion. The two trains of cars had to be abandoned because the bridge had been destroyed north of the station, and about forty wagons were lost in the attack made by Forrest between Thompson Station and Franklin. Everything else was saved. And by the way, Stanley was one of the many good soldiers who were over-slaught by the big promotion obtained by Schofield. Stanley outranked Schofield, both as a captain in the regular army and as a major general of volunteers.
But by assignment of the president, gained by his extraordinary ability in the arts of diplomacy instead of by fighting ability displayed on the battlefield, Schofield was a department commander while Stanley was a corps commander. And it thus happened that Stanley was serving under his junior in rank. Wagner's division was the last to leave Spring Hill. When night came, Bradley's brigade began to entrench the lines it was on, and kept at its work until nearly midnight, when the men were called under arms, and spent all the remainder of that anxious, weary night on their feet. While standing in column, we could hear to our left the rumble of the wheels while the artillery and the wagons were pulling out, and much of the time could be heard the dull tread of many feet and the clicking of accoutrements that told the march of a column of troops along the pike.
But there was no other sound, not even the shout of a teamster to his meals or the crack of the whip. All the surroundings were so impressive as to subdue the most boisterous, profane men. In expressing their dissatisfaction with the situation, they were always careful to mutter their curses in a tone so low as to be inaudible a short distance away, for looking to our right we could see the glow on the sky made by the bivouac fires of the enemy. and in some places could see the fires with a few men about them cooking something to eat or otherwise engaged, while most of their men were lying on the ground asleep. Every minute of those anxious hours, we were looking for them to awake to the opportunity that was slipping through their fingers and grab hold of it by advancing and opening fire on the congested mass of troops and trains that choked the pike.
Occasionally, our column would move on a short distance. Any orders that may have been given were spoken in a low tone at the head of the column. You would be apprised that the column was moving by the silent disappearance into the darkness of your file leader. You would hurry after him, and taking perhaps not more than a dozen steps would be brought to a sudden halt by running against him, immediately followed by the man in your rear bumping up against yourself. Then would follow an indefinite wait until the column would move again on a short distance. The wearying suspense of the long waiting while standing on our feet, the exasperating halts following those false starts, when everybody was almost frantic with impatience to go on, the excessive physical fatigue combined with the intense mental strain when already haggard from so much loss of sleep during the three days and nights preceding, make that night memorable as by far the most trying in nearly four years of soldiering.
It afforded unspeakable relief when, just as daylight was beginning to dawn, our column finally got away in rapid motion for Franklin, the enemy dogging our heels with their close pursuit. The location of Hood's headquarters was central as to the position of his troops until nightfall, and was therefore a proper one. But he was too far away to get any personal knowledge as to what was going on at Spring Hill, and he had to rely on the reports of his subordinates who were in contact with our troops. The character of those reports is unmistakably indicated by the second move that Hood made. His first move, as has been shown, was based on the correct theory that part of Schofield's army was at Spring Hill, and part at Duck River, and it contemplated thrusting in Cheatham's corps between those two parts.
His second move, made after the fighting was all over, and he had received the reports of that fighting, was based on the theory that all of Schofield's army had reached Spring Hill for abandoning all purpose of cutting off any part south of Spring Hill. It contemplated seizing the pike north of Spring Hill and cutting off Schofield's retreat to Franklin. Between sunset and dark, as stated by General Stewart, which would be about five o'clock at that season of the year, he received orders to cross Rutherford's Creek with his corps to pass to the right of Cheatham's corps, and to extend to his right across the Franklin Pike. After about five hours, Stuart finally went into bivouac with his right more than a mile away from the Franklin Pike.
His explanation for his failure was the lack of a competent guide, the darkness of the night, and the fatigue of his men. To accomplish Hood's orders required a march of a little less than four miles by Stuart's head of column, about three miles by a direct county road leading to Mount Carmel Road, and the remaining distance across the country between Mt. Carmel Road and the Franklin Pike. It would seem that a guide might have been found among the cavalry who had explored the country that afternoon in developing the position of our line between Mt. Carmel Road and the railway station west of the Franklin Pike, or there were men in some of the Tennessee regiments whose homes were in that vicinity.
who were thoroughly familiar with the ground. That no great difficulties were involved in the march is proved by the fact that Johnson's division made a similar march in about two hours later in the night to get into position on Bates' left. The night was as dark, the men were as tired, the distance was as great, and the way was as difficult for Johnson as it was for Stewart. In view of these plain facts, it is a fair inference that Stewart made a very lukewarm effort to accomplish Hood's orders, that it was possible for him, by a display of no more energy than Johnson displayed, to have extended his right across the Franklin Pike as early as eight o'clock, and then, when Schofield started north with Ruger's division about nine o'clock, he would have found his way effectively barred.
The prime cause of Hood's failure was apparently the lack of confidence in his generalship on the part of so many of his subordinates. They had been dissatisfied with his appointment to the command of the Army, and their dissatisfaction had been greatly increased by the failure of his attacks on Sherman's lines in front of Atlanta. With the poor opinion they held of Hood's ability, it was not possible for them to give to any plan of his that wholehearted, unquestioning support that gives the best guarantee of success. Simple as his plan was, they all failed to grasp the importance of getting possession of the Pike, and Claiborne accepted They all acted as if they were expecting a repetition of the disastrous experience that had followed the attacks on Sherman.
The promptness with which Claiborne turned and rolled up Bradley's brigade, when he was so unexpectedly assailed on his own flank, was the only energetic action on the part of any of them after they crossed Rutherford's Creek. And no doubt, if Claiborne had not been halted by Cheatham's order, He would have gone on until he had reaped the full measure of success made so easily possible by the faulty situation of our army. But amid all the exciting occurrences of that eventful evening, it is amazing that no inkling of that faulty situation seems ever to have entered the minds of any one of those veteran generals. Hood made a mistake, as stated by himself, by not taking B.'s corps on the flank march instead of Cheatham's corps.
He believed that would be in Cheatham's place he would have succeeded, and in view of the skill with which Lee executed the part assigned to him to hold Schofield at Duck River, it is more than probable he would have given at Spring Hill far better support than Cheatham gave. Hood led Cheatham within sight of an easy and brilliant success. In it was hesitation displayed by Cheatham, Brown, and Bate at the critical time that defeated Hood's plan and saved Schofield's army. That their hesitation was not due to any lack of courage on their part or on the part of the troops they commanded was abundantly proved by the unsurpassed courage with which they assaulted Franklin next day, when it was everlastingly too late.
If they had fairly utilized at Spring Hill one-tenth part of the courage that was thrown away on the breastworks of Franklin, they would have changed the later current of the war, with results too far-reaching to be estimated. The prime purpose of Schofield's campaign was to delay Hood. How well he succeeded in that purpose can be significantly stated in a single sentence. The evening of November 29th he was at Duck River, and the morning of December 1st he was at Nashville, more than 40 miles away. Then followed the panicky feeling displayed by the administration, and by General Grant, because General Thomas was not ready to attack Hood immediately on his appearance in front of Nashville. If Schofield's ores at Dock River had been to make no effort to delay Hood but to get inside the fortifications of Nashville with the least possible delay, he would not have covered the distance in so short a time without the spur of Hood's flank movement, and the celerity with which he ran out of the country was due to the scare he got at Spring Hill.
From Franklin next day, he wired General Thomas at Nashville. That he had come through, but that the least mistake on his part or the fault of any subordinate might have proved fatal, and he did not want to get into such a tight place again. That a worse position for an inferior force than the one at Franklin could hardly be found, that he had no doubt Forrest would be in his rear next day, or doing some worse mischief, that he ought to fall back to Brentwood at once. In short, his Franklin dispatches, read by the light of Stanley's report in a packed statement, Clearly showed that his mind was still dominated by the fright of Spring Hill, and that he could feel no security short of Brentwood, where he would be backed up too close to Nashville for Hood to have room to repeat the terrible flank movement.
Not even the wrecking of Hood's army on the breastworks of Franklin that evening could reassure Schofield. He insisted on retreating to Nashville that night, when thousands of the men were in such a condition, from more than forty hours of incessant marching, fortifying, and fighting, that they dozed on their feet while they were walking, and in spite of the manly protest of General Cox, who was so urgent in his efforts to persuade Schofield no more running was necessary, that he offered to pledge his head he could hold the position.
The Battle of Spring Hill, Tennessee, read after the stated meeting held February 2nd, 1907 by John K. Schellenberger.