Library of Che Theological Seminary PRINCETON - NEW JERSEY D7 KE FROM THE LIBRARY OF THE REVEREND CHARLES ROSENBURY ERDMAN D.D., LL.D. 14 vt Ai ar. yi ctv ay it qa) A Ms Wey ee HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS OF THE CIVIL WAR CLARENCE EDWARD MACARTNEY Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2022 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/highwaysbywaysof00maca WILLIAM BLACK Youngest Wounded Union Soldier Be and Bowens of te Civil War By Clarence Edward Macirttey Author of ‘“‘Lincoln and His Generals’ Illustrated with Official Photographs from the War Department ponent peasant Publishers COPYRIGHT 1926 DORRANCE & COMPANY INC MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ae To All Who Trod the Highways and Byways of the Civil War CONTENTS MEHMET ITY ers ye vitee Gaur phe ety retsitie tl Axia(G We al aiaenos ses i PIP reTTISULA oc tEy Ware iui ous ciate tah ata wUNtec vistas 33 RUTRCEEATIL ED OL Soh We ten Merv MRA shal'y aut ais Weaen miei cir 51 PAAR T STL CTT Y cee eu tensile! ule a tinatn Mea) Saal 61 Pieeoneta ncaa IV ALEW 2 wher alia nang Ws tic aie pints afabe 68 eae ME ATICI SOEs ie hoe oe Wa seta ebro le ore Srutaie deanate wcahene 75 22! Sie CS RARE Rohn sits: OUNCE A Re hg ers Na gree HAD 82 BIGOT UCT © saute suit plete eae auNGie ce atelier s Sas RTGLe af 95 Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville.............. 105 BEETLE V EDL OF fe cog err ee MU Na ver deans ote Bieta ah Sak Soe ened 116 JOS RE GREE AR AEN ace RE i RA 143 Urickamatioa! and Chattanooga oe). sicisie ssesclsre elds a's « 165 PEEIOOUP TY Le! VV LCLETTIESS 8 ta, V-yy tie did oie vole da Ou e/ula!s 177 Nashville ..... Plant rare ea rs sees ale Rosle t wes at grate 196 Bere mt ererSUULS MINE ue eer. Ware hee ad Saves ees 207 PNMIMEE SONA CHAS. we lay tieuie WI) sane Salou & halal cere w. erate 218 DUP erinatr oi] Tall Ve emis aera eS Als 231 Wiesner s trail Continued iisice teks vee os 241 Gor onernnans Cra, Concluded eve ui oe ak we oe 250 Peotone MOUTt TLOUSE) oy cca ly es Galk wo ole Soe 265 SPST Pe Che ge co) ee LRN ON UNE Yi Mh Nastia 274 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS WILLIAM BLAcK, YOUNGEST WouNDED UNION SOLDIER.............. Frontispiece WINTER QUARTERS. Horace Greeley Standing in Foreground........... Facing Page 24 LANDING SUPPLIES FOR UNION ARMY ONCE TAMES RIVER Mine iy tc Viele i ON aS BRIDGE Over THE ANTIETAM........ i i Peatiies, 3: HIGHWAYS AND Byways Topay..... TN y: 64 SHERIDAN AND His CAVALRY IN THE SHENANDOAH VALLEY........... ‘ ix See nh Vee GENERALS Hancock, BARLow, Grae MEN PISID NEY 0. cout bala altuniaiclale esas Lee GENERAL HooKER ON Lookout Moun- Tee) 2 PRN De eRe BIG A nO BAU EE QIN BN NER Ke A Ae PPELEVNDUCVOLINTVET).) vic) X, oval orsvarece cae foal feeds e ra OOS SCENE OF SHERMAN’S REPULSE BY JoHNnsTon, KENESAw Mountain... “ “248 GRANT AND His STAFF IN THE LAST CAMPAIGN. Including: Generals Bar- nard and Rawlins, Colonels Badeau, Dent and Parker, the Last a Full- POPE D ATEN AT) oa ok ae en ahaa flaws x aN AS” 8 FOREWORD Pausanias preserves for us the tradition that those who visited by night the famous battlefield of Mara- thon, where phantom cavalry rushed to and fro, ina spirit of mere vulgar sightseeing and idle curiosity, were severely punished in the dark; but those who came with filial reverence for their ancestors, and with profound sympathy for their heroic achievements, met with a kind and gracious reception. I invite the reader to come with me and pay a pilgrimage to the battle- fields of the Civil War, not in the vulgar spirit of sightseeing or idle curiosity, but with a love for his Nation and a deep reverence for the principles of de- mocracy. There the phantom cavalry and infantry of the glorious past shall greet us and tell us how and where they fought and died. Philadelphia, May 30, 1926 Cy Bee M. Nye He ca 4 Ge SPU A hy at Lape f WAT eh Liiwpatet yep en noe Sy te es Ba | ae is wh sf MN i i A ¢ HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS OF THE CIVIL WAR I BULL RUN A Nation AWAKES “Mary had That was not her name, so far as I knew; but the word was sufficient to cause her to turn and look in my direction, as she stood on tiptoe, straining the muscles of her shapely little legs in an effort to lift the lid of the tin mail box and drop a letter. It was no unfriendly glance, and with a little encouragement, neither too bold nor too shy, she came over to where I was sitting on a grassy bank by the roadside under the shade of a venerable cedar. The eyes which met mine were as blue as the cornflower which grew along the bank; her hair hung in two plaits down her back; her blue dress showed stains of blackberries, and her bare feet smoothed the grass or tossed aside the twigs and pebbles. “Ts your name Mary?” INO “What is it?” “Judith.” “Judith what?” “Judith Constance.” “Anything else?” “Henry—Judith Constance Henry.” “Where do you live, Judith?” “Up yonder,” pointing with her left hand to an un- painted frame house which stood on the hill back of us, well shaded by cedars and lilac bushes. “Who is that man harrowing yonder in the field?” 15 16 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS “My father.” “And the two boys with him?” “My brothers. Near that tree last week my father ploughed up a skull and bones.” “The bones of a dead man?” “Yes; he must have been a soldier. Every now and then father comes upon bones of soldiers.”’ “How could soldiers’ bodies have got here? Tell me about it.” “Don’t you know? Why, I thought everybody knew about Bull Run. This is where the battle was fought.” “Oh! now I understand. This is the Henry farm where the battle was fought?” “Yes. Yonder (pointing to a little square of trees and bushes enclosed with a picket fence and with white stones showing through the green) is Grandmother Henry’s grave. She was killed in the battle.” “How was that?” “She was lying in bed sick when the battle com- menced. They carried her down yonder to the spring- house, but it was worse there and they brought her back to the house. A shell came through the wall and killed her. I am her great-granddaughter.” This, then, is Bull Run! What memories it evokes! Memories sad, bitter and glorious. From my little blue-eyed and barefooted maiden, symbol of peace, affection and innocence, my mind reverted to the day when peace and love and innocence had fled these pleasant hills, ravines and woodlands, when the shells were screaming through the tops of the trees, the bat- teries thundering into position along the road in front of me; when the grassy slope of the hill was strewn with fallen men, some writhing, struggling in vain to rise, imploring, cursing, calling for water, for help, for mother, for home, for God, for death; and not a few to whom that last request had been granted, lying now still and quiet in the unbroken satisfaction of ful- “, BULL RUN 17 filled desire. Only a few hours since, clad in their fantastic uniforms, they had been boys on a vast frolic, calling out bantering remarks to one another as the regiment of one state marched alongside that of an- other; and only a few weeks, or, at the most, months since, the hope of their parents and their friends, their goings out and comings in followed with pride and praise. But now no better than the beast, blood of horse mingled with the blood of man; if dying, having to die alone; if dead, lying there mere carcases, to be shoveled into a hastily dug trench, not for honor’s sake, but because being dead they are but nuisance and corruption. As if they had not been anointed with oil! Bull Run is forever first. First in the emotions which it stirred; first in the hopes and fears which it inspired; first in the pain and anguish which it brought to northern and southern homes; first in the splendor and romance of battle which it displayed to the combat- ants—for the simple reason that it was first in time. There hovers ever a solemnity and hush about last things and first things. Men could fall by thousands, greater defeats could be inflicted and victories be won; but never, never again, could the nation, or its armies, pass through the experiences of that July Sabbath on the hills about Bull Run. “No battle of the war was better planned or so poorly fought.” That was the verdict of the disgusted and humiliated Sherman when he wrote to his wife the day after the engagement. ‘The first part, at least, was true. The battle was admirably planned. The planner thereof was Irvin McDowell, Commander of the Union Army, aged forty-three. Schooled in France and at West Point, he won a captaincy at Buena Vista, and was a favorite with the head of the army, General Scott. Modest, unassuming, his abili- ties were the sole ground for his appointment. When he crossed the Potomac to take command of the forces 18 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS south of the river, Lincoln offered to make him a major general, but McDowell refused, saying that it~ might excite jealousy among the other officers and hinder his usefulness. That was a good start for any general. He was looking for victory, not rank and standing. Military critics, as a rule, neglect altogether the political significance of war. It is easy to say now that the government should have waited until a greater and more preponderating force had been gathered and organized. But there were political conditions which made the campaign which resulted in Bull Run in- evitable. The nation was restive; it felt that the national situation was due in great part to the vacil- lating and compromising policy of the government in the past. The election of Abraham Lincoln was a notification to the world that the “Union must and shall be preserved.” But there were apprehensions lest this victory, the solemnly declared will of the people, should be lost by inactivity and further compromise. Spontaneously and irresistibly, the cry arose for im- mediate demonstration of the power of the nation to vindicate its honor. A blow must be struck, and at once, else the nation was humiliated. The place and power of this feeling is well shown by the fact that for weeks before the battle of Bull Run, Horace Gree- ly’s paper, the New York Tribune, ran at the head of its columns these sentences: Tue NatTiIon’s WarR Cry! Forward to Richmond! Forward to Rich- mond! Forward to Richmond! ‘The Rebel Congress must not be allowed to meet there on the 20th of July. By that date the place must be held by the National Army!! BULL RUN 19 It is true that McDowell objected, that Scott pro- tested, and after the battle, losing control of himself, declared to Lincoln that he (Scott) was the great- est coward on the face of the earth, and could prove it by the fact that he had permitted the army to move when he knew it was not ready. But all this, and much like it, was merely accidental. Scott, McDowell, the Congress, Lincoln himself were insignificant fac- tors in this first campaign of the war. It was the nation which ordered it, carried it out, suffered with it, and wept over it, and yet in it found its soul and dedi- cated itself to carry out, through a thousand defeats and humiliations, if necessary, the high purpose to vindicate national honor and defend the rights of hu- manity. Think of Bull Run as a campaign conceived at Washington, executed by Scott and McDowell and fought by eighteen thousand troops from a dozen northern states, and it is only a ridiculous episode in military history. But behold in that campaign a puis- sant nation, rousing itself from sleep, invoking the arbitrament of the God of Battles, by blood and agony and anguish of defeat, coming to itself and taking its magnificent stand for human liberty amid the jeers and scoffings of half the world, and Bull Run becomes holy ground. ‘These hillsides and these fields and this little brook running under the steep, stony banks are sacramental; for there, in the first real battle of the long war, the nation poured out its soul unto death and was numbered with the transgressors, and was made an offering for sin. With immense enthusiasm, the soldiers of the National Army received the orders in July, 1861, to march to the south. It was soon evident that dis- cipline and order were to have no part in that cam- paign. This great host of buoyant democrats did very much as they pleased. When they became thirsty with the Virginia heat, they left the ranks and gathered about the wells or the springhouses to drink their fill, 20 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS and when their feet became sore with the long march- ing, they sat down under the shade of the trees and. removed their shoes and stockings, in a lordly manner taking their ease. The blackberry bushes, too, were a great temptation, and muskets and haversacks were laid aside as the men rushed to gather the succulent berry, despite the protests and orders of their officers, officers who came from the same towns and villages, whom they all knew by their first names, and to whom the dangers and sufferings. of war had not given that authority which makes an officer mean anything to an army. On the seventeenth of July they passed through Fairfax Courthouse, and pulling down the Confederate banner, raised the Stars and Stripes. Who then could have dreamed, that more than three years later, after millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives had been sacrificed, not many miles away, at Culpepper, that same army, tempered by many a battle, would be setting forth on the last cam- paign. As they saw the Stars and the Bars come flut- tering down from the tower of the courthouse, the cheering Nationalists thought that in a few days it would all be over. That night the army bivouaced at Centerville. The excesses incident to invasion had al- ready commenced. Some of the men paraded through the streets in female attire that they had taken from the houses, and one fellow marched up and down in the gown and bands of a clergyman, solemnly reading the funeral service of Jefferson Davis. And much worse than this. Sherman comments on what he witnessed in these bristling sentences: ‘“‘No curse could be greater than invasion by a volunteer army. No Goths or Van- dals ever had less respect for the lives and property of friends and foes, and henceforth we ought never to hope for any friends in Virginia.” After a reconnoissance at one of the lower fords, Blackburne’s, on the eighteenth of July, McDowell de- termined to make an effort to turn the left flank of BULL RUN 21 the Confederate Army, interposing himself between it and its base at Manassas Junction. His plan was to have Tyler’s division make a feint at the Stone Bridge over Bull Run on the extreme Confederate left, while Hunter and Heintzelman, making a long detour through the woods, crossed the Bull Run at Sudley Church with fifteen thousand troops, and marching along the other side of the creek, fell upon the rear and flank of the Confederates at the Stone Bridge, when Tyler’s division was to cross and the ' Confederates would be crushed between the two forces. The strategy was splendid, but the tactics of the battle were poorly executed. The army began to move about two in the morning, leaving behind them a rear guard and a great company of sightseers from Washington, who had learned that a battle was imminent and had come out to see the sport, driving in their own carriages and bringing with them their own supplies. The pres- ence of this horde made the army encampement seem like one vast county fair. Some of the three-months men’s terms had expired, and despite the entreaties of the Secretary of War and McDowell, a Pennsylvania regiment and a New York regiment marched off the field on the eve of battle. McDowell, who had been ill, was taken in a carriage to the place at the crossroads chosen for headquarters, and anxiously awaited news from the columns which were making the turning movement. He had hoped to see the attack made early in the morning. Armies have always liked to attack at the dawn. But Tyler was not in position at the Stone Bridge until six, and it was four hours later that Hunter and Heintzelman had crossed at Sudley Creek and by the intervening ford. The first shot of the day had been fired by one of Tyler’s batteries, a great Parrot rifle that broke the Sabbath stillness, and all through the day, whenever it was fired, dominated the field, making all other sounds mere clatter and rattle as compared with its 22 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS deep bellow. The Confederate commander at the Stone Bridge was Evans, a fine soldier of the old army. ~ Beauregard and Johnston had planned an attack very similar to that of McDowell, crossing in force at the enemy’s left, and then attacking in the front. Orders to this effect were sent to Early on the extreme Con- federate right, but for some mysterious reason, the messenger never reached Early, and before he could cross, he was called to aid the other wing of the army. Evans discerned a cloud of dust floating over the woods to his left. He was not long in guessing what it meant. The weak effort of Tyler on his front had convinced him that the movement at the Stone Bridge was only a feint and the real attack was coming on his left flank. Sending word to his superiors, Evans faced about and marched his men to meet the oncoming hosts of Hunter and Heintzelman. These divisions had safely crossed the creek and had marched down it to within a mile and a half of the Stone Bridge. There they were met by the eager troops of Evans, and the battle was on. The first clash was on Matthew’s Hill, the National Army sweeping the Confederates off this eminence and driving them back to the hill on which the Henry house stood. This open plateau now be- came the scene of the chief fighting. What did these men think as brothers for the first time clashed with brothers? Were there any regrets, misgivings, any eleventh-hour wishes that it had been otherwise? Apparently not. “Come on, boys! You’ve got your choice at last!” cried the dashing Meagher, the Irish adventurer, as he rode to the head of his cheering men. The men of the North were eager to strike a blow which would crush rebellion at the out- set. The men of the South, inflamed with hatred by fire-eating oratory, were eager to slay these monsters who, as they had been told, had come down to steal their property and ravish their women. Sherman, al- ways the keen observer, senses the spirit of the south- BULLAREN 23 ern army, when he tells of a Confederate trooper who rode his horse across the brook and up to within a hundred yards of where he was standing with a group of officers, and brandishing his gun, shouted, “Come on, you damned black abolitionists !’’ Never again did any engagement of the war see such a variety of uniforms. In the northern army, many of the fashions of the European armies were imitated. Ellsworth’s Zouaves, burning to avenge the death of their leader, shot when lowering the Con- federate flag in a hotel at Alexandria two months be- fore, wore the baggy red trousers of the French army; other troops had the three-cornered hat and the feather and plume of the Garibaldian Italians; and others wore the garb of English colonial troops, with a cloth pro- tector hanging down their necks. Many of the regi- ments wore gray, and in the thick of the fight foe was often taken for friend. On the Confederate side there was the dirty “butternut,” the new Confederate gray, but not a few men were dressed just as they had left town or farm, and some of the Confederate officers still wore the uniform of the old United States Army. It was eleven-thirty o’clock when the Confederate troops were driven in confusion off the Matthew Hill and to the upper slope of the Henry Hill. The Na- tional Army gained possession of the farmhouse and McDowell mounted to the top to view the field, order- ing up all available troops. The Union ranks were thrilling with the tidings of a great victory. Then the first fatal mistake of the day was made. Two fine batteries of artillery, Rickett’s and Griffin’s, were or- dered to advance and take a position in the open field a little to the north and west of the Henry house. Somewhat amazed, and requesting a written copy of the order, these splendid officers promptly limbered up and galloped their pieces to the Henry field. They had not fired a shot before the Confederate riflemen in the woods near by began to pick off men and horses. 24 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS A regiment, the 33rd Virginia, was climbing over the fence along the edge of the field and Rickett and | Griffin had their guns turned on them. Major Barry, McDowell’s chief of artillery, told them not to fire, saying that they were a supporting regiment. While ' they stood arguing the question, it was solved by the disputed regiment pouring in on them a withering and destructive fire, Rickett falling by his guns, desper- ately wounded. The Zouave regiment that had been sent to support the battery, took fright at some of Stuart’s “black cavalry,” and fled in panic down the hill. This was the beginning of the end. McDowell flung company after company and regiment after regi- ment onto the hill, which was taken and retaken several times. But back under the cedar trees was Jackson, blood flowing from his hand, fire flashing in his eye, his whole form vibrant with the passion of the battle. Bee and other officers had told him that the day was going against them. This was two-thirty o’clock in the afternoon. But Jack- son’s men stood firm and earned for their leader his sobriquet, the “Stonewall.” Now Jackson gave the order to charge and the hunter’s halloo, the first rebel yell, rose over the din of battle as these men rushed forward with their bayonets, sweeping the hill in front of them. But still the battle is undecided. An accident, a slip, a chance of fate, and either side may conquer. To the left and south more clouds of dust. Who are these? Friend or foe? They are the brigades of Kirby Smith, son of Connecticut, but ardent secession- ist, the last troops of Johnston to reach the field, just taken off the cars on their way from Win- chester. Before the new host, the weary Fed- erals begin to withdraw, not frantically, nor in a panic-stricken manner, but generally, all along the line, as if all had received an order; company punoissioy ul suipuryg (2) Aajaeiny vdeIOPFY SYUALYVNO WHLNIM BULL RUN 25 after company, regiment after regiment, brigade after brigade. All organization is lost as the men stream down the roads and paths leading to the fords. A strange babel of tongues, answering their officers’ vociferous appeals and waving swords with a clamor that they had not been properly supported, that they could not tell friend from foe, and so on; and so on; thoroughly convinced, at least, that there was no use fighting any longer, and now nothing to do but go back to their camps on the Potomac. No rout, no wreck, no panic as yet; but thousands of demo- crats, each man a sovereign, tired of his job, feel- ing that he had done all that was possible, and walking from the field much in the way that the operatives of a vast factory file out of the build- ings and down the streets when the whistle has blown. The National Army began to leave the field about five o’clock, and it was only when the night was coming on and its shadows made it difficult to tell whether friend or foe was approaching, that the retreat became a rout. Over Cub Run the Warrenton Pike crossed by a_ stone bridge. This bridge became blocked by the wreck of a battery and the ford below it was soon im- passable with wagons. Here the debacle com- menced. Those pushing on from the rear, hear- ing in every sound the approach of Stuart’s “Black Horse Cavalry,” became desperate, not knowing what it was that was holding up their column. Artillerymen and wagoners cut their horses’ traces and leaped on their backs and gal- loped off in the dusk. The infantry would seize the stirrups of mounted men and thus be dragged over the road; or some, in their desperation, would try to ride the beams of the artillery trains as they thundered by, many of them losing their 26 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS grip and falling to the road were ground into the dust, mud now, rather, for the inevitable bat- tle rain had commenced to fall. The wounded, lying helpless under the trees by the roadside, lifted their hands and cried out in vain appeal to be taken along, but their cries were lost in the rumble of wagons, the galloping of horses and the hurried tramping of thousands of frightened men. At Centreville, McDowell gathered his officers together and all voted to make a stand there. But commanding general and officers were no more now than the lowest soldier in the ranks. The soldiers themselves decided what to do, and all through the night thé army kept streaming along the muddy roads and over the wet fields and through the dripping woods on its way to the Potomac and safety. It was Sauve qui peut over again. Let us now pick our way through the wood and along the crowded roads, past the groups of the fugitives until we come once more to the scene of the battle. Here they lie, poor fellows, a little hour or so ago resplendent in their gay uniforms, joking with their companions and boasting of their deeds, a few of them with handcuffs and ropes with which to bind their prisoners. Instead of that, they themselves have been taken prisoners by death, and the iron has entered into their souls. The rain pours down upon their white faces and wide-open, staring eyes, and converts the caked blood and dust on their clothing into a reddish-yellow liquid which oozes into the soil. How torn and soiled and somber now those once glorious uniforms: the red Zouave trousers, the smart gray suits of the Wisconsin and Maine regiments, the blue of New York, the three-cor- nered hats of the Garibaldians, the great plumed helmets, such as Cesar’s legionaries wore, of the BULL RUN ad. Virginia cavalry. But happier these dead than the others who lie in the grass and among the trampled corn, calling out in their misery, and yet afraid to call, lest the foe, that cruel, no-quarter- giving, wounded-abusing, dead-desecrating foe, about whom their minds had been filled with wild, false tales, should come upon them. Worse yet, the agony of the beasts. Sherman saw here his first field of glory, but it was the anguish of the beasts, not of the men, that filled him with hor- ror: “Then for the first time I saw the carnage of battle; men lying in every conceivable shape, and mangled in a horrible way; but this did not make a particle of impression upon me, but horses running about riderless with blood streaming from their nostrils, lying on the ground hitched to guns, gnawing their sides in death.” Up in the battered Henry house there are lights showing. The surgeons are working there over the wounded; in the little room to the left of the entrance, a sheet has been drawn over a form on the bed; it is the body of the octogenarian, Judith Henry, who had been killed by a shell. Away back in the wood towards Manassas, General Bee, the same who gave Jackson his sobriquet beneath the cedars, lies dying in a log cabin. His only words are, “Find Imboden! Find Imboden!” During the early stages of the battle, Imboden’s battery had been left in an exposed position without proper support. For this Im- boden blamed his superior, Bee, and cursed him bitterly. Bee learned of this, and before he died wished to tell Imboden with his own lips that he had given orders for his relief. All through the night men are scouring the fields and the woods and riding up and down the road searching for Imboden. At length they find him, caked with blood and sweat, the blood coming from one of his 28 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS ears, deaf now forever from the concussion of the guns, his red undershirt torn by the bayonet of a huge, panic-stricken Southerner fleeing from the field, and who, when Imboden, with drawn sword, threw himself across his path, lunged at him with the bayonet, knocking him over, and thus es- caped. This is the wild-looking officer who steps under the roof of the log cabin and hastily takes Bee by the hand. He calls him by name; no curses now, but softly, fondly, filially. But none answered! Too late, now, dying Bee, to make your explanations! Too late now, fierce-looking Imboden—hereafter much to be heard of in this war between the brothers—to take back the curses! Irrevocable! Irrevocable! That is the word to write after Bull Run. Hopes of further com- promise, of coming to an understanding, of a speedy victory on either side, of taking back hot, cursing words—all that now forever gone. Now there is nothing to do, inexorable North, defiant South, but to see the thing through to the end, to drink slowly, deliberately, with full taste and appreciation of its wormwood and gall, the bitter cup of pain and grief and anguish. Jefferson Davis, head of the new State, reached Manassas late in the afternoon and rode out to- wards Bull Run. He could hardly be persuaded that there was a victory when he saw wounded men coming to the rear escorted by four and five unwounded. That, he said, was more like a de- feat. He remarks bitterly about the handcuffs which had been picked up on the field, things be- longing more to thieves and police, he says, than to the soldiers of a free nation. Where was Lincoln? What was he doing? What thinking about during the long hours of that eventful Sabbath? At eleven o’clock he went BULL RUN 29 quietly to the Presbyterian Church. At three in the afternoon he went over to army headquarters and roused General Scott out of his afternoon nap. The reports were vague, but nothing yet of an alarming nature, telling of the first suc- cesses. Scott assured him that all was going well and went back to sleep, Lincoln to drive. At six, Seward, pale and haggard, came to the White House. “Where is the President?” nirone to. drive’ “Have you any late news?” “Yes; McDowell has won a complete victory.” “That is not true. The battle is lost. Find the President and tell him to come immediately to General Scott’s.”’ After a little Lincoln came home and listened in silence as his secretaries gave him Seward’s message. When he reached General Scott’s, this telegram was read to him: “General McDowell’s army in full retreat through Centreville. The day is lost. Save Washington and the remnants of this army.’ In the evening the newspaper cor- respondents, the Senators and Representatives, who had followed the army. to battle, began to arrive, and all through the night Lincoln listened to their accounts of what had transpired. Monday dawned with gloom and drizzle of rain. Even so were the spirits of the nation. A week of depres- sion and alarm followed. Even the strongest be- gan jto waver. The fierce editor of the Tribune, the paper that kept standing at the head of its columns the cry, “Forward to Richmond! For- ward to Richmond!” thus addressed the Presi- dent: This is my 7th sleepless night—yours, too, doubtless, yet I think I shall not die, because 30 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS I have no right to die. You are not consid- ered a great man, and I am a hopelessly broken one. You are now undergoing a ter- rible ordeal, and God has thrown the gravest ‘responsibilities upon you. Do not fear to meet them. Can the rebels be beaten after all that has occurred, and in view of the actual state of feeling caused by our late awful dis- aster? If they can, and it is your business to ascertain and decide, write me that such is your judgment, so that I may know and do my duty. And if they CANNOT be beaten —if our recent disaster is fatal— do not fear to sacrifice yourself to your country. If the rebels are not to be beaten, then every drop of blood henceforth shed in this quarrel will be wantonly, wickedly shed, and the guilt will rest heavily on the soul of every promoter of the crime. Yours in the depths of bitterness, Horace Greely. Yes, Greely was right. Lincoln was not yet accounted a great man, and perhaps he had not slept any more that week than Greely. “Can the rebels be beaten?’ That was the question which was passing through the minds of the nation’s leaders; all but one of them, the leader of leaders, soon to be. The calm look on Lincoln’s face when, on the Sabbath evening he first heard the mes- sage from Seward, told plainly enough what his answer would be. The “rebels” could be beaten, and would be beaten! There Lincoln was the incarnation of the thinking and feeling nation. He did not despair of the Republic. The Union could be preserved and would be preserved, though hell itself rose in arms against it. Out in Illinois a camp-meeting revival was in BULL RUN 31 session. The preacher read to the congregation the tidings of the battle, and then added: “Breth- ren, it is time to adjourn this meeting and go to drilling!” There spake the nation—time to ad- journ all else and go to drilling, and thence to fighting, until the Union was saved and democ- racy vindicated. Conspicuous among the dead on the field of battle at Bull Run were the red-clad soldiers of the New York Zouaves. When the flag was fired on at Sumter one of the first regiments which came pouring into Washington for the defense of the nation was the New York Zouaves, under the command of a boyish colonel, Ellsworth. When a young lawyer in Chicago, Ellsworth had or- ganized the Chicago Zouaves and had given ex- hibitions of their stirring drill in the chief eastern cities. He was acquainted with Lincoln and, when the war broke out, the regiment which he had organized out of the men of the fire depart- ment of New York City was one of the first ac- cepted for service. When Virginia finally for- mally seceded from the Union, President Lincoln had this regiment of Zouaves, together with the First Michigan Infantry, sent across the Potomac to Alexandria. From the White House Lincoln and his household had been able to see through a glass the Confederate flag flying over the Mar- shall House in Alexandria. As soon as Ellsworth reached the Virginia shore, he took a private with him and, entering the hotel, went to the roof and pulled down the flag. As he was descending, he was shot and killed by the proprietor of the hotel. This was the first casualty of the war on the soil of the seceded states and produced a thrill in the North second only to the firing on the flag at Sumter and the attack of the mob on the Sixth Massachusetts as it passed through Baltimore. 32 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS The young officer’s funeral was held in the East Room of the White House. As Lincoln gazed on the lifeless features he seemed to have a vision of what was to follow in the years to come, for the exclaimed, “My boy! My boy! Was it neces- sary this sacrifice should be made?” This attractive young colonel, over whose dead body Lincoln uttered that sigh of present and anticipated sorrow, was only the first fruits of a crimson harvest of the youth and manhood of the nation which the naked arm of war was to reap, ere the nation’s unity had been vindicated and peace established. By the time the mayflowers of 1865 were smiling peace upon the wounded nation, 359,528 young men were on record as hav- ing followed in the footsteps of Ellsworth. After Bull Run the nation awoke to the fact that it was at war, and that war meant suffering and death. II THE PENINSULA A MAGNIFICENT EPISODE “So long as life lasts the survivors of those glorious days will remember with quickened pulse the attitude of that army when it reached the goal for which it had striven with such transcend- ent heroism. Exhausted, depleted in numbers, bleeding at every pore, but still proud and de- fiant, and strong in the consciousness of a great feat of arms heroically accomplished, it stood ready to renew the struggle with undiminished ardor whenever its commander should give the word. It was one of those magnificent episodes which dignify a nation’s history and are fit sub- jects for the grandest efforts of the poet and the painter.”’ These words were the last ever written by General McClellan. They were found on his desk the morning after his sudden death in 1886. Had the General’s heart been opened, there would have been found written on it, “The Army of the Potomac.” His dying tribute to the army that fought with him during those desperate Seven Days in the Peninsula contained a true account of what transpired: “It was one of those mag- nificent episodes which dignify a nation’s his- tory.” But towards the great end in view, the defeat of the Confederate armies in the field and the overthrow of their government, this “magnifi- cent episode’ made a very small contribution. By the end of May, McClellan’s army, which 33 34 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS had been transported by water to Norfolk and had advanced slowly up the peninsula, lay about seven miles from Richmond, the goal of its march. The early successes of the Confederacy which had raised to so high a pitch the hopes of the people of the South had been followed by serious reverses in every area of the war. In the West Grant had taken Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, and had emerged a victor in the bloody battle fought in the solitudes of Shiloh, on the Tennes- see River. Farragut had taken New Orleans and the Confederacy was severed in twain. In the East the naval forces of the United States pa- trolled all the waters, and after the evacuation of Yorktown the famous ram, the Merrimac, un- able to put to sea without a port for supplies, and unable to proceed up the James to Richmond, had been broken up. Now the highly organized Army of the Potomac under General McClellan lay so close to Richmond that on a clear day the outposts could see the spires of the city churches and on a clear, still night could hear the bells strike the hour. That army was the grim and visible embodiment of an awakened nation’s indomitable purpose. The approach of McClellan’s well-drilled and splendidly equipped army caused no little misgiv- ing at Richmond. Jefferson Davis was visibly distressed and sought consolation in the hopes of the Christian faith, being baptized at his resi- dence and confirmed at St. Paul’s Church by Bishop Johns. The archives of the Confederate Government were collected and made ready to ship to Columbia, South Carolina, and trains with steam in the engines’ boilers lay ready to trans- port the members of the government. A heavy shadow had fallen across the face of the South. Upon nearing Richmond, McClellan had di- THE PENINSULA 35 vided his army into two sections. The greater part of the army lay north of the Chickahominy River, whence connection was had with the Union base at White House, on the Pamunkey, and near to the York River. Transports could come up the river and keep the army well sup- plied. But the selection of the York River as the base of operations was not McClellan’s first choice. It was determined by the fact that the Ist Corps, McDowell’s, which had been held back from his army and which was now stationed near Fredericksburg, was under orders to ad- vance across the country by land and join forces with McClellan. This necessitated the choice of the York, instead of the more practical James, for by maintaining a footing on the York, and to the north of Richmond, McClellan would be in a position to await the arrival of McDowell. But in order to keep an hostile front towards Rich- mond, to the south of the Chickahominy, Mc- Clellan kept two of his divisions, those under Keyes and Heintzleman, on the south side of the river. He was not unaware of the danger of such an arrangement, his army divided by a stream, and that stream likely at any time to flood the bridges, but felt that no other course was open to him. It was this exposed state of that portion of the Union Army on the south of the Chickahominy which prompted the Confederate commander, General Joseph E. Johnston, to attack in that quarter, hoping to annihilate the two corps be- fore McClellan could come to their rescue. This he attempted to accomplish on the 3lst day of May at Seven Pines. Because of the fact that his orders to the various commanders were given verbally, and not written, there was confusion and lack of co-ordination in the Confederate as- 36 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS sault. But as it was, they came dangerously near being successful. The advanced Union divisions were driven back in confusion, and it was only the arrival of Sumner on the field from the north bank of the river that saved the day. That noble officer had been stationed near the river with instructions to hold himself in readiness to cross over when the orders arrived. There had been heavy rains the night before and the bridges were already swaying dangerously in the flood when he reached them; but the weight of the men soon settled the bridges back on their piling and the crossing was effected without loss. The presence of these fresh troops turned the tide of battle and the Confederates drew off from the bloody field. In the closing hours of battle General Johnston was wounded and the command de- volved upon the next in rank, General G. W. Smith. On June Ist, General Robert E. Lee, who, after an unsuccessful campaign in West Virginia and some engineering work in the Carolinas, was acting in the capacity of military adviser to the Confederate Government, was appointed to suc- ceed Johnston. On the first day of June he did not go to the front, with chivalrous consideration giving General Smith a chance to win laurels on that day if the opportunity presented itself. The grimness of war is illustrated by an incident re- lated by General John B. Gordon, one of the Confederate commanders. As he rode forward into battle he saw among the wounded his nine- teen-year-old brother, a captain, shot through the lungs. He dared not turn aside even to ease the agony of a brother. This brother afterwards re- covered from his wounds, but only to perish in the battle of the Wilderness. After the repulse of the Confederate attack in the battle of Seven Pines, McClellan continued THE PENINSULA 37 to strengthen himself and to prepare for the in- vestment of Richmond. His reports to his gov- ernment are filled with complaints and calls for reinforcements. The weather, too, he declared was against him, forgetting, as Lincoln said after reading one of these reports, that the rain fell on the just and the unjust alike. His one great com- plaint, and a very proper one, was the continued withholding from his army of the fine corps un- der McDowell. This corps had been retained in the first instance because it was thought neces- sary for the defense of Washington. It was then directed to march in the direction of McClellan’s army, when the activities of “Stonewall” Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley caused it to be dis- patched into that quarter. The purpose of Jack- son’s outbreaks had been to draw off some of McClellan’s troops that were closing in upon Richmond, or at least keep reinforcements from joining him. In this Jackson was more than suc- cessful. But it seems not to have been a feeling of panic or insecurity at Washington, following Jackson’s victory over Banks at Winchester and his descent upon Harper’s Ferry, that dictated the diversion of McDowell from his true objective, McClellan’s army, but rather the hope that Mc- Dowell, Banks and Fremont together could catch the bold raider and crush him. The trap was care- fully laid, but Jackson outmarched them and out- guessed them. McDowell’s division had accom- plished nothing in that quarter, and on the other hand, its absence had greatly hampered McClel- lan. If McDowell had been permitted to join the Army of the Potomac, instead of being sent off on the wild-goose chase after Jackson, there is every reason to believe that Richmond must have fallen and, possibly, the war been ended. All this was bad. But the worst was yet to 38 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS come. It was bad that Jackson had slipped out of the steel trap that the Union officers had set for him; but it was well-nigh disastrous for Mc- Clellan that Jackson was permitted stealthily to withdraw his army from the Valley and get a position on the right flank of the Union Army. With three armies in the field to watch him and pursue him, the government at Washington could give McClellan no certain knowledge as to Jack- son’s whereabouts, and it was not until the after- noon of June 24th, just when he was about to make an advance towards Richmond, that Mc- Clellan learned that Jackson was marching to- wards his right. The plan of Lee was to attack that portion of McClellan’s army north of the Chickahominy and destroy it before succor could come. Jackson, by getting far around their right was to cut them off from their base at White House. The ex- posed divisions would be driven into the Chicka- hominy, and the rest of the army overwhelmed in the pestilential swamps or driven in confusion down the York River. McClellan’s advance had been timed for the twenty-sixth, but on that day the advanced pickets were being driven in by the Confederate advance and the great struggle which was to last for seven days was on. Jackson had notified Lee in council with his generals at Richmond, on the twenty-third of June, that he could get his men up by the morn- ing of the twenty-sixth, and the attack was ac- cordingly set for that day. As a matter of fact he did not get into position to do any fighting that day, and the Confederate attack under A. P. Hill spent itself in sanguinary and fruitless as- saults upon Porter’s advanced position at Beaver Dam Creek, where McCall’s splendid Pennsyl- vania Reserves stood like a wall of stone. South- THE PENINSULA 39 ern military writers lay great stress upon the fact that Jackson’s miscalculation and delay spoiled the chances of a complete victory for the Confederate Army. They do not seem to take into consideration the fact that Lee, as com- mander-in-chief, and responsible for all move- ments, ought to have known whether or not Jackson was up and ready before he let Hill go forward in the bloody and hopeless assault, in- stead of relying on word that Jackson had given him three days before. It is interesting to note that according to General Alexander, the reason for Jackson’s delay was that, being averse to military activity on the Sabbath, he had spent the previous Sunday in idlness at a house on the line of his march. The same general affirms that on the critical twenty-ninth of June McClellan was able to get through the White Oak Swamp only because of the inactivity of Jackson, who would exert neither himself nor his troops on the Lord’s Day. When McClellan learned of the attack on the right of his army posted north of the Chicka- hominy, he conceived what some have called the finest inspiration of his career, and others the movement which brought the Peninsula cam- paign to nothing and postponed for a number of years the ending of the Civil War. This was his plan to abandon his base on the York River at White House and fight his way across the penin- sula through the swamps and jungles to a new base on the James River. All his orders were now to that end, and once decided upon and in- augurated, no more difficult movement was ever carried out in so masterly a manner. There were scores of times when McClellan might have lost his army, and perhaps the Union cause, by a single false move; but that single mistake was 40 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS never made. The whole retrograde movement was a masterpiece of military brains. It has been maintained that while the greater portion of Lee’s army was attacking Porter and his few ‘thousands north of the Chickahominy, McClellan, had he possessed the daring and vision of a great commander, would have struck straight for Rich- mond, breaking his way through the few regi- ments that Magruder interposed between him and the Confederate capital. McClellan’s own ex- planation is that Lee was now well into his rear and in a position to sever his communications with the White House base, and that even if he had taken Richmond he would have been desti- tute of food. McClellan never gives a foolish reason for anything he did or refused to do. But undoubtedly a more bold commander would have taken the chance and pushed for Richmond. After the repulse of Lee at Beaver Dam, Por- ter received orders to fall back to a strong posi-~ tion at Gaines’ Mill covering the approaches to the bridges over the Chickahominy. Here on the twenty-seventh of June was staged one of the most gallant achievements of the whole war. Hour after hour, Lee and his sixty thousand flung themselves upon Porter and his twenty-five thousand. It was not until evening that the Union line was broken and Porter fell back to the last summit between him and the Chicka- hominy, night putting an end to the conflict. It was a magnificent stand, in every way comparable to that of Thomas, the “Rock of Chickamauga,” when the Confederate Army flung itself upon him at the close of that disastrous September day in 1863, when Rosecrans was driven back into Chattanooga. Porter’s great effort was partly inspired by the thought that through his holding on McClellan would smash his way into THE PENINSULA 41 Richmond. Porter was beloved and admired by McClellan, yet the latter gave him but slender support, apparently being engrossed with the plan of getting his army started for the James River. No officer rendered more brilliant service in the Peninsula than Porter. His subsequent career was one of sorrow and controversy. A court-martial found him guilty of insubordina- tion and disobedience of orders in the second battle of Bull Run and he was dismissed from the army, ‘‘and forever disqualified from holding any office of trust under the government of the United States.” In 1878 his case was reopened, but all that could be done was to remove the dis- qualification. Grant took his part in an article in the North American entitled, ‘‘An Undeserved Stigma.” In 1886, after a similar bill had been vetoed by President Arthur, President Hayes signed the bill restoring Porter to rank in the United States Army. On the night of the twenty-seventh of June, McClellan gathered his generals about him near the south entrance of the Alexander bridge and discussed with them the movements of the next days. The project of assaulting Richmond was discussed, but the general opinion was for the move towards the James. In giving the orders for this movement, McClellan completely deceived Lee, who thought that he would either try to fight his way back to his base at White House or retreat down the York River in the direction of Norfolk. It never dawned upon him that Mc- Clellan was plunging into the swamps, headed for the James. For these reasons, Lee held his troops north of the Chickahominy, sending some to White House only to find an abandoned base, and some of them down the Chickahominy to hold bridges which McClellan had no idea of at- 42 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS tempting to cross. Thus while Lee was waiting to strike at McClellan as he attempted to move down the Peninsula along the York, McClellan was putting his enormous trains, like a huge ser- ‘pent, in motion through the defiles of the jungle and the swamps. To appreciate the difficulty of McClellan’s un- dertaking, one must travel through the country itself. The soil is a mixture of clay and quick- sand, the rains of spring and summer quickly turning the roads into a morass. The roads wind through growths of stunted oaks and pines, cross- ing over innumerable streams, themselves incon- siderable, but quickly overflowing all their banks and carrying away their bridges. In the more remote regions the few roads lead through dis- mal swamps and bayous, noisome and pestilential with their vapors and dark with the shadows of the low branching trees whose limbs are cov- ered with melancholy vines. Never was there a region so difficult for the march of an army or so unfavorable to the spirits of the soldiers. Through such a waste as this it was that Mc- Clellan led his army in the last days of June, 1862. That it was ever accomplished is a monu- ment to the military skill of its leader and the discipline of the army itself. The first concern was for the trains, these taking the roads and the soldiers marching alongside. Twenty-five hundred beef cattle went bellowing before the host, now weary and lying down in the roads re- gardless of the blows and oaths of their drivers, and now stricken with panic and rushing forward with menace for the soldiers. Owing to Lee’s miscalculations as to his move- ments, McClellan had a whole day’s, start in the race for the James. But Lee was soon on his rear, striking at him on the twenty-ninth at THE PENINSULA 43 Savage Station, where McClellan left behind twenty-five hundred sick and wounded, and again on the thirtieth, at Frazier’s Farm, where roads led to the James River. Jackson failed Lee at White Oak Swamp, on the twenty-ninth, spending all day either resting or rebuilding the bridge over the Chickahominy, so that the last Federal regi- ments passed in safety out of the dangerous defile. The final struggle in the week of battles was at Malvern Hill, where McClellan had posted his army in an impregnable position. In a series of disjointed attacks, worse than at Gettysburg, Lee suffered a bloody repulse, leaving the fields be- fore the Crew house covered with the slain. He then drew back towards Richmond and McClellan stationed his army at Harrison’s Landing. Mc- Clellan had not lost a single regiment and his army on the retreat had inflicted greater damages on their enemies than they themselves had re- ceived. Nevertheless, the sentimental victory was with Lee. He had to all appearances driven McClellan down the Peninsula away from Rich- mond and raised the siege of the capital. As a matter of fact, McClellan was in a better position than ever for an offensive and still only about fifteen miles from Richmond. Had he been re- inforced and leit to his own devices, he would have taken the city. But the government ruled otherwise, and the gallant army which had made one of the most marvelous retrograde movements in all history was re-embarked and sent to rein- force Pope. The final protest of McClellan against this policy was prophetic: “Here is the true defense of Washington. It is here on the banks of the James that the fate of the Union should be decided.” And so it was. Grant com- menced in 1864 where McClellan left off in 1862. Among the great figures in the supreme crisis 44 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS - of American history, there is no one over whom there has been in the past, and is likely to be in the future, so much controversy as George B. Mc- Clellan. The sixty-one years which have elapsed since the close of the war have sifted out the characters of many an actor on that great stage and settled many a controversy. But time seems not to settle the dispute over McClellan. What was he? An incompetent boaster, sublime egoist, procrastinator, or a devoted patriot and a military genius of the first order, who, if he had been left unmolested by his government, would have brought the war to a quick conclusion? Of one thing we may be sure, McClellan dur- ing the critical days of his campaign in the Penin- sula was convinced that the authorities at Wash- ington wished him to fail and were withholding | from him troops and information so that he would fail. He was a Democrat, the idol of the Army, was opposed to the plans of the Abolitionists, and for these reasons a case has been made out that the Cabinet, particularly Stanton, was determined to break him. If so, this was accomplished when his army was withdrawn from the Peninsula. In private letters to McClellan, Stanton protests his friendship, but against this there are perplexing statements on the part of Secretary Wells and Blair, indicating great enmity towards McClellan on the part of Stanton. When it was proposed that Lincoln restore McClellan to command, which he did after Pope’s disaster at Second Bull Run, Stanton was in a rage, and declared that he would prefer the loss of the capital to the resto- ration of McClellan to command of the Army. Probably it was Lincoln more than Stanton who was responsible for the great military blunder of withholding at the last moment McDowell and the Ist Corps; but it is difficult to show that the THE PENINSULA 45 government ever deliberately sought to undermine McClellan and destroy his campaign. That is un- thinkable. McClellan had too morbid a distrust of, together with too proud a scorn for, his civil superiors. This distrust and anger found its most unlicensed expression in the famous report which McClellan sent to Stanton from Savage Station, on June 28, 1862, two days after the movement towards the James had commenced. In this re- port he insists that with ten thousand reserves he could take Richmond. He concludes this ex- traordinary indictment of his government with this final thrust: “I feel too earnestly to- night. I have seen too many dead and wounded comrades to feel otherwise than that the gov- ernment has not sustained this army. If you do not do so now, the game is lost. If I save this army now, I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you or to any other persons in Washington. You have done your best to sacrifice this army.” Military writers are wont to dismiss McClellan by saying that he was a great organizer rather than a great leader. That he was a great organ- izer and drillmaster none has ever disputed. Only an army that had been thoroughly organ- ized could ever have stood the strain of the re- treat across the Peninsula, marching by night and fighting by day, yet maintaining its organic unity and its splendid spirit. The rabble and and horde of Bull Run had become an army. McClellan’s second feat as an organizer was when he took the remnants of Pope’s beaten army and the fragments of his own former army on the seventh of September, 1862, and quickly transformed this military mob into the magnificent machine which within ten days broke the sword of Lee’s in- vasion on the banks of the Antietam. But the careful student will see at once that 46 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS to accomplish this work of reorganization it took more than a mere organizer, a man of plans and details. What it required was above all a great personality. A great, a magnetic personality, ‘McClellan undoubtedly was. Without this in- definable power and attraction of personality, McClellan’s trained mind and military brain could never have accomplished the miracle of twice making over the Army of the Potomac and in- spiring it to fight. No general in the whole war, on either side, so moved the hearts of the soldiers under him as did McClellan. His presence on the line immediately evoked enthusiastic cheer- ing, and McClellan was not far from the truth when he wrote, “I think there is scarcely a man in this whole army who would not give his life for me.” Here was a man who had the greatest and most to be envied power and influence that Heaven bestows upon her children. Before him masses of men were like the waving corn when the wind breathes softly through it on a Septem- ber evening. With this extraordinary personal influence, the strange thing is that McClellan made so little use of it. He was seldom seen near the front during a battle. At Williamsburg he was twelve miles in the rear. At Seven Pines he was across the river at Gaines’ Mill; during the desperate fighting of the Seven Days he was always away from his men, pre- paring in advance the position of the army for the next day. At Malvern Hill he sat smoking on the Galena in the river, with the thunders of the battle rolling about him, and Heintzleman sending messages that his absence depressed his men and disastrous results might ensue. At Antietam much of his time was spent out of sight of the battle at his headquarters, although he does say that on the afternoon of the seventeenth he rode in among the men of Sedgwick’s division and THE PENINSULA 47 rallied them in person. McClellan had a tender heart and a great distaste for the horrible sights of the bat- tlefield. This may have had something to do with his keeping aloof from the men when they were in action. But the chief reason was that he considered it to be the function of the commander-in-chief to receive re- ports of the progress of the battle and issue orders ac- cordingly, rather than provoke cheering by appearing on the line. The fact that he never made any serious mistake nor sacrificed his troops without inflicting a greater loss on the enemy may be attributed in great part to his habit of seclusion during an engagement. That the spell which McClellan cast over his friends was not broken even by the hatred and animosities of the war, is shown by a letter which Pickett, afterwards of everlasting fame at Gettysburg, wrote to his wife on June 1, 1862, at the close of the fight at Seven Pines: “I have heard that my dear old friend, Mc- Clellan, is lying ill about ten miles from here. May some loving, soothing hand minister to him. He was, he is, and will always be, even were his pistol pointed at my heart, my dear, loved friend. May God bless him and spare his life.”’ When all has been said that can be said, the Penin- sular Campaign still remains the mystery of the Civil War. Here was a great army, splendidly drilled, or- ganized and equipped, full of confidence in and burn- ing with affection for its commander, with implicit faith in the righteousness and moral grandeur of its cause, and with a fighting spirit unsurpassed by any army during the whole war; yet it accomplished noth- ing save a glorious defeat. The lack of results is not to be attributed to the military genius of the gen- eral commanding the opposing army, for no stu- dent of the campaign, no matter how under the spell of Robert E. Lee, can claim for him any brilliance of action or design during the days that he followed McClellan down the Peninsula. At 48 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS the very outset he permitted himself to be com- pletely misled as to the direction the latter was going to take, whether along the York or towards the James. Then he allowed McClellan to pass without injury through the dangerous defiles of the great swamp, the Confederate movements be- ing without co-ordination or timeliness; and this blunder at the beginning and the mismanagement while McClellan was getting out of the swamp— for this was Lee’s golden opportunity—were crowned by the colossal folly of the bloody assault at Malvern Hill. The generalship of Lee, then, is not the solution of the enigma or the explana- tion of the complete failure of the Federal cam- paign. It is a mystery. The nearest we can come to the penetration of the mystery is to say, not that McClellan could not make the army fight, for no army ever fought more gallantly or with more ardor and dangerous courage, but that for some unaccountable cause, something within the mentality of McClellan himself, which yet eludes definition, he could not lead his army to great victory. There are two National cemeteries in the Pen- insula country. One of them is near the Frazier’s Farm battlefield on the edge of the White Oak Swamp. Here the dead from the fields of the Seven Days’ fighting were buried, having been collected from swamp and bayous and thickets and sandy fields. The fine brick walls of the cemetery with the ivy trailing over it and the well-kept lawns within the walls contrast strangely with the desolate wilderness of tangled thickets and malarial swamps which surround it. I had been wandering on a summer’s day over the bat- tlefields between Seven Pines and Malvern Hill, following the retreat of McClellan and locating the places where, like a wounded lion, his army MAAIN SHWNV( AHL NO AWHV NOINN YOd SHIIddNS ONIGNVWJ THE PENINSULA 49 from time to time turned savagely at bay and fought off its pursuers. But nothing had I seen, save here and there a few mounds where the breastworks had run, to remind me of the fear- ful conflict that had been staged there. Suddenly I came upon the walls of the cemetery and saw the flag of the nation floating over the pines and the live oaks. Within were the seried ranks of little white markers, the known and the unknown - dead. I used to feel, when I visited other National cemeteries, that there was a sad difference be- tween the graves of the known and the unknown dead. But today, in this solitary cemetery, in the midst of the swamps, I felt that there was lit- tle difference. All alike, whether with name and regiment and state noted, or just with a number, were now unknown. “John Wilson—Fifth Ohio Cavalry” seemed just as lonely and forgotten as “No. 10—Unknown.” Of all the cemeteries I have visited this seemed to me the saddest, the loneliest. Few ever pass the cemetery by that road through the swamps and fewer still pause to enter the gate and look upon the graves of the heroic dead. Such is the irony of war. The great war comes in its day; the drums beat and the crowds cheer and throw their kisses and strew their roses. Then, behind a cloud of yellow dust, the soldiers vanish into the black cloud of battle- smoke that hovers over the battlefield. When that smoke has lifted, mangled, dehumanized forms are collected and buried together in long rows. White stones are put over the graves and a wall is builded around them. A veteran of the war is established in the keeper’s house with a large book wherein visitors may sign their names. Once a year, on Memorial Day, survivors of a regiment may meet and an oration is made. Then 50 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS silence and oblivion for another year. As the. years pass, the soldiers’ sacrifice and suffering and death are forgotten, despite our eloquent periods about the “immortal dead.” So it was that this lonely cemetery in the White Oak Swamp where McClellan’s lads sleep together beneath the live oaks and the pines, was to me a symbol of the loneliness, the suffering, the ob- scurity and oblivion which overtake the soldier. Whenever I hear the martial music and the rat- tle of the accoutrements and see the glinting of the sun on the cannon and hear the huzzas of the multitude or listen to the glowing periods of the patriotic orator, I see, as in a vision, that quiet little cemetery with the ivy walls sheltering the graves yonder in the wilderness. Il ANTIETAM Aw Oxtp MAN’s PROPHECY The hill country through which Lee retreated after the battle of Gettysburg is of unsurpassed beauty and grandeur. There the Blue Ridge Mountains, which more than any other chain of mountains seem to represent American character and life, are to be seen at their best. At the point where the railway train commences its descent towards Hagerstown one stands in the center of a great arena of the Civil War. We usually think of Gettysburg as a northern and Antietam as a southern battlefield, forgetting that not more than fifty miles separates them. Back of you is Gettysburg, to the left of you South Mountain, the prelude to Antietam, and in the plain before you, Hagerstown, the little Antietam Creek, the village of Sharpsburg, and in the dis- tance, where the Shenandoah and Potomac join their waters, quaint old Harper’s Ferry. After the rout of Pope’s army at Second Bull Run, Lee planned his first invasion of northern territory. His plan was much the same as in the Gettysburg campaign of the following year: to hold communications with Richmond by the Shenandoah Valley, threaten Pennsylvania, and draw the Army of the Potomac away from its base. As the first fruits of the campaign he hoped for thousands of recruits the moment the Stars and the Bars was unfurled on the soil of St 52 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS Maryland. Lee hoped for a victory before the national elections, and so confident of success was he that he wrote to Jefferson Davis suggest- ing that he accompany the army and be ready to make proposals for peace and independence at the head of a victorious host. In these expec- tations Lee was to be bitterly disappointed. The ragged, unkempt appearance of his shoeless le- gions as they forded the Potomac, singing lustily, “Maryland! My Maryland!” was in itself enough to keep the prosperous farmers of that state from joining such an army. As these tatterdemalion soldiers marched past her house, one ardent Con- federate sympathizer exclaimed, “God bless your dirty, ragged souls!” When Lee’s army took up the march from Fredericksburg on its way towards Hagerstown, it passed the quiet cemetery in Frederick where Francis Scott Key, the author of “The Star- Spangled Banner,” lay sleeping beneath the Sep- tember leaves. We wonder what thoughts passed through the minds of Lee and Jackson and other of the officers who had served under the old ban- ner and had uncovered their heads when the stirring hymn was sung. We wonder, when “My Maryland!” was on every lip, if in a few hearts at least, there was not vibrating the melody of the older song. "Tis the Star-Spangled Banner; O long may it wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave. The capital was filled with stragglers and the contents of the arsenal were being shipped to New York, when a trim-looking officer with a yellow sash about his waist rode out to meet the dispirited army which was retreating from the field of Second Bull Run. The wild cheering ANTIETAM a which rolled like a wave from regiment to regi- ment and from division to division as he rode past, told plainly enough that the trim-looking officer who had superseded the vainglorious Pope was General McClellan. This master or- ganizer quickly brought order out of chaos and soon had the army ready for the field. In doubt as to the purpose of Lee, he marched slowly up the north side of the Potomac until, at Fred- erick, one of the chances of war gave him full information as to the movements of the Con- federate Army. There was a strong Union garri- son at Harper’s Ferry and also one at Martins- burg. These troops not only menaced Lee’s communications with the Shenandoah Valley, but offered a tempting prize to the Confederate leader. Jackson, McLaws and Walker were or- dered to capture the garrison at Martinsburg and Harper’s Ferry, and then join the main army at Hagerstown en route for the Cumberland Valley. A copy of these orders had been used as a wrapper for a package of tobacco and was found at Frederick when the Federal Army entered that place. McClellan saw his opportunity to crush Lee before the divisions at Harper’s Ferry could rejoin him. To this end he advanced over the South Mountain, carrying Turner’s Gap and Crampton Gap after a spirited resistance. But at the same time Harper’s Ferry had capitulated and Jackson was hurrying back to join his chief. The fact that McClellan knew his position and plan of campaign had been revealed to Lee by a citizen of Frederick who was at McClellan’s headquarters when the dispatch was read and had hastened to warn the Confederate leader. In the four years of marching and fighting no finer piece of military work was done than the investment and capture of Harper’s Ferry by 54 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS ‘Stonewall’ Jackson just on the eve of the battle of Antietam. When Lee crossed the Potomac into Maryland, he expected that Harper’s Ferry, garrisoned by 10,000 Federals, would be evacu- ated. McClellan suggested this sound measure to Halleck, but it was treated with contempt and the garrison was left to its fate. Both neces- sity and opportunity, therefore, prompted Lee to capture the garrison: necessity, because of the risk of leaving so large a body in the way of his retreat after any movement into Pennsylvania; opportunity, because of the tempting prize, more than ten thousand troops. Once again, in spite of Longstreet’s protest, he decided to risk a divi- sion of his army. Jackson was dispatched to take Harper’s Ferry, and the rest of the army was put in motion for Hagerstown, the gateway to the Cum- berland Valley. Jackson was to cross the Poto- mac to the west of Harper’s Ferry, capturing or driving before him the garrison of three thou- sand men at Martinsburg, and then close in on Harper’s Ferry from the west, while Walker seized Loudon Heights across the Shenandoah from Harper’s Ferry, and McLaws, Maryland Heights. From either of these eminences artil- lery could dominate the Federal position on Boli- var Heights, back of Harper’s Ferry. With a precision like that of clock work, these move- ments were made, and on the morning of the fifteenth Harper’s Ferry, hopelessly beleaguered, surrendered. After McClellan had carried the mountain passes, Lee slowly withdrew to the vicinity of Sharpsburg. At eight o’clock on the evening of the fourteenth Lee ordered one of his divisions to withdraw into Virginia, but two hours later he changed his mind and decided to make a stand at Sharpsburg. With only nineteen thousand i i .- ANTIETAM 55 men he turned to face the whole Army of the Potomac under its favorite general. In the entire military career of Lee he never planned a bolder or more hazardous movement. But as we shall see, the fortunes of war were with his army. Moreover, the high expectations which the South entertained for this campaign perhaps induced Lee to fight a battle before he withdrew into Virginia. Sharpsburg is a straggling little town five miles north of the Potomac. A mile or two east and north of the town is a range of hills and bluffs, at the base of which flows the Antietam Creek. Along these hills Lee stationed his army. The Antietam was on his front and the Potomac six miles in his rear. His position was strong for a defensive battle, but exceedingly dangerous in the event of defeat. It was against such a position that McClellan flung his great army on the bloodiest day of the Civil War, September 17, 1862. McClellan might have attacked with the cer- tainty of victory on the fifteenth. But his cus- tomary caution and habit of exaggerating the strength of the army opposed to him kept him from striking when he could not have failed, for Lee was not joined by Jackson until the morning of the sixteenth. As it was, the Union Army still vastly outnumbered the Confederate.* Lee brought into the fight 39,500 men, McClellan 78,000. On the afternoon and evening of the sixteenth Hooker and Mansfield crossed the An- tietam on the Union right, and at six o’clock the next morning these troops commenced the san- guinary struggle. On this part of the field *Stanton, the Secretary of War, commenting on McClel- lan’s habit of overestimating the strength of his enemy, de- clared that if he had a million men he would swear the enemy had two million and would then sit down in the mud and holler for another million. 56 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS honors were even. The Dunkard church in the woods was taken by the Federals and then re-. taken by Jackson’s men, The most fearful slaughter of the day took place in a sunken road- way on the Confederate left-center, where the men of D. H. Hill and R. H. Anderson lay in- trenched in this natural rifle-pit. To this day the road is called “Bloody Lane.’ In one part of the field a Confederate officer said to an- other officer, “Why do you not move that line of battle to make it conform to your own?” look- ing at a line of men lying in ranks. The answer was, ‘““These men are all dead; they are Georgia soldiers.” The key to the battlefield was the stone bridge over the Antietam on the Confederate right. Today the bridge is a quiet and peaceful spot where one can rest on a summer day and listen to the music of the little stream as it babbles over the rocks below. But that stream, if it were so minded, could tell another story. On the day of the bat- tle the bridge was choked with bodies and the river beneath flowed crimson to the Potomac. While Hooker and Mansfield and Sumner were adventuring their lives on the high places of the field to the right, Burnside, at eight o’clock in the morning, was ordered to carry the bridge. It seems that any battle about a bridge is sure to live in history; witness Lodi, Bothwell, and Horatius. This bridge did not escape such gen- erous immortality and is now known as the “Burnside Bridge.’’ Four times Burnside and the Ninth Corps tried to carry the bridge and four times they were driven back. At one o’clock they finally succeeded, and at three o’clock Cox stormed the hills beyond and drove in the Con- federate right. For a few moments it looked like a complete overthrow of the Confederate Army. IWW.LATUNY A dN Oa Gala ANTIETAM 57 But just as the Confederate right wing was giv- ing way, the men of A. P. Hill, marching back from the spoils of Harper’s Ferry and clad in the blue uniforms they had taken there, came rush- ing through the cornfields and drove Burnside’s men back to the bridge and saved the day for Lee. The tide of battle had ebbed and flowed all day, and when night put an end to the fight neither side could claim the victory. But the invasion of the North had been checked with iron and blood; and after lying all the next day in his lines and waiting for McClellan to attack him again, Lee withdrew across the Potomac, taking nothing but glory with him and having filled far more graves than he had gained recruits. In the North the battle was hailed as a victory, and Lincoln, keeping his “Covenant with God’—for he had promised God that if Lee were driven out of Maryland he would crown the result by freeing the slaves—saluted the victory with the Proclamation of Emancipation. | Near Burnside Bridge is the monument of the 100th Pennsylvania, the famous ‘Roundhead”’ regiment, made up of psalm-singing Presbyterians of western Pennsylvania. They were the “Iron- sides” of the Army of the Potomac and their deeds at Antietam will live as long as those of Cromwell’s heroes at Naseby and Marston Moor. With his rifle across his arm, his back to the Antietam, his brow high and lifted up, the bronze figure of the “Roundhead” sums up and symbol- izes that moral earnestness and faith in God which fought the Civil War to a successful issue, The Civil War was a soldiers’ war, and as the years increase, the fame of commanding officers will grow less and less and the fame of the private in the ranks will grow apace. The Union 58 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS was preserved by the undismayed fortitude and unshrinking courage of the men in the ranks, and of those men the “Roundhead” was a goodly type. The stone church of the Dunkards, or “foot- washers,” was the scene of heavy fighting on the Confederate left. There is a strange irony in the bitterness of the conflicts of the Civil War which raged about country churches—Shiloh, Antietam and Salem Church—and some of these battles broke the quiet of the Sabbath. This little church at Antietam was first used as a hospital and then as a morgue. Not far away was “Bloody Lane,’ but now, instead of being heaped for half a mile with moaning, dying lads who had stabbed and hacked each other till they could fight no more, it was covered with clover and dandelions and wild roses. Methinks that never blooms the rose so red As where some buried Cesar bled. Of all the National cemeteries, I think that at Antietam the most beautiful. More dead sleep there than at Gettysburg—4,759 in all, and 1,850 unknown. Eighteen hundred and fifty homes North and South waiting anxiously for news from the front, looking down the road for the postman to see if he would bring them any tidings of John or Thomas or Charles or Henry. Days passing into weeks, weeks into months, months into years. A nameless grave on Antietam’s banks, and in thousands of homes and hearts a nameless pain. On one stone erected by the mourning father and mother of a lad in an Illinois cavalry regiment, I saw the legend, “He died in the advance.” And with this they comforted their broken hearts. There we left them all, ANTIETAM 59 known and unknown, officer and private, brave actors who gave all that man can give in a mighty adventure of the human spirit. Your own proud land’s heroic soil Must be your fittest grave. She claims from war his richest spoil, The ashes of the brave. On the days following the battle the friends and relatives of the dead and wounded came to claim their own. Among these was Oliver Wen- dell Holmes. In a charming essay, “My Hunt After the Captain,” he tells how he came to An- tietam to find his wounded son. On the night after the battle he received a message, “Wounded in the neck, though (or thought) not serious.” He left Boston the next morning and came to Philadelphia and then by Baltimore as far as Frederick City. There he commenced to search the churches and barns and houses which were full of wounded men. When he reached the vi- cinity of the battlefield, he was informed that his son had recovered and gone back to Baltimore. To Baltimore and Philadelphia the anxious father retraced his steps only to find that hope deferred maketh the heart sick. Finally, at Harrisburg, he boarded a train from Hagerstown filled with wounded. In one of the front seats of the first car he saw his “Captain.” “How are you, boy?” “How are you, dad?’ were the only words of their matter-of-fact greeting, but the father con- fesses that the heart was saying far different words. The “Captain” is now the venerable As- sociate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Antietam was the high-water mark for one day’s carnage during the war. Less than three 60 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS years before, at Charlestown, Virginia, within sound of the guns of Antietam, an old man was led down the steps of the jail to be hanged by the neck until dead. As he left the prison he handed to his guards a last message to his coun- trymen: “I, John Brown, am now 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.” As I leaned over the Burnside Bridge and watched the shadows of the giant sycamores playing on the face of the murmuring stream, my mind ran back to that September morning of 1862, when the sun had risen upon a peaceful landscape where every prospect pleased. The little river flowed quietly under its stone bridges, the smoke rose from the houses of the thrifty burghers, and the sentient fields of corn stood waiting for the reaper’s hand, little dreaming that a sterner hand was to garner them that day. When the moon came up over the distant mountains, it looked down upon an- other scene. The rows of corn, swept by the sleet of lead, lay prostrate and trampled. The trim hedges and fences were broken and scat- tered, the orchards were mangled and splintered; in the great barns the surgeons with bare and bloody arms cut and sawed in the flickering light of the lantern, while the cattle looked on with dumb awe; and down by the river banks, and in the river, and under the bridges, along the roads and lanes, in the trampled grain and beneath the wounded trees, thousands of young men, most of them under twenty-one, lay still and rigid, their white faces pleading a mute protest to the autumnal moon. Had John Brown’s prophecy about the atonement of blood come true? IV HARPER’S FERRY A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS When I awoke this morning, I saw from my bed- room window the noble gorge of the Potomac, where it takes the Shenandoah (Daughter of the Stars) into its bosom, and the reinforced river breaks a way for itself through the Blue Ridge. Seen by daylight, with the smoke from the locomotives rising out of the deep valley of the Potomac, with here and there a spiral of smoke from the factories of the little town, and the bald eagle floating in the empyrean far above Loudon Heights; or when “the moon takes up the wondrous tale and nightly to the listening earth repeats the wonders of her birth,” and the shadows of the great hills are reflected in the two rivers, and holy, invio- lable, mysterious night casts her spell over the three great mountains and the two historic streams, the scene is memorable, therapeutic for hurt minds; in- structive in patriotism, too, for if you would breathe the atmosphere of real America, you must visit the Blue Ridge Mountains south of the Potomac. I know of just two picturesquely quaint towns on this continent. One is Quebec, crowned on her rock on the St. Lawrence; the other is Harper’s Ferry. The town starts where the two rivers join their waters, and works its way up the steep hill towards Bolivar Heights. Venerable brick and stone houses, with three stories on the down side and two on the side up the hill; and on the down side a porch, or “gallery” as they call it, and over brick and stone walls the trailing 61 62 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS vine or red rose, make you think that you are in an ancient English or French town. ‘That impression is not lessened when you learn that the chief street which takes you up to the heights is called the “High” Street. Slowly these fine old houses are giving way to modern edifices with garage and garish attendants. ‘Therefore, if you would see this quaintest town of America be- fore its glory and charm have departed, come now. Try it on an October day, when the glow of the golden- rod is over the fields and all the mountainsides are bright with the brown and scarlet and gold of the autumn. On a warm July afternoon, in 1859, an old man alighted from the Baltimore and Ohio train at Sandy Hook, a station on the Maryland side of the Potomac, and three miles below Harper’s Ferry. “Isaac Smith,” the old man gave as his name and said that he was one of a party which was to prospect for minerals. He wanted to rent a farm where his party could live while carrying on their mining explorations. An obliging native took him out the river road to what was, and is now called, the Kennedy farm, five miles from Harper’s Ferry on the Maryland side. He paid thirty-five dollars in cash for the use of the farm from July to March. The old man was John Brown, and the men who soon gathered from all parts of the coun- try were the members of his “Gideon band” of de- liverers. Oliver Brown, one of the raiders and a son of John Brown, a few days before the raid wrote to a friend, “Tf we succeed, some day there will be a United States flag over this house—if we do not, it will be considered a den of land pirates and thieves.’’ One who cares to visit that farmhouse might wish that either prophecy had come true, for either with a flag on it, or com- monly regarded a den of land pirates, it would have been easy to find. The place lives neither in glory nor in disgrace; it has been forgotten, and only the most HARPER S PERRY 63 careful searching will lead the wanderer to that house where John Brown dreamed his strange dream of negro emancipation. The farm lies in a wilderness back of the Maryland Heights. The house is brick below and frame above, with a gallery in front. Its situation, a hundred yards or more back from the public highway, suited the pur- pose of Brown, for the raiders could always see the approach of a stranger or visitor, and have time to hide in the attic. In this attic they had stored the nine hundred pikes and the rifles. A mile from the farm is the Dunkard church where John Brown worshipped and frequently exhorted. It was a Sunday evening in October when, after Bi- ble reading and prayer, Brown and his men sallied forth from his house and made the attack on the town. They first took possession of the railroad bridge and then seized the arsenal and the rifle factory. The night watchman who took the second turn at the bridge, Patrick Higgins, was still living at Sandy Hook upon my first visit to Harper’s Ferry, and told me a graphic story of the events of that. memorable night and the day following. On his head there was still to be seen the scar made by a bullet from Oliver Brown’s rifle when he ran from the raiders on the bridge. The news of the attack soon reached Washington and steps were taken to protect the government prop- erty. Colonel R. E. Lee happened to be at that time in Washington on furlough. He was dispatched to Harper’s Ferry with a company of marines. He reached the town on Tuesday morning and at once proceeded to take Brown and his men. The sudden attack, the seizing of prominent citizens and holding them as hostages, the unknown leader and the igno- rance as to the purpose of the conspiracy had thrown the whole community into the wildest excitement. During the preparations for the assault on the engine 64 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS house by Lee’s men, one of the negroes with Brown leveled his rifle at Colonel Lee and was about to fire when one of the hostages warned him to desist, telling him that he was about to fire on an officer of the United States Army. lLee’s aide was Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart, afterwards the famous cavalry leader. When he went with a flag of truce to tell Brown the terms of Lee, the old man met him with a cocked car- bine. Stuart had seen service on the Kansas frontier and at once recognized “Isaac Smith’ as “Osawato- mie’ Brown. After his capture, marked by brutal and barbarous acts on the part of the infuriated townsmen and farm- ers, Brown was taken to Charlestown, the county seat of Jefferson County. The terrible dread of a servile insurrection was in the heart of Virginia, and made the conviction and execution of Brown a foregone conclusion. Cannon were planted so as to sweep the courthouse and militia were parked about the square. Found guilty on three counts, conspiracy, treason and murder, the stern old Covenanter, still suffering from a bayonet stab, was brought in for sentence. When asked if he had anything to say, he made an address to the Court and the jury which Emerson places next to the Gettysburg oration of Lincoln. He concluded with these words: “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 so to them. It teaches me further to remember them that are in bonds as bound with them. I say, I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done—in be- half 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 OVC) C= ov VW AG SCEN A Vat iL SHOAZIPUIY Alloy Ss Jodie yy ‘ puryAriepy SuUMOIg uUYyof ‘ uosyoe f SINGSYIJopsty ‘uolsue py dAIVIY IT pue oo7 Jo s9e[q sBUIJIBIY 4ST HARPER’S FERRY | 65 whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel and unjust enactments, I submit; so let it be.” In one of the last méssages which he sent the night before he died, Brown had written: “I have asked to be spared from having any mock or hypocritical pray- ers made over me, when I am publicly murdered; and that my only religious attendants be poor, little, dirty, ragged, bareheaded, and barefooted slave boys and girls led by some old grayheaded slave mother.” Per- haps suggested by this last request, a familiar painting has given currency to a pretty legend which sprang up after the execution of Brown, about his taking a negro baby out of its mother’s arms and kissing it as he was on his way to the gallows. But in that day of tense excitement and dread foreboding, it is unlikely that any negro would have ventured near the scene of execution. As he rode in a spring wagon with his own coffin, Brown said to the men who were to do him to death: “This is a beautiful country. I have never noticed it before.”’ This was as near to an ex- pression of desire for more of the sweet liberty of life as the doomed man permitted himself to come. The day before his execution Brown was visited by his wife, Mary. Only for a moment or two when they first met did either husband or wife give way to grief. Gravely they talked together concerning the education of the soon-to-be-fatherless children, spoke contentedly of the coming event, and then parted for this world. Mrs. Brown was driven back to Harper’s Ferry, and there in the little hotel, mourning for her sons because they were not, and refusing to be com- forted, she waited until the word came that Virginia was through with John Brown and that she might now have his lifeless body. Among the militia martialed about the gallows, lest the spirit of the mountains should come suddenly down and liberate him, were two other men whose names will live as long as that of the abolitionist himself. One 66 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS was John Wilkes Booth. The other was “Stonewall” Jackson, who had come up with a company of cadets from the Virginia Military Institute at Lexington. In a letter to his wife, Jackson thus describes the scene: “December 2d. John Brown was hung today at about half-past eleven. He behaved with unflinching firmness. The arrangements were well made and well executed under the direction of Colonel Smith. The gibbet was erected in a large field south of the town. Brown rode on the head of his coffin from his prison to the place of execution. The coffin was of black walnut, enclosed in a box of poplar of the same shape as the coffin. He was dressed in a black frock coat, black pantaloons, black vest, black slouch hat, white socks and slippers of predominating red. There was nothing round his neck but his shirt collar. The open wagon in which he rode was strongly guarded on all sides. Capt. Williams marched immediately in front of the wagon. The jailer, high sheriff, and several others rode in the same wagon with the prisoner. Brown had his arms tied behind him, and ascended the scaffold with apparent cheerfulness. After reaching the top of the plat- form, he shook hands with several who were standing round him. The sheriff placed the rope around his neck, then threw a white cap over his head, and asked him if he wished a signal when all should be ready. He replied that it made no difference, provided he was not kept wait- ing too long. In this condition he stood for about ten minutes on the trapdoor. Colonel Smith then announced to the sheriff ‘all ready —which apparently was not com- prehended by him, and the colonel had to repeat the order, when the rope was cut by a single blow and Brown fell through about five inches, his knees falling on a level with the position occupied by his feet before the rope was cut. There was very little motion of his person for several moments, and soon the wind blew his lifeless body to and fro. Altogether it was a very solemn scene. I was much impressed with the thought that before me stood a man in the full vigor of health, who must, in a few minutes, enter eternity. I sent up a petition that he might be saved. I hope he was prepared to die, but I am doubtful.” HARPER SUP RNY 67 “And soon the wind blew his lifeless body to and fro.” “Stonewall” Jackson saw that much. Was he able to see more than that? Was he able to see the winds blowing, not his lifeless body, but his living spirit to and fro over the earth long after the body was mouldering in the grave? In a minute or two it was allover. Just an old man hanging at a rope’s end, a fool—so they said—dying as the fool dieth, just a speck of black in the bright December sunlight, with the song of the Shenandoah in the distance, and far beyond, the eternal blue of the mountains. But here was a scaffold that swayed the future. Not John Brown, but negro slavery was hanged that day: and so it came about that the dead that he slew at his death were more than they that he slew in his life. Neither saint nor fool, John Brown was a prophet of national repentance. All that he predicted came true, and all that he had advocated was put into effect within three years. “Who art thou?” we ask the hills and rivers where he planned and fought and suffered death. And back from the hills of the Shenandoah and Potomac there comes an answer, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the Way of the Lord.” V THE SHENANDOAH VALLEY A PATHWAY TO A SHRINE With a river to make it glad and a chain of moun- tains on the right hand and on the left, the Valley of Virginia, as the Plain which tempted Lot, is well watered, like the Garden of the Lord. There may be valleys which are deeper and hills which are steeper, but no valley in all the land where the charm of field and stream and hill is so closely woven with the romance of stirring history. The gateway to the Valley is Harper’s Ferry, and Harper’s Ferry a gate- way to Washington. These facts are sufficient reason for the important part played by the Shenandoah Valley in the Civil War. No territory in all the area of war was so battle-ridden as this narrow strip of country between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghenies. Its great fertility and its geographical importance as an approach to Washington and a back door to Richmond made its possession of vital interest to North and South. Leaving Harper’s Ferry, the old stage road leads first to Halltown, for a time the headquarters of Sheridan, and then to Charlestown, where John Brown was tried and hanged. The jail in which Brown was incarcerated still stands. It is directly opposite the Courthouse, and if one may believe the local testi- mony, whenever the snow falls in Charlestown, al- though the street be deep with it, it will melt on the path across the street which was taken by Brown as he went from the jail to the Courthouse during his 68 THE SHENANDOAH 69 trial. From Charlestown the road leads down the valley through rolling, fertile fields and past well-kept, prosperous-looking farm buildings until Winchester is reached. As one rides along, it is not difficult to imagine that one can hear the clatter of the hoofs of Mosby and Ashby, or to see the farms and mills aflame with the torch of Sheridan and Hunter. This section of the arena of the Civil War furnished more raids and surprises, midnight cries and alarms, cap- tures and escapes, more love affairs between Federal officers and southern belles, in short, more of the romance of the war than any other section. General Charles Lee, of Monmouth notoriety, came down into this section to live after he had been cashiered from Washington’s army. He built a stone house at what is now called Leetown. Instead of conventional walls and partitions, he chalk marked the different chambers on the floor. Here, surrounded by a company of dogs, he spent his last years. He left a remarkable will filed with the clerk of Berkeley County. It is as follows: “T desire most earnestly that I may not be buried in any church or churchyard, or within a mile of any Presbyterian or Anabaptist meeting-house; for since I have resided in this county, I have kept so much bad company when living that I do not desire to con- tinue it when dead.” Winchester, the most important town in the north- ern valley, was a fickle place during the war, changing hands seventy-two times. But as the oldest town south of the Potomac and west of the Blue Ridge, it has other memories than those of the Civil War. It was from Winchester that Braddock and Washington set out in 1754 on their ill-starred expedition against Fort Duquesne, and after the slaughter, Washington fell back again to Winchester. In the early part of the Civil War, Jackson had headquarters at Winchester, he and his wife living with the pastor of the Presbyterian church, the Reverend Dr. Graham. 70 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS A few blocks from the Presbyterian manse is the comfortable mansion from which General Sheridan started on his famous ride to stem the rout of his army at Cedar Creek. The natives of Winchester declare that Buchanan’s poem was much more famous than Sheridan’s ride. But, however that may have been, that nineteenth of October saw the finish of Jubal Early, the man who gave Washington such a scare and burned Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. After the de- feat of Early at Winchester, September 19, 1864, Sheridan established headquarters at Cedar Creek, twenty miles from Winchester. On the seventeenth of October he went to Washington for a conference with the War Department. The day before, the Union signal officers had intercepted a message as it was being flagged from Longstreet to Early. It read: “Be ready to move as soon as my forces join you, and we will crush Sheridan.” This message afterwards proved to be ficticious, but it caused Sheridan to hurry back from Washington. He returned on the evening of the eighteenth and spent the night in the Logan house at the headquarters of Colonel Edwards. At six o'clock the next morning his aide awakened him and reported heavy firing in the direction of Cedar Creek. At first Sheridan thought it was only a reconnoissance by the officer in command. But as the firing increased in volume he became uneasy, and calling his horse, mounted and rode off down the street. As he passed through the streets of the town women appeared at the doors and windows, shaking their hoop skirts and making gestures of scorn and contempt. This further increased the anxiety of Sheridan, for it was evident that the women had received good news over the “grapevine” telegraph. As he rode along he put his head down to the pommel to listen to the firing and quickly came to the conclusion that his army was being driven back. When he reached the top of a hill beyond Mill Creek he met the streaming rout of his broken THE SHENANDOAH 71 army. He ordered Colonel Edwards to draw a line of soldiers across the roads leading to Winchester and stop all fugitives, and then putting spurs to “Rienzt”’ rode furiously to the front. General Wright had already formed a new line of battle while the Confederates were pillaging the Fed- eral Camp, and the presence of Sheridan was all that was necessary to turn the tide of battle. With hat in hand, he rode up and down his lines evoking the wildest enthusiasm wherever he appeared. ‘Torbet cried, “My God! I’m glad you have come back!” And Custer rode to his side and threw his arms about his neck and embraced him. Ina few minutes defeat had been turned into victory and Early’s army was practically annihilated. Among the officers who fell on the Union side was Colonel James Russell Lowell, a nephew of James Rus- sell Lowell, who had married Josephine Shaw, the sis- ter of Colonel R. G. Shaw, who fell at the head of his negro troops at Fort Wagner and whose noble me- morial now stands on Boston Common. There is a national cemetery for the Union dead at Winchester and one for the Confederate. One monu- ment tells the Southern side of the war: “In memory of 398 Virginia soldiers lying in this cemetery who fell in defense of constitutional liberty and the sovereignty of the state.” The monument is crowned by the figure of a Confederate soldier, leaning upon his musket, and his head, not defiantly lifted, but humbly and sadly bowed. Always sadly looking down, these figures in gray which one encounters all through the South. They express the pathos of the lost cause. Another monument bears this legend: To the Unknown Dead Who they were, none knows— What they were, all know. 72 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS There was the music of the whetstone in the land. I followed it until I came upon the grizzled old care- taker sharpening his scythe. He looked like Father Time himself. I asked him what graves of interest there might be in the cemetery. He named several and concluded by lifting his hand and pointing with the whetstone, saying, “Over yonder is the Ashbys.”’ My response was as unfortunate as spontaneous, “Ashby the guerrilla?’ I saw at once that I had made a mistake, as a look of pain and anger spread over the veteran’s face, and I feared for a moment that he would hew me in pieces like Agag, for he was of those who had ridden by the side of the dashing horsemen; and now, in his old age, he keeps their grave. I quoted Sheridan’s memoirs as authority for the mili- tary classification of the Ashby brothers, whereupon our veteran spat on his hands, and bending to his task, said, “Ashby was a better soldier than Sheridan ever tried to be.” The younger of the brothers, Richard Ashby, was killed early in the war, and the remaining brother waged war as a fierce revenge for his brother’s death. In the older part of the cemetery is a flat slab, cracked and disfigured with age, and on it I made out a name which recalled the heights of Saratoga and the wilderness of the Cowpens—Daniel Morgan, of the Revolutionary Army. At the head of the valley is the Natural Bridge, where the national road crosses from one ridge of hills to another. ‘“God’s greatest miracle in stone,” Chief Justice Marshall called it; and certainly nature has wrought few works that are mightier or more im- pressive. On one of the limestone walls under the bridge the guide points out a possible “G. W.,” where the Father of His Country foretold his fame by carv- ing his name higher than anyone else. In this respect the name of his children is legion, for the walls now are covered with names and dates spelled by muses, both lettered and unlettered. The natural bridge and KAW V AG AV OGUN VY Nee SSA Pile N Dee Cy AeA Seve) 5 CLINE Vie CU Set Eis «> THE SHENANDOAH 73 the land about it was part of an estate which fell to Thomas Jefferson when he married the widow Skel- ton. He greatly admired the bridge and the country around, and had planned for a home and retreat in the vicinity. The wonderful arch has been described many times by painters and narrators and scientists, but never better than by its earthly owner himself, where he writes in the Notes on Virgima: “The nat- ural bridge is the most sublime of nature’s works. It is impossible for the emotions arising from the sublime to be felt beyond what they are here; so beautiful an arch, so elevated, so light, and springing, as it were up to heaven! The rapture of the spectator is really indescribable.” Fifteen miles over the hills from Natural Bridge lies Lexington. The sun was sinking behind the Blue Ridge on a September day in 1865, when a stout gray horse climbed the steep road leading to Lexington and bore his rider to the village inn. Here and there, as he passed down the street, a few citizens and veterans of the war saw the horse and his rider and lifted their hats. The horse was “Traveler’’ and the rider, Robert FE. Lee. The unattended ride into the mountain village marked the beginning of the last and noblest chapter in Lee’s career. An English nobleman had proffered him an estate with a pension in England, and insur- ance companies had offered him fabulous sums for the use of his name. The trustees of the Presbyterian College at Lexington borrowed a suit of broadcloth from a local judge, dressed one of their number in the garments, and sent him off to Richmond to offer Lee the presidency of Washington College at a salary of fifteen hundred dollars a year. This was the offer Lee accepted. The last years of his life were devoted to the Christian education of the young men of the South. The great genius and captain of the war had come to take captivity captive by stooping to the school- master’s task. 74 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS One such example is worth more to earth, Than the stained triumphs of ten thousand Cesars. A little beyond the campus of Washington and Lee University is the Virginia Military Institute where Jackson was a professor when the war broke out, and where many of the officers of the Confederate armies were trained. At the other end of the town is the cemetery where Jackson and Pendleton lie buried. Pendleton was Lee’s chief of artillery, and after the war he went back to his old calling of the ministry and became rector of the church where Lee worshipped in Lexington. The last public act of Lee was to move at a meeting of the vestry an increase in the salary of his old comrade-in-arms, and now his pastor. When Jackson lay dying after Chancellorsville he asked that he be laid in the Valley of Virginia. His monument shows him with his hand on his sword, looking off towards the east as if about to give an order for one of his turning movements. This mountain town ought to be proud of its tombs, for it guards the ashes of both Lee and Jackson. Lexington is the pantheon of the Confederacy. Lee is buried beneath the chapel of the college he served, and over his grave is the beautiful creation of Valentine which represents him asleep on the field of battle. There, in the high places of Virginia, where the South may warm herself at their memory, let these great captains rest. “They were swifter than eagles; they were stronger than lions. They were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they are not divided.” VI FORT DONELSON Tue Man or DESTINY Crushing in his hand a bundle of dispatches, the commanding general said to his officers who had just brought him tidings of the disaster which had befallen the Union lines before Fort Donelson: ‘“‘Gentlemen, the position on the right must be retaken.” That sentence made Grant. Had he faltered or hesitated then, the country would never have heard of him. On a May day in 1861, after a crowd of loyal citt- zens had pulled down the Confederate flag from a building in St. Louis, a young man stepped on to a street car and, addressing a man at his side, said: “Things have come to a damned pretty pass when a free people can’t choose their own flag. Where I came from, if a man dares to say a word in favor of the Union, we hang him to a limb of the first tree we come to.” To this the man thus addressed, who hap- pened to be a leather dealer’s clerk, quietly responded: “After all, we are not so intolerant in St. Louis as we might be. I have not seen a single rebel hung yet, nor heard of one. There are plenty of them who ought to be, however.” Within less than a year this ordinary-looking leather dealer’s clerk, who had failed in the regular army, failed as a farmer and a real estate dealer and had finally been given a place in his father’s tannery at Galena, Illinois, struck the first hard blow at the Con- federacy, and men, playing with the initials of his name, were calling him ‘Unconditional Surrender Grant” and hailing him as the Man of Destiny. 75 76 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS In order to hold the two great rivers, the Tennessee and the Cumberland, which constituted natural avenues for invading the Confederacy, the southern military authorities had built Fort Henry on the Tennessee and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland, both in the state of Tennessee and only a few miles apart. Fort Henry fell before the guns of the river flotilla under Flag Officer Foote, and most of the garrison escaped to Fort Donelson, twelve miles distant. Grant then turned immediately against Donelson, now strongly reinforced by twelve thousand men from Albert Sid- ney Johnston’s army at Nashville. The garrison at Donelson was under the command of General Floyd, who had been Secretary of War under Buchanan and was responsible for the sending of government stores to southern arsenals just prior to the outbreak of the war. Under him was Pillow, a veteran of the Mexican War, and Buckner, an able and professional soldier. Colonel John S. Mosby thus comments on the move- ments which led to the surrender of Fort Donelson: “A greater blunder was never committed in war than when General Albert Sidney Johnston sent Floyd, Buckner and Pillow down the Cumberland River with about seventeen thousand troops to hold a fort situated in the angle made by the confluence of the Cumberland and a deep, unfordable creek. There was no line of retreat open by land or transportation provided for escape by water, in case of defeat. The Confederates were caught in a trap and their surrender was, of course, inevitable.” It was a bright April Sunday morning when, stand- ing on the deck of the steamboat, we caught sight of the Stars and Stripes floating over the trees on a high bluff on the left bank of the Cumberland River. The flag told us that we were nearing our destination, Fort Donelson, the place where fifty years before Grant dealt the Confederacy its first staggering blow. I have seen the flag on the high seas and waving from our —_— So FORT DONELSON 77 consulates in strange lands, or draped as a funeral pall for the dead veteran; but never did the flag so touch me with its sacred symbolism as it did that Sabbath morning when I saw it waving in the wilderness over Fort Donelson, guarding a few nameless graves of lads from Wisconsin and Indiana and Illinois, who there adventured their lives on the high places of the field. What a strange backwash of civilization! Dover is a county seat and in the midst of the Square stood the courthouse, a little brick build- ing with white trimmings and green shutters. Neither the officers of the law nor its victims were anywhere in evidence. Through a yellow clay street, past unpainted cottages, and around droves of swine that seemed to hold undisputed sway on the highways, we walked along till we came to a small, one-story building which had a doctor’s sign over it. We entered and found the physician blacking his boots preparatory to setting out on his calls. His office was a strange litter of books, bottles, drugs, whips, and robes. The roads were so heavy that he had to walk instead of drive. When I thought of the roads I wondered why he blacked his boots so carefully. His call took him in the direction of the fort, and with him as guide we set out. The rise of the river had flooded the country all about Dover and a by no means despicable lake of yellow water lay between us and the hill upon which had stood the main fortifications. One of the natives who lived near the ravine hallooed for us, and soon a boy in a flatboat put off from the other side. It was not much of a boat but it carried us across in safety. Then by cautious climbing of barbed- wire fences and careful avoidance of the road, we made our way to the top of the high hill where 78 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS the Confederate works had been laid out, and still can readily be traced. There had been batteries on the top of the hill and also on the water level below. On the morn- ing of the fourteenth of February, 1862, Foote, flushed with the easy victory at Henry, opened fire with his gunboats. But this time it was more serious business. Within two hours every gun- boat was disabled, fifty-four men had been killed, and Foote himself badly wounded. The fleet dropped down the river for repairs, and the army was apparently face to face with a long siege. During the night it had suddenly turned bitterly cold. On the march from Fort Henry many of the raw troops had thrown away their blankets, and as they lay on the frozen ground, unable to build fires because of the enemy’s guns, the men suffered intensely. “The sun went down,” says General Grant, “leaving the army confronting Fort Donelson anything but comforted over its prospects.” But the Confederates were not elated by their repulse of the fleet. At a council of war it was decided to attack the Union right and clear the road to Nashville, so that the garrison might withdraw. On the morning of the fifteenth a fierce attack was made on McClernand on the Union right, and his division was driven back, together with a part of the troops under Lew Wallace. By one o’clock the road to Nashville was open. But by an extraordinary blunder the Confederate troops, instead of setting out for Nashville, were held in their lines. At this critical juncture Grant was several miles down the river conferring with Foote on his flag- ship. When he landed from the cutter, one of his staff, his face white with fear, told him of the disaster that had befallen his army. As fast as his horse could carry him over the rough, frozen FORT DONELSON 79 roads Grant galloped to the front. This was a real crisis in his career. He met it as he met every other emergency, with coolness and deter- mination. “A mediocre person would have taken the repulse as another argument for entering upon a siege. Had Grant done so, it is very probable his career would have been then and there concluded.” In the lull of the battle Grant saw the chance for victory. To one of his staff, Colonel Webster, he said, ““The one who attacks first now will be victorious, and the enemy will have to be in a hurry if he gets ahead of me.” To Wallace and McClernand, as they told him of the defeat, he merely said, “Gentlemen, the position on the right must be retaken.” In a short time the veteran commander, Smith, was leading a charge which drove the Confederates into their works and sealed the doom of the fort. At a council that night Floyd turned the command over to Pillow, who gave it to Buckner. Floyd had good reasons for not wanting to fall into the hands of the United States authorities, as it was during his term as Secretary of War that great quantities of arms had been removed from North- ern to Southern arsenals and every means taken to cripple the Government and aid the coming Confederacy. Very likely he would have been tried for treason. Nathaniel Forrest refused to surrender, and with his troopers cut his way out in the night by riding through the ice of the backwash of the river near Dover. Forrest is ranked by many military writers as the greatest natural cavalry leader of the war. He always led his own men, and fought like a demon. If he had had the advan- tages of education his achievements would have been even greater. His maxim of war was “to git thar fustest with the mostest men.” He generally 80 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS succeeded. On one occasion a loquacious widow asked him how it was that his beard was black but his hair was gray. He replied that it must have been because he used his brains more than he did his jaw. Towards the close of the war he was engaged in a desperate personal encounter with an officer whom he had reduced in rank. The officer shot him, inflicting a dangerous wound, but Forrest with wonderful grit and furious passion stabbed him to death with a penknife. Forrest was the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, which was organized at Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1865, and was designed to relieve the white population of the South from the domi- nation of negroes and carpetbaggers. The Ku Klux Klan of our day has adopted the name and revived some of the terrors of the original Klan. Pillow and Floyd, together with some Vir- ginia troops, escaped across the river, and to the gallant Simon Bolivar Buckner fell the unhappy task of surrender. The last time Grant and Buckner had met was in the Mexican War when they made an ascent of Popocatepetl. To his inquiry for terms Grant sent back the famous answer: “No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted.” The formal surrender took place in the hotel at Dover which had been the headquarters of Buckner. Lew Wallace was the representative of Grant. By the surrender the South lost more than 12,000 soldiers, forty guns, and stores of ammunition. It was the first time that the iron entered into the soul of the South, and for the first time the North “saw daylight” in the war. In the interview at the Dover tavern, one of Buckner’s staff, Tom Clay, a grandson of Henry Clay, took Wallace’s hand and cried like a child. Wallace started to say something about the “old Flag,” when Buckner, bringing his fist FORT DONELSON 81 down on the table, exclaimed, “The old Flag! I followed it when most of your thousands out yonder were in swaddling clothes—in Mexico, on the frontier—and I love it yet.” Donelson made Grant a major-general of volun- teers. “Out of the clouds of smoke that settled down upon that fatal field where friend and foe alike lay frozen and stiff with the agony of death in every feature, there rose to the horizon one star of destiny.” We shall next meet him in a forest solitude on the banks of the Tennessee, again undismayed by apparent disaster, and by his cool determination turning defeat into victory. VII SHILOH A Nation Drinxs Its Cup A great river flowing silently away, a raft of logs and a steamboat, with its towering black stacks, lying at the landing; deep ravines with brooks hurrying towards the river, green hillsides, and, here and there, granite monuments appear- ing through the trees, the leaves of which were stirring at the breath of the soft April wind—this is Shiloh. Soon after the fall of Fort Donelson the Union Army began to move south by way of the Ten- nessee River, its object being the Confederate army, under Albert Sidney Johnston, at Corinth, Mississippi. Grant had been relieved of his com- mand by the unspeakable Halleck, and the vet- eran C. F. Smith was put in charge of the ex- pedition up the Tennessee River with Johnston’s army as an objective. Smith chose for his camp a site on the west side of the Tennessee River, at Pittsburgh Landing, also known as Shiloh, a stop- ping place for steamers and about twenty miles north of Corinth. The position was a strong one, being protected on both flanks by deep ravines, at that time filled with the backwash of the river. But in the event of a defeat it would have been almost impossible to withdraw the army, for the river was too high for a bridge. But Smith was not destined to lead in the great battle that was imminent. As he was leaving the headquarters SHILOH 83 of Lew Wallace on a steamboat, February 16th, he missed his footing and scraped his leg against the sharp edge of the seat of the yawl. On his return to Savannah he took to his bed in the Mhetrys rouse, and never (lett,it) > Grant): once more in favor with Halleck, was restored to com- mand. He maintained his army at Pittsburgh Landing, the site chosen by Smith, and established his headquarters at Savannah, nine miles down the river and on the east bank. On the fifteenth of March, General Buell, com- manding his splendidly drilled Army of the Ohio, commenced his march from Nashville to join Grant on the Tennessee, the combined armies then to take the field against Johnston. Johnston, gathering his strength at Corinth, determined to strike Grant before Buell could join him, drive him into the Tennessee River, and then crush Buell. It was a bold design and fell just short of its execution. The mistake Johnston made was in waiting too long, so that Buell had time to get up; or in not waiting a little longer, when he him- self would have been heavily reinforced by the army under Van Dorn. It is generally conceded that at Shiloh Grant violated almost every well-known maxim of war but that of hard fighting. He played the part of a brave and undaunted man when the storm broke upon him, but it was only by good fortune that he failed to reap the disastrous fruits of care- lessness and neglect. What this carelessness was is best summed up in the words of General Buell: “An army comprising 70 regiments of infantry, 20 batteries of artillery, and a sufficiency of cavalry, lay for two weeks and more in isolated camps, with a river in its rear and a hostile army claimed to be superior in numbers 20 miles away on its front, while the commander made his head- 84 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS quarters and passed his nights nine miles away on the opposite side of the river. It had no line of battle, no defensive works of any sort, no out- posts, properly speaking, to give warning, or check the advance of an enemy, and no recognized head during the absence of the regular com- mander. On a Saturday the hostile force arrived and formed in order of battle, without detection or hindrance, within a mile and a half of the un- guarded army.” The plain fact is that a large Union army was placed in grave jeopardy through the fault of its commander. Only a presupposi- tion that Grant and Sherman were incapable of blundering could lead to any other conclusion. Both Grant and Sherman excused themselves on the ground that their troops were raw and needed drill more than digging, and that, as it was an offensive campaign, entrenchments would have made the army timid. To get to the field of Shiloh we had to go to Memphis and there take the train to Corinth, in Mississippi. When we asked the hotel clerk at Corinth if it were not possible to get.to Shiloh by automobile, he shook his head and smiled. We soon learned why he smiled. We secured a double-seated wagon and two stout horses and set out about midday on the twenty-mile drive to Shiloh. When about three miles from the town I said to the driver, “These roads are not so bad. I have seen worse in Pennsylvania.” But the words were hardly out of my mouth when the horses plunged belly-deep in the mud and the yellow sea washed against the dashboard. From there on for more than fifteen miles it was one continuous wallow in the mire. The wonder was that the horses ever got through or that the wagon stood the strain. Here and there we came upon a farmer’s stalled wagon with all the mule teams ls BAAC Ne! 85 in the immediate vicinity assisting to drag it out of the muddy abyss. It was not a road; it was the Slough of Despond. One could easily under- stand why it was that Johnston was a day late in getting up his army for the attack. As we pitched and floundered about we fancied we could see the long teams of mules dragging the Confederate artillery through the mire. It was a poor cotton belt that we drove through, and the houses were wretched, un- painted shacks, set up on blocks to preserve them from the damp. Fifty years have wrought no change in that part of Tennessee and Mississippi, and the whole landscape impressed one as the abomination of desolation. Most of the farmers who had to go to town rode on mules. At one crossroads store we saw a man building a fire under a mule’s nostrils, evidently to cure him of the distemper or other malady. Towards evening the country became more hilly and a long line of wooded hills told us where the Tennessee flowed towards the Ohio. In the gathering shadows we came upon a little clearing in the forest where there stood a white, frame meeting-house. This was Shiloh. Shiloh was its name, and Shiloh, peace, it was, in the soft spring evening. Here, half a century ago, in the gray dawn of the Sab- bath moring, the van of the Confederate army burst like a storm cloud on the division of Sherman. The Army of the Tennessee numbered 47,000 men and lay with its left wing resting on the Tennessee River, two miles below Pittsburgh Landing, and its right on Owl Creek, three miles west of the river. The line of battle faced west and south; three brigades of Sherman on the right near Shiloh Church; Prentiss in the center one-half mile from Sherman; McClernand, a 86 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS political soldier, behind Sherman; Hurlburt be- hind Prentiss, and behind Hurlburt, W. H. L. - Wallace. The field of battle consisted of heavily wooded sections, with here and there a clearing, and intersected by deep ravines. The veteran division of Lew Wallace was at Crump’s Landing, five miles from Pittsburgh and on the same side of the river. The Army of the Ohio, under Buell, then marching in the direction of Savannah, num- bered 37,000 men. The Confederate army num- bered 40,000 men and 100 guns. It was divided into three corps under command of Bragg, Polk, and Hardee, and a reserve division of infantry under Breckenridge, who had been Vice-President with Buchanan. Beauregard, the victor at Bull Run, was second in command, and seems to have had general supervision of the fighting on the Confederate side. The original plan was to turn the Union left so as to cut the Union army off from the Tennessee and force it back upon Owl Creek. This plan was not carried out, for the Confederate attack spent itself in the effort against the Union center and right. In the orders issued to his army at Corinth, April 3rd, General Johnston said, “You can but march to a decisive victory over agrarian mercenaries sent to subju- gate and despoil you of your liberties, property and honor.” Because of the terrible condition of the roads the army did not get within striking distance of Shiloh until the evening of the fifth, Saturday. At a council Beauregard advised giv- ing up the assault and retiring to Corinth. But Johnston was determined to fight. During these days there had been constant skirmishing at the front, but the Federal com- manders seem to have had no intimation that a great army was stealthily closing in upon them. On Friday evening, the fourth, Grant was trying SHILOH 87 to make his way to the front where he had heard firing, when his horse fell with him, severely in- juring his ankle, so that during the battle he was able to walk only with the aid of crutches. On Saturday evening, with the whole Confederate army hidden in the forests less than two miles distant, Grant went back to his quarters at Savannah, where the van of Buell’s army, march- ing from Nashville, was already appearing. He rose for an early breakfast on Sunday morn- ing, expecting to ride out and meet Buell. But in the midst of his breakfast he heard the thunder of the guns nine miles distant at Shiloh, for John- ston was up before him. Instead of waiting to meet Buell, Grant boarded the dispatch boat Tigress, which always had steam up, and started for the scene of action. On the way up the river he ran close to Crump’s Landing and directed Lew Wallace to get his troops under arms and ready for marching orders. When Grant reached the field there was little for him to do but ride from one division commander to another, giving them what encouragement he could. The Confederate attack began early on the sixth. After the dreary rains of the past few days the sun rose bright and clear. The Con- federates hailed it as the “sun of Austerlitz.” As General Johnston mounted his horse he turned to his staff and said, “Tonight we will water our horses in the Tennessee River!” The first in- timation the Union forces had of the attack was when the startled rabbits and forest folk came rushing on before the crest of the Confederate wave. The shock of the first attack fell on Sher- man near the meeting-house. His men fought bravely, but were pushed back into the lines of McClernand, and for the rest of the day Sherman and McClernand fought together. Sherman was 88 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS twice wounded and a bullet passed through his hat. At sunset the forces of these generals were drawn up on the eighth position they had occu- pied that day. Grant arrived on the scene at eight o’clock when the battle was at its fiercest. He sent an urgent appeal to Buell, saying that if he could get his troops across the river the day might be saved. A message was dispatched to Lew Wal- lace ordering him to bring his division to the front at once. By some misunderstanding Wal- lace took the wrong road and his troops had to be countermarched, not reaching the scene of battle until the fighting had ceased on the sixth. The absence of this veteran division was keenly felt. During all the morning hours the Federal line was being steadily driven from one position to another. The Confederates paid a fearful price for their advance, but nothing could stay their impetuous charges. At one o’clock Buell reached the landing on a steamer ahead of his troops, and had a brief meeting with Grant. Both generals must have been impressed with the ex- treme gravity of the situation. On the plateau near the river, men mounted and on foot, wagons and their teams and excited drivers were hope- lessly mixed up with batteries of artillery and army stores. At the foot of the bluff thousands of panic-stricken stragglers had taken refuge. Buell cursed and berated them for cowards and even threatened them with the cannon of the gun- boats, but “most of them would have been shot where they lay, without resistance, before they would have taken muskets and marched to the front to protect themselves.” Many of them perished in frantic efforts to get over the river, and not a few were seen sitting astride of logs and desperately trying to paddle their way across SHILOH 89 to the eastern shore. But the bulk of the army was fighting grimly and desperately, and Grant himself had no thought of anything but fight- ing it out. Buell thus describes him at the time of their meeting on the steamboat: “In all his career he has, I venture to say, never appeared to better advantage. There was the frank, brave soldier, rather subdued, realizing the critical situa-., tion in which causes of some sort had placed him, but ready without affectation or bravado, to do anything that duty required of him.” The one rock which broke the victorious on- rush of the Confederates was the body of troops under Prentiss and W. H. L. Wallace. They were posted on high ground on what was after- wards known as the “Hornet’s Nest.” A dense thicket screened the men of Wallace and Prentiss; in front of them was a sunken road, washed by the recent rains, and beyond that again an open field over which the Confederates had to charge. The stubborn defense of Wallace and Prentiss from ten a. m. until five-thirty p. m. probably saved the day for the Union army, for it pre- vented the Confederates from turning the left flank at the Landing. It was in front of the Hornet’s Nest that Johnston was killed while leading a charge, about two-thirty o’clock. Dur- ing a lull in the fighting before the ridge, Brecken- ridge rode up to Johnston and said to him, not observing Governor Harris of Tennessee: ‘“Gen- eral, I have a Tennessee regiment that won't fight.” Governor Harris answered, “General Breckenridge, show me that regiment!” After a vain attempt to get the men to charge, Harris and Breckenridge returned to Johnston and he himself determined to lead them. Sitting his thoroughbred mare, “Fire-eater,”’ and gesticulat- ing with a little tin cup which he held in his 90 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS hand, Johnston rode down the lines saying, “Men! we must use the bayonet. I will lead you!” Then, with a mighty shout the line moved forward and the ridge was carried. Johnston’s horse was wounded in four places, but he himself was un- hurt. But a number of the retreating Federals turned and fired a last volley. One of these minie-balls tore the popliteal artery of Johnston’s left leg, although the wound was not discovered until he fell, faint from loss of blood. Governor Harris and one of his aides led his horse back under cover of the hill and, lifting him from it, gently laid him on the grass. When his brother-in-law, Preston, asked him if he knew him, he smiled faintly but spoke no word. Ina few moments his precious lifeblood had ebbed away, and the Confederacy’s great leader was dead—dead in the moment of apparent victory. In the words of President Davis, ‘““The fortunes of a country hung by a single thread of the life that was yielded on the field of Shiloh.” Beauregard now assumed the command of the army and the attack was everywhere pushed for- ward. For three more hours the Confederates hammered away at the Hornet’s Nest, until at five-thirty o’clock Wallace was mortally wounded and Prentiss with 2,000 men surrendered. But just about that same time the steamboats were bringing over the river the advance guard of Buell’s army. The left wing of the Union army formed for its last stand not far from the land- ing. The artillery was posted so as to sweep a ravine partly filled with backwater, and the two gunboats, Lexington and Tyler, anchored off the mouth of the ravine, in Dill’s Creek, and com- menced to throw their shells into the Confeder- ates. At that moment Beauregard gave the order to cease firing. He reports that darkness was SHILOH 91 coming on and that the Confederate regiments were in confusion. That Grant would have been swept into the river if the attack had been pressed is by no means certain. Nothing but the attack itself could have settled that much disputed point. Considering the desperate fighting of the greater part of the Union army, the strong position held by their lines above Dill’s Creek, and the fresh regiments of Buell, then disembarking, it is ex- ceedingly doubtful whether the Confederate at- tack would have proved successful, although no less capable a man than Bragg cried out when he received the order to fall back, “My God, my God, it is too late!” Grant declares that the arrival of the division of Lew Wallace and the Army of the Ohio had no effect on the day’s grim and bloody work. “Thus night came, Wallace came, and the advance of Nelson’s division came, but none—unless night—in time to be of ma- terial service to the gallant men who saved Shiloh on that first day against heavy odds.” In the darkness the Confederates drew back about a mile to the lines occupied in the morning by the Union troops and slept in their tents. The two gunboats fired shells every fifteen minutes in the direction of the Confederate lines all through the night, and the rain fell in torrents. Grant, sore and bruised with the fall of the Friday preceding, and worn with the anxiety of the battle, lay down under an oak in a vain effort to find sleep. The rain drove him into a log house where the wounded were being brought, but their wounds and cries were less endurable than the storm outside, and he went back to his bivouac under the tree. Lew Wallace, resting at his headquarters on the right, heard through the noise of the falling rain and the bursting of the gunboat shells, the voice of a wounded man cry- We HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS ing piteously and constantly, all through the night, from the place where he lay between the lines, “Help! Help!” He was one of many thou- sands, and until day there was none to help. Among those thousands who cried for help, and with none to save, was the heroic commander of the second division, W. H. L. Wallace. While at the head of his men he had been severely wounded, and in the confusion incident to the withdrawal and surrender of his troops was left for dead on the field. On Monday, when the Union troops recovered that part of the field, Wallace was found still alive. Mrs. Wallace had come up on one of the gunboats and she tenderly nursed him at Savannah, where he died on the tenth. At five in the morning the reinforced Federal army commenced the attack, and the weary and disappointed Confederates were sullenly and slowly driven back over the ground which they had won the day before at such a fearful cost. But the odds were too heavy, and Beauregard wisely and skilfully withdrew to Corinth. Grant ought to have destroyed him, but the pursuit was not pressed. The truth was that he was glad to emerge from the difficulty as well as he did. The army too must have been appalled at the slaugh- ter. Until then there had been no great loss of life. But now, on that Monday evening, almost twenty thousand men lay dead and wounded in the tangled woods of the field. Many of the wounded would have perished in the forest fires had it not been for the merciful rain which came down upon both armies and showed pity to the just and unjust. The Confederate wounded suf- fered the most, for they were heaped like sacks of grain into the wagons, groaning, cursing, pray- ing, while the mules, urged on by the frightened SHILOH 93 drivers, plunged belly-deep in the mud, the water often coming up into the beds of the wagons. “The scene on the field,’ says Sherman, “would have cured anybody of war.” On the side of the Confederates there fought a young lad of sixteen, aiterwards known to the world as Henry M. Stanley. As a mere child he had been taken to Aspah Workhouse, and after a pathetic boyhood of neglect and abuse, was working as a butcher’s boy in Liverpool, when he was trapped into signing as a cabin-boy on a sailing vessel bound for New Orleans. At New Orleans, with his clothes and Bible, he fled the ship. On the streets of the city he found em- ployment with a kind, Christian gentleman who baptized him with his own hand and gave him his own name, Henry M. Stanley. After the death of his benefactor he was cast once more upon the world. When the war broke out he was clerking in a Hebrew store in the mud flats of Arkansas. The lads of the town were enlisting in the army, but it never occurred to him to do likewise, till one morning a package filled with articles of female attire was found in his room. He took the hint and forthwith enlisted in the Dixie Grays. Then followed the first enthusiasm of war, the prayers of the clergy, the orations of politicians, the tears and kisses and flowers of the women; then the fading of the new uniforms and the fading of the moral and spiritual, all the “Shalt nots” changed into “Thou shalt,” the lapse from prayer and innocence, the rise of the beast in man, the lust for battle, and finally the baptism of fire at Shiloh. In his autobiography he gives us his impression of that bloody field: “It was the first Field of Glory I had seen in my May of life, and the first time that Glory sickened me with its repulsive aspects and made me suspect 94 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS that it was all a glittering lie. My thoughts re- verted to the time when these festering bodies were idolized objects of their mother’s passionate love, their fathers standing by, half-fearing to touch the fragile little things, and the wings of civil law outspread to protect parents and chil- dren in their family loves, their coming and going followed with pride and praise, and the blessing of the Almighty overshadowing all. Then, as they were nearing manhood, through some strange warp of society, men in authority sum- moned them from school and shop, from field and farm, to meet in the woods on a -Sunday morning for mutual butchery, with the deadliest instruments ever invented. Civil Law, Religion, Morality, complaisantly standing aside, while ninety thousand young men, who had _ been preached and moralized to for years, were. let loose to engage in the carnival of slaughter.” . , -, Until the battle of Shiloh, it was still thought . in the North that the war would be brief-and that a single great battle would end it. The carnage of Shiloh dispelled that illusion and told the aroused and awakened nation that it must drink a deep and bitter cup. It had to be the complete conquest of the South. Out on the field where the Army of the Ohio fought on the second day there now stands a splendid monument to the soldiers of Illinois. On one side a bronze relief shows the men fighting among the trees. Now the feathered folk of the forest have built their nests in the bronze branches of the trees and the peace of God broods over the field. Peace, Shiloh, has come. But it did not come without pain and anguish, for “without shedding of blood there is no remission of sin’—sins of men, or sins of nations. VIII STONE RIVER KENTUCKY SAVED The Stone River, flowing peacefully away past limestone hills and through rich meadows, where cattle rest beneath the flowering locusts and gracious elms, has little about it today which suggests one of the bloodiest struggles of the wat. The Confederate army, beaten at Shiloh, might have been pursued and destroyed at once, but it Was permitted to escape, and, early in August, reinforced and reorganized and now under the command of General Braxton Bragg, marched north into Kentucky. General Don Carlos Buell with his Army of the Ohio, after an exciting race, reached Louisville ahead of Bragg, and in the severe battle of Perryville crippled Bragg so badly that he was compelled to give up his in- vasion and withdraw to Tennessee, where he established his headquarters near Murfreesboro. The campaign of Buell was a disappointment to the Government and he was replaced by General William S. Rosecrans, on the twenty-sixth of October. General Rosecrans was one of that dis- tinguished list of Ohio-born soldiers who ren- dered such great service to the Union cause. At the outbreak of the war, like nearly every other general who rose to distinction, he was retired from the army and was conducting a business at Cincinnati. Rosecrans now occupied Nashville, 95 96 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS while Bragg took up a position near Murfrees- boro. Towards the last of December Rosecrans advanced to attack him, and thus on December 31, 1862, and January 2, 1863, was fought the sanguinary battle of Stone River, or Murfrees- boro. The campaign which culminated in Perryville and Stone River recalls one of the most tragic episodes of the Civil War, the killing of Major- General William Nelson by General Jefferson C. Davis, in the Galt House, at Louisville, Kentucky, September 29, 1862. Until the arrival of Buell, Nelson was in command of the troops at Louis- ville. For a neglect of duty Nelson had repri- manded one of his subordinates, General Davis, and ordered him to report to General Wright at Cincinnati. Davis questioned the authority of Nelson to order him, whereupon Nelson ordered his adjutant-general to see that Davis was put across the river. When Buell reached Louisville, General Wright ordered Davis to report again to Nelson. He arrived at the Galt House on the morning of the twenty-ninth of September, ac- companied by Governor Oliver P. Morton, of Indiana. General Buell in his account of the tragedy severely denounces Governor Morton for trying to exercise a quasi-control over In- diana troops in the army under Buell and en- couraging a spirit of insubordination. Davis ac- costed Nelson in the vestibule of the Galt House and in an insulting manner demanded satisfaction for what he termed the injury done him by Nelson. As he spoke, Davis threw a wad of paper into Nelson’s face, and Nelson responded by slapping Davis in the face, and said to Gov- ernor Morton, “Did you come here, sir, to see me insulted?” Davis then procured a pistol and, meeting Nelson near the foot of the stairway, STONE RIVER 97 fired at him, inflicting a mortal wound. Nelson made his way upstairs and fell near the door of General Buell’s room, requesting that a clergyman be sent for to baptize him. Davis was immediately put under arrest by Buell, but as the army was about to engage in battle, Buell could not spare officers for the trial and requested General Halleck to order a court from Washington for the trial of the case. Ina few days Davis was released by order of General Wright, ostensibly on the ground that the case might be turned over to the civil authorities. Davis was indicted by a grand jury, but the case was never brought to trial and he served with distinction to the end of the war. Thus, a re- volting crime on the part of a high officer was never punished. Buell dismisses the sad story with these words: “And thus the military author- ity of the Government was abased over the grave of a high officer, whose military slaughter by another officer under such circumstances, and a purely military offense, it had not the character to bring to trial.” We reached Murfreesboro by rail from Chat- tanooga, about two o'clock on a spring morning. We had telegraphed to the proprietor of a hotel to meet us at the station, and when we alighted from the train we found a two-seated carriage awaiting us. The driver told us that his hotel was filled up, but that we could secure accom- modations at the Jordan House. At the door of the Jordan House, therefore, we were unloaded in the early morning hours. Vigorous and long- continued knocking finally brought to the door the night clerk, clad only in a shirt and blanket. He seemed indignant that the other hotel had dumped us on his hands, and it was only because of our importunity that he finally took a candle 98 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS and lighted our way up the broad staircase to a small room on the attic floor. The hotel had an air of vanished greatness. In the morning we learned that at the time of the Civil War it had been the home of a well-known citizen, and that in the very parlor, off the dining-room, where we were eating our breakfast, John Morgan, the daring raider and cavalry leader, was married to the daughter of the owner of the house by Lieu- tenant-General Bishop Polk, and in the presence of a number of prominent Confederate’ generals, among them Bragg, Hardee, Breckenridge and Cheatham. This was a few days before the battle of Stone River, and the same evening Mor- gan left his bride and went on a raid towards Kentucky. Men still loved; and war, though it kindled hate, could not stifle love. But it left little time for honeymoons. We had for our guide to the battlefield a wizened little man who had been a youth in the neighborhood during the war. He told us how, when Forrest took the town in the fall of ’sixty- two, he was possessed with the idea of becoming a soldier, although then not more than fifteen. He went out to the headquarters of the army and found Forrest sitting on a log, whittling a stick. The famous raider seemed amazed at the request of the lad to be enrolled as a soldier, but asked him if he could ride. Being answered in the af- firmative, he told the boy to get on a horse which was standing close by, and ride up and down the road before him. When he came back and dis- mounted, Forrest said to him, “My boy, you’re a good rider, but you’re too damn small to be a soldier.” After we had crossed the Stone River, which gave its name to the battle, we reached the ex- treme right of the Union position which had been STONE RIVER 99 held by McCook’s corps. Thomas commanded the center and Crittenden the left. Opposed to McCook was Hardee, on the Confederate left, Polk in the center, and Breckenridge on the left. Both Bragg and Rosecrans had planned to at- tack on the thirty-first, and at the same place, the enemy’s right. But Hardee, on the Confederate left, was the first to move, and with a vigorous attack drove the right wing of the Union army under McCook back to the Nashville pike, clear into the rear of the Federal left. At the same time, Crittenden had crossed the river on the Union left, to advance against the Confederate right. He was hastily recalled when Hardee made his attack. The day was saved for the Union army by the splendid resistance of the center corps under Thomas. Thomas was the “Rock of Stone River” no less than the “Rock of Chickamauga.” The winter night came on with the advantage on the side of the Confederate army, and Bragg tele- graphed to his Government, “God has granted us a Happy New Year.” There was no fighting on the first of January, but on the following day, at four o’clock in the afternoon, Breckenridge’s division made a furious attack on the Union right, only to be driven back with great loss. On the night of the third, Bragg evacuated Murfreesboro and retreated towards the southwest. So far as actual fighting was concerned, it was a drawn battle; but it was in reality a Union victory, for it necessitated the retreat of Bragg’s army and the abandonment of the invasion of Kentucky and central Tennessee. Both in results and desperate fighting it may well be compared with Antietam. In concluding his official report of the battle of Stone River, the devout Rosecrans made appro- priate use of the beautiful words of the One Hun- 100 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS dred and Fifteenth Psalm, “Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy Name give glory.” Near the Franklin Pike we saw nailed to a tree a board sign which said that at that place Colonel Garesche, Rosecrans’ Chief-of-Staff, was instantly killed. Rosecrans, with a few of his staff, and General Sheridan, was riding along the front of Sheridan’s column, when the Confederates opened on them with their guns. One of these solid shells carried away the head of Garesche. Both Rose- crans and Garesche were Roman Catholics and only a few minutes before had partaken of the Sacrament. Sheridan says, “Garesche’s appalling death stunned us all, and a momentary expression of horror spread over Rosecrans’ face; but at such a time the importance of self-control was vital, and he pursued his course with a spirit of indifference; which those about him saw was assumed, for undoubtedly he felt most deeply the death of his friend and trusted staff officer.” More than twenty thousand were killed and wounded during the three days’ fighting at Stone River, and many of these Union dead now sleep in the National Cemetery. There, as in every other National Cemetery, from Maine to the Philippines, Union dead are commemorated by steel tablets, on which are graven the lines from The Bivouac of the Dead, a poem written by a Confederate soldier, Theodore O’Hara, in memory of Kentuckians who fell at Beuna Vista: The muffled drum’s sad roll has beat The soldiers’ last tattoo. No more on life’s parade shall meet, That brave and fallen few. On fame’s eternal camping ground, Their silent tents are spread And glory guards with solemn round The Bivouac of the Dead. STONE RIVER 101 Among so many brave, as in every army, there had been some who shirked their duty, and an example was necessary. Of this number were four officers in Sheridan’s division who had abandoned their colors. After their guilt had been established, Sheridan caused his whole division to be formed in a hollow square, and had the four officers marched to the center. There he told them he would not humiliate any officer or soldier by re- quiring them to touch their disgraced swords and compelled them to deliver them up to his colored servant, who cut from their coats every insignia of rank. Then an order was read, dismissing them from the service, and the four cowards were drummed out of camp. It is an incident char- acteristic of the fiery Sheridan, but it had its desired effect, for he says that from that day no officer in that division ever abandoned his colors. Sheridan distinguished himself in this battle and was from then on regarded as one of the most promising of the division commanders. Al- though born in New York he may justly be claimed by Ohio and his name added to that re- markable list of Ohio men who served the Union with such distinction, for he was brought up in that state and appointed to West Point from Ohio. Perhaps of all the Union officers who rose to high rank, Sheridan inherited the least in respect to home training and education. His parents were Irish immigrants. His father had secured some employment on the Cumberland Road, then being built west of the Ohio. This led him to settle in Somerset, Perry County. There Sheridan had a little schooling in the vil- lage school and soon graduated into the position of clerk in a local store. He did some reading and was able to inform his customers about the events of the Mexican War then being fought, 102 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS and in which most of his future associates were receiving their baptism of fire. Unlike Grant, who did not want to go to West Point or be a soldier, Sheridan was possessed with an ambition to go to the Academy and become an officer. He entered with the Class of 1848. Among his classmates, and for a time his roommate, was Henry W. Slocum, afterwards the able com- mander of the 12th Corps in the Army of the Po- tomac and the left wing of Sherman’s Army. Slocum gave Sheridan great assistance by help- ing him with the difficult mathematical problems for which he had not been properly prepared. He graduated with the Class of 1853, being num- ber thirty-four in a membership of fifty-two. At the head of this class was the brilliant McPherson, another son of Ohio, whose career was cut short at Peach Tree Creek in the Atlanta campaign. Schofield and Hood were also members of this class. Sheridan was one of the youngest generals in the Union Army, being just thirty years of age at the time Stone River was fought, and weighing one hundred and fifteen pounds. Grant had the highest opinion of Sheridan as a commander and, in conversation with John Rus- sell Young, said of him: ‘He belongs to the very first rank of soldiers, not only of our country but of the world. I rank Sheridan with Napoleon and Frederick and the great commanders in his- tory. No man ever had such a faculty of finding out things as Sheridan, of knowing all about the enemy. He was always the best informed man in his command as to the enemy. Then he had that magnetic quality of swaying men, which I wish I had—a rare quality in a general.” In the battle of Stone River Sheridan rode his famous charger, Rienzi. The animal had been presented to Sheridan by Captain A. P. Campbell, STONE RIVER 103 of the 2nd Michigan Cavalry, when the army was encamped near Rienzi, Mississippi. The horse was then three years old, sixteen hands high and strongly built, and, save for three white feet, was jet black. His owner was afraid to mount him and was glad to present him to Sheridan. It was on this animal that he made his famous ride from Winchester to Cedar Creek, in 1864. Rienzi carried Sheridan through all his stirring campaigns, and, although wounded several times in battle, survived the war and lived to a good old age, dying in 1878. In the Presidential campaign of 1864, a number of Republican leaders, meeting one night at the old Continental Hotel, on Chestnut Street, Phila- delphia, asked Thomas Buchanan Reed to write something which could be used in the campaign. The news had just come in of Sheridan’s victory at Cedar Creek, and taking that for his cue, Reed immediately composed his stirring poem, “Sheridan’s Ride,” reciting the several stanzas as he reached the different landings on the grand stairway of the hotel, on his way to his room. This poem made Rienzi the most famous war horse of American history: And there, through the flush of the morning light A steed as black as the steeds of night, Was seen to pass as with eagle flight ; As if he knew the terrible need He stretched away with his utmost speed. Hill rose and fell; but his heart was gay, With Sheridan fifteen miles away. Interesting light is thrown on the character of Sheridan, destined to become one of the great personalities of the war, by the story of his fight at West Point with a fellow-cadet, William R. Terrill, of Virginia. In September, 1851, Sheri- 104 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS dan’s company at West Point was forming for parade, when Cadet Sergeant Terrill gave Sheridan an order to “dress” in a certain direc- tion. Sheridan thought he was accurately dressed and that the order had been given in an improper tone, and in his furious anger made at Terrill with lowered bayonet, but got control of himself before an actual contact could take place. Ter- rill, of course, reported him for this gross in- subordination and when they next met Sheridan at once attacked him with his fists. The result was that Sheridan was suspended from the Academy for a year; not graduating until 1853. In 1862 both Sheridan and Terrill were with Buell’s army, then assembling at Louisville, and Sheridan took steps towards a reconciliation. The reconciliation, however, was not destined to last as long as the estrangement, for Terrill was killed a few days later in the battle of Perryville. Ter- rill was from Virginia, and had a brother, James B. Terrill, who became a general in the Confed- erate Army and was killed leading his brigade at Bethesda Church, Virginia. When the war was over, the father brought the body of William all the way from Kentucky, and that of James from the field of Bethesda and buried them at the Vir- ginia home in the same grave. On the stone over their grave he had placed the inscription: This monument erected by their father. God alone knows which was right. IX FREDERICKSBURG AND CHANCELLORSVILLE DISASTER AND DISAPPOINTMENT A fine old white-pillared Virginia mansion among the trees at the top of a green hill, at the bottom of which runs a low stone wall—this is the scene of the saddest tragedy of the Civil War. In the Philipps house across the heights from Fred- ericksburg, on the evening of December 9, 1862, Burn- side had just finished explaining to his general officers the plan of attack against the Confederate Army. General French declared that the battle would be won in forty-eight hours, and called for three cheers for the commanding general, which were given with a will. But as Burnside passed along the hall from the council chamber he met Brigader-General R. C. Haw- kins and said to him, “What do you think of it?” Hawkins answered, “If you make the attack as con- templated, it will be the greatest slaughter of the war; and there isn’t infantry enough in our whole army to carry these heights if they are well defended.” Haw- kins was right and the cheers were wrong. In a little while those same officers who cheered the plans of their general groaned aloud over the senseless slaughter of their men. On the day after the battle of Fredericksburg, Major W. R. Mason, C. S. A., was sent across the river under a flag of truce to meet with Union officers and make arrangements for the burial of the dead. He was an old friend of Burnside, and he said to the 105 106 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS officer to whom he handed his dispatch, ‘Give my re- gards to General Burnside and say to him that I thought he was too familiar with the surroundings of Fredericksburg to butt his brains out deliberately against our stone walls.” When all has been said and written, that is about the best and shortest history of the battle of Fredericksburg—a deliberate butting out of brains against a remorseless stone wall. Burnside was one of those men who have greatness thrust upon them. The battle in which he commanded is the least glorious of the battles of the Civil War. Not that there was no display of valor and heroism, for of that there was no lack, but because of the blind alleys into which that valor was asked to go. Even heroism is commonplace unless it be expressed in an intelligent effort. There seems to have been no such effort at Fredericksburg. The lack of an intelligent plan and method at the battle on the part of the Union Army is strikingly set forth in the report of Hooker, who commanded one of the grand divisions. He writes that after losing all the men which his orders required him to lose, he withdrew. That one of the commanders should have thrown in his men with no hope and no expectation of doing anything except de- plete his ranks is evidence enough of the lack of plan on the part of Burnside. It was madness with no ameliorating method in it. “Oh! great God!” groaned Couch to Howard, as they stood in the steeple of the courthouse and watched the blue lines wasting away on the plain in front of the stone wall. “See how our men, our poor fellows, are falling!’ While his men were being cut down in the hopeless assault, the gray- bearded Sumner, restrained by General Burnside from crossing the river to take the place at the head of his lines, shed tears at the awful spectacle. And the nation groaned too, when it heard of the slaughter. After “Jeb” Stuart’s wild ride around the entire Union Army in the middle of October, McClellan FREDERICKSBURG 107 had little standing at Washington. He was relieved by Burnside on the fifteenth of November. Public opinion demanded an engagement with the Confeder- ate Army, and Burnside proceeded to engage the en- emy without particular regard as to time or place. The failure of the War Department to have pontoons ready for Burnside when he reached the Rappahannock on November 17th gave Lee time to concentrate his army. The position taken by the Confederates at Fred- ericksburg was one of unusual strength. Back of the sleepy old town, filled with memories of Washington and guarding the tomb of Mary, the mother of Wash- ington, is a steep hill. The hill is crowned by a fine, old southern mansion and takes its name, Marye’s Heights, from the once owners of the house. At the bottom of the hill, on the Fredericksburg side, there is a sunken road flanked by a stone wall. On the hill above, just in front of the Marye house, Lee had his artillery situated. Alexander, Longstreet’s chief of artillery, had declared that his guns so swept the plain below that not a chicken could live on it. Behind the stone wall at the base of the hill, protected both by the wall and the depression of the road, a sort of sunken road of Ohain, lay the infantry in three lines, one loading, the next passing the guns, the next firing. Against such a position Burnside marched his men on the fatal thirteenth of December, 1862. Their first obstacle was a canal, the bridges of which had been destroyed. Those who got over this and escaped the fire of the artillery on the heights above, rushed forward to cer- tain death in front of the stone wall. More than twelve thousand men, dead and wounded, were sacri- ficed in a blind effort to take the Heights. The most honorable mention of that dark day belongs to the Irish brigade. Twelve hundred strong, with sprigs of green in their caps, the Irishmen marched in the light of the sinking sun against the terrible stone wall. When they came back, they mustered just two hundred 108 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS and eighty. When the firing had ceased, a lady ven- tured to look out of her door upon the field where the Federal dead lay. Then the field was blue—blue with the uniforms of the dead. A few hours afterward she looked again, and the field was white—the ghastly white of human bodies stripped of their clothing. The Irish brigade was commanded by the Irish orator Thomas Francis Meagher. In 1848 he was sentenced to death for sedition in Ireland, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in Van Diemen’s Land. Thence, in 1849, he escaped to the United States. He survived the perils of the Civil War, only to end an adventurous and romantic career by drown- ing in the Missouri River near Fort Benton, Montana, when governor of that territory. On the Confederate side, the most conspicuous officer of Irish birth was Patrick Ronayne Cleburne, killed when storming the Union lines at Franklin, Tennessee. Fredericksburg is not without its heroine. She was the mistress of a cottage along the road where the Con- federates lay. In the midst of the battle a ball passed clear through the house and mortally wounded the Confederate General, T. R. Cobb. No bandages were at hand, but the brave woman slipped off her skirt, tore it into strips and bound up the leg of the dying officer. Battles are strange things. When the can- nonading was making the hills shake and men were falling by the thousands, General Lee’s thoughts, so he confessed in a letter, were wandering far from the scene of carnage. He was thinking of the summer day he told his love to Mary Parke Custis as they stood together beneath a tree. In his general orders telling of the battle of Fred- ericksburg, the only officer below a major-general mentioned by Lee was John Pelham, of Alabama, known afterwards as “the gallant Pelham.”’ Pelham was killed at Kelly’s Ford. His body was carried back to the plantation home in Alabama, and as they FREDERICKSBURG 109 bore him up to the house in the evening, as the moon- light lay white on the cotton fields and on the vines at the doorway, his mother stood waiting to greet him. As they carried the body in, she said through falling tears, ‘“Washed in the blood of the Lamb that was slain.” He was only twenty-five years old, but his name stands out as a synonym for chivalry and gal- lantry beyond that of almost any officer in the South- ern Army. January 26, 1863, saw the Army of the Potomac with a new commander, “Fighting Joe’ Hooker. After months of drilling and organizing he had re- stored the morale and discipline of the army and was ready for aggressive movements. At that very time, Lee and Jackson were contemplating an invasion of Pennsylvania; but Hooker moved first. Along with his commission as commander, Lincoln had _ sent Hooker a fatherly and characteristic letter. He ended the letter by saying, “I have heard, in such a way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the army and the government needed a dictator. Of course, it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the command. Only those generals who gain successes can set up dictators. What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship. And now beware of rashness, beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories.” As events turned out, Hooker failed at Chancellorsville because of too great fear of rashness. His sobriquet, “Fighting Joe,’ was not won in that campaign. The spirit of confidence was abroad in the army, for their old huts across from Fredericksburg were de- stroyed by the soldiers when they took up the march. Lee was lying in his old position on the heights back of Fredericksburg when he learned that Hooker with a great army was well in his rear, in the vicinity of the Chancellor House. This house, a substantial brick 110 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS building, stands in the midst of a clearing in the dense forest, not inappropriately named the Wilderness. Sedgwick had been left with a strong corps at Fred- ericksburg and Lee was between two fires. Lee left Jubal Early in the lines at Marye’s Heights and turned back along the plank road in the direction of Hooker’s army. Everything had so far turned out well for Hooker, and the bombastic manifesto issued to his troops, in which he said the “enemy must come out of his intrenchments or else ingloriously fly,’ was not al- together out of keeping with the situation. But on that Friday, May Ist, everything began to go wrong. Instead of fighting where he had planned to make battle, on high clear ground well on towards Freder- icksburg, Hooker ordered his line to fall back towards the Chancellor House. ‘This retrograde movement angered his corps commanders, discouraged the men in the ranks, and gave Lee the opportunity to send Jackson on his famous flanking expedition. When the order to withdraw reached him, Meade exclaimed, “My God! If we can’t hold the top of the hill, we surely can’t hold the bottom!” The keeper of the inn at Fredericksburg was a veteran of Lee’s army and had charged with the men of Pickett’s division on the third day at Gettysburg. After his term of enlistment expired he was employed with a comrade in burying Union dead who fell in the battle of Fredericksburg. As they were shoveling the earth down upon a Union corpse the one said to his companion, “Tom, don’t this beat the devil! Jeff Davis gave us thirteen dollars a month for shooting these fellows, and now Uncle Sam pays us a dollar a day for burying them!” For a guide this veteran sécured me a wiry little man who had lived as a boy in Fredericksburg at the time of the battle. A's be- fitted his profession, he was well versed in lore of other battles, particularly the battle of Waterloo, and as we FREDERICKSBURG 111 jolted over the terrible corduroy roads he recited the lines of Byron, commencing, There was the sound of revelry by night. . . In the midst of the wilderness we came to a road leading off to the left. Beneath the trees where the roads join, our guide pointed out a small granite stone. It marks the bivouac of Lee and Jackson on Friday night, May lst. It was there they planned the great stroke, and along that road that “Stonewall” Jackson passed with his thirty thousand men in the gray mists of the next morning. That movement and the subse- quent turning of the right flank of the Union Army has been the subject of more debate and discussion than any other action of the war. It has generally been con- sidered a brilliant climax to the brilliant military career of the man who led the flanking column. If the move- ment had failed, and there was every reason why it should have failed, Lee would have been greatly blamed for dividing his army and leaving himself with an inferior force between Sedgwick and Hooker. With all due regard for the dash and daring of Jackson and his men, the success of the movement must ever re- main one of the mysteries of the war. It was a march in broad daylight with a column of almost thirty thou- sand men, along the lines of a great army. A body of cavalry doing its proper work would have un- covered this move, but Hooker had sent Stoneman on an abortive raid towards Richmond. At one place, Lewis Creek, Jackson had to pass over high ground in full view of the Union Army, and hundreds of glasses were leveled on his men by Federal officers. But the rumor which spread through the Union Army was that Lee was retreating. All through that long hot Saturday the Union outposts were being constantly driven in, and reported the passage of a large body of troops. The 11th Corps was under Howard and 112 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS formed the Union right. It was a new corps in the army and had been dubbed the foreign contingent, because of the large number of Germans in the corps. Von Gilsa, Schurz, Schimmelpfeinig, Krygyaweuski, and Steinwehr were the names of some of the officers and it is little wonder that the corps was so named. But that day they were the victims of stupidity and inaction at headquarters. . At six o’clock the whole corps was facing south and east, and the men were getting their suppers, sleeping, or playing cards. The first intimation they had of the presence of Jackson’s men was when the startled deer and rabbits ran through their camps. This was fol- lowed by the rebel yell, and in a moment the Confed- erates, lean, shoeless, ragged, but great fighters and marchers, were upon them. Regiment after regiment was telescoped and men, mules and guns were hope- lessly entangled. As an instance of the confusion it is related how the 119th New York Regiment was formed in battle line only to find that their backs were to the foe. In the midst of the riot and panic Dilger saved the honor of his corps by fighting his guns to the last man. Our guide took us through the forest and under the barb-wire fence to show us where Dilger had turned his guns from south to west and stayed for a moment the onrush of the Confederates. A mile or two down the road Hooker was sitting on the veranda of the Chancellor House, enjoying the quiet spring evening and chatting with his officers. The woods of the wilderness were so dense that the sound of the firing did not carry for any distance. The first intimation he had of the disaster was when he saw men, mules, oxen, horses and soldiers pouring down the road. He and Howard did what they could to stem the rout, but the Confederates were not to be denied. In the darkness the victorious Confederates had be- come disorganized themselves, and with a view to re- FREDERICKSBURG 113 forming the lines, Jackson had ridden out along the plank road on a reconnoissance. The advance lines of the Confederates had orders not to fire on infantry because of the darkness and the confusion, but to fire on any mounted troops which might appear. As Jackson and his staff were trying to get into the lines, they were fired upon by the 18th North Carolina Regi- ment. Just what happened no one will ever know. A Massachusetts regiment has claimed the sad dis- tinction of killing Jackson. But whether by his own men, or by the hand of the enemy, Jackson fell mor- tally wounded. At the time of his honeymoon, Jackson and his bride had visited Quebec. They drove out to the plains of Abraham and stood by the monument of General Wolfe. Reading the inscription, J die content, Jack- son said to his bride, ““Who would not be content to die in the hour of glorious victory!’ Little did he then imagine that he, too, was to be struck down in the moment of his greatest achievement. A huge granite stone in the midst of the wilderness marks the spot where he fell. It is one of the few monuments on the field of Chancellorsville, and rightly so. His character was rugged and simple like the stone which tells the place where he finished his course and fought his last fight. One week after, in his delirium order- ing A. P. Hill to prepare for action, Jackson crossed over the river and rested beneath the shade of the trees. His death made Chancellorsville a Pyrrhic vic- tory for the South. On Sunday morning Stuart carried on the attack and finally drove Hooker away from the clearing at the Chancellor House, and united his own lines with those of Lee. During the fighting on Sunday, Hooker was a strange mystery of inaction and torpidity. Some assert that he was drunk; others, among them Carl Schurz, that too long abstinence accounted for his torpid brain. Certain it is that as he was standing 114 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS on the gallery of the Chancellor House, a ball struck the pillar against which he was leaning and he fell to the floor in a dazed condition. To the misfortune of the army he did not relinquish the command at that time. Most of his generals were anxious for battle, but he thought only of retreat. Meanwhile, Sedgwick had moved across the Rap- pahannock and stormed Marye’s Heights. He was well on his way to join Hooker when he was checked after a fierce fight at Salem Church. On Monday, and after a stiff fight, Lee forced him to retire across the river. Through all this battle of Salem Church, with the sound of the guns in his ears, Hooker lay listlessly idle with thousands of men. It is said that Salem Church is the only place where Lee ever lost his temper. He was displeased that Wilcox and An- derson had not followed up their fight of Sunday and driven Sedgwick over the river. But so far as the issues of the campaign were concerned, there was no reason for Lee to lose his temper. Hooker’s great army had been flanked, scattered, and finally driven across the Rappahannock to their familiar quarters. Thus in gloom and humiliation did the campaign which had opened with such promise of success come to a close. In actual losses the damage was not great. But the general failure and miscarriage had elated the South and occasioned anger and sorrow in the North. The distress of Lincoln over Chancellorsville was more poignant than at any time during the war. The conditions were not as bad as Lincoln believed them to be, and the army, as the Gettysburg campaign im- mediately following demonstrated, was still intact and in splendid military form. But the great expectations of the President and those of the country had again been dashed. Noah Brooks, an inmate of the White House at the time, thus describes Lincoln’s anguish of mind: “I shall never forget that picture of despair. He held a telegram in his hand, and as he closed the FREDERICKSBURG 115 door and came towards us, I mechanically noticed that his face, usually sallow, was ashen in hue. The paper on the wall behind him was of the tint known as French gray, and even in that moment of sorrow and dread expectation I vaguely took in the thought that the complexion of the anguished President’s visage was almost exactly like that of the wall. He gave me the telegram and in a voice trembling with emotion, said, ‘Read it—news from the army.’” (The telegram was from Hooker’s chief-of-staff, Butterfield, con- firming the rumor that the army had retreated across the river.) “The appearance of the President, as I read aloud these fateful words, was piteous. Never as long as I knew him, did he seem so broken up, so dis- pirited and so ghostlike. Clasping his hands behind his back, he walked up and down the room, saying, ‘My God, my God, what will the country say! What will the country say!’ ’”’* The night after Chancellorsville, the White House was like a funeral. The hopes of the country and the administration had once more been blasted. The vast expenditure of gold and blood had again come to naught. Measureless denunciation and pathetic cries for peace poured in upon the President. Who could have blamed him if he had yielded to those protests and abandoned what seemed to be a hopeless war? All through the night Lincoln kept his lonely vigil. The secretary, who sat in his room across the hall, heard only the ticking of the clock and the tread of the President’s feet as he walked up and down in his chamber. Our Man or Sorrows was treading his wine- press alone, and of the people there was none to help him. The battle of Chancellorsville had been lost, but Lincoln’s battle was won. The next morning he went down to Fredericksburg to comfort his defeated gen- eral and to encourage the army and the country. *“TLincoln and His Generals,” Macartney, pp. 150, 151. x GETTYSBURG Tuus FAR AND No FARTHER Shortly before the Civil War broke out, Robert Toombs, of Georgia, the prince of the “fire- eaters,’ had declared in the United States Senate that he would call the roll of his slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill monument. In the last days of June, 1863, the advance guard of Lee’s army began to pour into Pennsylvania by way of the Cumberland Valley, and there were not a few alarmists in the North who thought that the bombastic boast of Toombs was about to be fulfilled. All things considered, the invasion of Pennsyl- vania was as rash as the boast of the Georgia “fire-eater.’ Some such movement was in Lee’s mind when he made the campaign which ended at Antietam. Then the victory of Second Bull Run suggested the invasion; this time it was the victory of Chancellorsville. Lee counted on the low morale of the Army of the Potomac. But in this he was mistaken. The fiasco in the wilder- ness about the Chancellor House had in no way disorganized the Union Army or caused it to lose heart. The greater part of the army had not been thrown into the fight at all, and were only too anxious for a fight instead of retreat. From the day that Hooker broke camp at Fredericksburg up to the last charge at Gettysburg, the soldiers of the Army of the Potomac manifested the keen- est fighting spirit. The purpose of Lee was to 116 COM We Ge de tana e: 117 secure sustenance for his army in the fertile fields of Pennsylvania and Maryland, capture Harris- burg, the railroad and recruiting center of the North, threaten Philadelphia and Washington, and if pursued by the Army of the Potomac, turn on it and defeat it on Northern soil. The Con- federate leaders hoped that such a victory would bring recognition from Europe and compel the government at Washington to make a reasonable peace. By the invasion of Pennsylvania it was hoped, too, that Grant would be compelled to loosen his hold on the straitly shut up Vicksburg. As a means of relief Longstreet had suggested that Johnston be sent to reinforce Bragg, who was contending with Rosecrans in Tennessee; that his (Longstreet’s) division should join Johnston’s reinforcements for Brageg’s army, their combined forces to strike Rosecrans and then march for the Ohio River and Cincinnati. When Lee sub- mitted his plan, that of Longstreet was dropped. The first division under Ewell reached Cham- bersburg on the twenty-fourth of June, and then pressed on to Carlisle, and almost to Harrisburg. A part of this same division, under command of Jubal Early, had marched east of the mountains through Gettysburg, and as far as Wrightsville on the Susquehanna River. His orders were to take the bridge and join the army at Harrisburg. The other two corps under Hill and Longstreet joined forces at Hagerstown, Maryland, on the twenty-fourth of June, the same day that Ewell’s corps reached Chambersburg. The plans of Lee were working smoothly and the different col- umns were doing all that they had been ordered to do. A glimpse at the map will show how the Cum- berland Valley is a continuation, north of the 118 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS Potomac, of the Shenandoah Valley. The Cum- berland Valley made a natural avenue of invasion and the Shenandoah Valley formed Lee’s lines of communication with Richmond. Hooker had asked permission of Lincoln to make a raid against Richmond, but Lincoln told him that Lee’s army was the objective. In characteristic manner he wrote that if he went to the south of the Rappahannock he would be “like an ox half over a fence, liable to be torn by dogs front and rear, without a fair chance to gore one way or kick the other.” A few days later, when Lee’s advance was at Martinsburg, near Harper’s Ferry, and the rear just leaving Fredericksburg, Lincoln tele- graphed Hooker: “If the head of Lee’s army is at Martinsburg and the tail of it on the plank road between Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, the animal must be very slim somewhere. Could you not break him ?” The main divisions of the Confederate cavalry under “Jeb” Stuart had been detached from Lee’s army for a raid around the Army of the Potomac. Lee expected that Stuart would be able to keep in touch with the right wing of the army as it ad- vanced into Pennsylvania, but Stuart placed the Union army between him and the Confederates, crossing the Potomac at Rowser’s Ford on June 27th and raiding through the outskirts of Balti- more. At Rockville he captured some of the trains of the Union Army and conveyed these to Lee. At Hanover, Pennsylvania, he fought a rear guard battle with the Federal cavalry under Kilpatrick, and then pressed on in the direction of Harrisburg, greatly delayed and hampered by his captured wagons. He had no news from Lee and did not know that the Confederate army had turned back from the Susquehanna and was con- centrating near Gettysburg. He therefore did GETTYSBURG 119 not reach Carlisle until the afternoon of the second day’s battle at Gettysburg. And thus it came about that Lee had no cavalry between him and the army following him, and stumbled into a battle which was both accidental and disastrous. The Confederate general, Heath, who commanded the division which first met Meade’s advance in Gettysburg, declared that the battle was lost be- cause of the “absence of the cavalry.” In con- trast with the service of the Confederate cavalry was that rendered by regular cavalry under Bufford, which was scouting ahead of the Union army and disclosed the Confederate advance to- wards Gettysburg. It was only through a scout of Longstreet’s that Lee, then at Chambersburg, learned on the evening of June 28th that the Federal Army was as Frederick City, Maryland, under the command of General George Meade. Hooker’s movements had been wise and vigorous, and had he retained the command he undoubtedly would have regained the laurels he had lost at Chancellorsville. When at Frederick City he properly asked to have the garrison at Harper’s “erry attached to his army. His request was refused by Halleck and the War Department, not because it was not a sound mili- tary measure, for it was the first thing Meade did when he took command, but because Halleck and Stanton were determined that after the dis- astrous campaign of Chancellorsville, Hooker should not be entrusted with the conduct of an- other battle. Because of the powerful influence of the Chase faction in the Cabinet, Hooker was not relieved immediately after Chancellorsville, but as soon as it was clear that another great battle was imminent, steps were taken to make him resign his command. In the Chancellorsville campaign Hooker was 120 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS a great disappointment to the country, to Lincoln, to the Army of the Potomac and to himself. But in the handling of his army during the movements which came to a climax in the battle of Gettys- burg, Hooker displayed remarkable intuition and guided the operations with extraordinary skill. The result was that when he handed the com- mand over to Meade, the position of the Army of the Potomac with relation to the invading Con- federate Army was such that a defeat for Lee was almost inevitable. Congress quite properly recognized the great part Hooker had played in the operations before Gettysburg, and in the resolution of thanks he was mentioned first of all. Meade, Hooker’s successor, was a man forty- eight years of age, born in Spain, a graduate of West Point, and, like nearly all the prominent generals of the North, had resigned from the army and entered civil life, only to go back to the army before the Mexican War. Most of his service had been as an engineer, and after he took command of the Army of the Potomac the engineers came rapidly to the front. Meade had been a critic of Hooker and, when he was awak- ened in his tent to receive his commission as com- mander, he thought that it was an order placing him under arrest. Silent and unboasting, the author of no rodomontade, he was a careful, cau- tious general who took no risks and fought his one great battle wisely and courageously. His irritable disposition when in action made him few friends, and his fame after the war was disproportion- ate to his service. At a Cabinet meeting just before Gettysburg was fought, the members were discussing the merits of the various corps commanders who were being suggested for Hooker’s place. When the opinion of Stanton was sought, he said he preferred Meade. There was evident surprise, GETTYSBURG 121 for Meade was little known and had none press- ing his claims. Stanton was asked about Meade’s backers and sponsors. He replied with a laugh, “Perhaps that is just the reason why I prefer him. He has no backers and sponsors, and is not al- ways asking for leave or special privileges. He attends to his business and does his work well.” The news which Longstreet’s scout had brought to Lee, and which ought to have come to him long before through his own cavalry, was serious enough. Meade was close behind and within striking distance of his communications with the Shenandoah Valley. In order to keep Meade away from his communications Lee or- dered his army, which was spread out through the Cumberland Valley, to march east of the mountains and concentrate at Cashtown, near Gettysburg. Jubal Early, who was already east of the mountains and about to cross the Susque- hanna at Wrightsville, was checked just in time and called back to the main army. Gettysburg was an accident, so far as the actual staging of the fight was concerned. But with Lee’s army moving east and south, and Meade’s army march- ing north, a conflict somewhere in the vicinity of Gettysburg was inevitable. Thirty-five miles southwest of Harrisburg, and within striking distance of Washington, Balti- more, and Philadelphia, Gettysburg lies in a little valley well east of the Blue Ridge, or South Mountain. It is a typical Pennsylvania county seat, with a population of about three thousand. The country about it is exceedingly fertile, and in comparison with the wilderness about Freder- icksburg and Chancellorsville seemed like the Promised Land, Fair as the Garden of the Lord To the eyes of the famished rebel horde. 122 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS Most of the farmers were Germans, popularly called “Pennsylvania Dutch.” As a center for Germans, Gettysburg was the seat of a college and a Lutheran theological seminary. In one of the streets of the village there is now to be seen a monument to the Gettysburg College boys who had a skirmish with Early when he passed through the town some days before the battle. The old Seminary building stands on a ridge west of the town, and from the cupola one commands a view of the first day’s conflict. Fields brown, yellow and golden are spread out before one, dotted here and there with the sub- stantial stone houses and enormous barns of the thrifty “Dutch.” On the thirtieth of June, Pettigrew’s brigade of Heth’s division came marching along the road from Cashtown. They had been sent to Gettys- burg to procure shoes, always a luxury for Con- federate soldiers. But as they neared the ridge where the seminary stands they were stopped by a body of regular cavalry under Bufford. With- out their shoes the men of Pettigrew’s brigade marched back to Cashtown and reported the pres- ence of the enemy. The next morning, July Ist, Heth’s whole division was sent forward with or- ders to clear the town. Bufford stuck to his post and was speedily reinforced by Reynolds, who was near at hand with three corps. He had ex- pected to draw out the enemy and then retire to the lines Meade had prepared at Taneytown, Maryland. But Reynolds had his fighting blood ae il determined to hold Gettysburg to the last itch, During the first day’s battle, Bufford, Howard, Schurz and Reynolds had their lookout in the cupola of the seminary building. Today one can see a little in front of the seminary the equestrian GETTYSBURG 123 statue of Reynolds, who fell in the midst of the fight. His monument is one of the six hundred which dot the field. There are more monuments at Gettysburg than on all the other battlefields of the world together. Monuments to officers, to privates, to generals, to regiments, to divisions, to corps. Every possible fancy of the sculptor’s art has found expression. The influence of Gettysburg upon our national sculpture is note- worthy, for at Gettysburg and on the other fields of the Civil War sculpture has expressed in bronze and stone the hopes and sorrows of the heroic age of the nation. Wherever one goes: in the village streets, in the woods, by the streams, in the fields and on the hilltops, one stumbles upon a crouch- ing infantryman, a charging horseman, a dying general or a wounded color-bearer. One of the most successful statues is the splen- did bronze piece on the summit of Little Round Top, representing General Warren, the chief en- gineer of the Federal Army, looking off to the west through his glasses and examining the Con- federate lines. Just before the action commenced on July 2nd, Warren went to the summit of Little Round Top, which was used as a signal station. The Union troops posted in front of Little Round Top were in the woods and therefore unable to see the movements of the Confederates. To guard against a surprise Warren ordered the captain of a rifle battery to fire into the woods beyond. The shot caused a commotion among the Confed- erates, and looking through his glasses Warren saw the glistening of gun barrels and bayonets in the enemy’s line of battle, then drawn up in a position to outflank the left wing of the Union army. Warren immediately sent a hurry call to Meade for troops. As he rode down from the summit he met a detachment of troops from the 124 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS Fifth Corps and at once ordered them to take a position on Little Round Top. This prompt action of Warren played a great part in saving the day for the Union Army. There is nothing in this sea of monuments and tablets which brings back the battle like this statue of Warren. As one climbs to the top of the hill and comes suddenly upon the statue, placed on the very edge of the rocks, one can hardly believe that one is not looking upon flesh and blood. The subsequent career of General Warren had an element of tragedy init. He rose to the command of the 5th Corps under Meade and Grant and did valiant service in the move- ments against Richmond and Petersburg. At the battle of Five Forks Sheridan was dissatisfied with the manner in which Warren brought up his corps, and by the authority of Grant, whose favorite Sheridan was, relieved him of his com- mand. With Appomattox just eight days away, this was a sad ending to the career of the general who had contributed so much to the ultimate victory. Warren asked Sheridan to reconsider his action. Sheridan replied, “Reconsider? hell! I never reconsider my orders!” In the administra- tion of President Hayes, Warren was exonerated by the court of inquiry, but misfortune followed him even to the end, for he died before the de- cision of the court was made known. So deeply did he feel the wrong which had been done him, that he requested that he be not buried in his uniform and that there should be no military display and no emblems of his profession about his coffin. When the grand review of the vic- torious armies was held in Washington on the twenty-third and twenty-fourth of May, 1865, General Warren, having been relieved, was not with the troops; but when the 5th Corps, now GETTYSBURG v2) under Griffin, marched past the reviewing stand where Warren stood, he was greeted with tu- multuous cheers by the men who had followed him in many a hard-fought battle. Not until Hayes was President was Warren able to get a hearing, and then, too late, the stigma was lifted from his name. After the fall of General Reynolds the com- mand of the Union Army on the scene of fight- ing devolved upon Doubleday and then upon Howard. Howard might have held the field against the Confederates if Slocum, who was not far away with the 12th Corps, had immediately been sent forward to his aid. But Slocum was under the orders of Meade and knowing that Meade’s plan was not to fight at Gettysburg, it was not till late in the afternoon that his corps came to the help of Howard, for Meade as yet knew nothing of the first day’s engagement. But a more determining factor in the repulse of the Union advance was the timely arrival of Jubal Early on his way back from the Susquehanna. His division was thrown in on the Union right, flanking the 11th Corps and compelling the with- drawal of the entire line. With considerable dis- order and with the loss of several thousand prisoners, the retreat was made through Gettys- bring to the hills beyond, and thus in disaster and gloom the first day’s battle came to an end. News of the fight and rumors of the death of Reynolds had reached Meade at his headquarters at Taneytown, in Maryland. Howard ranked Hancock, but the latter possessed the full confi- dence of Meade, and he ordered him to Gettys- burg to take command of the troops and decide whether or not to make a stand there. Hancock reclined in an ambulance wagon as it thundered over the pike leading to Gettysburg, studying a 126 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS map of the field. Near Gettysburg he met the body of the fallen Reynolds. When he reached the field the remnants of the Ist and 11th Corps were being put in position on Cemetery Hill. He approved the position taken by Howard, and after assisting in the forming of the lines, turned the command over to Slocum and went back to tell Meade that this was the place to fight. Howard afterwards received the thanks of Congress for selecting Cemetery Hill as a line of battle. But whether Howard or Hancock was responsible for the position, it was one of great natural strength, and one need not be a soldier to appreciate that fact. Yet strong as it was, the broken and routed divisions which had just retreated through the village could hardly have held the hills against a determined attack that night. Lee thought that Early should “press those people,” but left it to the discretion of his subordinate. If the attack had been made that night, there would have been no second day’s fight, for the whole Con- federate Army was closing in, and the Union Army was still scattered, with headquarters at Taneytown. All that night the pick and shovel rang among the graves on Cemetery Hill and all through the night the roads from the south re- sounded with the tramp of the advancing divi- sions, and by morning Lee confronted a vast army in lines of great natural strength. His oppor- tunity was gone. But Lee and his whole staff, with the exception of Longstreet, suffered that day from overconfidence. The history of the second and third day was a gallant attempt to do the impossible. Longstreet relates that as he and General Lee were riding along Seminary Ridge and viewing the Federal position, Lee struck the air with his clenched fist and declared, “If he is there tomor- GETTYSBURG 127 row I will attack him.” To which Longstreet replied, “If he is there tomorrow, it will be be- cause he wants you to attack. If that height has become the objective, why not take it at once? We have forty thousand men, less the casualties of the day. He cannot have more than twenty thousand.” One of Longstreet’s officers, J. S. D. Cullen, relates that when he congratulated Long- street upon the events of the first day, Long- street remarked that it would have been better not to have fought at all than to have stopped when they did, and that the enemy had been left in a position that it would take the whole Confed- erate Army to drive them from and then at a great sacrifice. ) Longstreet opposed the plan and urged Lee to slip around the Union Army and get between it and Washington. He comments on Lee’s tactics at Gettysburg in these words, “That he was ex- cited and off his balance was evident on the after- noon of the Ist, and he labored under that op- pression until enough blood was shed to appease him.” On the second day Lee’s plan of battle was to turn both flanks of Meade’s army, the heaviest attack to be made by Longstreet on the Union right. Most Southerners are profane when the name of Longstreet is mentioned in connection with the battle. He is charged with delaying the attack which had been ordered for the morning until four in the afternoon. However that may have been, when he finally did move it was with his accustomed vigor. Sickles had taken an ad- vanced position on the Union left which separated him from the Union center. Against this posi- tion in the peach orchard Longstreet hurled his men and drove the 3rd Corps back against Little Round Top. For a little it seemed as if he would 128 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS succeed in getting round the Union left, but after a sanguinary struggle in the wheatfield and in the Devil’s Den, a gorge of huge rocks, his men gave up the effort. All that he had succeeded in doing was to drive the Union left into proper alignment with the rest of the army. Instead of attacking the left end of the Union line, Longstreet thought that Lee ought to manoeuvre Meade out of his strong position on the hills. General Hood, who led the Confederate attack on the Union left, de- spite his fiery, impetuous disposition, had no hope of accomplishing anything by his attack, and asked permission to move around Big Round Top where the Union trains were parked. To this re- quest Longstreet sent back the answer: “Gen- eral Lee’s orders are to attack up the Emmetts- burgh Road.” Again Hood sent back a staff officer asking for a change of orders, and again the response came back: “General Lee’s orders are to attack up the Emmettsburgh Road.” When, after a third protest, Lee’s orders were repeated to him through Longstreet, General Hood ordered his men to make the assault. Meanwhile, Lee had been operating on the Union right. Rodes and Early, both of Ewell’s Corps, attacked Cemetery Hill, while Johnson at- tacked Culp’s Hill at the extreme right of the Union line. Rodes and Early failed to co-operate properly and the attack was a failure, although Early got well into the Federal lines before he was driven out. The great spectacle in the fight- ing on this part of the field was the charge of the “Louisiana Tigers’ at dusk on Cemetery Hill. But for the greater glory of Pickett’s charge the next day, the fierce assault of these rough des- peradoes of the Mississippi River might have gone down in history as the high-water mark of Southern valor. Of seventeen hundred “Tigers” AdusIg pue uoqqly ‘MOTIeg s[etguer) :Sulpurys MOOODNVH “IVAAHNHD GETTYSBURG 129 only three hundred got back to the Confederate lines. Johnson at Culp’s Hill was more success- ful, for Meade had withdrawn a part of the 12th Corps to help Sickles on the left. He succeeded in getting a position where he could threaten the Union right, and from which it was necessary to drive him the next morning. After the conflict had subsided on the evening of the second of July, Meade called a council of war at his headquarters back of the Union center on Cemetery Hill. Weary and worn, the different corps commanders filed into the little room in the Leicester cabin, Newton of the lst, Hancock of the 2nd, Birney of the 3rd, Sykes, the 5th, Sedg- wick, the 6th, just arrived from Manchester, Howard, the ill-starred 11th, Slocum, the 12th, General Butterfield, chief of staff, General War- ren, chief of engineers; Williams and Gibbons, attached to the 12th and 2nd, respectively, and General Meade. Meade’s scholarly face was fur- rowed with anxiety as he sat at the table and questioned his lieutenants, some of them sitting on the floor, others on the bed and on the few chairs, while Warren, wounded in the neck by the fragment of a shell, lay down on the floor and fell asleep. General Meade propounded three questions to his council. First, should the army remain in its present position, or retire to another nearer its base of supplies? Newton thought the position bad and that the lines should be arranged, but all voted not to retreat. The second question read: “It being determined to remain in the present position, should the army attack or wait the at- tack of the enemy?” All voted not to attack ex- cept Howard, who advised waiting as long as four o'clock, and then attack. In answer to the third question: “If we wait attack, how long?” 130 HIGHWAYSVANDIBYWAWS Sedgwick and William voted one day, Howard till four the next day, and Hancock said indefinitely that the army could not long remain idle Slocum voted to “stay and fight it out.” When the voting was over, Meade said to the officers about him, “Such, then, is your decision.” As the council broke up, Meade said to Gibbon of the 2nd Corps, “If Lee attacks tomorrow, it will be on your front.” Asked for an explanation, Meade answered that he had failed on both flanks and if he tried again, it would be at the center. While Meade and his corps commanders were holding their conference, Lee was meeting with his lieutenants and making plans for the next day. He was encouraged by the arrival of the belated Stuart with the cavalry, and Pickett’s fresh division of veteran Virginia troops had been brought up from Chambersburg. The Confed- erate leader still had the confidence of victory and his troops shared that confidence. His plan was, as the astute Meade had foreseen, to break the Union center and have Stuart ready to fall on the broken army from the rear. Meantime the weary Union soldiers, those who had fought, and those who had suffered the greater hardship of a forced march, lay resting among the rocks and boulders of Round Top, back of the stone fences on Ceme- tery Hill, and in the woods to the rear of their lines. A mile away on the opposite ridge slept the war-worn Confederates, dreaming of the spoils of Harrisburg, Baltimore, Washington and Phila- delphia. During the night of the second the thirsty and wounded soldiers of both armies came to fill their canteens and bathe their wounds at a spring on the Spangler farm, at the extreme right of the Federal lines. One touch of nature made the blue and the gray kin once more. Now walled and arched, this quiet woodland spring, GETTYSBURG 131 flowing serenely beneath the oaks and the hicko- ries, breathes a heavenly rebuke to the hate and passion of war. On a summer’s day in July, or in the autumn, when the fields are brown and the leaves are red, veterans of Lee and veterans of Meade, wearied now with a few hours’ walk over a field where once they fought for three days and three nights unceasingly and untiringly, sit thus by the well, dreaming the dreams of old men where once they saw the visions of the young. The wonderful popularity of McClellan with the Army of the Potomac is shown by an incident which occurred during the forced march of the 6th Corps under Sedgwick from Manchester, twenty-six miles from Gettysburg, on the night of the first. Half-way to Gettysburg the panting, perspiring men were halted, formed in hollow squares, and orders, as if from headquarters, were read to them stating that the army was under command of General George B. McClellan. The night air was rent with cheers, for the name of “Little Mac” was to the soldiers of the Army of the Potomac what the name of Bonaparte was to the soldiers of France. From early morning till one o’clock a profound quiet brooded over the field of battle. At the stroke of one, there was a tongue of flame and a puff of smoke on Seminary Ridge where the Washington Artillery was stationed. In a mo- ment the whole Confederate line was ablaze with the fire of nearly two hundred cannon. A few caissons were blown up, but otherwise the great play of artillery did little damage to the Union Army, which lay safely hidden behind the stone fences on the opposite ridge. From his station on Little Round Top Warren had seen the forma- tion of a strong body of troops back of the Con- federate lines, as if for a charge. He communi- £32 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS cated his discovery to the Union chief of artillery, Hunt, who ceased firing, had his caissons refilled, dismounted guns, and dead and wounded car- ried to the rear. It was at this time that the Confederate leaders thought they saw their op- portunity and sent Pickett forward. Five years after the war Mosby and Pickett were standing together in the Jefferson Hotel, at Richmond, when General Lee passed them. Pickett ex- claimed with feeling, “That old man! He had my division massacred at Gettysburg.” To which Mosby replied, ‘““Well, it made you immortal!” When word came from Alexander that the Union guns had ceased firing, Longstreet and Pickett were sitting side by side on the grass. Pickett sprang to his feet and looking to Long- street said, “General, shall I go forward?’ Un- able to speak the order which he was convinced must end in disaster, Longstreet grasped Pickett by the hand and bowed his head. The next mo- ment Pickett was on his horse and off at a gallop. In a few minutes he came riding back to Long- street and handed him a letter addressed to his fiancée at Richmond. On the back of the en- velope he had written in pencil, “If Old Peter's (Longstreet’s sobriquet) nod means death, good- bye, and God bless you, little one!” As he went to the head of his lines again, Wilcox rode up and taking a flask from his pocket, said, “Pickett, take a drink with me. In an hour, you'll be in hell or glory.” Pickett refused to drink, saying, “I promised the little girl who is waiting and pray- ing for me down in Virginia that I would keep fresh upon my lips, until we should meet again, the breath of the violets she gave me when we parted. Whatever my fate, Wilcox, I shall try to do my duty like a man, and I hope that, by GETTYSBURG 133 that little girl’s prayer, I shall today reach either glory or glory.” Perhaps the finest monument at Gettysburg is the Virginia Memorial, which represents Lee seated on “Traveler” and looking off over the fields towards the clump of trees which was the objective of the Confederate assault. The visitor at Gettysburg is surprised to find that the charge was not made up a steep and rugged hill, but over a gently rising slope of fields and meadows. After the skirmishers had cleared away the fences and other obstacles, the assaulting column of fif- teen thousand men, with the blue flag of Virginia floating proudly at their head, marched forward as if on dress parade through the streets of Rich- mond. For seven-eighths of a mile they had to march without cover and exposed to the fearful fire of the Federal batteries.* First, solid shot began to plow through their ranks; then, grape and canister, and finally, the more deadly hail of bullets. Pickett’s men did about all they were asked to do. They pierced the Union center and took some of the guns and for a few minutes the Stars and the Bars floated amid the smoke and carnage at the stone wall. But they had been left without support and the Union regiments quickly closed in on them. Lee’s report of the battle tells the secret of their failure: “They deserved suc- cess as far as it can be deserved by human valor and fortitude. More may have been required of them than they were able to perform.” *On my first visit to Gettysburg, I had a conversation with a Professor Douthitt, of the University of West Virginia, who was going over the battlefield. He had been a captain in Pickett’s division, and was one of the very few officers who went through the charge unwounded. He told me that the moment they emerged from the wood they realized that they had started on a dangerous and hopeless undertaking. 134 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS Lieutenant-Colonel Freemantle, of the British Army, who was at the Confederate headquarters during the battle of Gettysburg, in his Three Months in the Southern States, thus describes the conduct of General Lee after the disaster which befell Pickett: “If Long- street’s conduct was admirable, that of General Lee was perfectly sublime. He was engaged in rallying and in encouraging the broken troops, and was riding about a little in front of the wood, quite alone—the whole of his staff being engaged in a similar manner further to the rear. His face, which is always placid and cheerful, did not show signs of the slightest disappointment, care or an- noyance; and he was addressing to every soldier he met a few words of encouragement, such as, ‘All this will come right in the end: we'll talk it over afterwards; but, in the meantime, all good men must rally. We want all good and true men just now,’ etc. He spoke to all the wounded men that passed him, and the slightly wounded he ex- horted ‘to bind up their hurts and take up a musket’ in this emergency. Very few failed to answer his appeal, and I saw many badly wounded men take off their hats and cheer him. He said to me, ‘This has been a sad day for us, Colonel— a sad day; but we can’t expect always to gain victories.’ He was also kind enough to advise me to get into some more sheltered position, as the shells were bursting round us with considerable frequency.” The Confederate wave of attack was rolling back, spent.and broken, when Meade rode up to the ridge from Slocum’s headquarters and, learn- ing of the repulse, ejaculated a fervent “Thank God!” That exclamation tells the story of the escape of Lee’s army and failure of Meade to reap the fruits of victory. “Up, Guards, and at them!” was the order which might naturally have been expected. As he lay wounded on the ground, GETTYSBURG 135 waiting for the ambulance, Hancock wrote a note to Meade urging him to make a counter attack. Had such an attack been made, Lee’s army, with ammunition chests almost empty, must surely have been destroyed. Reinforcements were being hurried to Meade from all directions, and Lee could not hope for a single man. Yet he was per- mitted to steal away unmolested and take several thousand prisoners with him. Meade thanked God for what he had gained and was content. The day after the battle rain commenced to fall in torrents, and Meade was seen sitting in the open on a stone, his head supported by his hands. What mattered the rain? He had saved his coun- try. After three days’ hail of lead and rivers of blood, the downpour of the heavens seemed like a benediction. While the great conflict was raging in the center, the cavalry had been active on both wings. On the Union left the dashing Kilpatrick, after- wards to gain invidious reputation on the march from Atlanta to the sea, was in command, and on the right, Gregg. Just two days before the battle opened, Captain E. J. Farnsworth, of the 8th Illinois Cavalry, was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general. There was no time for him to secure a new uniform and General Pleasonton generously divided his wardrobe with him, giving him his blue coat with a single star and soft black hat. Kilpatrick had been eagerly waiting for a chance to “get his eye in” and when the news came of the repulse of Pickett’s charge, he decided to throw Farnsworth’s brigade against the Texan infantry on the extreme right of the Confederate line. Realizing the desperate nature of the charge, Farnsworth said to Kilpatrick, “General, do you mean it? Shall I throw my handful of men over rough ground, through 136 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS timber, against a brigade of infantry?” Kilpatrick answered with heat, “Do you refuse to obey or- ders? If you are afraid to lead this charge, I will lead it!” Rising in his stirrups, Farnsworth cried with passion, “Take that back!” Kilpatrick at first returned the defiance, but gaining mastery of himself, said to Farnsworth, “I did not mean it; forget it.” Farnsworth then rode to the head of his column and led his men in a magnificent but hopeless charge. He fell after he had penetrated the enemy’s lines for a distance of two miles. When Andrew D. White, afterwards president of Cornell and minister to Germany, took up his duties as professor of history in Michigan Univer- sity, he was troubled by a group of sophomores in one of his classes. Among the obstreporous youth he noticed one tall, blackbearded man with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, and soon saw that he was the leader in all the annoying demon- strations. White asked him to remain after the class was dismissed and said to him, “I see that either you or I must leave the University.” The student feigned indignation and asked for an ex- planation. White reminded him that he himself had only recently been a student, that he knew their ways, and that if the disorderly demonstra- tions continued, one of them would be compelled to leave, adding, “I believe the trustees will prefer your departure to mine.” After reflection the re- fractory student decided to mend his ways and White soon had no better student or firmer friend in the University. Two years later, the Univer- sity was shocked by the news of a wretched carousal in which this young man was a leading spirit. One of the students lay dead at the coroner's rooms. Eight students were expelled, among them this man. On leaving the University he went to White and thanked him for what he GETTYSBURG 137 had done for him, acknowledged the justice of the actions of the faculty, but expressed the hope that he would yet show that he could make a man of himself. Five years later that student fell at the head of his brigade at Gettysburg. It was Farns- worth. He had made good his promise. Among the fallen on the Union side was Robert Livingstone, the son of the great apostle to Africa. He was of a restless, roaming disposition, and had gone out to Africa hoping to join his father. Un- able to reach him, he made his way to America and landed in Boston while the war was raging. He enlisted in a Massachusetts regiment and fell at Gettysburg in his nineteenth year. Before his father knew of his death, he wrote to a friend, “I hope your eldest boy will do well in the distant land to which he has gone. My son is in the Federal Army in America, and no comfort. The secret ballast is often supplied by a kind hand above, when to outsiders we appear to be sailing gloriously with the wind.” Here was another wayward boy who, like thousands of others, re- deemed himself by offering the greatest of all sacrifices. Nor was it unfitting that the son of the man who had done so much to loose the bonds of the African slave, should have perished in that field concerning whose dead Lincoln said, “They here gave the last full measure of devotion.” Lee’s retreat commenced the night of the third and was continued through the fourth of July. There was little opportunity to care for the wounded, and they were hurriedly thrown into the ambulances, the drivers of which with oath and whip, urged their horses and mules towards the mountains, in hourly dread of the Union cavalry. “Oh God! Why can’t I die!” was a cry which came from these wagons of pain, and by the time this vast procession of misery had passed through 138 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS Monterey Gap and reached Hagerstown, the prayer of many a wounded soldier had been answered and the dead were taken from among the dying. When Lee reached the Potomac, the rains had swollen the river and he had to intrench and wait for the waters to subside. Meade did not attack, and by the fourteenth, the Confederate Army was safe in Virginia. President Lincoln spoke of this time when Lee was waiting at the bend of the Potomac as one of the three times when the war might have been brought to a close. When he learned of Lee’s escape, he wrote Meade an angry letter, concluding with these words, “Your golden opportunity is gone, and I am dis- tressed immeasurably because of it.” But ere the sun went down his wrath abated and the letter was never sent. It was indeed a golden oppor- tunity which presented itself to Meade, and the nation was too ready to forget what Meade had done because it was amazed at what he had leit undone. General Longstreet, in his account of Gettys- burg, relates the following amusing incident: “As we approached Hagerstown, two grotesque fig- ures stepped into the road about a hundred yards in front of us—one a negro of six feet and a hun- dred and eighty pounds, the other a white man of about five feet seven. The negro was dressed in full uniform of the Union infantry, the white man in travel-stained butternut drygoods. The negro had a musket on his shoulder. Riding up to them, it was observed that the musket was at the cock-notch. The negro was reminded that it was unsoldierlike to have the gun at a cock, but said that he wanted to be ready to save and de- liver his prisoner to the guard; it was his proud- est capture during the march, and he wanted credit for it. The man was a recruit lately from GETTYSBURG 139 abroad, and did not seem to care whether or not he was with his comrades. However, there were doubts if he understood a word that was said. The uniform was a tight fit, and the shoes were evidently painful, but the black man said that he could exchange them. He was probably the only man of the army who had a proud story to take home.”’ Another incident of the retreat related by A. A. Long, Lee’s military secretary, shows, on the one hand, the love and loyalty of the Northern soldiers for the Union and, on the other, the kindness of heart of General Lee. A Union soldier had been desperately wounded during the battle on the third day. As General Lee and his staff rode past the place where he was lying, the soldier, although faint from exposure and loss of blood, recognized the Confederate commander and, raising himself up on his arm, shouted as loudly as he could, “Hurrah for the Union!” Lee heard the shout and, stopping his horse, dis- mounted and walked across the road to where the man lay. The soldier thought that Lee meant to kill him, but when he came near, with a sad expression on his face Lee extended to him his hand and, looking into his eyes, said, “My son, I hope you will soon be well.” As soon as Lee had mounted his horse and ridden on, the soldier, with all bitterness gone, cried himself to sleep upon the bloody ground. Not far from the stone wall in “Bloody Angle, where Armistead fell, with his hat on his sword, and crying, “Give them the cold steel, boys!” and where Cushing fired his last round, there is a clump of oak trees which Lee had indicated as the objective point of the charge. In the shade of these oaks there is a monument which is rightly named the high-water mark of the Rebel- bP] 140 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS lion. That plot of ground marks the flood-tide, not only of Southern valor and devotion, but also of the South’s armed resistance to the United States. Great battles were still to be fought, but from the moment that Pickett’s men reeled back- wards from Cemetery Ridge the Confederacy was a sinking tide. Like the tide of the ocean it was to come back again in white fury at Chickamauga and the Salient at Spottsylvania. But it was the fury of a tide going down the beach. Fifty years after the sun had set that fourth of July over that field of pain and hate and blood, he looked down upon that same field. But how different was the scene which he beheld! Orders again had been sent out for both armies to con- centrate at Gettysburg. They had come from the north, south, east, west; from Maine, from Florida, from California, from Oregon. But alas! Time, the great conqueror, has taken his toll of them and their step is not so brisk nor their shoulders so square as when last they gathered there. But still they come, company after com- pany, regiment after regiment. Where once they marched and fought in the vigor of their youth, now they go slowly and softly, leaning upon the arms of stalwart sons or supported by tender and solicitous daughters. Many of them ought never to have come; but in their eyes one sees the grim, determined look which says, “I must see Gettys- burg or die!’ And when they reach home again it will be with all desire for travel satisfied, and their prayer will be the Nunc Dinutis of Simeon when he had seen the Lord’s Anointed, “Now, Lord, lettest thou thy servant depart in peace!” Now the curses, the horrible wounds festering in the July sun, the blood, the sweat, the hunger, the exhaustion, the passion of battle, the inex- GETTYSBURG 141 orable aloofness of death—the only noble thing on the so-called “field of glory’—all that is past and forgotten. There they are by the thousands, these men of the ’Sixties, many of them with the scars of the fight on their bodies, many of them deaf from the roar of the artillery, many of them crippled with rheumatism contracted lying in the rain and on the snow. But time has healed the bitterness, as the ivy covers the disfiguration of some fallen tower. Last night I went up to the cupola of the Lutheran Seminary, where Rey- nolds, Howard and Bufford had their lookout on the first day of the battle. The sun had gone down behind the Blue Ridge and the cool of the evening had come, almost as dear to the sweating thousands of old men in their tents as it was to them after the hard day’s fight fifty years before. To the west I could see the dim outline of the South Mountain, through which Lee’s men poured into the valley where Gettysburg lies. Just in front were the regimental monuments marking the first line of battle, where Heth’s men with- stood the Ist Corps. To the left the equestrian statue of the gallant Reynolds, who fell early in the fight; to the right Oak Hill, where Jubal Early outilanked the 11th Corps and drove the Northern army in confusion and defeat through the streets of Gettysburg; then the little county seat, with its few thousand inhabitants, and be- yond, the hills where Howard drew up the beaten army—Culp’s Hill, Cemetery Hill, Cemetery Ridge, Little Round Top and Big Round Top. On the lawn of the seminary grounds a military band played The Star-Spangled Banner as the sunset guns roared on Cemetery Ridge. The vast encampment where the fifty thousand veterans lay together was ablaze with thousands of electric lights. Martial airs were carried on the night 142 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS winds, for old drummers and fifers were at work again, and out of the camp and town came the music of Yankee Doodle, Dixie and The Girl I Left Behind Me. Now neither army feared the coming of the dawn, for the new day would bring only more reunions, more recollections, more good-fellowship and song. Hear the old fellows singing together where they stabbed and bay- oneted one another fifty years ago! O that Lin- coln, our Man of Sorrows, could have been there! O that Lee might have sat on “Traveler” once more and heard the songs and learned how time had healed the bitterness of the past and made the nation one and inseparable, now and forever. Now the lights go out and the old men are asleep, dreaming the dreams of fifty years ago, when they waited for bugle and cannon and musket to summon them to the carnage of the battle. Sleep on, dream on, old grizzled heroes! Good-night, old man in blue! Good-bye, old man in gray! XI VICKSBURG Tue Mississtpp1 UNVEXED “The fate of the Confederacy was sealed when Vicksburg fell.” That was Grant’s comment on the significance of his campaign against the river fortress. It sealed the fate of the Confederacy, for the surrender of Vicksburg, followed in a few days by the surrender of Port Hudson, left the ' Mississippi open from New Orleans to Cairo, and rent the seceding states in twain. The first attempt to take Vicksburg ended in failure, when Sherman with the advance of Grant’s army made a bloody and unsuccessful as- sault at Chickasaw Bayou, nine miles up the Yazoo from Vicksburg. .This was on the twenty- ninth of December, 1862. From then on until Grant threw his army across the river south of the city in the great rear attack that was to bring victory, the history of the campaign is the story of a succession of always baffled efforts to take the city. The right flank of the defenses of Vicksburg was Haynes’ Bluff on the Yazoo River, and if the city was to be approached from the north, some way had to be found of getting into the rear of that point, for the place could not be stormed. The Mississippi River washed the bluffs of Vicksburg and the batteries were so placed that boats attempting to run down or up the river would be under fire for a distance of not less than fourteen miles. If the city could not be 143 144 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS taken on the north, it might be taken by landing an army on the east side of the river, south of the fortresses. But the problem was how to get the army down the river to a place where they could land without running the dangerous bat- teries. Two efforts were made to get into the Yazoo River above the works at Haynes’ Bluff and find a landing place from which the army could take Vicksburg from the rear, and two were made to get the army across the Mississippi at a point south of Vicksburg. These undertakings were titanic in their proportions, feats of digging and engineering beyond that of the Medes and Persians when they diverted the Euphrates from its course, turning it into the canals Nebuchad- nezzar had built at Sippara, and marching by the emptied river-bed into Babylon; but all were doomed to complete failure. In earlier days, steamers plying between Memphis and Vicksburg left the main channel of the Mississippi at Yazoo Pass, a hundred and fifty miles north of Vicksburg, and steamed down the Caldwater River into the Tallahatchie and thence down the Yazoo River, entering the Mississippi a short distance above Vicksburg. But in recent years the channel from the Mississippi in the Yazoo Pass had been closed by a levee. From Muilliken’s Bend, opposite Vicksburg, where Grant’s army lay, to the point on the Yazoo River where troops could be disembarked, the distance by way of these several streams was not less than seven hundred miles. On the second of Febru- ary the levee was broken and the tawny flood of the great river was poured into the abandoned pass. Before the channel had risen to the level of the Mississippi, the gunboats and transports were rushing down with the angry waters. They negotiated the pass in safety but were stopped VICKSBURG 145 by a fort which the Confederates had erected where the Tallahatchie and the Yallabusha unite to form the Yazoo River. The attack made by the fleet was unsuccessful, due in part to the mental aberration of the commander, Watson Smith, and to a lack of co-operation on the ‘part of the army. Still another effort was made to get from the Mississippi into the Yazoo at a point north of the forts at Haynes’ Bluff. Near Milliken’s Bend on the Mississippi, an opening was discovered by which boats could pass from the Mississippi into Steele’s Bayou, thence by a series of bayous and creeks into the Yazoo River where troops could be disembarked north of the forts at Haynes’ Bluff. Early in March, Porter steamed into Steele’s Bayou with the gunboats, followed by the troops on small steamers and under command of Sherman. It was a veritable wilderness of forest tangles and watery wastes where the slug- gish bayous had not been parted by the prow of a boat since the day that the rude canoe of the savage had glided through the vast solitudes. As the fleet pushed its way through the narrow channels, thousands of birds, astonished at the strange invasion, rose in their flight, making the woods resound with their raucous cries and dark- ening the heavens with the multitude of their host. As the steamers and gunboats proceeded, the gigantic and Briarean arms of the trees swept away smokestacks, small boats and all that was movable, and huge, dead limbs crashed with menace on the decks. In places the channel was blocked by trees two feet in diameter. Against these the gunboats were driven under a full head of steam. When the tree had been rammed, block and tackle were applied and it was hoisted out of the way. By the time he reached the Rolling 146 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS Fork, Porter found his way blocked by the enemy, who had compelled crews of negroes to fell trees in his front as well as in his rear. The rudders were unshipped and he began to back out of his dangerous position, all the time under the fire of sharpshooters who lurked in the thickets along the banks. He was like a lion caught in the net, and it might have gone ill with him, had not Sherman, marching his men through the woods by the light of blazing pine torches, come to his rescue. Then the whole expedition withdrew. Let us now turn to the efforts made to land the army on the east bank of the Mississippi at a point south of Vicksburg. Seventy miles north of Vicksburg, and about a mile from the channel of the river, is Lake Providence, a part of the old bed of the river. It had a swampy outlet into Baxter Bayou, which again led through several rivers and bayous into the Red River, and the Red into the Mississippi. Thus, by a journey of more than four hundred miles, troops could be brought into the Mississippi and landed south of Vicksburg. When the levee was cut and the Mississippi let into Lake Providence, it was hoped that navigation would be possible. But in Baxter Bayou a wilderness of cypress trees was en- countered, the task of cutting a passage through proved too formidable, and the project was aban- doned. If the reader will look at a map of the Missis- sippi, he will see how the volatile river, when it reaches the neighborhood of Vicksburg, describes a great loop, first flowing to the northeast until about two miles above the city, then turning abruptly to the southwest, until at a point about a mile distant from where it turns to the north- east it resumes its journey to the Gulf. Grant’s baffled host lay encamped on the high ground at VICKSBURG 147 Milliken’s Bend, beholding the city of their desire but unable to approach it. If the neck of the peninsula created by the river were cut open, the troops could be transported south of the city with no danger from the batteries. Thousands of men were set to work to dig the canal and change the course of the river, with the plan of leaving Vicks- burg high and dry, to awake one morning and dis- cover that the great river had forsaken the bluffs which it had so long washed, and now in a new channel, was bearing the enemy triumphantly southward. But early in March a sudden rise in the river broke the dam at the upper end, and drove the men out of the ditch. All these failures gave no little satisfaction to the Confederates, and to the enemies of Grant in the North. During these months of baffled efforts a great cry had arisen against Grant and there were loud and insistent demands for his removal. It was at this time that the rumors of his intemperate use of liquor were most widely current. It was to satisfy the mind of Lincoln and Stanton as to the manners and methods of Grant, that Charles A. Dana was sent to join the army as a special commissioner, to send daily reports on the progress of the campaign and the men who were entrusted with it. Fortunately, Halleck and Lincoln and Stanton all stood loyally by Grant, and, sooner than they thought, he was to give splendid vindication to their confidence. On the evening of the fourteenth of April there was a conference of officers at Grant’s head- quarters. All the officers of high rank save Sherman and McClernand were present, and the Commander of the Navy, Porter. To these men Grant told his plan to run gunboats and transports past the batteries and march the army along the roads that had been left bare by the receding 148 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS backwash of the river to a point where they could be ferried over to the east bank, and attack Grand Gulf, the left flank of the defenses of Vicks- burg. All of Grant’s lieutenants voiced their dis- sent and declared the undertaking to be full of hazard, and Sherman sent a long, written remon- strance, urging a return to Memphis and an overland campaign from the north. After all opinions had been freely stated, Grant said in his quiet way, “I am sorry to differ with you all, but my mind is made up; the army will move tomor- row at ten o’clock.” Seldom in the history of our nation has a more momentous decision been made. Grant had no authority over Porter, at the head of the river navy; but one of the fairest chapters in the long struggle to save the Republic from disunion is the story of the loyal and en- thusiastic support given by Porter and the men under his command to Grant and his soldiers. Porter was a son of the famous captain who com- manded the Essex when, after a terrible battle, she struck to the Cherub and the Phoebe in the harbor of Valparaiso in the War of 1812. In the struggle for the Mississippi he showed himself a worthy son of a famous sire. At ten o’clock on the night of the sixteenth of April, Grant stood on the deck of his head- quarters’ boat and watched with deep anxiety the dark hulks of the gunboats and the transports drift slowly down with the current until they were lost to view. The ships displayed no lights save signal lamps in the stern. But a sudden flash from the batteries and the scream of the shell told Grant and his staff that the ships had been detected. In a moment every battery opened fire, and the whole range of bluffs was illuminated with the fire of the guns. To aid them in getting the range, houses were set on fire on the shore VICKSBURG 149 across from the city. But the aim of the Con- federate gunners was wild, and each of Porter’s gunboats as it ran in front of the city saluted it with shell after shell, as if giving Vicksburg a taste of what was to come. The boilers of the vessels were protected with bales of cotton and hay, and fearless men were stationed in the holds to stop with cotton any shotholes that might be made in the hulks. Only one of the transports was lost in running the batteries whose fire had been so dreaded, the menace of which had kept the army digging for months in noisome swamps and bayous in a vain endeavor to reach the city. The lost transport was the Henry Clay, her in- trepid pilot standing by her until she grounded, and then escaping by floating down the river on a plank. On the thirtieth of April the advance corps of Grant’s army was safely over the river and the last chapter in the siege of Vicksburg had com- menced. The thunder of Porter’s guns as his ships ran by the batteries sounded the doom of the defiant fortress. The first great objective towards the gaining of which all the dreary, dis- heartening labor of the winter months had been expended, had now been secured. As Grant saw the last regiments of McClernand’s corps clamber up the bluffs at Bruinsburg, he breathed a sigh of relief. His own words tell best of what had been accomplished and of the difficulties yet to be en- countered: “When this was effected, I felt a degree of relief scarcely ever equaled since. Vicksburg was not yet taken, it is true, nor were its defenders demoralized by any of our previous moves. I was now in the enemy’s country, with a vast river and the stronghold of Vicksburg be- tween me and my base of supplies. But I was on dry ground on the same side of the river with the 150 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS enemy. All the campaigns, labors, hardships and exposures from the month of December previous to this time that had been made and endured, were for the accomplishment of this one object.” On dry ground on the same side of the river with the enemy! There you have Grant in all his simplicity and rugged determination. All he had asked for was standing room so that he might launch the blow of his mailed fist. The first day of May saw him standing on high ground east of the Mississippi. Vicksburg was now to feel the power of his blow. The mutual support of the generals command- ing the different divisions of an army is always an important factor in the success of any military undertaking. Because of the peculiar conditions at Vicksburg, it may be said that in this cam- paign, more than in any other campaign of the Civil War, the enthusiastic and harmonious eli- forts of the officers commanding the different parts of the army contributed to the final victory. Who were these men upon whom Grant had to rely? First and foremost was the versatile and fiery Sherman. William Tecumseh Sherman came of a. prominent Ohio family, his brother John being. before the war, and for long after, a man of the greatest influence in the government circles at Washington. Sherman commanded a brigade in the debacle of Bull Run, and was then appointed to an important command in Ken- tucky. He told Cameron, then Secretary of War, that he would need two hundred thousand men for the work confronting him. This got out in the newspapers and it was very generally reported that Sherman was insane. This canard operated against his securing an important position until Shiloh gave him his opportunity and started him on a career of usefulness and success which was VICKSBURG 151 to come to a consummation when he led his army from Atlanta to the sea. At the head of the 17th Army Corps was an- other young officer, also a son of Ohio, James B. McPherson. McPherson, then thirty-two years of age, was a military engineer and had served with Grant at Shiloh. When Grant went east, McPherson succeeded Sherman in command of the Army of Tennessee and took a distinguished part in Sherman’s campaign through Georgia, until he fell mortally wounded at the battle of Peach Tree Creek in 1864. By those who served with him he was considered one of the first four or five officers in either army. Grant gives him this high encomium: “In his death, the army lost one of its ablest, purest and best generals.” McPher- son stood first in the class of 1853 at West Point; Schofield seventh; Sheridan thirty-fourth, and Flood forty-fourth out of a membership of fifty- two. Grant, Sherman and McPherson were all Ohio born and spent their early days within a hundred miles of one another. Grant’s third lieutenant, the commander of the 13th Army Corps, was an Illinois politician, John A. McClernand. He was in Congress when the war broke out, but resigned to serve his country in the field. A Democrat in politics, he was prompt to let it be known how he stood in the nation’s hour of need. In a democracy no wise president, in such a storm as overtook this nation in the ’Sixties, could ignore political con- siderations. The prominent part taken by Mc- Clernand, and assigned to him by Lincoln, must be considered in that light. McClernand com- manded a division at Donelson and Shiloh, and before Grant took command in the field over the armies operating against Vicksburg, had been given an independent commission to reduce that 152 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS stronghold. No one could question his personal gallantry or his patriotism. But he seems to have been one of those personalities who touch others unpleasantly. Sherman, Porter, McPherson all disliked him, and Grant maintains that the men in both the army and the navy in the west dis- trusted him. It was this fact, he says, that led him to take personal command over the expedi- tion against Vicksburg. McClernand felt that he had been unjustly removed from the leadership of the expedition, and manifested his grudge in a manner that to Grant must have been most irritating. When Grant and his officers were hurrying over the river, taking with them no baggage or camp outfit, McClernand was prepar- ing to transport his bride, her servants and all their impedimenta. He was profane, disrespectful to Grant in the extreme, and the wonder is that Grant tolerated him so long. After the second assault on the works of Vicksburg, he was indis- creet enough to have published in the press a congratulatory address to the men of his corps, reflecting on the services of the other parts of the army. This brought down on him the wrath of Sherman and McPherson, and Grant, when his attention was called to the offense, relieved him at once, appointing to the command of the 13th Corps the very able and professional soldier, Edward Ord. Ord afterwards commanded the Army of the James and was “in at the death” at Appomattox Court House. Among other officers who aided Grant in his difficult undertaking, mention should be made of General Logan, perhaps the ablest non-pro- fessional officer developed during the war. He commanded the 15th Army Corps in Sherman’s Georgia campaign, and was so highly thought of by Grant that he was sent west to relieve Thomas VICKSBURG 153 when that noble soldier’s cautious policy at Nash- ville had exhausted the patience of the govern- ment. Happily the word came of Thomas’ splen- did victory when Logan had got as far as Louis- ville. Nor must we forget Grant’s assistant adjutant- general, the Galena lawyer, John A. Rawlins. Grant describes him as “an able man, possessed of great firmness, and could say ‘no’ so emphati- cally to a request which he thought should not be granted, that the person he was addressing would understand at once that there was no use of pressing the matter. General Rawlins was a very useful officer in other ways than this.” One of those other ways was his personal influence upon Grant. A touching example of his devotion to his chief is shown by the letter which he addressed to Grant during the Vicksburg cam- paign, telling him how he had seen liquor about the headquarters, and how some of the officers associated with him would do him only harm, solemnly reminding him of the promise made that he would drink no more during the war, and pleading with him for his own sake and for the sake of the righteous cause, to practise total abstinence. The records of military history will be searched in vain for such an example of per- sonal loyalty and high devotion to the welfare of the state. Having spoken thus briefly of some of the men who were associated with Grant, let us look now for a moment at the character of the officers who led the opposing armies. The Commander-in- Chief in the West on the Confederate side was Joseph E. Johnston. He was in command of one of the Confederate armies at Bull Run and Op- posed McClellan in the peninsula until he was wounded at Seven Pines. He was highly es- 154 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS teemed by the officers of the old army and all the Union generals opposed to him during the Civil War spoke well of him. He commanded the forces opposing Sherman in his advance into Georgia, until relieved by the impetuous Hood. He remained unemployed until, in the last days of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis called on him to take command of the forces gathered in North Carolina to stay the progress of Sherman. Un- fortunately Johnston did not enjoy the confidence of Davis. In the Vicksburg campaign his orders to Pemberton were practically ignored. Had they been observed, it is improbable that the Confederate Army would have been shut up there with no possibility of escape. In immediate command at Vicksburg was Lieutenant-General John Pemberton. Pemberton was a Pennsylvanian who had graduated at West Point in 1837. In the old army, he had come under the spell of Jefferson Davis and when the South seceded, threw in his fortunes with the Con- federacy. Davis rapidly advanced him to a lieutenant-generalship and entrusted him with the defense of the Mississippi. He was wholly unworthy of the task and showed himself com- pletely unable to understand the kind of warfare that Grant had launched against him the moment he got his army across the Mississippi. That the fortress held out so long was due to the gallantry of the soldiers, and in no sense to the intelligence of Pemberton. It may be that in hanging on to the fortress when Johnston had ordered him to move out, Pemberton was influenced by the con- sideration that he, being a Pennsylvanian, might be under suspicion of treachery. Pemberton now sleeps in one of the cemeteries overlooking the Schuylkill River, a strange companion for Meade and that noble group of Philadelphians and Penn- VICKSBURG 155 sylvanians who played so notable a part in the great struggle which maintained the integrity of the Union. The last stage of the campaign for Vicksburg com- menced on the first day of May when Grant drove the Confederates out of Fort Gibson, and ended on the fourth of July when the garrison marched out of their works and stacked arms. That campaign of two months and four days represents Grant at his best. His blows were struck with a Napoleonic swiftness, and although circumstances altered the original plan of the campaign, he showed a wonderful ability to meet every condition and profit by every eventuality. His infor- mation as to the disposition of his adversary’s forces seems always to have been correct; he foresaw un- erringly the moves that his foe would make, and in whichever direction he moved, always met him with a superior force. At the same time, by a series of feints, he mystified his enemy and kept him in the dark as to his own purpose. When Grant occupied Grand Gulf, thirty miles below Vicksburg, it had been his plan to use it as a base of supplies, sending a part of his army down to the river to assist Banks in the reduction of the other Confederate fortress, Port Hudson. But on the third of May he received word from Banks that his army could not reach Port Hudson before the tenth of May. In the meantime, Grant knew that Johnston would be gathering forces for the relief of Vicksburg and that the defenses of the city would be strengthened. He could not afford to lose those seven days of time and opportunity. Could he afford to take the risk of cutting loose from his base, feeding his army on the country and driving the Confederate troops back into Vicksburg? All of his officers thought that he could not. Sherman told him that he was putting himself in a position to get him into which the enemy would manoeuvre a year. He would be in the enemy’s coun- try with a vast river and the stronghold of Vicksburg 156 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS between him and his chief base of supplies. Grant knew that Halleck and Lincoln would not approve the move, but he knew also that before they could order him back the venture would have won him Vicks- burg, or lost him his own army and his own career. The silent soldier took counsel with himself alone. There on the banks of the Mississippi at Grand Gulf, a grateful nation may now think of him treading alone the winepress of his anxiety and his solicitude for the nation, and at length making the decision which was to be so fateful for the country and for the world. During the day and the night of the sixth of May Sherman’s corps crossed the river at Grand Gulf, and the whole army was now east of the Mississippi. In the early morning of the seventh the bugles rang out through the scrub oaks and stunted pines, and the men of McPherson’s corps took up the march which was to end with victory. On the twelfth McPherson struck the Confederates under Gregg at Raymond, and sent them flying from the field. On the fourteenth Sherman and McPherson drove Johnston, who had arrived on the evening of the thirteenth, out of Jack- son, and the Stars and Stripes was hoisted on the dome of the fine old State House. Leaving Sherman to destroy stores and railroads in and about Jackson, Grant, without a day’s delay, turned west to meet the forces under Pemberton, now in his rear, and thinking they had cut his line of communications, little dream- ing that Grant had none to cut. Before he could get out of the road back into Vicksburg, or unite his forces with the fleeing Johnston, Grant was upon him at Champion Hill, a thicket hilltop a few miles west of Edwards Station, and about twenty miles from Vicks- burg. Pemberton was swept from the field, and if McClernand had acted with greater vigor and judg- ment, the entire Confederate Army would have been annihilated. This was on the sixteenth of May. On VICKSBURG 157 the seventeenth Pemberton withdrew his beaten army into the works of Vicksburg. The defenses at Haynes’ Bluff were abandoned, and on the afternoon of the nineteenth Grant and Sherman sat on their horses, looking down on the very bluffs where Sherman had met with the disastrous repulse the previous December. Both generals now realized that Vicksburg must fall, and the trials and labors and disappointments of the past weary months were forgotten. Sherman said to Grant that until then he had doubted the success of the movement, but now he knew that he had taken part in one of the greatest campaigns of history. Vicksburg was now straitly shut up, but it was still to be taken. Johnston sent word to Pemberton to try to cut his way out and save the garrison, for the city was doomed. Pemberton did not obey. On the nineteenth Grant, counting on the demoralization of the beaten garrison, ordered an assault. It was not successful, the Confederates fighting behind their defenses with the greatest spirit and determination. On the twenty- second another assault was ordered to be made by all three corps. The national flag waved for a little mo- ment on the parapets, but the works could not be car- tied. Grant and Sherman were standing together back of the Union lines discussing the failure of the assault when a note was handed them from McClernand, stat- ing that “the flag of the Union waved over the strong- hold of Vicksburg” and asking Grant to order Sher- man and McPherson to renew their attacks. Grant said to Sherman, “I don’t believe a word of it!” But Sherman thought the intelligence must be credited, and offered to renew the assault. At three in the afternoon a second assault was made, proving more bloody and costly than the first. McClernand had taken only a few outlying lunettes and most of the men who took them were either killed or captured by the Confed- erates. His exaggerated report of his success, induc- 158 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS ing Grant to make the final assault, caused great feel- ing against him on the part of the other generals. The Federal casualties were over three thousand. One of the horrors of the repulse was that Grant did not follow the usual custom and ask for an armistice to remove the dead and wounded. The dead lay fes- tering in the scorching sun until the stench became un- bearable, and the wounded lay writhing and moaning for three days without food or water or the ministries of their fellowmen. Grant regretted the assault when the facts were known; but regrets do not ease the agony of the wounded, nor call back to life the un- known dead. Of Second Cold Harbor, Grant said that it was the one battle he ever regretted having fought, and then adds, “I may say the same of the assault of May 22, 1863, at Vicksburg.” Efforts to take the town by storm having failed, Grant now settled down to a siege. His army lay on the high healthy plateaus with plenty of good water, and reinforcements were being hurried to him by Hal- leck. Vicksburg was admirably situated for purposes of defense. Sherman said that after visiting Sebas- topol, he regarded Vicksburg as the more difficult of the two. Some distance out from the town, the plateau on which the city stands has been cut by wind and water into a labyrinth of deep ravines and gullies. In the ravines were noisome swamps, and the sides and summits of the steep hills were covered with trees. The Confederate positions were on the tops of these ridges where they could command the gullies below, and by felling trees could erect in front of their works an almost impassable barrier. But the garrison had been depleted by the fighting in the country between Jackson and Vicksburg, and their spirits were de- pressed by the apparent hopelessness of their task. On the twenty-eighth of June Pemberton received a letter signed ‘Many Soldiers.” The letter contained senti- ments of this nature: ‘Everybody admits that we have VICKSBURG 159 covered ourselves with glory, but alas! alas! General, a crisis has arrived in the midst of our siege. Our ra- tions have been cut down to one biscuit and a small bit of bacon per day. If you can’t feed us, you had better surrender us, horrible as the idea is, than suffer this noble army to disgrace themselves and the country by desertion. I tell you plainly, men are not going to lie here and perish, if they do love their country dearly. The army is now ripe for mutiny.” Meanwhile the Union lines were being pushed nearer and nearer to the Confederate works, and the shells fired by the naval guns in the river sounded by day and by night the requiem of the Confederacy. The Queen City of the Bluffs must shortly be humbled in the dust. Grant had made all his preparations for a grand assault on the sixth of July. But at ten o’clock on the morning of the third, white flags were seen waving on the Confederate works and soon two offi- cers walked towards the national lines bearing a com- munication from Pemberton to Grant, asking for an armistice with a view to arranging for the capitulation of Vicksburg. The note suggested that three commis- sioners on each side arrange the terms of surrender. Pemberton said he could maintain himself for an in- definite period, but made the proposition in order to save the “further useless effusion of blood.” That was a phrase which Grant was to employ when he opened negotiations with Lee at Appomattox Court House. Grant refused to meet these officers, but agreed to meet with Pemberton himself, at the same time sending a note to that General and telling him that the best way to stop the “further useless effusion of blood’”’ was by the unconditional surrender of the city and the gar- rison. They met that afternoon at three o’clock be- neath a stunted oak in front of McPherson’s corps. With Grant were Ord, McPherson, Logan, A. iY Smith, Charles A. Dana and members of his staff. Pemberton was accompanied by General Bowen. 160 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS On a September day, sixteen years before, when the American army was taking the defenses of Mexico City, Lieutenant U. S. Grant had hoisted a howitzer to the tower of a church and opened fire on a position held by the Mexicans. The work of the gun was so telling that General Worth sent a staff officer to com- pliment Grant. The staff officer was Lieutenant Pem- berton. Now, after the lapse of years, they met under strangely different circumstances. Grant greeted him in a friendly fashion, and when, after a few minutes reminiscing, in reply to Pemberton’s inquiry as to terms, Grant said they would be what he had intimated in his note—unconditional surrender—Pemberton, with evident irritation, replied that the conference might as well end right there, and turned abruptly as if to leave. Grant acquiesced with a quiet “Very well,” and the conference would have terminated had it not been for the earnest intervention of General Bowen, who requested a conference with Smith. After a little, Bowen suggested that the garrison be permitted to march out with the honors of war, carrying their small arms and field artillery. This was rejected by Grant, and the two generals parted, Grant promising, how- ever, to send his terms by ten o’clock that night. He immediately summoned all his corps and division com- manfiders and had with them what he called “the near- est approach to a council of war I ever held.” He listened to their suggestions and then, in spite of the unanimous judgment of those present, sent to Pem- berton a letter offering to accept the surrender of the garrison with the understanding that all the defenders be paroled and permitted to march out of the Union lines, taking with them their clothing, necessary ra- tions, the field, staff and cavalry officers, their side arms and one horse each. The terms were generous, some thought too generous. But the transport of such a large body of troops to the North, only to be ex- changed and sent back to the South to fight again in VICKSBURG 161 the Confederate ranks, Grant considered a needless 1a- bor and expense. Most of the men in Pemberton’s army lived in the Southwest, and it was the hope of Grant, to a large extent realized, that these men, once paroled near their homes, would be glad to go home and stay out of the Confederate Army. When Pemberton opened negotiations for the sur- render of the fortress on the third of July, his purpose probably was to avoid the surrender or capture of the place on the national holiday, although he himself makes the absurd contention that the fourth was se- lected as the day for the surrender because he thought on that day he could get better terms. ‘Well aware of the vanity of our foe, I knew that they would attach vast importance to the entrance on the fourth of July into the stronghold of the great river, and that, to gratify their national vanity, they would yield then what could not be extorted from them at any other time.” But, however it may have happened, or what- ever the motives in the mind of Pemberton in asking for terms on the third, it was a fitting climax to the long and costly struggle for Vicksburg that the sur- render should have been made on the anniversary of the nation’s birth. At ten o’clock on the morning of the fourth the heroic defenders came out of their works and, forming a long line, stacked the arms they had borne with such courage and fortitude, and then marched back into their own positions. The men were weary—they looked as if glad to have it over with, but the faces of some of the officers were wet with tears. Not a cheer rose from the ranks of Grant’s seasoned veterans as they witnessed the final act in what they all realized was a great drama in American history. Sharp orders now rang out along the front of Lo- gan’s division which had approached nearest to the Confederate works, and to which was to fall the honor of first entering the vanquished stronghold. With drums beating and colors flying, these men in blue 162 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS marched through the now unresisting works and into the heart of the fallen city. Ona high hill, overlooking the river and the surrounding country, stood, and still stands, the noble old Courthouse, its massive Cor- inthian columns and lofty cupola visible from every part of the city. One of Logan’s men ran up the stairs and climbed the ladder leading to the cupola. Slowly the banner of the Confederacy that had so long flaunted its defiance came fluttering down like a wounded bird, and in its place waved in triumph the Stars and Stripes. As soon as the flag was observed by the men on the decks of the ships lying in the river, it was greeted by salvos of artillery and the long- drawn-out roar of the river sirens. At that same hour, on that same eventful Saturday, the roads through the passes of Monterey Gap and Fairfield, leading to Hagerstown and the Potomac, were blocked with the soldiers and horses and wagons of Lee’s army retreat- ing after the bloody repulse of Gettysburg. The war was to go on for almost two more years, but for the South it was the energy of despair. Gettysburg and Vicksburg were fields of destiny. On the fourth of July, 1776, the nation was born. On the fourth of July, 1863, the nation was born again. Thirty-one thousand six hundred soldiers were sur- rendered at Vicksburg, the largest body of troops ever taken prisoner in the history of modern war, up to the Franco-Prussian War. Five days after Vicks- burg fell, Port Hudson surrendered, and the Missis- sippi was free of hostile forces from where it washes the bluffs of Minnesota and Wisconsin to where it pours its yellow tide into the Gulf of Mexico. The chain which held slavery together had been broken, never again to be mended. No wonder Sherman wrote, “I now see the first gleam of daylight in the war.” The August sun was burning fiercely one day when I took refuge in the cool solitudes of the Courthouse. VICKSBURG 163 It had been reared by the labor of slaves, and stands a monument to the capacity and possibilities of the negro, as well as to the now forever-vanished reign of the slave-holder and his oligarchy. The vast size of the building, its massiveness, its grace and beauty, all reflect the lordliness and prodigality of slavery. The sheriff’s deputy told me I could get to the cupola and have a fine view of the city and the river if I was willing to climb a ladder. The ladder did not alarm me, and I went up the old stairway to the second story, pausing to have a look at the courtroom, very dirty, dark, well spittooned, but with all the evidences of one-time splendor and dignity. Then, on to the third story, and the fourth, and then up a narrow enclosed stairway until I found myself in a dim wilderness of rafters, iron girders and rods. Groping about, and fearful lest I should make a misstep and land in one of the undiscovered chambers beneath me, I soon laid hold of the ladder and climbed up it to the first land- ing, where the great bell, which had rung out tidings of joy and sorrow for Vicksburg and all the South- land, still hangs, and then on to the very pinnacle of this temple of justice, where I pushed open an obstinate and protesting dvor, and stepped out upon the railed platform and into the warm sunlight. In front of me, flowing past islands of green, was the Mississippi, with here and there the towering stacks or the ascending smoke of a river steamer. In the distance I could hear the hum of the city far below, and now and then the long-drawn and not unmusical roar of the steamer whistles, like an echo coming back from the activities of a vanished age. To my left lay the city with its churches, banks, warehouses and spires. Back of me, interspersed with the green of the trees, I could dis- cern the little white stones in the National Cemetery which marked the graves of twenty-six thousand Union soldiers, most of them “unknown.” Who they were none knows; what they were all know. And back 164 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS of the city, in one long arc stretching from the Yazoo to the Mississippi, the great white monuments told me where the battles had been fought and the trenches had approached each other. Conspicuous among the monuments is the massive temple erected to the sol- diers of Illinois who played such an important part in the campaign. The dome has been left open at the top, and the visitor, after reading the inscriptions and devices, may turn his glance upward and see the blue heavens, and the white clouds floating by. Further to the right I could make out the splendid mounted figure in front of the Iowa monument, and still more to the right the great eagle spreading his wings on the top of the Wisconsin column. Pennsylvania, too, is remem- bered on that field of glory, for while she was playing the chief part in the great drama that closed on the same day on the pleasant fields of Gettysburg, a few of her soldiers lay in the trenches before Vicksburg. Nor has the part of the navy been forgotten, and the heroic Porter stands with binoculars in hand at the base of the navy memorial, looking off towards the river he helped to free. Not elsewhere on this continent, I am thinking, will you behold a panorama which reveals to you so wide an expanse of our nation’s history. As I looked again on the mighty river winding away to the Gulf, the peaceful city, the white memorials to courage and de- termination gleaming on every high hill and under every green tree, methought I beheld the new nation, redeemed at so great a price from shame and dishonor, and in the pain and bloody toil of battle forever con- secrated to justice and righteousness. XII CHICKAMAUGA AND CHATTANOOGA When we left New York on an April afternoon the wind was cold and the snow was falling. In the morning we awoke in the midst of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. The western mountains are more rugged, but the Blue Ridge and the Allegheny Mountains are more pleasing to the eye and more typical of American life. As we came down from the summit of the mountains the sombre colors gradually gave way to the brighter hues of spring. Where the farmers had done their plowing, the fields lay a vast cloth of soft red or brown. Flanking the plowed fields were long stretches of brilliant green where the winter wheat, which had slept beneath the snow, was waking into newness of life. Along every fence and hedge and ravine there waved the crim- son blossoms of the Judas tree. Higher up along the hillsides flocks of sheep played in the joy of spring. Then came the forest line of battle— mostly green, the delicate green of new leaves— with here and there a dash of snow—white where the dogwood grew, or the red of the wild plum; and far in the distance, on the very summit of the hills, a lonesome pine, a noble cedar of Leba- non, keeping its solitary watch. But the dogwood was the chief glory of the landscape: In Tennessee, the dogwood tree . Blossoms tonight; towards the sea The Cumberland makes melody In Tennessee. 165 166 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS Through Lynchburg, near which were staged the last scenes of the Confederacy, not far from Lexington and the Natural Bridge, we journeyed to Bristol and thence to Knoxville. Now we were on the path of the Scotch-Irish emigrants who had come from Virginia, Pennsylvania and North Carolina to conquer the western wilds with rifle, Latin grammar, and psalm book. At Greenville we saw the house where John Morgan, the famous cavalry chief and raider, was surprised and shot. On the outskirts of the town we could see the grave and monument to the seventeenth President of the United States, Andrew Johnson, the stormy petrel of American politics. It was at Greenville he worked at the tailors’ bench and there he married Eliza McCardle, who taught him reading and arithmetic. His political career be- gan when, as a leader of working men, he was elected an alderman. After that he was mayor, state legislator, Congressman, Governor and U. S. Senator; then Provisional Governor of Tennessee, and finally Vice-President of the United States, when the assassin’s bullet made him Lincoln’s successor. A rough, strong, honest, patriotic man, more often in the right than in the wrong, his name is now beginning to recover from the odium once heaped upon it. Ten days before Vicksburg fell, Rosecrans continued the movement which had been sus- pended after Stone River and took the field against Bragg. As soon as Vicksburg fell Brage’s army was strengthened by the return of troops which had been sent into Mississippi to help raise the siege of Vicksburg. By a series of able movements Rosecrans forced Bragg out of middle Tennessee, across the Tennessee River and into Chattanooga. On the eighth of Septem- ber Bragg evacuated Chattanooga and retired into CHICKAMAUGA 167 Georgia, apparently in full retreat to the south- west. The Army of the Cumberland followed in pursuit, but owing to the broken and mountainous nature of the country, the different corps of the army were widely separated. The corps of Thomas was far to the north and left, and that under McCook far to the south, when word was brought by a scout of Sheridan that Bragg’s re- treat was only a blind, that he expected to be reinforced by Longstreet from the army under Lee, and that he was even then moving to inter- pose between the Union Army and Chattanooga. The scout who brought these startling tidings was a Union man living in the neighborhood. For his wages he asked that Sheridan would purchase what livestock he possessed so that he might migrate to the West. While getting information within the Confederate lines he was arrested and placed under guard. He managed to make his escape by crawling through the picket lines on his belly and imitating the grunts of the wild hogs with which the country abounded. The Chickamauga campaign, perhaps better than any other, illustrates the great importance of correct information as to the movements and purposes of the opposing army. This was on the thir- teenth, and it was only by tremendous exertions on the part of McCook’s corps that the army was reunited before Bragg could strike. It was this movement of Bragg which brought about the battle of Chickamauga on the nineteenth and twentieth of September, 1863. Chickamauga is an Indian name which means River of Death, and on those September days the name was no misnomer. Perhaps no field of the war is so much the child of solitude as the hills and fields and forests which comprise the arena of this greatest battle of the West. It was April 168 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS when I visited the field and the mountain air was cool and bracing. In the open fields the flocks of sheep were grazing, birds sang in the forest, and the whole scene was peaceful, like an unexplored wilderness. But here and there we saw blocks of white stone appearing through the leaves, and these told all too plainly that there once had been a day when Chickamauga heard other music than that of the birds and had seen other clouds than those white, fleecy ones which drifted aimlessly along, above the green of the trees, beneath the blue of the sky. Well down towards the center of the field stands a little log cabin called the Brotherton House. It was here that the men under Long- street broke through the Union lines and all but destroyed Rosecrans’ army. The battle had been opened on the morning of the nineteenth by Polk, the bishop-general, attacking the Union left under Thomas. The day ended without decisive advantage to either side. During the night Long- street, who had been detached from the army under Lee, came up in person and took a position on the Confederate left. The battle was renewed in the morning, but had yet reached no critical stage, when, by a misinterpreted order, a division of troops was withdrawn from the Union right and center. Through this gap near the Brother- ton House Longstreet poured his troops in a furious charge, led by the fiery Hood, which cut the Union army in two and swept the right under McCook and the center under Crittenden completely off the field. Charles A. Dana was with the staff of Rose- crans at that time as the personal representative of Secretary of War Stanton. On the evening of the nineteenth, Rosecrans conferred with his generals at headquarters in the Widow Glen’s CHICKAMAUGA 169 house. Thomas was weary with the day’s exer- tions and went to sleep repeatedly. When Rose- crans asked his advice he would straighten up and answer, “I would strengthen the left,’ and then fall asleep. He seemed to divine the danger of the morrow. When asked if he could cover the rear in case of a retreat, he replied, “This army can’t retreat!” Coffee was at length brought in and the versatile McCook sang the “Hebrew Maiden.” In many respects the McCook family is the most remarkable participating in the war. Of this Scotch-Irish Presbyterian family coming from New Lisbon, Ohio, the father and eight brothers were officers in the Union army, and of these the father and three brothers were killed. About noon on the twentieth, Dana, who was with Rosecrans on the right, dismounted from his horse and stretched out on the grass to take a nap. He was shortly awakened by a crash of musketry. Sitting up on the grass the first thing he saw was Rosecrans, a devout Catholic, crossing himself. ‘Hello!’ Dana said to himself, “if the general is crossing himself, we are in a desperate situation.” And such it soon proved to be. After a vain effort to stem the panic or get into communication with Thomas on the left, Rosecrans rode back into Chattanooga where he was joined by McCook and Crittenden. It seemed a complete wreck of the Union army and Dana telegraphed to Stanton; “My report today is of deplorable importance. Chickamauga is as fatal a name in our history as Bull Run.” But by the evening it was known that things were not quite so bad as he had represented them. As soon as the Union right and center had been driven off the field the victorious Confederates turned to attack Thomas on the left. Thomas was 170 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS strongly posted on a ridge of hills called the Horseshoe Curve. Against this position the Con- federates under Longstreet, veterans of the Peach Orchard and the Wheat Field at Gettysburg, flung themselves in furious and repeated charges. Perhaps never again during the war did the Confederate soldier fight with the same dash and spirit with which he charged the lines held by Thomas. After Chickamauga he still fought with desperation, but it was with the spirit of a man _ who was determined to die with harness on his back rather than that of a man who expected victory. The heroic stand of Thomas after his commanding officer and two-thirds of the army had left the field is one of the great incidents of the Civil War, and Thomas well deserved the title which he won that day, the Rock of Chickamauga. But there were other officers who shared in the honor of that engagement. First among these was Gordon Granger, who was stationed with the reserves near Rossville, far in the rear. As the fog lifted on that Sabbath morn- ing he and his officers heard only the peaceful tones of the church bells in Chattanooga rolling over the ridges. Soon these peaceful notes were lost in the thunder of the cannon at the front. Granger had been ordered to hold his present position at all hazards. But as the sound of the guns kept increasing in volume, and the clouds of smoke and dust rose on the horizon, he became impatient and exclaimed to his chief of staff, “Why the hell does Rosecrans keep me here? There is the battle !”—-pointing in the direction of Thomas. At eleven o’clock he climbed into a hay- rick and stood listening to the sounds of the conflict. Finally, with an oath, he thrust his glass into its case and jumping down from the hay-rick said, “I am going to Thomas, orders or CHICKAMAUGA 171 no orders.” Two hours later, at one o'clock, Granger shook hands with the anxious Thomas and flung his reserves into the battle. The part that Granger played in saving the day is illus- trated by the fact that out of 3,700 men of the Reserve Corps who were thrown into the battle, nearly fifty per cent were killed or disabled. A more careful officer might have waited for orders until Thomas had been overwhelmed. The night brought respite to the weary Thomas, and under orders from Rosecrans he withdrew his force to the shelter of the Union lines at Chatta- nooga. The Confederate army remained in pos- session of the hard-fought field, but Bragg did not follow up his advantage the next morning, the twenty-first, and the badly demoralized Union army was permitted to establish itself in the lines about Chattanooga. Aiter Chickamauga came the siege of Chatta- nooga. Jefferson Davis had come out from Rich- mond to visit Bragg’s army, and as he stood on a crag of Lookout Mountain and looked down upon the beleaguered army under Rosecrans, he said to Bragg that its destruction was only a question of time. Meanwhile the Government at Washington was frantic over the state of affairs at Chattanooga. Grant was lying at Vicksburg recovering from injuries received by his horse falling on him at New Orleans, when he was directed, on Octo- ber 3rd, to report at Cairo. At Cairo he received another telegram telling him to proceed to the Galt house at Louisville where he would meet an officer of the War Department. Just as his train was leaving Indianapolis it was stopped by a mes- sage that Stanton himself was in the station. On the way down to Louisville, Stanton gave Grant two orders assigning him to the command of the 172 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS “Military Division of the Mississippi.” One order left the army commanders as they were, but the other assigned Thomas to the command of the army at Chattanooga. Grant accepted the latter, relieving Rosecrans. Having thus arranged matters, Grant went to the theatre and Stanton to bed. As Grant was returning to the hotel, he he was met by messengers from Stanton, urging him to come at once, as something terrible had happened. Reproaching himself for having at- tended the theater when critical things had hap- pened in his absence, Grant hurried to Stanton’s room, where he found the Secretary pacing up and down in his night garments and in the great- est distress, for he had just received a telegram from Charles A. Dana, the Assistant Secretary of War, that Rosecrans had given orders to his army to retreat. Grant immediately sent a despatch relieving General Rosecrans of command and directing General Thomas to take command of the army until Grant could reach Chattanooga, and exhorting Thomas to hold his position at all hazards. Thomas sent back the laconic reply, . “We will hold the town until we starve.” In the battle of Chattanooga, fought Novem- ber 23, 24 and 25, 1863, Grant’s plan of battle was to have Sherman turn the Confed- erate right on Missionary Ridge and Hooker his left on Lookout Mountain. The first fighting, however, was done by Thomas in the center, who carried Orchard Knob on the twenty-third. The next day both Sherman and Hooker made their attack. Sherman won a position where he could threaten Bragg’s right on Missionary Ridge, and Hooker, in the so-called Battle above the Clouds carried Lookout Mountain. The fame of this last-named battle will not stand the light of in- vestigation. Commenting on this battle, Grant GENERAL HOOKER ON LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN CHICKAMAUGA 173 said to John Russell Young, who accompanied him on his trip around the world: “The battle of Lookout Mountain is one of the romances of the war. There was no such battle and no action even worthy to be called a battle on Lookout Mountain. It is all poetry.” Bragg seems to have had no intention of making a stand at Lookout Mountain and very few Union soldiers fell in the assault. They won a position at the foot of the palisades on the evening of the twenty-fourth, and were preparing to storm the heights the next morning, when it was discovered that the Confederates had withdrawn to Mis- sionary Ridge. On the twenty-fifth Sherman pressed his attack on the right of Bragg’s army, expecting to have assistance from Hooker’s left. But Hooker was delayed in getting across Chat- tanooga valley by the destruction of bridges, and in order to create a diversion in favor of Sher- man, Grant ordered Thomas to move against Missionary Ridge on the center. This was about four o’clock in the afternoon. The troops of Thomas had orders to take the first line of rifle pits at the base of Missionary Ridge. But when they had taken this first line the passion of the battle carried them in a wild charge up the slope and over the Confederate’s lines at the top of the ridge. No orders had been issued for such a charge, and Grant, turning to Thomas, said an- grily, “Thomas, who ordered those men up the ridge?’ Thomas quietly replied, “I don’t know; I did not.” Then turning to Granger, Grant said, “Did you order them up, Granger?’ “No,” an- swered Granger, “they started up without orders. When those fellows get started all hell can’t stop them.” Grant murmured that somebody would suffer if it did not turn out well, and then turned 174 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS to watch the charge. This battle, like Lookout Mountain, was not marked by any desperate fight- ing. A heavy fire was opened on the Union troops by Bragg’s batteries on the top of the ridge, but the guns could not be deglined suf- ficiently to do any damage. In a few moments Grant and his generals, watching from Orchard Knob, saw the men under Sheridan and Wood climbing over the top of the ridge, and the army of Bragg was in full retreat into Georgia. At half-past four Dana thrilled the country by wir- — ing to Stanton: “Glory to God! the day is de- cisively ours. Missionary Ridge has just been carried by the magnificent charge of Thomas’ troops, and the rebels routed.” Of this battle Grant said: “Mission Ridge, although a great vic- tory, would have ended in the destruction of Bragg but for our mistake in not knowing the ground. If I had known the ground as well be- fore the battle as I did after, ] think Bragg would have been destroyed. I saw this as soon as the battle was over and was greatly disappointed.” Chattanooga is the high-water mark of Grant’s ability as a commander. He had taken Henry and Donelson without a siege, at Shiloh he had fought a terrific battle; at Vicksburg he had over- come all obstacles by his masterly movements and let the “Father of Waters flow unvexed to the sea’; here at Chattanooga he had turned con- sternation into rejoicing, and by able tactical movements had won a great victory with very | little fighting. Now the country believed it had a soldier who could end the war. Three months after Chattanooga, Grant was standing before Lincoln at the White House. The President, who had just handed him his commission as Lieuten- ant-General said to him, “With this high honor, CHICKAMAUGA 175 devolves upon you, also, a corresponding re- sponsibility. As the country herein trusts you, so, under God, it will sustain you.” It is doubtful if the subsequent campaigns of Grant in Virginia added anything to’his military reputation. What he did there was accomplished by sheer hammer- ing in the full consciousness that he had unlim- ited men and supplies and authority back of him. But the nation trusted him with its men and its resources and gave him the full measure of its devotion because of what he had done at Donel- son, Shiloh, Vicksburg and Chattanooga. Lookout Mountain is well named. From the jagged rocks on its summit, twenty-three hundred feet above the level of the sea, one commands a magnificent view of the country round about. To the south one sees the hills of Alabama, to the south and east, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and to the east and north, Vir- ginia, Tennessee and Kentucky. Seven states wave their banners in the face of him who stands on Lookout Mountain. In a vast bend the Ten- nessee River skirts the base of the mountain and is lost among the hills. Far in the distance gleam the white monuments amid the solitudes of Chickamauga. The river is inseparably linked with the name and fame of that Silent Soldier who brought the long war to a successful issue. On the banks of the Tennessee, at Fort Henry, the world had first heard of Grant. Once more the world heard of him on the April Sabbath at Shiloh on the banks of the same river; and once again at Chattanooga, where, on the banks of the Tennessee, he turned defeat into victory and opened an avenue for the invasion of the South from the west. He has other memorials—beauti- ful marble and finely wrought bronze—but here are his grandest monuments: the rugged moun- 176 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS tain looking out over the States, east and west, north and south, and the broad river flowing si- lently by the mountain’s base on its long journey to the sea. XIII THROUGH THE WILDERNESS GARMENTS ROLLED IN BLoop Culpepper Court House, where Grant joined the Army of the Potomac in the spring of 1864, is forty miles south of Bull Run. After three years of desper- ate fighting, the Union armies were only forty miles nearer their goal. It looked as if little progress had been made, as if the vast expenditure of blood and treasure had been for nothing. But distances are often deceptive: they were decidedly so in this instance. The three years’ fighting had turned the left flank of the Confederacy, and the great river of the West was free from hostile forces. In the furnace of the war two splendid veteran armies had been developed, that now under Sherman in the west and the Army of the Potomac in the east. If Grant succeeded where so many before him had failed, it is but just to his pred- ecessors to remember that he fell heir to a rich inherit- ance. It was a finely tempered weapon that the nation put into his tried hands in the spring of 1864; other men had labored and Grant entered into their labors. But most important of all, the “coming man” had come; it had taken three years to bring him to the front, but now he was there. A matter of forty miles’ difference in the positions of the Army of the Potomac in 1861 and 1864 is by no means indicative of what had been accomplished during those three years. All the generals who had failed, through cir- cumstances, or through incompetence, all the men who had marched and fought, all the soldiers and officers Lise 178 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS who died in those years, contributed to the final suc- cess of Grant and shared in his victory. The sun was high and hot when we rode down the main street of Culpeper Court House, past the home of General A. P. Hill, of Lee’s army, and out into a rolling farm country which reminded me not a little of the Cumberland Valley in Pennsylvania, only the houses were of timber instead of greystone, and stood far back from the road, usually at the head of a tree- bordered lane.* Fifteen miles through this charming country, and the fine pike degenerated into a dirt road, the white pillared houses gave way to shabby cabins, and the rich meadows faded into uncultivated barrens or wooded solitudes. At length we reined in our horses at the top of a hill. There it lay—the Rapidan! Still darkly flowing, deep and swift. Beyond was a sea of green; not a house, not a clearing, not a single spiral of hospitable smoke. We were on the edge of the Wilderness. Four times the Army of the Potomac had reached the Rapidan and four times it had crossed it. Three times it had been compelled to recross, de- feated, baffled and dispirited. On the same hill, on the morning of the fourth of May, 1864, Grant sat on his bay horse “Cincinnati,” silent, smoking, thoughtfully observing his army as it defiled down the roads to the Germana Ford. It must have been a brave sight: the sun dancing on the brass pieces of the artillery and reflected from the) white covers of the supply wagons; the long lines of march- *On this expedition through the Wilderness, I was ac- companied by Dr. Cheesman A. Herrick, President of Girard College, Philadelphia. On the second day out from Spott- sylvania, my horse gave me a bad fall, and with a broken right arm I had to ride from Spottsylvania through the Wil- derness and the Chancellorsville battlegrounds to Fredericks- burg. As I rode along with my broken arm, I recalled the great suffering which those Wilderness defiles had once witnessed when the ambulances of Grant’s army transferred the wounded from these forest battlefields to the base hos- pitals at Fredericksburg. THROUGH THE WILDERNESS 179 ing troops, with reckless prodigality throwing away their blue overcoats till the roadsides were lined with a fringe of blue, these same careless veterans glancing up at the smoking chieftain and trying to take the measure of their new commander. Over the pontoons rumbled the artillery and the trains, clattered the cav- alry, with swaying tread marched the infantry; up the bank on the farther side, and then were lost in the wood. What was the silent General thinking of as he watched regiment after regiment vanish into the for- est, that deep, far-stretching, mysterious, ominous wil- derness which had seen other hosts march that way, which now put its arms so gently and so noiselessly about the new army that came to try its secrets? Burn- side, Hooker, and Meade, all had watched their armies go over the Rapidan, into the forest mystery; all had seen them recross, baffled, if not disastrously defeated. Would history repeat itself? By a path along the shady hillside and through a narrow gateway we rode our horses to a little house on the top of the hill in quest of dinner. In the shade of the porch at the back of the house sat an old man, his eye dim and his natural force much abated. He was not sure whether we could have dinner or not, but would consult his “old woman.” That person being favorably disposed, he came back and “reck. oned” that we could have a “snack.” While the “snack” was a-preparing, we rested on the porch, the rifle on the pegs overhead, underneath it the steel trap for fox or coon, and hanging down from the roof the strings of peppers. Our host had been born not far from where we were now sitting and had watched the army cross the river fifty-four years before. Once he had been to the county seat, fifteen miles distant, but never farther than that. Great armies had come and gone by his door; great tides of world politics had Swept by; but he had never wandered far away; and now his sun was sinking. 180 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS Much refreshed by “clabber,” honey, pork and hoe cake, we remounted our horses, crossed the bridge, and were swallowed up in the forest. The Wilderness is a tract of country lying along the south bank of the Rapidan, fifteen miles in length and about ten miles across at any given point. The title given it is no misnomer. Long before the war, the primeval forest had been cut away for the iron mines and the furnaces. In its place had sprung up a heavy second growth of low- branching oaks, dwarf pines, walnut, ash and chestnut. The abundant trees themselves would have proved a barrier and a menace to any army which attempted to maneuvre there; but their hindering, confusing power had been augmented by an impenetrable tangle of thickly twined un- derbrush, briers and vines woven together by the hand of nature. Cavalry and artillery alike were useless in such a tangle, and before many days had passed Grant sent most of his artillery back to Washington as a mere cumberer of the roads. In the battle that was soon to open, the combat- ants rarely saw one another, and fired only where they saw the smoke from the volley of their ad- versaries or heard the crashing of the underbrush. Grant’s army greatly outnumbered that of Lee, 118,000 against 60,000; but with a thorough knowledge of the country and the few roads that traversed it, and because of the nature of the forest, completely screening its movements, able to hear and observe the attacking force, and yet not itself be heard or seen, the army on the defensive en- joyed advantages that did much to compensate for inferiority in numbers. Running east and west, about two miles apart, there are two principal roads in the Wilder- ness, the Orange Turnpike to the north and the Orange Plank Road to the south. Not far from THROUGH THE WILDERNESS 181 the center of this Wilderness country these roads were intersected by the roads from the crossings of the Rapidan running northwest by southeast. There were a few farms and clearings, but for the greater part it was an unbroken solitude. Charles A. Dana, who was with Grant during the Wilder- ness campaign, writes that between the Rapidan and Spottsylvania Court House, he saw only twenty persons who were not soldiers. Now the soldiers were gone, but in the same country I saw not more than twenty persons. Of these twenty the greater number were school children playing about a lonely schoolhouse. We wondered whence the scholars came. The most pleasant spot in all that Wilderness was the clearing in the midst of which stood the Wilderness Church. A grassy lane, a hundred yards or more in length, and decently lined with hickory and chestnut trees, led from the main road to the white church with a bell in the tower. Back of the church slept the dead. Whenever I have seen these churches in the woods or in the fields, with the cemetery behind them, it has seemed to me as if they were an emblem of the Christian hope—the Church guarding its dead who had died in the Lord; in life the guide, in death the protector of man, a ‘pilgrim and a so- journer in life’s wilderness. Nor was it the name only, Wilderness, that made me think of that great Voice that once cried in the wilderness, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord!” Strange, too, that as a rule these Voices who cry for God in such wilderness sanctuaries have more of the John the Baptist ring about them, more to say about sin and repentance, than their brother Voices who cry in the midst of the great cities, and where it would seem the moral wilderness is denser and the need for repentance more crying. ioe HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS It had taken the Government three years to learn that the war could not be won by single, isolated movements, or victories, here a thrust and there a thrust, but by a concerted putting forth of the military power of the Nation. Grant’s Wilderness campaign was but one of five move- ments. The plan was titanic, and it all came from the mind of that general whom Richard H. Dana saw, a few days before the campaign opened, in the lobby of Willard’s Hotel in Washington, and described as “an ordinary, scrubby-looking man with a slightly seedy look.” In the order of their importance these different movements are as fol- lows: 1. Grant’s move towards Richmond, but with Lee’s army as fhe chief objective. 2. Sher- man’s campaign from Chattanooga into Georgia, with Johnston’s army and Atlanta as his goal. 3. Butler’s campaign against Richmond from the south along the James River. 4. The contem- plated movement of Banks with twenty-five thou- - sand veteran troops against Mobile and then to co-operate with Sherman. 5. The campaign of Siegel up the Shenandoah Valley to stop supplies from that rich district going to Richmond and Lee’s army. The first plan depended, to a de- gree, upon the successful carrying out of the other four. But only Sherman was successful; Butler, Banks and Siegel all failed disastrously. Historians of the war are not agreed as to whether or not Grant, when he took the plunge into the Wilderness, and, as Lincoln put it, “crawled in and pulled in the hole after him,” expected to get clear of the Wilderness country before encountering Lee’s army. Badeau, Grant's military secretary, ridicules the suggestion; but Humphrey, Dana and Wood declare that he did. Perhaps the safest thing to say on the subject is that Grant hoped that he might get his army over THROUGH THE WILDERNESS _ 183 the river and out of the Wilderness before having to fight Lee. The movement across the Rapidan commenced at midnight on the third of May, and by the evening of the fourth most of the army was over without molestation from Lee. That in itself was no inconsiderable achievement. But - Lee was not asleep. As soon as he learned that Grant had dared the perilous Wilderness journey he put his columns in motion along the two roads running parallel to one another and eastward through the forests. Lee was now marching due east, Grant southeast. The two roads gave Lee a splendid opportunity to strike at the right flank of the Union army. At seven o’clock on the morning of the fifth of May, Grant’s advance under the brilliant but ill-fated Warren encoun- tered Lee’s advance under Ewell. This was the beginning of the mighty contest of fighting, dig- ging and night marching that was to continue for several weeks. The battle raged until late in the evening, Grant anxious to dispose of Lee before Longstreet could come to his assistance, and Lee fighting desperately until his great lieu- tenant was in position to strike. Each side by impetuous drives and rushes gained local suc- cesses, but when the battle ceased at nightfall the relative position of the two armies was un- changed. Both generals ordered an assault at daybreak on the sixth, Lee striking a little earlier than Grant. Hancock, in the part of the line where he was assaulting, struck Hill’s Corps, the men of which were expecting to be relieved by Longstreet. With one of his characteristic suc- cesses, Hancock was driving Hill from the field in confusion when Longstreet’s Corps was rushed to the front and turned the tide against Hancock. This was at six-thirty in the morning. A flank movement by Longstreet compelled the with- 184 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS drawal of Hancock’s forces, a great portion of the army of the Potomac now being under his command, to entrenchments occupied the previous day. Longstreet was moving his men to attack this position when, like Jackson, not far away in that same Wilderness, he was laid low by a volley from his own men, and the Confederate attack was fortunately postponed until four o’clock, when it was successfully withstood. At sunset, far out on the Federal right, Gordon made a dashing as- sault and captured two brigadier-generals. Thus ended the fierce and sanguinary battle of two days’ duration. Grant had lost over 17,000 men and Lee probably 19,000. In this wild struggle in the tangles of the forest the two armies fought as they stumbled upon one another, like blinded giants, or infuriated beasts. The different units had to fight it out as best they could, without much help or counsel from their officers. Wounded men crawled off into the thickets to die by themselves, or painfully drag- ged themselves along the ground in frantic efforts to escape the flames, for the woods had caught fire and many of the wounded who might have recovered from the thrusts and shots of their fellowmen fell victims to the fury of the flames. As General Longstreet was being carried to the rear, with his hat over his face as he lay on the stretcher, he heard his men remarking that he must be dead, and that in giving out the report that he was wounded his fellow-officers were try- ing to keep the army from discouragement. With that he lifted his hat from his face, and when they saw that he was not dead they greeted him with enthusiastic cheers. The incident is worth relating as indicative of how much men’s trust in the personality of a leader counts in the midst of a battle, or in any great crisis of human affairs. THROUGH THE WILDERNESS 185 On the Union side, Wadsworth, commander of the Sixth Corps, had fallen as he was riding his horse over the Confederate works. He was a patrician and philanthropist from Geneseo, New York, representative of the highest type of Northern gentleman and officer. He died in the Confederate lines. An injured fellow-captive tells how he saw Wadsworth lying wounded at the base of a tree at a field hospital, a smile on his noble countenance and the fingers of his right hand playing with the trigger of a discarded musket, but in his eyes no speculation. The Wilderness “throbbed with the wounded.” More than 8,000 Federal wounded were started for Fredericksburg. So deserted now these roads, so still now these forest tangles; but one thought as one rode through them, of the long processions of agony that had once passed that way, and how, where one heard now only the mournful and pre- monitory cry of the whippoorwill, whose day commences with the night, one might have heard the cries of wounded men who lay in agony in the thick copses and sought for death but could not always find it. A New England grave bears this inscription: “Wm. T. G. Morton, by whom pain in surgery was averted and annulled; before whom, in all time, surgery was agony; since whom, science has control of pain.” That physi- cian and his marvelous discovery of ethereal anesthesia were with the army to bless the wounded who could be brought to the field hos- pitals. But many of them died in lonely thickets, with none to hear their cries, or perished miser- ably in the smoke and flame. A member of a rescue party relates how they came upon a badly wounded lad of the Confederate army painfully dragging himself over a grassy plot and gather- 186 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS ing the violets which were growing there in pro- fusion. And what of him who was directing his first battle with the Army of the Potomac? It had been said here and there that Grant had never yet met Lee, and that when he did the laurels of Donelson, Vicksburg and Chattanooga would wither. The keeper of the Wilderness store pointed out to me the open knoll two hundred yards from the road where Grant had his head- quarters during the battle. On the opening days of this first campaign in the East, Grant honored the occasion by wearing the regulation sword, spurs, sash and uniform coat and waistcoat, a very unusual thing for him. On his hands were a pair of yellow-brown thread gloves. During the anx- ious hours on the fifth and sixth of May, he sat most of the time with his back against a tree, a cigar in his mouth, his gloves still on his hands and ever whittling a stick; when one stick was cut away he would break off another and com- mence on it. They who reviled us as a “nation of whittlers” would have felt that the criticism was deserved, had they seen the generalissimo of all our armies thus occupied in the critical mo- ments of the battle. But if his hands were whit- tling, his brains were working. Excited officers would ride up madly to headquarters and give the most disturbing accounts of reverses that were overtaking them, but Grant neither in speech nor in behavior betrayed the slightest sign of pertur- bation. One single incident suffices to show the mind of the new Commander. When the fighting of the fifth was at its height, Grant issued an order that the bridges in his rear over the Rapidan be taken up. The Army of the Potomac now had a Commander who thought more about the front than the rear. It is our old friend, the same POROUGH CET ROW LEDER RNESS) 187 Grant whom we have seen order Smith and Wal- lace to retake the positions lost before the works at Donelson, or calmly smoking amid the trees at Shiloh, surprised, from the standpoint of mili- tary theory and tactics deserving to be defeated, but keeping his men at it with never a thought of retreat or defeat. That spirit soon communi- cated itself to his new army. They were wonder- ing, those men in blue, if, after the losses and hard fighting in the two days’ struggle in the Wilder- ness, the army was to retreat as it had done so many times before. On the night of the seventh, the army was set in motion towards Spottsyl- vania Court House. At first the tired fighters and marchers hardly knew which way they were go- ing, but by and by the words passed down the line, “Grant is moving to Richmond!” This was what they had been waiting to hear, and when- ever Grant rode by, mounted now on his black pony, “Little Jeff,” the men in the ranks made the woody defiles shake with their cheers. Those night cheers were more significant for the army of Lee than salvos of artillery, for they told that the Army of the Potomac now had a Commander who would make it fight, not one or two, but if necessary, a hundred battles until that for which they were contending had been secured. Those Wilderness cheers sounded the death knell of the Confederacy. We had ridden past the turning for Spottsy- Ivania, and were well on our way towards Chancellorsville when we discovered our mis- take. A negro woodsman told us that by fol- lowing the trail of a wagon hauling ties through the woods, we would come out on the Brock Road. After a ride of several miles over a trail, where we were often in perplexity as to which path to take, we emerged upon the Brock 188 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS Road. It was by this road that Grant marched his army when he strove to get to Spottsy- lvania before Lee. By one of the accidents of war, Lee was there before him. The advance of Lee, under R. H. Anderson, had orders to move to Spottsylvania on the eighth of May, but finding the woods on fire where he halted on the seventh, and being unable to go into bivouac, Anderson marched his corps into Spottsylvania. Grant’s object in moving on Spottsylvania was twofold: to thrust, if possible, his army between Lee and Richmond, and to keep Lee so engaged that he could not detach troops from his army to attack Butler who had come to grief at Bermuda Hundred on the James River. But once again he found Lee strongly entrenched on his path. The country, though still sparsely settled, be- came less wild as we rode towards Spottsylvania. At a crossroads, with night beginning to come down, we came upon a gray monument sur- rounded by iron rails. Drawing rein, I read the name. It was Sedgwick, the fine Commander of the Sixth Corps. On the afternoon of the Ninth, as the army was getting into position about Spottsylvania, Sedgwick went forward to recon- noiter. Bullets were falling in the vicinity, and Sedgwick, seeing a private soldier dodging, re- proved him, exclaiming, ‘““They couldn’t hit an elephant at that distance!” The next moment he crashed to the ground with a bullet through his brain. He was carried to General Meade’s headquarters where a rustic bower, fitting cata- falque for one who perished in that Wood of Ephraim, was built for his body. Out of the Wilderness, at length, he was carried to Cornwall, Connecticut, where he slept with his fathers. A storm that had been muttering at our back THROUGH THE WILDERNESS _ 189 all afternoon broke with fury just as we cantered into the quaint court house town and found refuge at the inn. Hail rattled on the windows and roof; but it was not the hail of lead that Spottsylvania had known on another May day. We were off at an early hour the next morn- ing to ride over the scene of the fierce fighting at the famous Salient. Tying our horses near the main road, we took a trail through a lonely, rolling forest tract until we came out at a farm- house, picturesquely sheltered beneath a mighty oak. The farmer had been a boy at the time of the war, and remembered well the terrible sights that he had witnessed after the battle. Standing by the monument to New York and New Jersey troops, we were able to get a very clear idea of just what took place on that twelfth day of May, 1864. In order to avoid low ground, the Con- federate line towards their center had been thrust forward three-quarters of a mile, thus forming a salient projecting towards the forest in which the Union army was entrenched. Both armies now took no chances in the matter of defense, and whenever the march was over, they threw up de- fensive barriers with the greatest skill and dis- patch. On the tenth, Colonel Emory Upton, 124th New York Volunteers, led a smashing assault on the left center of the Confederate army and got well into Lee’s works; but the co-operating force failed to come up, and Upton was forced to relinquish his hard-earned ground. For the gal- lantry and skill of his charge Grant made Upton a brigadier-general on the ground. Upton, who won his brigadier-generalship by his charge at Spottsylvania, was the chief figure in what, so far as the officers of the regular army were concerned, can be called the first battle of the Civil War. He was a cadet at West Point at 190 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS the time of the John Brown Raid. This raid created the most intense feeling among the cadets from the South. One of them, M. B. Young, of Georgia, afterwards a well-known cavalry leader, was heard to declare in the hearing of a Massa- chusetts cadet during the John Brown trial: “By G ! I wish I had a sword as long as from here to Newburg and the Yankees were all in a row! I’d like to cut off the head of every damned one of them!” Upton, before coming to West Point, had been a student at Oberlin College, Ohio, an institution noted for its Abolition sym- pathies. Wade Hampton Gibbes, of South Car- olina, made some slurring remark to a fellow- cadet about Upton’s student life at Oberlin and his association with negroes. The remark was repeated to Upton, who promptly called upon Gibbes for an explanation. The result was a fist-fight under circumstances of great excitement in a room of the First Division. Those who were able to get into the room and saw the fight have never reported what happened, but General Morris Schaff, who was in the crowd outside on the stairway, relates how John Rodgers, Upton’s classmate and second, came to the head of the stairs and, with his eyes glaring like a panther’s, said to the Southern sympathizers below him: “If there are any more of you down there who want anything, come right up!’ This fist-fight between the two cadets, one from South Carolina and the other from New York, was a prelude to the bitter struggle which was to follow. When the batteries at Fort Johnson opened fire on Fort Sumter in the early morning of April 12, 1861, the first shot was fired by the hand of Wade Hampton Gibbes. . Despite heavy losses on the tenth, Grant deter- mined to make another effort to break Lee’s THROUGH THE WILDERNESS 191 lines. Hancock, the best corps commander in the army for attack, was selected for the great effort. The men formed in the woods, and at four on the morning of the twelfth, went “over the top,’ out of the woods, and into the open, up one slope, down the other side, and then up the second slight elevation at the top of which were the Confederate trenches on the edge of the forest. With tremendous enthusiasm, Hancock’s men swarmed over the Confederate works, taking four thousand prisoners, among them two generals, Edward Johnson and George H. Stewart. On through the trees they drove the disorganized Confederates until, about a mile in the rear, they encountered Lee’s second, or interior, line. That line saved Lee’s army. In the intoxication of success and in the confusion of the rush through the woods, Hancock’s men had become disorgan- ized, and now in their turn were hurled back through the woods as far as the first line of trenches which they had taken. Here they de- fended themselves against five Savage assaults. Nearly all of those who saw anything of this bloody hand-to-hand conflict at the first line of Confederate works, the Union army holding them, the Confederates trying to regain them, agree that the fighting at the Spottsylvania Salient was the most desperate that the Army of the Potomac ever witnessed. From early morning on _ the twelfth until early morning on the thirteenth, the two armies fought one another with only a line of log works intervening. Men received fatal thrusts through the openings between the logs, and daring hands would reach over and pull prisoners across the logs into their own lines. At length, Lee gave up the effort to retake the works and retired to his second line. The fight had cost him 4,000 prisoners and as many more 192 HIGHWAYS. AND BYWAYS dead and wounded. The Federal loss was 6,800. When the two captured generals were brought to Hancock’s headquarters, Hancock went for- ward and gave them a generous welcome. Gen- eral Johnson took his hand with cordiality, but General Steuart declined to shake hands, saying, with a gesture of refusal, “Under the present cir- cumstances, I must decline to take your hand.” With that, Hancock, as quick in repartee as in assault, answered, “Under any other circum- stances I should not have offered it.” The excite- ment of defeat and disaster sifts men’s souls and lets in the light on littleness and poverty of spirit. When Hancock was driving the Confederates through the woods early in the morning, and it seemed that Lee’s center had been broken, Lee went forward to where Gordon’s men were form- ing for the advance, with the evident intention of leading the charge himself. But Gordon spur- red his horse in front of “Traveler,” and, taking him by the bridle, checked him and called out, “General Lee, you shall not lead my men in a charge. No man can do that, sir; another is here for that purpose. These men are Georgians, Vir- ginians, Carolinians. You must go to the rear, General Lee!” At once the men took up the saying and the echo, “General Lee to the rear!” rolled from regiment to regiment. The incident is perpetuated in the Gordon monument, a stir- ring piece of bronze in the front of the state capitol at Atlanta, Georgia. Charles A. Dana in his Recollections gives this account of what followed the battle: “The ground was thick with dead and wounded men, among whom the relief corps was at work. The earth, which was soft from the heavy rains we had been’ having before and during the battle, had been trampled by the fighting of the thousands of men “THROUGH THE WILDERNESS 193 until it was soft like thin hasty pudding. Over the fence against which we leaned lay a great pool of this mud, its surface as smooth as that of a _ pond. As we stood there, looking silently down at it, of a sudden the leg of a man was lifted up from the pool and the mud dripped off his boot. It was so unexpected, so horrible, that for a mo- ment we were stunned. Then we pulled ourselves together and called to some soldiers near by to rescue the owner of the leg. They pulled him out with but little trouble, and discovered that he was not dead, only wounded. He was taken to the hospital where he got well, I believe.” Pointing to a tall tree near the farmhouse, I said to the farmer who had been showing us over the ground, “That tree, I suppose, was here at the time of the battle?” ‘No, sir; all those trees have grown up since the battle was fought.” Then I began to count: fifty-three years had come and gone; fifty-three times the forest had blossomed and faded since that springtime battle. Fifty- three times the red and yellow leaves of October had covered the passionless mounds where slept the nameless dead. Yes, a new generation of trees had come since then, and a new generation of men. “By the left flank” had been the plan of Grant’s campaign up to this point, and continued to be until the bloody repulse at Cold Harbor. It consisted of a dogged effort to turn Lee’s right flank and get between him and Richmond. In the Wilderness, at Spottsylvania, again at the North Anna—whither Grant marched his army after the battle at Spottsylvania, and where he ex- tricated himself from a dangerous position, two wings of his army being over the river with Lee between them, and neither wing able to reinforce the other without twice crossing the river—and 194 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS finally at Cold Harbor, Lee by masterly move- ments flung his army in the path of Grant and thwarted his plan. On the afternoon of the eleventh of May, during the day’s interlude in the fighting at Spottsylvania, Elihu Washburn, Grant’s chief friend at court, was leaving head- quarters for Washington. He asked Grant for some message that he might take to the Presi- dent. Grant then sat down and wrote the letter to Halleck in which was included the now famous sentence, “I propose to fight it out along this line if it takes all summer.” This line of campaign he did follow up to the reverse at Cold Harbor. After that, baffled, and with the army and the country both disappointed, Grant changed his plan and threw his army across the James and attacked Richmond from the south. Cold Harbor was one of the few engagements in the war when both officers and men deliber- ately disobeyed orders and refused to advance against positions which they felt could not be taken. In the eight minutes of the first charge more men fell than during any similar period in any battle of the war. Grant himself admitted his blunder and looked upon Cold Harbor as his greatest mistake and Vicksburg as his best fought campaign. This bloody battle was fought over the very ground where McClellan’s army, two years before, had clashed with Lee at the begin- ning of the Seven Days battle. Cold Harbor is almost within sight of the spires of Richmond. Two years before, McClellan had brought his army to that point with comparatively insignifi- cant losses. But, from the time he commenced his campaign on the Rapidan up to the repulse at Cold Harbor, thousands upon thousands of graves marked the trail of Grant’s advance. The san- guinary nature of the fighting of the Army of the THROUGH THE WILDERNESS 195 Potomac under Grant’s command is best illus- trated by a comparison of the number killed in action under Grant and under the other com- manders. Under McDowell, McClellan, Pope, Burnside, Hooker and Meade, this number was 15,745, and under Grant, 15,139. Thus, his list of killed in eleven months, from May 4, 1864, to the surrender at Appomattox, April 9, 1865, was only 606 less than that of the army under six commanders and during three years of war. But, despite the fearful casualty lists appearing in the newspapers, the nation continued to put its faith in Grant and said with Lincoln, “I can’t spare this man—he fights!” XIV NASHVILLE SLow BUT SURE In front of the capitol in Nashville, a rearing horse of bronze bears a stern, thin-visaged man in the uniform of a major-general of the United States Army. If this stern soldier had been President of the United States at the time of the weak and vacillating Buchanan, perhaps there would have been no Civil War, and the battle of Nashville would never have been fought. In those days of doubt and misgiving, there were not a few who thought of the old man then sleeping in peace at the “Hermitage” by the side of his beloved Rachel, and wished for one hour of Andrew Jack- son. It was a warm spring day when I walked up the avenue between the rows of stately cedars and, taking the path going off to the right from the noble old mansion, entered the garden and stood by the modest sepulchre which he had built for himself and his wife, and where he desired that his body should rest, instead of in the sar- cophagus of the Roman Emperor, Alexander Severus, which had been brought from Palestine by Commodore Elliot and proffered to Jackson as a resting place. In answer to the proposal of Com- modore Elliot, Jackson replied as follows: “I cannot consent that my mortal body shall be laid in a repository prepared for an emperor or a king. My republican feelings and principles for- bid it. True virtue cannot exist where pomp and 196 NASHVILLE ier parade are the governing passions; it can only dwell with the people—the great laboring and producing classes that form the bone and sinew of our confederacy. I have prepared an humble depositary for my mortal body beside that wherein lies my beloved wife, where, without any pomp or parade, [I have requested, when my God calls me to sleep with my fathers, to be laid.” In keeping with the wishes of this democratic con- fession of faith and this noble valedictory to the vicissitudes of life, the stern old soldier sleeps now in a modest sepulchre beside his wife. The stone bears this inscription: General Andrew Jackson Born March 15, 1767 Died June 8, 1845 Then follows his own epitaph for his wife: Here lie the remains of Mrs. Rachel Jackson, wife of President Jackson, who died the 22nd of Decem- ber, 1828, age 61 years, Her face was fair, her per- son pleasing, her temper amiable, her heart kind; she delighted in relieving the wants of her fellow- creatures, and cultivated that divine pleasure by the most liberal and unpretending methods; to the poor she was a benefactor; to the rich an example; to the wretched a comforter; to the prosperous an orna- ment; her piety went hand and hand with her be- nevolence and she thanked her Creator for being per- mitted to do good. A being so gentle and so virtuous slander might wound, but could not dishonor; even Death, when he bore her from the arms of her hus- band, could but transport her to the bosom of her God. As I stood reading the affectionate inscription, with the branches bending low over the tomb and the mocking birds and bullfinches pouring out 198 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS their springtime melody in the garden, defying death, as it were, with their passionate song, there came to my mind the words of the dead hero, “The Union must and shall be preserved!” It was fitting that the battle which dispelled any doubts as to whether or not the Union was going to be preserved, should have been fought at Nash- ville, and where the sound of its cannon echoed over the grave of him who, with all his faults, was ever a lover of his nation and exalted and de- fended its unity. In the romance and tradition which have gathered about Sherman’s march from Atlanta to the sea, the notable achievement of General Thomas at Nashville has been almost forgotten. When Grant took supreme command of the Union forces he was counting on the operations of Sherman’s army to bring the war to an end not less than on the army under his own immediate command. After taking Atlanta, both Grant and Sherman looked upon Mobile as the next ob- jective. But the operations of Hood, the new commander of the army confronting Sherman, necessitated a change in plans. On July 17, 1864, Joseph E. Johnston, an able soldier who had skil- fully contested the advance of Sherman from Chattanooga, was superseded by John Bell Hood. Hood was then thirty-four years of age, a trained soldier, full of fight and daring, having lost an arm at Gettysburg and a leg at Chickamauga. Both Grant and Sherman rejoiced at the change in commanders, for they now hoped for an oppor- tunity to crush his army in open fight. Hood did not stand to defend Atlanta, but turned towards the northwest to strike at Sherman’s communica- tions with Chattanooga and Nashville. It was an- ticipated that Sherman would have to follow him, and Jefferson Davis had prophesied a retreat like NASHVILLE 199 that of Napoleon from Moscow. Sherman did follow him as far as Snake Creek Gap, where he had been five months before, although he still kept his hold on Atlanta. Then he made the bold decision to cut loose from Atlanta, march to the sea, and then join Grant, leaving it to Thomas to cope with Hood. The success, therefore, of Sherman’s movement was wholly dependent upon the success of Thomas at Nashville. On September 29th, Thomas had been sent back to Chattanooga and then on to Nashville. There he gathered a force of about fifty thousand men, some of them colored troops, some of them raw recruits, and many of the cavalry unmounted. Hood crossed the Tennessee River below the Muscle Shoals, near Florence, Alabama, with some forty thousand men. He planned to seize Nashville, and make it a base for an invasion of Kentucky. After that he had dreams of taking his army through the mountains and falling upon the rear of Grant before Petersburg. Schofield had been sent forward by Thomas to observe Hood and feel his force. He was not to risk a stand-up fight. But the Confederate advance was so rapid that Schofield could not avoid a battle on November 30th, at Franklin. For the time of its duration, a little more than one hour of daylight, this was the bloodiest battle of the war. The Confederate generals, aroused to a pitch of desperation, led their men in furious charges against the strong Union position. The Union loss was only 189 killed, while that of the Con- federates was almost 2,000 killed, among them, Patrick Cleburne, the ablest division commander in the west. Schofield continued his retreat to Nashville and joined his forces with Thomas. The invasion of Hood caused no little alarm in the North, and Grant himself began to fear the 200 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS worst. He bombarded Thomas with telegrams, urging him to attack Hood, and warning him lest he should carry the war to the Ohio River. Dur- ing these days there was occasional rain followed by freezing. This left the ground in no condition for maneuvering an army, especially in an attack upon the strongly posted army of Hood along the Brentwood Hills, four miles south of Nash- ville. Grant telegraphed him that “Now is one of the finest opportunities ever presented of destroying one of the three armies of the enemy.” But Thomas could not be moved to make an attack before he was ready by telegrams from Grant and the War Department, any more than he could be dislodged from the hills of Chickamauga by the furious assaults of the Con- federate infantry. He was not asleep to his chance, but he waited until the ice had melted and he could move with certainty of success. In answer to Halleck’s appeal that Grant was dis- pleased with his delay, Thomas wired, “I feel conscious that I have done everything in my power to prepare, and that the troops could not have been gotten ready before this. If General Grant shall order me to be relieved, I will submit without a murmur.” There spoke the manly soldier and unselfish patriot. As he sat at head- quarters, baffled by the elements, he said to his cavalry leader, General J. H. Wilson, ‘‘Wilson, they (meaning Grant and the War Department) treat me as though I were a boy and incapable of planning a campaign or fighting a battle. If they will let me alone I will fight this battle just as soon as it can be done, and will surely win it; but I will not throw victory away nor sacrifice the brave men of this army by moving till the thaw begins.” General Logan, then visiting Grant at City Point, was given authority to relieve NASHVILLE 201 Thomas, and started at once for the west. But he was not to make public the order until reach- ing Nashville, and, in the meantime, if Thomas had moved, he was not to deliver it at all. But so uneasy was Grant that he determined to go west himself, and had gone as far as Washington when the news came of the first successes of the Union army on December 15th. Logan had reached Louisville when he heard of the victory and went no further. The long period prayed-for thaw had come, and on the morning of December 15th Thomas, by a skilful turning movement, drove the left wing of the Con- federate army out of its strong position on the Brent- wood Hills. This necessitated a new line of defense for Hood’s army. On the morning of the sixteenth the negro troops under Steedman made an unsuccess- ful assault on the Overton Hill, a steep eminence on the Confederate right. To strengthen his extreme left under Chalmers, Hood weakened his line at Shy Hill. Schofield was sent against this position by Thomas and about the same time the cavalry under Hatch came in by the rear along the Granny White turnpike. This broke the Confederate line and the defeat became a disastrous rout. Had the Union cavalry been mounted, it is a question if any of Hood’s troops would have escaped. In his own account of the battle Flood writes: “Our line thus pierced gave way; soon thereafter it broke at all points, and I beheld for the first and only time a Confederate army abandon the field in confusion.”* In the battle, and during the pursuit of the next few days, 13,000 prisoners and 72 cannon were taken. It was the only important battle *In his “Advance and Retreat,” General Hood, describ- ing the confusion and panic which had overtaken his army, tells how a young lady of Tennessee rushed out into the midst of the fleeing soldiers and, regardless of the hail of bullets, implored them in the name of God and country to turn and face the enemy again. 202 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS of the war in which one of the armies was completely broken up and destroyed. More prisoners were taken than after any victory up to that time, with the exception of Donelson and Vicksburg. From now on Sherman was free in his movements and the doom of the Confederacy was sealed. The work which had commenced one spring day at St. Louis when Na- thaniel Lyon took Camp Jackson was now completed on this December day on the hills south of Nashville. The Mississippi Valley had been thoroughly subjugated and the left flank of the Confederacy was crushed. General Horace Porter, who was on Grant’s staff both in the west and in the east, says that these weeks of the campaign which ended in the great victory of Thomas at Nashville were the most anxious period in his entire military career. He shrank from doing an injustice to the faithful and capable Thomas, and yet his long delay occasioned the deepest anxiety for the issue of the campaign in the west. Had Hood not been repulsed, the whole military situation, east and west, would have changed, to the very serious disad- vantage of the North. Hence the deep anxiety of Grant. There was never a warm cordiality between these two distinguished officers, but as soon as Grant heard of the way in which Thomas had wrecked Hood’s army, he made honorable amends for any supposed lack of appreciation of the qualities of Thomas by telegraphing him: ‘The armies operating against Richmond have fired two hundred guns in honor of your victory.” As one hundred guns had been the salute fired in honor of other victories, the unusual recognition of the victory at Nashville shows how highly Grant esteemed the work of Thomas. In his estimate of the character and ability of Thomas, Grant speaks of him as “‘inert,’’ and quotes the saying of his army comrades, ‘““Thomas is too slow to move and too brave to run away.” In his final report at the close of the war, Grant wrote a number of pages criti- NASHVILLE 203 cizing Thomas and explaining his reasons for remov- ing so distinguished a commander, but he generously suppressed that part of the report, not wishing to de- tract in any way from the fame of Thomas. As we drove out along the Granny Pike we found little to remind us of this most brilliant victory of the war. ‘The hills were green with the tender leaves of spring and white with the dogwood blossoms. Granny White’s cottage is gone and only the old well remains. There you will find neither marker nor monument to tell of this crowning victory. There was one farmer who would point out Overton Hill where the “niggers got it’; but that was all. The soldier who struck this great blow at Nashville was a Virginian. Writing to his brother John from Pittsburgh, in June 1861, General Sherman said con- cerning the Federal army under General Patterson: “There are two A-number-one men there—George Thomas, Colonel Second Cavalry, and Captain Sykes, Third Infantry. Mention my name to both and say to them that I wish them all the success they aspire to, and if, in the varying chances of war, I should ever be so placed, I would name such as they for high places. But Thomas is a Virginian from near Norfolk and, say what he may, he must feel unpleasantly at leading an invading army. But if he says he will do it, I know he will do it well. He was never brilliant but always reliable and steady, maybe a little slow.” The opportunity to suggest Thomas for a high place came to Sherman sooner than he imagined. In August, 1861, Sherman, in conference with Lincoln as to the appointment of new brigadier-generals, suggested Thomas. He gives the following account of the in- terview and what followed: “His reply was that Thomas was born in Virginia, and there were some doubts as to his loyalty. In my most earnest manner I protested indignantly against this most cruel ac- cusation. I said: “Mr. President, Old Tom is as loyal 204 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS as I am, and as a soldier he is superior to all on your list Mr. Lincoln said, ‘Will you be responsible for him?’ and I unhesitatingly replied, “With the greatest pleasure.’ The President instantly sent his name among others to the Senate. In the afternoon of that day I went to the Senate Chamber to see my brother, John Sherman, of Ohio, and he told me of the names on the list of brigadier-generals that had been sent to the Senate, and said they had all been confirmed, Thomas with the rest. I then began to recollect that I had not seen Thomas for twenty years, and I had become responsible for him.* It was a hot day, and the thing so worried me that I went to the War De- partment and asked where Colonel Thomas, now Brigadier-General, was to be found. I was told, in Maryland, some eight or ten miles from the city. So I ordered a carriage and started at once, my anxiety to see him impelling me to urge the driver to make as rapid time as he could. When I arrived at the place I inquired where Colonel Thomas was; and the ser- geant of the guard went with me to Thomas’ tent, and found that he was in the saddle superintending some movement of the troops. Controlling my impatience, I waited in no easy frame of mind, that sultry day, for his return, and as there is an end to everything, Thomas came back at last and we greeted one another heartily. ‘Tom,’ said I, ‘you are a brigadier-general.’ ‘T don’t know of anyone that I would rather hear such news from but you,’ he replied. ‘But,’ I said, ‘Tom, there are some stories about your loyalty. How are you going?’ ‘Billy,’ he replied, ‘I am going south.’ ‘My God!’ I exclaimed, ‘Tom, you have put me in an awful position; I have become responsible for your loyalty.’ ‘How so?’ said he; so I related to him the conversation between President Lincoln and myself, * Sherman evidently forgot a brief meeting with Thomas when the latter was in Patterson’s army in the Cumberland Valley. NASHVILLE 205 when he leaned back and remarked, “Give yourself no trouble, Billy; Iam going south, but at the head of my men.’ And so he did, and no nobler man, no braver, better soldier, and no more courteous gentleman ever lived.’’* How Thomas kept his promise let Mill Spring, Stone River, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, and Nashville answer. It was this Virginian, reviled in the South and under suspicion in the North, whose command saved the day at Stone River when McCook and Sheridan had been swept from the field; this same Virginian against whose lines in the pines at Chicka- mauga the whole Confederate army flung itself only to be tossed back like waves breaking on a rocky coast; it was his soldiers who carried the rifle pits in their inspired charge up Missionary Ridge; and now it was the army under his command which annihilated the army of Hood at Nashville. Thomas was one of the great personalities of the Civil War. In his first days as a cadet at West Point, he showed that courage and grim determination which afterwards served the nation so splendidly on many a hard-fought field. An upperclassman came into his room one evening to give orders to Thomas and his two room-mates. Whereupon Thomas arose and, walking over to him, said: ‘Leave this room immedi- ately, or I will throw you through that window!’ Thomas had one of the faults of strong, independent characters, an over-sensitiveness to what he conceived to be a slight to his rank or his ability. When Grant came to take command of the operations at Chatta- nooga after the defeat at Chickamauga, Thomas, al- though loyally co-operating, resented what he thought was an imputation that he himself was not sufficient *Sherman’s conversation with the Hon. Thomas L. James at the time of the dedication of the Garfield Memorial at Sana in May, 1890. (Copée’s Life of Thomas. pp 319, 206 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS for the crisis. Like Meade, Thomas was deeply of- fended because he was passed over when Grant made Sheridan Lieutenant-General of the army, and he nursed this wound to the day of his death. Sherman, who says he knew Thomas better than any man living, pays tribute to his strength, calmness and imperturb- ability, and then adds: “Yet, of all my acquaintances, Thomas worried and fretted over what he considered neglects or acts of favoritism more than any other.” Sherman tried to get Thomas to go with him to Grant and have a frank talk about his rank and appointment, but this Thomas refused to do. In discussing the mat- ter of the lieutenant-generalship of the army and the passing over of Meade and Thomas when Sheridan received the commission, Sherman writes that Con- gress should have provided by law for three lieutenant- generalships for these three great soldiers and should have dated their commissions with “Gettysburg,” “Winchester,” and “Nashville.” “It would have been a graceful act and might have prolonged the lives of two most popular officers who died soon after, feeling that they had experienced ingratitude and neglect.” XV THE PETERSBURG MINE BLACK GLORY AND WHITE DISHONOR The Virginia sun shone so fiercely at midday that I could hardly make out the inscription on the monument to the 48th Pennsylvania Regiment, whose men dug the mine that was exploded under the Confederate lines in July, 1864, and I was glad to turn away and follow a road which led through the fields until I came to a farmhouse on the verge of a forest. At my hail a woman appeared and offered to conduct me to the famous crater. Remnants of the Confederate trenches were plainly visible as we walked through the woods, and it was not difficult to people them again with their ragged soldiery. As I was thinking of those days and imagining those scenes, we came suddenly upon what is left of the crater, an irregular gap in the ground, about fifty yards in length and five to ten feet in depth and sixty feet across. Around the crater was a fringe of trees, oak and beech. A few hundred yards in front of me was the little ravine where the mine had been started within the Union lines. Besides ourselves not a human being was in sight. Fifty years before, thousands of men had waited anxiously with all eyes fastened upon that one spot under the trees. Here, as in a maelstrom, met the opposing currents of two hostile armies, with a whole nation anxious for the outcome. How strange, then, this silence and solitude, broken only by the wing of bird or the cry of a squirrel. The generals, the armies, the 207 208 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS tents, the soldiers, Confederate and Union, black and white, all gone, vanished completely. So time stills the fury of each successive generation; yes- terday’s solitude becomes the busy mart of today, and today’s busy mart becomes the wilderness of tomorrow. To me both silence and solitude were grateful, for I was the better able to summon up the great events that once had transpired in that deep and wide gash in the hillside. | After the bloody repulse at Cold Harbor, Grant transferred his army to the south side of the James River and invested Petersburg, the “back door’ to Richmond. By attacks on the seven- teenth and eighteenth of June, the 9th Corps, un- der command of Burnside, had taken an advanced position within one hundred and thirty yards of the Confederate line and fronting a strong posi- tion called Elliott’s Salient. It was at this time that Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Pleasants sug- gested to his divisional commander, General Pot- ter, that a mine be dug under the Confederate lines. Burnside and Potter were favorable to the movement, but General Meade and Major Duane, Chief Engineer of the Army of the Potomac, were sceptical, saying that a mine of such a length had never been excavated in military operations, that the whole thing was “claptrap and nonsense.” Colonel Pleasants was a mining expert and most of his men were from the anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania. They entered heartily into the project. The mine was started in a hollow just back of the advanced Union lines. The chief diffi- culty was to dispose of the earth taken out of the excavation. It was carried out in cracker boxes reinforced with hickory strips and hoops of iron taken from barrels. Green boughs were cut and strewed over the ground where the earth was dumped, so as to hide the operations from the GCHGCNNOM NOINNA THE PETERSBURG MINE 209 eyes of the Confederates. Pleasants’ miners dug with the greatest energy, and by the seventeenth of July the main gallery, 510 feet in length, was completed and two lateral galleries were thrust under the fort and the contents of 320 kegs of powder stowed away in eight different magazines. The magazines were connected by wooden tubes half-filled with powder, and these in turn were connected with the three lines of fuses in the main gallery. The explosion was set for the thirtieth of July. A few days before, Grant had ordered Hancock and Sheridan to make a diversion on the north bank of the James, with the thought that Lee would withdraw some of his forces from the Petersburg lines for the defense of Richmond, and thus weaken the opposition to be met with when the mine was exploded and the assault made. In this Grant was not disappointed. Lee moved eight of his divisions to the north side of the James to protect Richmond and the railroad, but on the evening of the twenty-ninth, Hancock and Sheridan recrossed to the south bank of the James and were brought up to support the expected as- sault on the thirtieth. Burnside had in his corps a division of colored troops under command of General Ferrero. For days the negroes had been carefully drilled in a plan of attack and had rehearsed their charge with the greatest enthusiasm. But at the last moment, and to the overthrow of the whole operation, Burnside was compelled by his superiors, Meade and Grant, to substitute a division of white troops. This was the initial and fatal blunder. Meade represented to Grant that the negro division had not been in contact with the enemy, and if the assault should prove a failure he and Grant would be blamed for “shoving these people ahead to get 210 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS killed because we did not care anything about them.” Grant permitted Meade to overrule Burn- side, but when he testified before the Committee on the Conduct of the War, said that if Burnside had been allowed to go ahead with his original plans, the assault would have been a success, in- stead of “a stupendous failure.” When the negroes were withdrawn, Burnside had his other division commanders draw lots for the difficult and dangerous post. The lot fell upon Ledlie and his division was put in position for assault the moment the mine was sprung. Meade had given Burnside particular instructions to have his parapets and abatis prepared so as to let through the assaulting columns and to have entrenching tools distributed among the men. These instructions were apparently entirely over- looked by Burnside. In a personal talk with Burnside, Meade had impressed upon him the necessity of pushing forward to the ridge beyond the part of the line to be broken by the mine, and that the taking of the crater would be useless unless this was done. All that Burnside was urged to do he failed to do, and all that he was warned against doing he did. In making the assault on the thirtieth, Grant was counting on the “psychological moment.” Wild rumors were abroad in the Confederate lines of what was going on, and the Confederates, unable to see their subterranean foe, were filled with unrest, not knowing when the slumbering volcano would belch forth destruction upon them. “I somewhat based my calculations,” writes Grant, “upon this state of feeling.” At quarter past three o’clock on the morning of the thirtieth, Colonel Pleasants lighted the fuses to the magazines. For an hour the army waited anxiously for the explosion, when two courageous THE PETERSBURG MINE 211 men from the 48th Regiment, Lieutenant Jacob Doughty and Sergeant Henry Reese, volunteered to enter the mine and learn the cause of the delay. They found the fuse burned out at one of the splices and relighted it. The whole army was under the greatest tension. Ledlie’s division which was to make the assault lay on their arms with ears and eyes attent. The gunners of eighty-one siege guns and mortars and as many field guns stood about their pieces ready to pull the lanyards the moment the crash came. At exactly sixteen minutes before five o’clock the mine exploded. It was a terrible spectacle, alarming enough to those who stood ready to at- tack, but carrying terror to the hearts of the enemy who suddenly felt the earth quake beneath them. Like an immense cloud the mass of earth rose into the air, taking with it men, guns, cais- sons, carriages and timbers. So near and so men- acing was this cloud of debris that the first line of the Union assaulting column, fearing that it would break over their heads, drew back from their advanced positions. Within the Confederate lines there was wild consternation, and Grant and his staff, as they watched, could see men running in every direction. Never was there a more favorable opportunity for a complete crushing of the enemy. But fate willed otherwise. Slowly, very slowly, because no opening had been made for them, Ledlie’s division filed out of the Union trenches and marched across the inter- vening two hundred yards of terrain, heading straight for the crater. Here a strange and ter- rible sight met them. The great hole, 150 yards long, 60 wide and 25 deep, was strewn with huge pieces of clay, fragments of carriages and timbers, with men’s heads, feet and arms protruding from the earth. So unique and awful was the sight 212 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS that the front ranks of men in Ledlie’s column seemed to forget that they had come to fight and paused on the brink of the chasm to gaze and wonder. The men coming up from the rear pressed against the front ranks and pushed them over the edge into the crater. The 2nd Brigade went first into the pit and was followed at once by the Ist, the men becoming inextricably mixed and all order of the line being lost, and what was worse, could not be restored because of the crowded pit into which they had been pushed. The men could only find a footing by facing into the crater and digging their heels into the earth and clinging to the banks with their hands. And all the time more men came sliding and tumbling into the fatal hole, creating a veritable hell of stench, horror and confusion. A few troops of the supporting columns turned to the right or leit and attacked the trenches there, but the majority kept pressing over the edge of the crater, and the others, feeling themselves in danger, soon turned from the Confederate trenches into the safety of the crater. It was the sunken road of Ohain over again. The startled Confederates had gathered their wits together and their guns began to train upon the writhing mass in the pit. Mahone’s men, at- tacking, drove out the Union soldiers who had gained a lodgment in the trenches to the right and the left of the pit. Major Powell was sent by Colonel Marshall, commanding the advance bri- gade, to report the conditions to General Ledlie. He found that gallant soldier sitting safely in a bombproof within the Union lines. He repeated Burnside’s order to go forward, but it was im- possible to reform the lines either within or with- out the crater. General Potter’s second division had followed the men of the first division into THE PETERSBURG MINE vA) the dust and wreckage of the crater, and now, at eight o’clock, as if there were not enough con- fusion and debacle, Ferrero’s division, the colored troops, was sent in. From six until eight o’clock these troops lay in the covered ways waiting for an order to advance and watching the wounded carried past them to the rear. General Ferrero sent a protest to General Burnside against the movement of his troops, saying that three divi- sions of white troops were already huddled to- gether in the crater. The business of leading colored troops was the most hazardous in the service, for so great was the feeling in the Con- federate Army against them that in case of defeat neither officers nor men had much chance of com- ing out alive. This feeling was shown in the frightful massacre of the colored troops defending Fort Pillow, which Forrest reported in these words: “The river was dyed with the blood of the slaughtered for two hundred yards. The ap- proximate loss was upward of five hundred killed, but few of the officers escaping. My loss was about twenty killed. It is hoped that these facts will demonstrate to the Northern people that negro soldiers cannot cope with Southerners.” The same attitude was expressed by Hood when, demanding the surrender of the garrison at Re- saca, Georgia, he wrote to the commanding officer: “I demand the immediate and uncondi- tional surrender of the post and garrison under your command, and should this be acceded to, all white officers and soldiers will be paroled in a few days. If the place is carried by assault, no pris- oners will be taken.” All this was not unknown to the colored troops or to their officers. Many heroes were “carved in ebony” that day, and the officers of the division, with the terrible exception 214 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS of the commanding general, acquitted themselves with distinction. As soon as the negroes got into action the ad- vantage of their course of training for the charge was evident, and had they been permitted to go in first, even without the presence or counsel of their general, they would have won a notable vic- tory. The division moved to the right of the crater and striking the enemy’s lines captured several hundred prisoners. Back of them came the men of the 18th Corps under General Ord. The negroes, having taken a part of the trenches to the right of the crater, were led by one of their heroic brigadiers against the ridge in the rear of the crater and the key to the whole battlefield. But there they were met with a fierce charge by Mahone’s men and were driven back to the trenches near the chasm. This created confusion among the negro regiments holding the trenches, and a general rush was made for the fancied safety of the crater. One division of Ord’s troops and the men of Potter’s, who were outside the crater, were caught in the stampede and hurled back into the pit. The crater was now a scene of indescribable confusion. The vast pit was filled with a strug- gling mass of white and colored troops, cowering against the steep sides and vainly seeking shelter from the fire of the Confederate artillery which was directed against them. The blood of men wounded near the top flowed in streams down the yellow sides of the crater and gathered into pools at the bottom. Men wounded on the edge of the pit came rolling down its steep sides, or ran screaming and cursing through the mob. The sun was now high and the day was one of fearful heat. The men suffered terribly from thirst, and soon a wave of moisture produced by the breathing of THE PETERSBURG MINE Z15 the bloody, seething, struggling, perspiring mass rose like a cloud over the scene of horror. By this time it was clear to all that the assault was a “stupendous failure.” But the problem was how to get the men out of the crater and back to the Union trenches over the open field swept by Confederate guns. Messages were sent to Burn- side that if shovels and picks were sent in, the men could dig a passage back to the Union lines. But nothing was done. For hour after hour, the tortured men squirmed and dug and burrowed in the awful chasm. Between one and two o’clock., Mahone’s men made another fierce assault and two of the brigadiers in the crater on their own responsibility gave the order to retire, and the troops fell back to the Union lines, leaving behind them four thousand dead, wounded and prisoners. “Someone had blundered.” Whatever honor there was in that day of disaster belonged to the despised negroes. They proved that they them- selves knew how to fight for their own freedom. General Meade at once asked for a Court of In- quiry. The findings of the Court exonerated him and placed the blame upon Burnside and _ his division commanders, with the exception of Pot- ter. T’he Congressional Investigating Committee found that the disaster was due to the fact. that the attack was led by white troops instead of the specially drilled colored troops. General Grant himself concurred in this opinion. There was a total lack of unity of military thought, and in that lack both Meade and Grant must share the blame, although the chief burden lay upon the shoulders of gallant, but slow and blundering, Burnside. Once again this unfortunate general was the chief actor in a “stupendous failure” and tragic fiasco. At Fredericksburg he had sent his men to slaugh- ter in the impossible assault upon Marye’s Hill, 216 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS and now once more he saw the troops under his command go to disaster in the crater. In the former instance he ordered an impossible move- ment; in the latter a movement that promised great and notable success came to a grim failure because of his inefficiency. In his appraisal of the different corps commanders under him, Grant speaks thus kindly and truly of Burnside: “Gen- eral Burnside was an officer who was generally liked and respected. He was not, however, fitted to command an army. No one knew this better than himself. He always admitted his blunders and extenuated those of his officers under him beyond what they were entitled to. It was hardly his fault that he was ever assigned to a separate command.” But the tragedy of that day was not the ineffi- ciency of the corps commander nor the incom- petence of the division commanders, but that at least two of the division commanders “proved also to possess disqualifications less common among American soldiers.” They were cowards. While the heroic negroes were vainly charging the ridge beyond the crater, and while the whole mass of misled troops was struggling beneath the fearful sun at the bottom of the crater, looking in vain for leaders or orders, led as sheep to the slaughter, where were the division commanders? Two of them, Ledlie and Ferrero, were crouching in bomb-proof shelters within the Union lines, giving their absurd orders to the dying men in the pit. A shameful stain had been put upon the honor of the American officer. But against the dark and sinister background of cowardly generals, the heroism and devotion of the negro troops stands out in noble proportions, an imperishable monu- ment to the possibilities of their race. The honors of that day rested not with the white Union THE PETERSBURG MINE Ze troops, and still less with the Confederate troops, who, driven mad by the sight of their former chattels in arms against them, hacked and stabbed with unparalleled and unpitying ferocity and cruelty; but with the patient blacks, chanting their plantation melodies as they went forward into battle, glad to lay down their lives and leave purer and freer the world that had refused them a name and a place. XVI ANDERSONVILLE Tue DEscENT INTO HELL The bloodiest battle of the Civil War was Gettysburg, in which 3,721 Union soldiers were killed in action. But from June to September, 1864, almost three times that number, 8,589, died in the terrible stockade at Andersonville, Georgia. Andersonville was the deadliest battle of the war. In July, 1862, commissioners for the North and South signed a cartel providing for the exchange of prisoners of war; but through the abuse of parole and the unwillingness of the South to ex- change negro prisoners, the cartel soon fell into disuse, and subsequent exchanges of prisoners were made by special arrangement. The Confederate Government under the pres- sure of military necessity was later in the war willing to waive the matter of the negro soldier and proposed the resumption of the cartel. That this proposal was not accepted by the United States is the chief defense put forward by South- ern writers for the dreadful suffering and high mortality in their prison camps. The deplorable situation at Andersonville and elsewhere could have been relieved if the North had agreed to exchange prisoners. This argument is perpetu- ated in stone at Andersonville, where a monument has been erected by the Daughters of the Con- federacy to Captain Henry Wirz, the officer in command of the prison at Andersonville, and who ANDERSONVILLE 219 was tried and hanged by the Federal Government at the end of the war. On one side of the monu- ment is the following excerpt from a letter of General Grant to General Butler, on August 18, 1864: It is hard on our men held in Southern prisons not to exchange them, but it is humanity to those left in the ranks to fight our battles. At this particular time to release all rebel prisoners would insure Sherman’s defeat and would compromise our safety here. The inference is that if Grant had consented to full exchange of prisoners there would have been no tale of horror at Andersonville. General Sherman took the same view as Grant when Hood made proposals to him about the exchange of prisoners and the relief of the situation at Ander- sonville. He declined on the ground that the prisoners he held would at once be put into the ranks of Hood’s army, whereas those which he took in exchange would have to be sent to the different armies of which they were a part when captured. In conversation with Butler, Grant explained very carefully his reasons for the stand he had taken against exchanges, saying that the North sent back well men who went at once into the ranks, whereas the South sent back sick men, who, by the Federal regulations, would at once have three months’ furlough. The 26,000 prison- ers then held by the North would give to Lee a larger corps of veteran and well-fed troops than he then possessed, and make the campaign that much longer and bloodier. The refusal to ex- change would also put a stop to the temptation to non-American or non-patriotic soldiers in the armies, who had been drafted or had enlisted for 220 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS the bounty, to let themselves be taken prisoners and then sent home. Grant had a tender heart, was very sensitive to the scenes of suffering in the field, and was, as events were soon to show, magnanimous above the average. But when it came to the matter of the fierce duel between himself and Lee, he could, for the sake of his cause and the nation, take a position of great severity. When, in January, 1865, the Confederate Government again offered to exchange man for man, Grant accepted the pro- posal which he had previously declined, for he saw that the end could not be far off. If by the ex- change of prisoners the success of Grant’s cam- paign and that of Sherman would have been jeopardized, and the war thus prolonged, Grant was justified in his refusal to exchange, even al- though it meant misery to thousands of loyal men at Andersonville and elsewhere, for the severe way would, in the end, prove to have been the merciful way. Looking back now at the course of military events and considering the number of men the North then had under arms, and the straitened resources of the Confederacy, one is not impressed with the argument that the addi- tion to the Confederate ranks of all the prisoners held by the North would have had any appre- ciable effect upon the issue of the war. Before the capture of Atlanta, Sherman had permitted General Stoneman to make a cavalry raid upon Jonesboro and Andersonville, the latter place be- ing the depot for Union prisoners, as many as twenty-three thousand being confined there at one time, poorly fed and harshly treated. It was hoped that this dash of Stoneman and the cavalry would liberate them. But instead of liberating the captives at Andersonville, Stoneman was himself captured and his command broken up. Jefferson ANDERSONVILLE 221 Davis made application to send cotton to Liver- pool to purchase supplies for the Confederate prisoners in the North. This request was granted, but upon the condition that the cotton be sent to New York and the supplies bought there. In 1864 a delegation of Federal prisoners at Ander- sonville was sent North to plead their cause at Washington. Nothing came of the petition and their leaders complained of contemptuous treat- ment at the hands of Stanton, the Secretary of War. The chief prisons in the North were at Point Lookout, Maryland; Camp Douglas, Chicago; Springfield, Illinois; Indianapolis, Indiana; Colum- bus, Ohio; Johnson’s Island, Ohio; and for the officers, Elmira, New York; Rock Island and Alton, Illinois, and Fort Delaware, Delaware. The mortality among the Confederate prisoners in these camps was very high, yet among the re- turned prisoners and the people of the South there was never any fierce clamor of accusation against the conditions in these prisons. These considerations should temper one’s judgment when confronted by the terrible inhumanities practiced at Andersonville and elsewhere in the South. Complete records for mortality among the Union soldiers in Confederate prison camps are lacking, but according to the most reliable statis- tics 194,743 Union prisoners were held in Con- federate camps. Of these 30,218 died in captivity. In the Northern prisons 214,865 men were con- fined. Of these 25,976 died in captivity. This would make the mortality in the Northern prisons twelve per cent and in the Southern prisons fifteen per cent. In his Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Jefferson Davis quotes Stanton and Surgeon-General Barnes as his authorities for a different enumeration, according to which the pee HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS mortality was twelve per cent in the Northern prisons and nine per cent in the South. But even taking the figures more favorable to the North, the difference is very little. When one takes into consideration, too, the abundance of medicine, food and clothing in the North and the superior shelter provided, the high death rate among the Confederate prisoners is a mystery. General Butler offers this very reasonable explanation that the Confederate soldiers were undernourished when captured, and that their low vitality made them an easy prey to disease. The most severe arraignment of the Northern prisons comes from the pen of Henry M. Stanley, the explorer, who was captured at the battle of Shiloh and confined at Camp Douglas, Chicago. Since he was English, and was released from the prison upon enlisting in the Federal Army, his account is at least free from the charge of preju- dice. He describes the prison as a vast “cattle yard with a line of whitewash about fifty feet from the fence and running parallel with it.” This was the dead line, which if he crossed any prisoner might be shot. He makes no complaint about the food or shelter, but protests against the rigid exclusion of ‘every medical, pious, musical or literary charity that might have alleviated our sufferings.’ Vermin and filth were the chief enemies. As at Andersonville the latrines were poorly located. “On the way thither we saw crowds of sick men who had fallen prostrate from weakness, and given themselves wholly to despair, and while they crawled or wallowed in their filth, they cursed or blasphemed as often as they groaned. ... Every morning the wagons came to the hospital and the dead house to take away the bodies; and I saw the corpses rolled in their blankets, taken to the vehicles, and piled one upon ANDERSONVILLE 223 another, as the New Zealand frozen mutton car- casses are carted from the docks!” Stanley makes no accusation against the prison officials or the United States Government. “It was the age that was brutally senseless and heedlessly cruel.” The traveler who sits down to rest in Holly- wood Cemetery, in Richmond, near the grave of Jefferson Davis and the beautiful memorial to Winifred Davis, can see Belle Island in the midst of the James River. Until the establishment of Andersonville this was the chief prison in the South. There, on the sandy and low stretches of the island, forbidden access to the high and pleas- ant wooded portions, without any adequate shel- ter, thousands of the youth of the Northern armies languished in captivity. At that point the James is a tempestuous and angry stream, leaping and foaming over the rocks. But the love of free. dom is strong, and many a Union soldier per- ished in the yellow, turbid waters of the James in a vain effort to swim the river. The other prison of importance was the Libby warehouse. This was for officers. Here the treatment was severe and the fare meager, but the men were protected from the inclemencies of the weather. Occasional complaints are made against Libby, but there was no widespread cry of indictment. The chief count against Libby prison was the placing of a mine of powder underneath it with a threat to blow it up should the prisoners make any attempt to escape. This was at the time of Dalghren’s raid and al- leged finding of letters on his body indicating a plot to free the prisoners and fire the city and assassinate the Government. It is generally agreed now that these letters were a forgery. The one name that comes to mind when the subject of prisons is mentioned is Andersonville. The increase in the number of prisoners, the 224 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS scarcity of provisions, and the approach of Union armies towards Richmond made it wise to remove the prisoners there to a more remote section. The place chosen was Andersonville, in southwestern Georgia, in one of the most fertile regions of the South. Here a tract of twenty-seven acres was fenced off in the form of a parallelogram with a stockade twenty feet high. On the inside of the stockade and about twenty feet from it ran a rail- ing which constituted the dead line beyond which none dared venture. A small stream ran through the center of the enclosure and at the lower por- tion of the stream were the latrines. On either side of the stream was marshy land, reducing the available area to twenty-three acres. Not the slightest provision was made for shelter, although the country about was well wooded and the prisoners could soon have made themselves huts. In this human corral there were penned up at one time as many as 32,000 captives. All trees had been cut down and the fierce Georgian sun smote upon the men. Even if they had had sufficient food and clothing and medical stores, the crowding to- gether of so many human beings would have been terrible of itself. Each man had less than six square feet, and there were times when they had to fight for a place to lie down. In the rainy weather the trampling of so many thousands of feet and the necessities of so many thousands of human bodies turned the place into a vast morass, the filth of which was indescribable and the stench of which was oppressive at the distance of a mile. The men were forbidden tools of any sort, and whatever shelters they were able to secure they had to contrive with their hands or by digging with tin cup and plates in the ground. The commander of the prison was a German- Swiss, a Captain Henry Wirz, who had settled in ANDERSONVILLE 225 Louisiana, where he practiced medicine until the outbreak of the war. His superior was General John H. Winder, who had charge of the prison arrangements in the Confederacy. Winder was a cruel and wicked man and certainly would have been hanged along with Wirz had not death sum- moned him to a higher tribunal. For evidence as to the awful and inexcusable conditions at Andersonville there is no need of having recourse to the testimony of Union pris- oners. The confidential reports of Confederate agents is proof overwhelming. One of these re- ports was made by Colonel D. T. Chandler, Assistant-Adjutant and Inspector-General in the Confederate Army. His report charges Winder with advocating leaving the prisoners as they were until death had so reduced them in number that the accommodations would be ample. He tells of the absolute lack of any sanitary arrange- ments and the pestilence-breeding filth that every- where prevailed. Sick, starved, and depressed, seli-respect sank and crime broke out among the prisoners, six men being tried and hanged by the prisoners themselves for their misdemeanors. The dead were carted out daily and buried without coffins, “their hands in many instances being first mutilated with an axe in the removal of any finger rings they may have.” Chandler recommended that no more prisoners be sent to Andersonville and that some of those then there be transferred elsewhere. He speaks of the stockade as “a place the horrors of which it is difficult to de- scribe and which is a disgrace to civilization.” In September, 1864, Dr. Joseph Jones went to Andersonville to make investigations in behalf of the medical department of the Confederate Army. He was a graduate of the University of Pennsyl- vania and professor of medical chemistry at 226 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS Augusta, Georgia. He spent three weeks at the camp and his report is a document of horror al- most without a parallel in military history. Here we see the wretched captives lying in the caves they had digged out of the soil; walking deject- edly about in the dismal enclosure, ragged and haggard, wasted with fever and diarrhcea, or de- voured with gangreen and cancer. The sick were lying in their own filth and neglected, robbed and maltreated by their nurses. For two thousand sick men in one hospital there was but one medical officer. The atmosphere was loaded with animal exhalations and the soil was saturated with filth, and everywhere death and pestilence stalked unchallenged. Ulcers, sores and hemor- rhages, bleeding gums and swollen lips told of the ravages of the scurvy, which had been induced by the poor fare and foul animal emanations. In this prison hell the most pitiful of the suf- ferers were the neglected sick. “The haggard, distressed countenances of these miserable, com- plaining, dejected living skeletons, crying for medical aid and food, and cursing their govern- ment for its refusal to exchange prisoners, and the ghastly corpses with their glazed eyeballs staring up into vacant space, with the flies swarming down their open and grinning mouths, and over their ragged clothes, infested with numerous lice, as they lay among the sick and the dying, formed a picture of helpless, hopeless misery, which it would be impossible to portray by words or by the brush.” His report concludes by saying that “this gigantic mass of human misery calls loudly for relief, not only for the sake of suffering hu- manity, but also on account of our own brave soldiers now captives in the hands of the Federal Government.” A pack of dogs was kept to run down the ANDERSONVILLE 22/7 fugitives who tried to escape from their stockade. These animals were encouraged to tear and mangle the prisoners whom they tracked, and, according to the indictment brought against Wirz, fifty Union soldiers suffered death through being torn by the dogs. It was to Ambrose Spencer, a citizen of Sumter County, that General Winder remarked when Spencer wondered at him cutting down the trees in the stockade which would prove shelter for the prisoners: “That is just what I am going to do; I am going to build a pen here that will kill more damned Yankees than can be destroyed at the front.” This wicked boast was made good in a ghastly fashion. The number of Union soldiers who perished in the cruel stockade was 13,000, and this out of a total prison population of 49,000, and during a few months. One of the chief causes of suffering among the prisoners was the insufficient supply of water. The little stream which flowed through the com- pound was soon polluted by the necessities of 30,000 men. The men went for their water as far up the stream as possible, venturing close to the dead line and dipping up the water with cups fastened to long poles. Had the stockade been enlarged a little it would have taken in a portion of the Sweet Briar stream, and much suffering would have been alleviated. But where man was cruel, God was kind. One day during the sum- mer there burst forth near one end of the en- closure a pure and vigorous spring. The thirsty prisoners hailed it with delight, and every morn- ing at sunrise a thousand men could be seen wait- ing in line to draw water out of the well. Like the water that gushed forth at the stroke of Moses’ rod, many of the captives regarded the breaking out of this spring as a direct interven- 228 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS tion of Heaven in their behalf and named it Providence Spring. The incident is commemo- rated in the inscription which Iowa has placed upon the monument to the sons of that state who perished in the stockade: They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them and shall lead them unto liv- ing fountains of water; and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. Rev. 7:16, 17. And on the base: “God smote the hillside and gave them drink.” Aug. 16, 1864. The “exceeding great and bitter cry” that went up to God from this place of bondage and found an echo in thousands of homes and villages in the Northern states where friends and relatives spoke in despair the dreadful word “Andersonville”— what effect did it have on the South? What im- pression did it produce within the councils of the tottering Confederacy? There were not lacking individuals, both officials and private citizens, who cried out against the inhumanity and besought the government to put a stop to it. One interesting letter which came to Jefferson Davis, and by his secretary forwarded to the Secretary of War, was signed by a “Poor Man.” He wrote: “Please read the sixth chapter of Second Kings (should be Second Chronicles, 28). Follow the example of the King of Israel. Send the prisoners at Anderson- ville home on their parole. Send them home be- fore the cold proves more destructive of their lives than the heat has been in the open and unshaded pen your officers provided for them. It will prove the greatest victory of the war and do our cause ANDERSONVILLE 229 more good than any three victories our noble troops have gained.” The passage from the Old Testament referred to in the letter tells of the command given by the prophet Oded to the north- ern kingdom at Samaria, that they should treat kindly and send home to Jerusalem the captives that they had taken from Judah in war. Alexander H. Stephens, the brilliant Vice- President of the Confederacy, advocated that the prisoners be paroled and sent home. He sug- gested that Jefferson Davis visit the stockade and aiter solemnly addressing the prisoners upon the nature of the conflict, how the South was fighting not against the Union but for principles upon which the Union was based—extend to them an unconditional release. He thought that such an act of generosity, together with plentiful copies of his address, would have great influence in the North and prove an effective instrument for the South in her struggle. But Davis was not mag- nanimous enough to do it. The captives were doomed, doomed by their jailers, as well as by their own Government, which, for the sake of a righteous victory, and for the greater mercy in the end, shut up its bowels of mercy towards its imprisoned soldiers and refused to take them back in exchange. In a very interesting colloquy between Alex- ander H. Stephens and Professor Norton, the lat- ter asked Stephens whether he thought the fact that the Federal Government refused to exchange prisoners for any cause whatsoever justified the cruelties which were practiced upon the men at Andersonville. Stephens replied that it certainly did not, and then proceeded to deny that there had been any systematic policy of inhumanity. The question of Professor Norton goes to the heart of the whole terrible matter. The refusal 230 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS of the North to exchange prisoners was no excuse for what transpired at Andersonville. If, as the Southern apologists allege, the South was not able to feed, shelter, nurse and clothe the men left on their hands by the refusal of the North to ex- change, then the South owed it to humanity to parole them and let them go. A state has no right to hold prisoners when it cannot care for them. Some will say that the close contact with slavery had perverted the conscience of the South and dulled her finer susceptibilities and prepared her to look with indifference upon what was tak- ing place in that remote corner of Georgia. Others will see in the awful tragedy not so much an indictment of the slave-holding Confederacy as an indictment of war, showing how it strips from men the carefully woven garments of civilization and hardens them till they can look with indif- ference upon the misery and suffering of man, who, of all God’s creatures, stands in the greatest need of kindness. Not since the victorious Syra- cusans huddled together the vanquished Athenians of Nicias and Demosthenes in the fatal stone quarries of Sicily, has war written so dark a con- demnation of itself as it did at Andersonville in Christian Georgia and America. XVII ON SHERMAN’S TRAIL CHATTANOOGA TO ATLANTA The fifth of May, 1864, was a great day for our country, and for the world, for on that day the Army of the Potomac moved out from its position north of the Rapidan and started on its long and bloody campaign against Lee’s army and Rich- mond. And on the same spring day, Sherman rode out from Chattanooga and commenced the march which was to carry him through Georgia to the sea, and thence through the Carolinas to Durham, North Carolina, a distance of a thousand miles. The march which began on the fifth of May, when Sherman rode out from Chattanooga to Ringold, ended on the twenty-sixth of April, 1865, when Johnston met Sherman at the Bennett farmhouse and surrendered his army. For this great undertaking Sherman possessed one of the finest armies that ever followed a flag. It was composed of three units: the Army of the Ten- nessee under the command of James Birdseye McPherson, the Army of the Ohio under Henry Schofield, and the Army of the Cumberland under the command of that great soldier and patriot, George Thomas. The corps commanders were Howard, Hooker, Palmer, Logan and Dodge, three of them professional soldiers, and Logan and Palmer civilians who had already distinguished themselves in the war. The whole host counted 98,797 men and 254 guns. Confronting Sherman 231 232 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS at Dalton, Georgia, lay a Confederate army of 42,856 men and a very limited supply of artillery. In command of this army was Joseph E. Johnston, the Fabius Maximus of the Confederacy, and among the Confederate officers who had been in the United States Army he had held the highest rank, that of brigadier-general. Johnston had seen little active service since he was wounded at Seven Pines, in May, 1862. He had under him very able corps commanders, Hardee the tactician, Polk the Bishop, and Hood, the fighter. The chief objective of Sherman was not Atlanta, but Johnston’s army, just as the chief objective of Grant’s campaign, opening on the same day, was not Richmond but Lee’s army. This campaign marked the first great concerted effort on the part of the armies of the United States. The foe was to be pressed on all fronts and at the same time. What the Entente Allies after four terrible and wasteful years did against the Central Powers, the United States, in 1864, commenced then to do against the Confederacy. Grant thus sums up the situation: “Before this time various armies had acted separately and independently of each other, giving the enemy an opportunity often of deplet- ing one command not pressed to reinforce an- other more actively engaged. I determined to stop this.” He did stop it, and that most effec- tually. Besides these two great movements under Grant and Sherman, there were to be accompany- ing strokes, one in the west by Banks against Mobile, and the other in the east against Rich- mond by the way of the James under Butler. Both of the minor movements were abortive. On my way to catch the morning train at the Chattanooga-Atlanta depot, I took a last look at the towering eminence of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge. The great movement which I ON SHERMAN’S TRAIL Boo was about to trace had not been possible without the victories won on those mountains. As I boarded the train, I paused to scan the famous old engine, “General.” Early in April, 1862, James in Andrews, a spy in the employ of General Buell, in company with a number of soldiers, all in civilian dress, started from Shelbyville, Alabama, to make their way through the mountains to Marietta, Georgia. They gave themselves out to be Ken- tuckians traveling south to join the Confederate Army. Some were captured or delayed and only twenty made the rendezvous at Marietta. The men bought tickets from Marietta for different points along the railroad between that and Chat- tanooga and boarded a moving train going west and north. The train stopped eight miles out from Marietta at a Confederate camp, Big Shanty. The crew hurried to their breakfast leaving the train unguarded. Andrews and his men uncoupled a section of the train, threw open the lever and were steaming out of the camp before the amazed soldiers realized what was taking place. As they proceeded towards Chattanooga, they tore up rails, cut wires, and burned bridges, doing an enormous amount of damage. Andrews told all questioners that he was an agent of Beauregard and was running an impressed powder train through to the army about Corinth. A pursuing train was soon on their trail and finally, not far from Chattanooga, the raiders had to abandon their engine and take to the hills. In a week the whole party was captured. Being in citizen’s dress, they were held as spies. A court-martial condemned the leader and seven to death. The others were never brought to trial because of the advance of the Union forces. The engine is a curious-looking machine, with the hexagonal smokestack which marked the locomotives of that 234 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS day. Behind a far different engine I commenced my journey over the same road. Skirting the field of Chickamauga, we soon passed through the tunnel at Tunnel Hill and had a view of the Buz- zard’s Roost, a deep gorge through the mountain range known as Rocky Face. Through this gorge there ran a stream of water which the Confederates had damned up, making a formid- able obstacle. By one flank movement after an- other Sherman cleverly maneuvered Johnston from Dalton to Resaca, from Resaca to Cassville, from Cassville to Allatoona, from Allatoona to Dallas, until Johnston drew up his army in a very strong defensive position at Kennesaw Mountain, covering the town of Marietta, and about one hundred miles from Chattanooga. The retreats were carefully made and Johnston’s army left nothing behind it. Nevertheless, in spite of all the praise bestowed upon successful retreats, they will never uphold any cause, and the continued withdrawal of Johnston caused dismay in the Con- federate Government at Richmond. In the afternoon I secured a stout saddle horse at a livery stable and inquired the way to Kenne- saw Mountain. I was told that I could ride to the foot of the mountain and there would have to leave my horse and walk up. Arrived at the farm at the base of the mountain, I asked the sallow woman who lived there if there was not a path by which I could ride to the top. She “reckoned” that it was not possible so to do, but indicated where I might find the trail. It was a steep and rough path, not used perhaps since Johnston’s soldiers dragged their guns to the summit, but by frequent detours and dismountings I at last reached the top and was rewarded by a magnifi- cent panorama. Between the mountain and Marietta lay a fertile plain with fields of cotton, ON SHERMAN’S TRAIL ZO but to the north and west stretched rolling up- lands covered with forests. The soil in this part of Georgia is red, and as far as the eye ranged, I could see the red roads stretching through the forests like red ribbons on a green dress. The solitary buzzard soaring over my head reminded me of the feast his kind had on that June day fifty-two years before, when Sherman made his assault. Hitherto, Sherman had been content to maneuver Johnston out of position, but bad roads and the importance of time determined him to try to break Johnston’s lines. On the twenty-seventh of June, McPherson assaulted Kennesaw Mountain, supported on the left by Thomas. The attack was gallantly made, but the works of the Confederates were impregnable, and after losing 2,500 men, Sherman drew off his men, and turned to his former tactics. At Kennesaw Mountain Johnston had all the advantage that Meade had at Gettysburg on Little Round Top and Cemetery Hill, and more, too, for Kennesaw is a formidable mountain. In the heat of the con- flict, after the Union forces had withdrawn a little distance from the line reached in their first charge, the woods took fire and the Union wounded who had been left behind by their re- treating comrades were in danger of yet more terrible sufferings. The chivalrous Confederates called to the Union soldiers to come out and re- move their wounded. This was done, many of the Confederates assisting in the work. When the in- formal truce was over, both sides turned again to the business of killing. It was a beautiful episode and strangely accentuated the folly of war and hatred between those who thus could love and serve one another. From the top of Kennesaw I could see Pine Mountain where the Confederate General Polk 236 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS was killed. While riding his lines a few days be- fore the battle, Sherman noticed a group of offi- cers on Pine Mountain. He ordered Howard to open on them and scatter them with his artillery. At the second or third shot Polk was killed. Johnston had noticed the preparations of the bat- tery to fire, and cautioning his fellow-officers to retire, hurried behind the parapet. Polk, who was corpulent and dignified, was slowly moving away when a cannonball struck him, killing him in- stantly. A monument now marks the place where he fell. Returning to Marietta, I paid a visit to the Na- tional Cemetery. I was surprised to discover that more than ten thousand Union dead are buried there, more, I think, than in any other of the numerous National Cemeteries. So far from home they lie—“‘Qui procul hinc, qui ante diem peritt. Sed miles, sed pro patria.” I thought of what their history had been until it closed in that soldier’s grave so far from home: how they had been the idolized objects of parental love; then, when war came, summoned from field and farm, from shop and forge, from college and academy, to bear the weapons of war; the orations of the politicians, the sermons and benedictions of the clergy, the flowers of the children, the tears and kisses of the women, the long railroad journey to the front, the galling marches, the baptism of fire, the fatal wound, and happy they who died at once; but most of them to lie all night in forest or on hill- side, calling in vain for water and for home and for mother; at dawn, when the battle’s roar had swept over and beyond them, gathered up, what was left of them, flung into ambulances or stretched on rude boxcars and shipped to the base hospital, there to languish and suffer, in the days when war-nursing was not yet a social fad, cared ON /SHERMAN'S TRAIL 237 for by overworked orderlies, sending a last message through chaplain or comrade, and then the last enemy and the last battle, which is death —and after death, this quiet Marietta grave. Now how far removed they seem from the battle’s smoke and tide. No rumor of the foes’ advance Now swells upon the wind; No troubled thought at midnight haunts Of loved ones left behind; The neighing troop, the flashing blade, The bugle’s stirring blast, The charge, the dreadful cannonade, The din and shout are past. Over the stone archway at the gate I read the legend, “Erected by the Government of the United States.” The Government of the United States! As I walked through the cemetery and read the inscriptions on the graves across which played the shadows of the pines, those words kept repeating themselves in my ears. Yes, there is a Government of the United States, a sacred and holy thing, not to be expressed in terms of armies and navies and legislatures and courts. What is the soul of this nation worth? How shall we appraise it? Is it worth all the flocks and herds which graze upon its thousand hills and pleasant meadowlands? Is it worth all those waving seas of golden grain now gathered into barns? Is it worth all those lonely and majestic forests on the shores of the lakes and on the shoulders of the mountains, through which the summer winds make melancholy music? Is it worth all the coal and oil and silver and gold and precious stones which lie hidden in their secret chambers waiting the potent touch of the rod of industry? Yes; it is worth these and far more than these. It is 238 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS worth the price that was paid to redeem it. Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain that they may live again and tell us what the Government of the United States is and what the soul of the nation is worth! After the bloody repulse at Kennesaw, Sherman resorted to his old flanking movements and gradually forced Johnston back upon the defenses of Atlanta. Johnston had taken up his position on the line of the Peach Tree Creek, and was planning to stand and fight when he received the telegram from Richmond ordering him to turn over the command of his army to General Hood. This was on the night of the seventeenth of May. On the morning of the eighteenth, Hood rode to Johnston’s headquarters and urged him to pocket the dispatch and fight the battle for Atlanta. Hood, Hardee and Stewart sent a joint telegram to President Davis requesting that Johnston’s re- moval be postponed at least until the battle for Atlanta had been decided. Having given his or- der, Davis properly refused to withdraw it. Hood maintains that he asked Johnston to remain at headquarters and give him the benefit of his counsel and plans while he determined the issue, and that Johnston assented to this, but on that evening he rode off into Atlanta and did not re- turn. The position of Hood on the evening of May 17th, when he was given the command of the army, was not unlike that of Meade when he was roused out of his sleep at Taneytown, in June, 1863, and given the command of the Army of the Potomac on the very eve of the battle of Gettys- burg; but with this difference—Meade was fol- lowing an invading army and could in a measure choose his time of battle, whereas when Hood took command of the Army of the Tennessee, ON SHERMAN’S TRAIL 239 Sherman was pushing his men over Peach Creek and against the Confederate lines. The Army of the Cumberland under Thomas was the first to get across, and being detached for a little from the rest, Hood assaulted it on its exposed flank. Sherman’s right withstood all assaults and Hood’s own right was now hard pressed by the approach of McPherson. The Confederate loss in this battle was 6,000, the Federal loss 1,700. Before retiring into Atlanta, Hood made one more effort to break Sherman’s remorseless en- circling iron folds by sending Hardee against McPherson on the Union left. The attack was a surprise, by reason of the absence of Union cavalry, and soon a desperate battle was joined. Early in the fight the noble McPherson fell mortally wounded. Logan succeeded him in tem- porary command and handled the army in a courageous and skilful manner. The tide soon began to turn against the Confederates, but Hood sent division after division forward in hopeless and costly assaults. His total loss is estimated at 10,000. McPherson, then thirty-four years of age, more than six feet tall and handsome, was with Sherman at his headquarters, the Howard House, when the sound of the battle on the left came roll- ing in. He leaped upon his horse, and taking with him only a few members of his staff, gal- loped off in the direction of the firing. In an hour he was carried back dead. He had ridden upon the Confederate lines in the confusion of the battle just as Jackson rode upon the Union lines at Chancellorsville, and was shot when attempting to turn his horse and escape. The whole army mourned his loss and none mourned more sin- cerely than the Confederate Commander Hood, for he had pleasant memories of McPherson. Hood tells of his fondness for McPherson and 240 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS how, after nights of skylarking at West Point, he would early in the morning have recourse to the scholarly McPherson to help him with his studies. McPherson was to Sherman what Jackson had been to Lee. ‘Poor Mac,” writes Sherman, ‘‘was killed instantly. His death was a great loss to me. I depended much on him.” For a successor to McPherson, Sherman chose Howard. Blair and Hooker were both offended, Hooker leaving the army, considering it an insult that an officer whom he outranked and whom he blamed for his defeat at Chancellorsville, should be appointed over his head. He had not worked well with Sherman and the other officers of high rank, and none of them was sorry to see him go. His withdrawal marked the passing of one of the fore- most personalities of the war. Even his best friends must have wished that some other cause than that of wounded vanity had removed him from the ranks of the army. Sherman’s analysis of Hooker is, of course, unfriendly, but searching and true: “Hooker took offense and has gone away. I don’t regret it; he is envious, imperious and braggart. Self prevailed with him, and know- ing him intimately, I honestly preferred Howard.” After the battle of Atlanta, Sherman slowly fastened his grip upon it, and on the evening of the second of September, Hood evacuated the city. Sherman wired the news to Lincoln in these words: “Atlanta is ours, and fairly won.” The news cheered the heart of Lincoln and was a great factor in his re-election in November. Grant cele- brated the victory by ordering every battery of the Army of the Potomac to fire a salute with shotted guns against the Confederate lines at Petersburg. XVIII ON SHERMAN’S TRAIL ATLANTA TO THE SEA Before he had reached Atlanta, Sherman in one of his letters home, lets drop this hint as to what he intended to do with that doomed city: “If I can break up that nest, it will be a splendid achievement.” His first step in the breaking up of this “nest” was the order for the deportation of its citizens. In a letter to Halleck he gives as his reasons for this extraordinary measure the need of his own army for all houses and buildings, the contraction of his lines of defense, a poor population which would soon have to be fed, and the menace to the Federal cause by inevitable correspondence between the enemy and _ their families in Atlanta. But back of all these reasons was his deliberate plan, again and again adverted to in his correspondence, to make the people of the South realize that war meant “something else than vain glory and boasting.” The order for deportation occasioned a fiery correspondence between Sherman and Hood. Hood agreed to send the commissioners to ar- range for the removal but protested that the “un- precedented measure you propose transcends, in studied and ingenious cruelty, all acts ever before brought to my attention in the dark history of war. In the name of God and humanity I pro- test, believing that you will find that you are ex- pelling from their homes and firesides the wives 241 242 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS and children of a brave people.” Sherman came back with a careful defense of the proposed measure and rebuked Hood for his appeal to God: “In the name of common sense, I ask you not to appeal to a just God in such a sacrilegious man- ner. You who, in the midst of peace and pros- perity, have plunged a nation into war—dark and cruel war—talk thus to the marines, but not to me who have seen these things. If we must be enemies, let us be men and fight it out as we pro- pose to do, and not deal in such hypocritical ap- peals to God and humanity. God will judge us in due time and He will pronounce whether it be more humane to fight with a town full of women and the families of a brave people at our back, or to remove them in time to places of safety among their own friends and people.” This letter Hood answered by accepting the challenge to fight it out, saying that it was better to die a thousand deaths than “submit to live un- der you and your Government and your negro allies.” To an appeal sent him by the mayor of Atlanta, Sherman gave a studied defense of his action, saying frankly that the measure was “not designed to meet the humanities of the case, but to prepare for the future struggles in which mil- lions of good people outside of Atlanta have a deep interest. We must have peace, not only in Atlanta, but in all America. You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will, WAR IS CRUELTY, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. You might as well appeal against the thunder- storm as against these terrible hardships of war. They are inevitable, and the only way the people of Atlanta can hope once more to live in peace and quiet at home is to stop the war, which can ON SHERMAN’S TRAIL 243 only be done by admitting that it began in error and is perpetuated in pride. We don’t want your negroes, or your horses, or your houses, or your lands, or anything you have, but we want and will have a just obedience to the laws of the United States. That we will have, and if it in- volves the destruction of your improvements, we cannot help it.” Of a voluminous correspondence, this is Sher- man’s greatest letter. Indeed, it is one of the great documents of the Civil War. The phrase, “War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it,” 1s probably the source of the more familiar saying attributed to Sherman, ‘War is hell.” He could not remember ever having said the latter. But now it is forever associated with his name. On St. Gaudens’ splendid equestrian statue of Sher- man, at the entrance to Central Park, New York, the sculptor planned to use the lines of Henry Van Dyke: This is the soldier brave enough to tell The glory-dazzled world that War is hell: Lover of peace, he looks beyond the strife, And rides through hell to save his country’s life. But he omitted them because of the lack of historic evidence that Sherman ever declared war to be hell. In his admirable life of Robert E. Lee, Thomas Nelson Page, in recounting Lee’s invasion of Pennsylvania, takes great pleasure in contrasting the methods of Lee and Sherman, and writes, “War is hell, he was quoted long after as saying. He did more than all others to make it so. He ruthlessly devastated, not only for the needs of his army, but to horrify and appall. He made war, not only on men, but on women and chil- dren.” Thus ever will the adherents of North 244 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS and South differ as to the course pursued by Sherman. As for those who can take an un- biased view of the matter, their conclusions will be determined by whether they think a people and a country in rebellion against a just and long- sulfering government should be rewarded with honors and grants, or wasted and devastated in order that the rebellion might be put down. I found very little in the modern Atlanta, the metropolis of the South, to remind me of the days when Sherman brought fire and sword to her gates, for Sherman utterly destroyed the city when he left it for his march to the sea. In the center of the town I found the monument to Atlanta’s “chief speaker,’ Henry Grady, who, speaking at a dinner in Boston on the “New South,” leaped from a banquet revelry into na- tional fame. On his monument are the words, “And when he died he was literally loving a na- tion into peace.” Sherman was at the banquet in Boston when Grady spoke, and turning to him Grady said, “I want to tell General Sherman, who is considered an able man in our parts, though kind of careless about fire, that from the ashes which he left us in 1864, we have built a brave and beautiful city, that, somehow or other, we have caught the sunshine in the brick and mortar of our homes, and have builded therein not one ignoble prejudice or memory.” Atlanta had fallen, but the chief objective of Sherman’s invasion was not Atlanta, but the Con- federate Army. That army, though somewhat damaged by the hard fighting about Atlanta, was still intact and ready for action. Its daring com- mander conceived the bold plan of striking Sher- man’s line of communication with Chattanooga and Nashville. He hoped to recruit his army in Tennessee and Kentucky, threaten Ohio, and after ON SHERMAN’S TRAIL 245 worsting any Union force which might be sent alter him, cross the mountains and join Lee in Virginia. His first blow was struck at Allatoona, where on October 4th he attacked the Federal garrison and was repulsed. He then moved farther to the west and crossed into Alabama. Sherman followed him as far as the Alabama border and then decided upon the great march which has added such lustre to his name. He sent his chief lieutenant, Thomas, back to Nashville to deal with Hood and resolved to cut loose from his base at Chattanooga, burn Atlanta and march towards the sea, where he could again establish communications with his government. After he had taken Atlanta, it had been the plan of Grant to have Sherman move south to Mobile and use that city as a base. The Federal fleet under Farragut had run the forts and destroyed the Confederate fleet, but Canby’s military ex- pedition against the city had failed. That city as a base was now out of the question and Sherman had to choose between a pursuit of Hood’s army and the march to the sea. The latter plan was his own and was opposed by both Grant and Thomas. It is neither wise nor safe to criticize movements which have completely succeeded, but Sherman himself confessed that when he looked back he felt like a man who had been walking a narrow plank and wondered how he did it. He certainly took very grave risks. The destruction of the enemy’s army, the aim of his invasion, he left to his lieutenant, Thomas. Thanks to Thomas, this was effectually done at Nashville in Decem- ber. But any failure on the part of Thomas would have been disastrous to the Union cause. How keenly Grant realized this is shown by the fact that, worried by the slowness of Thomas to at- tack Hood, he first sent Logan and then started 246 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS west himself before the news of Thomas’ great victory reached him. Even so careful a critic as Ropes writes: ‘No margin was left for accidents, and Grant and Sherman counted unreasonably upon the favor of fortune.” Lincoln was fearful, but did not interfere on the principle, as he wrote, of “nothing risked, nothing gained.” On the morning of the fifteenth of November, 1864, Sherman’s veteran army, purged of all wounded, sick and hangers-on, and with all rail and wire communications with Chattanooga and Nashville destroyed, swung out of the smoulder- ing ruins of Atlanta and to the thousandfold chorus of John Brown’s Body headed towards the distant sea. It was a happy, devil-may-care army, full of enthusiasm and confidence, but as Sherman saw them march by and heard them call to him, “Uncle Billy, I guess Grant is waiting for us at Richmond!” he felt all the more the load of responsibility upon him, “for success would be accepted as a matter of course, whereas should we fail, this march would be adjudged the wild adventure of a crazy fool.” His army numbered 62,000 and was divided into two wings, on the right the two corps of the Army of the Tennessee under Howard, and on the left the two corps of the Army of the Cumberland, now under the command of Henry Slocum who had been sum- moned from Washington to take the place of Hooker when that general resigned in a huff when Howard was named to succeed McPherson. Meanwhile, as this host marched towards the sea, the drums of Hood’s army were beating for the advance into Tennessee. As the only Confederate army fit to cope with Sherman had invaded Tennessee, the march through Georgia was little more than a vast frolic. The devastation of Georgia, one of the ON SHERMAN’S TRAIL 247 chief granaries of the Confederate armies, would soon make itself felt in Lee’s army and the hard- ship which it brought to the inhabitants would induce many of the Confederate soldiers to desert the ranks and visit their helpless relatives. Sher- man’s orders to his army contained the phrase, “forage liberally on the country.’’ Noreceipts were to be given by officers, but they were instructed to endeavor to see that private individuals were not left without enough to support life. Since he had cut loose from his source of supplies, the question of forage was the chief one for Sherman's army and the march from Atlanta to Savannah may be described as a great foraging expedition by an army of more than sixty thousand men. This was the way in which the foragers carried on their trade. A company of fifty men would be detailed from each brigade commanded by two daring officers, and knowing the destination of the army for the day, would issue forth at daylight and visit all the plantations along the line of march. Horses, mules, ducks, chickens, turkeys, in short, almost everything that had legs or wings, these foragers collected together, and at evening came riding into camp laden with hams, bacon, cornmeal, and all that the farms could yield them. Though they went forth at morning on foot they never failed to return with some kind of a mount, and shouts of derision and laughter greeted them as their comrades beheld them approaching camp mounted on asses, steers, donkeys, horses and mules, and arrayed in nondescript finery taken from the wardrobe of some proud family. Cox tells of a forager who came driving his load of plunder behind a team composed of a cow and a jackass. Sherman relates seeing a soldier pass him with a ham on his musket, a jug of sorghum molasses under his arm, and a big piece of honey 248 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS in his hand from which he was eating. Catching Sherman’s eye the wag remarked carelessly to his companion, so that Sherman could hear him, “Forage liberally on the country,” quoting from Sherman’s general orders. It is evident from the abundant literature on the subject that the soldiers of Sherman’s army took the wasting of Georgia as a huge joke, and it is clear, too, that the officers of the army had kindred sentiments. Sherman says that his sole act of vandalism was burning a clock and bedstead in the fire one cold night as he lay on the floor of an old mansion. But when he stopped at Howell Cobb’s plantation he noted with evident satisfaction that the place was totally destroyed. General Kilpatrick’s name is more closely associated with the sack of Georgia than that of any other officer. This was not un- natural since he was in command of the cavalry. He is the man who boasted that he changed the name of a town, Barnwell, to “Burnwell,” and he is said to have made a speech at a dinner in which he said, “In after years, when travelers passing through South Carolina shall see chimney- stacks without houses, and the country desolate, and shall ask, ‘Who did this? some Yankee will answer, ‘Kilpatrick’s cavalry’.” Kilpatrick was himself notorious for rapacity and irregular con- duct, but Sherman winked at his offenses because of his daring and the spirit of fight and enterprise which he had instilled in the cavalry brigades which did invaluable service in keeping Wheeler and his troopers at bay. With such an example in an officer in high command, it is not strange the junior officers and privates were guilty of ir- regularities. But there is no evidence that, despite the great provocation and the unusual liberty, the men of the army were guilty of crimes of rape or violence. Jefferson Davis likened the NIVLNQOW MVSHNAM ‘NOLSNHO[ Ad ASTNdAY S\NVNYHHS AO ANAS