Reminiscences of the Civil War

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

i My First Command and the Outbreak of the War

A company of mountaineers — Joe Brown's pikes — The Raccoon Roughs — The first Rebel yell — A flag presented to the company — Arrival at Montgomery, Alabama— Analysis of the causes of the war — Slavery's part in it — Liberty in the Union of the States, and liberty in the independence of the States . 3

Introduction

For many years I have been urged to place on record my reminiscences of the war between the States. In undertaking the task now, it is not my purpose to attempt a comprehensive description of that great struggle, nor an elaborate analysis of the momentous interests and issues involved. The time may not have arrived for a full and fair history of that most interesting period in the Republic's life. The man capable of writing it with entire justice to both sides is perhaps yet unborn. He may appear, however, at a future day, fully equipped for the great work. If endowed with the requisite breadth and clearness of view, with inflexible mental integrity and absolute freedom from all bias, he will produce the most instructive and thrilling record in the world's deathless annals, and cannot fail to make a contribution of measureless value to the American people and to the cause of free government throughout the world.

Conscious of my own inability to meet the demands of so great an undertaking, I have not attempted it, but with an earnest desire to contribute

xi xii INTRODUCTION

something toward such future history these reminiscences have been written. I have endeavored to make my review of that most heroic era so condensed as to claim the attention of busy people, and so impartial as to command the confidence of the fair-minded in all sections. It has been my fixed purpose to make a brief but dispassionate and judicially fair analysis of the divergent opinions and ceaseless controversies which for half a century produced an ever-widening alienation between the sections, and which finally plunged into the fiercest and bloodiest of fratricidal wars a great and enlightened people who were of the same race, supporters of the same Constitution, and joint heirs of the same freedom. I have endeavored to demonstrate that the courage displayed and the ratio of losses sustained were unprecedented in modern warfare. I have also recorded in this volume a large number of those characteristic and thrilling incidents which illustrate a unique and hitherto unwritten phase of the war, the story of which should not be lost, because it is luminous with the noblest lessons. Many of these incidents came under my own observation. They marked every step of the war's progress, were often witnessed by both armies, and were of almost daily occurrence in the camps, on the marches, and between the lines; increasing in frequency and pathos as the war progressed, and illustrating the

INTRODUCTION xiii

distinguishing magnanimity and lofty manhood of the American soldier.

It will be found, I trust, that no injustice has been done to either section, to any army, or to any of the great leaders, but that the substance and spirit of the following pages will tend rather to lift to a higher plane the estimate placed by victors and vanquished upon their countrymen of the opposing section, and thus strengthen the sentiment of intersectional fraternity which is essential to complete national unity.

J. B. Gordon.

Chapter I My Fikst Command And The Outbreak Of The War

A company of mountaineers— Joe Brown's pikes— The Raccoon Roughs — The first Rebel yell— A flag presented to the company— Arrival at Montgomery, Alabama— Analysis of the causes of the war— Slavery's part in it— Liberty in the Union of the States, and liberty in the independence of the States.

THE outbreak of war found me in the mountains of Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama, engaged in the development of coal-mines. This does not mean that I was a citizen of three States ; but it does mean that I lived so near the lines that my mines were in Georgia, my house in Alabama, and my post-office in Tennessee. The first company of soldiers, therefore, with which I entered the service was composed of stalwart mountaineers from the three States. I had been educated for the bar and for a time practised law in Atlanta. In September, 1854, I had married Miss Fanny Haralson, third daughter of General Hugh A. Haralson, of La Grange, Georgia. The wedding occurred on her seventeenth birthday and when I was but twenty- two. We had two children, both boys. The struggle between devotion to my family on the one hand and duty to my country on the other was most trying to my sensibilities. My spirit had been caught up by the flaming enthusiasm that swept like a prairie-fire through the land, and I hastened to unite with the brave men of the mountains in organizing a company of volunteers. But what was I to do with the girl-wife and the two little boys? The wife and mother was no less taxed in her effort to settle this momentous question. But finally yielding to the promptings of her own heart and to her unerring sense of duty, she ended doubt as to what disposition was to be made of her by announcing that she intended to accompany me to the war, leaving her children with my mother and faithful "Mammy Mary." I rejoiced at her decision then, and had still greater reasons for rejoicing at it afterward, when I felt through every fiery ordeal the inspiration of her near presence, and had, at need, the infinite comfort of her tender nursing.

The mountaineers did me the honor to elect me their captain. It was the first office I had ever held, and I verily believed it would be the last ; for I expected to fight with these men till the war ended or until I should be killed. Our first decision was to mount and go as cavalry. We had not then learned, as we did later, the full meaning of that war-song, " If you want to have a good time, jine the cavalry"; but like most Southerners we were inured to horseback, and all preferred that great arm of the service.

This company of mounted men was organized as soon as a conflict seemed probable and prior to any call for volunteers. They were doomed to a disappointment, " No cavalry now needed " was the laconic and stunning reply to the offer of our services. What was to be done, was the perplexing question. The proposition to wait until mounted men were needed was promptly negatived by the suggestion that we were so far from any point where a battle was likely to occur, and so hidden from view by the surrounding mountains, that we might be forgotten and the war might end before we had a chance.

"Let us dismount and go at once as infantry." This proposition was carried with a shout and by an almost unanimous vote. My own vote and whatever influence

I possessed were given in favor of the suggestion, although my desire for cavalry service had grown to a passion. Accustomed to horseback on my father's plantation from my early childhood, and with an untutored imagination picturing the wild sweep of my chargers upon belching batteries and broken lines of infantry, it was to me, as well as to my men, a sad descent from dashing cavalry to a commonplace company of slow, plodding foot-soldiers. Reluctantly, therefore, we abandoned our horses, and in order certainly to reach the point of action before the war was over, we resolved to go at once to the front as infantry, without waiting for orders, arms, or uniforms. Not a man in the company had the slightest military training, and the captain himself knew very little of military tactics.

The new government that was to be formed had no standing army as a nucleus around which the volunteers could be brought into compact order, with a centre of disciplined and thoroughly drilled soldiery; and the States which were to form it had but few arms, and no artisans or factories to supply them. The old-fashioned squirrel rifles and double-barrelled shot-guns were called into requisition. Governor Joseph E. Brown, of Georgia, put shops in the State to work, making what were called " Joe Brown's pikes." They were a sort of rude bay< >- net, or steel lance, fastened, not to guns, but to long poles or handles, and were to be given to men who had no other arms. Of course, few if any of these pikemen ever had occasion to use these warlike implements, which were worthy of the Middle Ages, but those who bore them were as gallant knights as ever levelled a lance in close quarters. I may say that very few bayonets of any kind were actually used in battle, so far as my observation extended. The one line or the other usually gave way under the galling fire of small arms, grape, and canister, before the bayonet could be brought into requisition. The bristling points and the glitter of the bayonets were fearful to look upon as they were levelled in front of a charging line ; but they were rarely reddened with blood. The day of the bayonet is passed except for use in hollow squares, or in resisting cavalry charges, or as an implement in constructing light and temporary fortifications.

It may still serve a purpose in such emergencies or to impress the soldier's imagination, as the loud-sounding and ludicrous gongs are supposed to stiffen the backs and steady the nerves of the grotesque soldiers of China. Of course, Georgia's able war governor did not contemplate any very serious execution with these pikes ; but the volunteers came in such numbers and were so eager for the fray that something had to be done ; and this device served its purpose. It at least shows the desperate straits in securing arms to which the South was driven, even after seizing the United States arsenals within the Confederate territory. The irrepressible humor and ready rustic wit which afterward relieved the tedium of the march and broke the monotony of the camp, and which, like a star in the darkness, seemed to grow more brilliant as the gloom of war grew denser, had already begun to sparkle in the intercourse of the volunteers. A woodsman who was noted as a " crack shot " among his hunting companions felt sure that he was going to win fame as a select rifleman in the army ; for he said that in killing a squirrel he always put the bullet through the head, though the squirrel might be perched at the time on the topmost limb of the tallest tree. An Irishman who had seen service in the Mexican "War, and was attentively listening to this young hunter's boast, fixed his twinkling eye upon the aspiring rifleman and said to him : " Yes ; but Dan, me boy, ye must ricollict that the squirrel had no gon in his hand to shoot back at ye." The young huntsman had not thought about that ; but he doubtless found later on, as the marksmen of both armies did, that it made a vast difference in the accuracy of aim when those in front not only had "go ns" in their hands, but were firing them with distracting rapidity. This rude Irish philosopher had explained in a sentence one cause of the wild and aimless firing which wasted more tons of lead in a battle than all its dead victims would weigh.

There was at the outbreak of the war and just preceding it a class of men both North and South over whose inconsistencies the thoughtful, self-poised, and determined men who did the fighting made many jokes, as the situation grew more serious. It was that class of men in both sections who were most resolute in words and most prudent in acts; who urged the sections to the conflict and then did little to help them out of it; who, like the impatient war-horse, snuffed the battle from afar — very far : but who, when real war began to roll its crimson tide nearer and nearer to them, came to the conclusion that it was better for the country, as well as for themselves, to labor in other spheres ; and that it was their duty, as America's great humorist put it, to sacrifice not themselves but their wives' relations on patriotism's altar. One of these furious leaders at the South declared that if we would secede from the Union there would be no war, and if there should be a war, we could "whip the Yankees with children's pop-guns." When, after the war, this same gentleman was addressing an audience, he was asked by an old maimed soldier : " Say, Judge, ain't you the same man that told us before the war that we could whip the Yankees with pop-guns ? "

" Yes," replied the witty speaker, " and we could, but, confound 'em, they would n't fight us that way."

My company, dismounted and ready for infantry service, did not wait for orders to move, but hastily bidding adieu to home and kindred, were off for Milledgeville, then capital of Georgia. At Atlanta a telegram from the governor met us, telling us to go back home, and stay there until our services were needed. Our discomfiture can be better imagined than described. In fact, there broke out at once in my racks a new rebellion. These rugged mountaineers resolved that they would not go home ; that they had a right to go to the war, had started to the war, and were not going to be trifled with by the governor or any one else. Finally, after much persuasion, and by the cautious exercise of the authority vested in me by my office of captain, I prevailed on them to get on board the home-bound train. As the engine-bell rang and the whistle blew for the train to start, the rebellion broke loose again with double fury. The men rushed to the front of the train, uncoupled the cars from the engine, and gravely informed me that they had reconsidered and were not going back; that they intended to go to the war, and that if Governor Brown would not accept them, some other governor would. Prophetic of future dash as this wild impetuosity might be, it did not give much promise of soldierly discipline ; but I knew my men and did not despair. I was satisfied that the metal in them was the best of steel and only needed careful tempering.

They disembarked and left the empty cars on the track, with the trainmen looking on in utter amazement. There was no course left me but to march them through the streets of Atlanta to a camp on the outskirts. The march, or rather straggle, through that city was a sight marvellous to behold and never to be forgotten. Totally undisciplined and undrilled, no two of these men marched abreast ; no two kept the same step ; no two wore the same colored coats or trousers. The only pretence at uniformity was the rough fur caps made of raccoon skins, with long, bushy, streaked raccoon tails hanging from behind them. The streets were packed with men, women, and children, eager to catch a glimpse of this grotesque company. Naturally we were the observed of all observers. Curiosity was on tip-toe, and from the crowded sidewalks there came to me the inquiry, "Are you the captain of that company, sir?" With a pride which I trust was pardonable, I indicated that I was. In a moment there came to me the second inquiry, "What company is that, sir?" Up to this time no nam*' had been chosen— at least, none had been announced to the men. I had myself, however, selected a name which I considered both poetic and appropriate, and I replied to the question, " This company is the Mountain Rifles." Instantly a tall mountaineer said in a tone not intended for his captain, but easily overheard by his companions and the bystanders : " Mountain hell ! we are no Mountain Rifles ; we are the Raccoon Roughs." It is scarcely necessary to say that my selected name was never heard of again. This towering Ajax had killed it by a single blow. The name he gave us clung to the company during all of its long and faithful service.

Once in camp, we kept the wires hot with telegrams to governors of other States, imploring them to give us a chance. Governor Moore, of Alabama, finally responded, graciously consenting to incorporate the captain of the " Raccoon Roughs " and his coon-capped company into one of the regiments soon to be organized. The reading of this telegram evoked from my men the first wild Rebel yell it was my fortune to hear. Even then it was weird and thrilling. Through all the stages of my subsequent promotions, in all the battles in which I was engaged, this same exhilarating shout from these same trumpet-like throats rang in my ears, growing fainter and fainter as these heroic men became fewer and fewer at the end of each bloody day's work ; and when the last hour of the war came, in the last desperate charge at Appomattox, the few and broken remnants of the Raccoon Roughs were still near their first captain's side, cheering him with the dying echoes of that first yell in the Atlanta camp.

Alabama's governor had given us the coveted " chance," and with bounding hearts we joined the host of volunteers then rushing to Montgomery. The line of our travel was one unbroken scene of enthusiasm. Bonfires blazed from the hills at night, and torch-light processions, with drums and fifes, paraded the streets of the towns. In the absence of real cannon, blacksmiths' anvils were made to thunder our welcome. Vast throngs gathered at the depots, filling the air with their shoutings, and bearing banners with all conceivable devices, proclaiming Southern independence, and pledging the last dollar and man for the success of the cause. Staid matrons and gayly bedecked maidens rushed upon the cars, pinned upon our lapels the blue cockades, and cheered us by chanting in thrilling chorus :

In Dixie-land I take my stand To live and die in Dixie.

At other points they sang " The Bonnie Blue Flag," and the Raccoon Roughs, as they were thenceforward known, joined in the transporting chorus :

Hurrah, hurrah, for Southern rights hurrah !

Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star !

The Hon. R. M. T. Hunter, of Virginia, who had been Speaker of the National House of Representatives, aud United States senator, and who afterward became the Confederate Secretary of State and one of the Hampton Roads commissioners to meet President Lincoln and the Federal representatives, was travelling upon the same train that carried my company to Montgomery. This famous and venerable statesman, on his way to Alabama's capital to aid in organizing the new Government, made, in answer to the popular demand, a number of speeches at the different stations. His remarks on these occasions were usually explanatory of the South's attitude in the threatened conflict. They were concise, clear, and forcible. The people did not need argument ; but they applauded his every utterance, as he carefully described the South's position as one not of aggression but purely of defence; discussed the doctrine promulgated in the Declaration of the Fathers, that all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed; asserted the sovereignty of the States, and their right to peaceably assume that sovereignty, as evidenced by the declaration of New York, Rhode Island, and Virginia when they entered the Union ; explained the protection given the South's peculiar property by the plain provisions of the Constitution and the laws ; urged the necessity of separation both for Southern security and the permanent peace of the sections; and closed with the declaration that, while there was no trace of authority in the Constitution for the invasion and coercion of a sovereign State, yet it was the part of prudence and of patriotism to prepare for defence in case of necessity.

Although I was a young man, yet, as the only captain on board, it fell to my lot also to respond to frequent calls. In the midst of this wild excitement and boundless enthusiasm, I was induced to make some promises which I afterward found inconvenient and even impossible to fulfil. A flag was presented bearing a most embarrassing motto. That motto consisted of two words : " No Retreat." I was compelled to accept it. There was, indeed, no retreat for me then ; and in my speech accepting the flag I assured the fair donors that those coon-capped boys would make that motto ring with their cracking rifles on every battle-field ; and in the ardor and inexperience of my young manhood, I related to these ladies and to the crowds at the depot the story of the little druinmer-boy of Switzerland who, when captured and ordered to beat upon his drum a retreat, proudly replied, " Switzerland knows no such music ! " Gathering additional inspiration from the shouts and applause which the story evoked, I exclaimed, "And these brave mountaineers and the young Confederacy, like glorious little Switzerland, will never know a retreat ! " My men applauded and sanctioned this outburst of inconsiderate enthusiasm, but we learned better after a while. A little sober experience vastly modified and assuaged our youthful impetuosity. War is a wonderful developer, as well as destroyer, of men ; and our four years of tuition in it equalled in both these particulars at least forty years of ordinary schooling. The first battle carried us through the rudimentary course of a military education ; and several months before the four years' course was ended, the thoughtful ones began to realize that though the expense account had been great, it had at least reasonably well prepared us for final graduation, and for receiving the brief little diploma handed to us at Appomattox.

If any apology be needed for my pledge to the patriotic women who presented the little flag with the big motto, " No Retreat," it must be found in the depth of the conviction that our cause was just. From great leaders and constitutional expounders, from schools and colleges, from debates in Congress, in the convention that adopted the Constitution, and from discussions on the hustings, we had learned the lesson of the sovereignty of the States. We had imbibed these political principles from our childhood. We were, therefore, prepared to defend them, ready to die for them, and it was impossible at the beginning for us to believe that they would be seriously and forcibly assailed.

But I must return to our trip to Montgomery. We reached that city at night to find it in a hubbub over the arrival of enthusiastic, shouting volunteers. The hot. 'Is and homes were crowded with visiting statesmen and private citizens, gathered by a common impulse around the cradle of the new-born Confederacy. There was a determined look on every face, a fervid prayer on every lip, and a bounding hope in every heart. There was the rumbling of wagons distributing arms and ammunition at every camp, and the tramping of freshly enlisted men on every street. There was a roar of cannon on the hills and around the Capitol booming welcome to the incoming patriots ; and all nature seemed palpitating in sympathy with the intensity of popular excitement. It fell to the lot of the Raccoon Roughs to be assigned to the Sixth Alabama Regiment, and, contrary to my wishes and most unexpectedly to me, I was unanimously elected major.

When my company of mountaineers reached Montgomery, the Provisional Government of the "Confederate States of America" had been organized. At first it was composed only of six States: South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The States of Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina were admitted into the Southern Union in the order, I believe, in which I have named them. Thus was launched the New Republic, with only eleven stars on its banner; but it took as its chart the same old American Constitution, or one so nearly like it that it contained the same limitations upon Federal power, the same guarantees of the rights of the States, the same muniments of public and personal liberty.

The historian of the future, who attempts to chronicle the events of this period and analyze the thoughts and purposes of the people, will find far greater unanimity at the South than at the North. This division at the North did not last long; but it existed in a marked degree for some time after the secession movement began and after twenty or more United States forts, arsenals, and barracks had been seized by State authorities, and even after the steamer Star of the West had been fired upon by State troops and driven back from the entrance of Charleston Harbor.

At the South, the action of each State in withdrawing from the Union was the end, practically, of all division within the borders of such State; and the roar of the opening battle at Fort Sumter in South Carolina was the signal for practical unanimity at the North.

Prior to actual secession there was even at the South more or less division of sentiment — not as to principle, but as to policy. Scarcely a man could be found in all the Southern States who doubted the constitutional right of a State to withdraw from the Union; but many of its foremost men thought that such movement was illadvised or should be delayed. Among these were Robert E. Lee, who became the commander-in-chief of all the Confederate armies ; Alexander Hamilton Stephens, who became the Confederate Vice-President; Benjamin H. Hill, who was a Confederate senator and one of the Confederate administration's most ardent and perhaps its most eloquent supporter ; and even Jefferson Davis himself is said to have shed tears when, at his seat in the United States Senate, he received the telegram announcing that Mississippi had actually passed the ordinance of secession. The speech of Mr. Davis on taking leave of the Senate shows his loyal devotion to the Republic's flag, for which he had shed his blood in Mexico. In profoundly sincere and pathetic words he thus alludes to his unfeigned sorrow at the thought of parting with the Stars and Stripes. He said : " I shall be pardoned if I here express the deep sorrow which always overwhelms me when I think of taking a last leave of that object of early affection and proud association, feeling that henceforth it is not to be the banner which by day and by night I am ready to follow, to hail with the rising and bless with the setting sun."

He agreed, however, with an overwhelming majority of the Southern people, in the opinion that both honor and security, as well as permanent peace, demanded separation. Referring to the denial of the right of Southerners to carry their property in slaves into the common Territories, he said : "Your votes refuse to recognize our domestic institutions, which preexisted the formation of the Union — our property, which was guarded by the Constitution. You refuse us that equality without which we should be degraded if we remained in the Union. . . . Is there a senator on the other side who, to-day, will agree that we shall have equal enjoyment of the Territories of the United States ! Is there one who will deny that we have equally paid in their purchases and equally bled in their acquisition in war ? . . . Whose is the fault, then, if the Union be dissolved? ... If you desire, at this last moment, to avert civil war, so be it ; it is better so. If you will but allow us to separate from you peaceably, since we cannot live peaceably together, to leave with the rights we had before we were united, since we cannot enjoy them in the Union, then there are many relations, drawn from the associations of our (common) struggles from the Revolutionary period to the present day, which may be beneficial to you as well as to us."

Abraham Lincoln, on the other hand, the newly elected President, was deeply imbued with the conviction that the future welfare of the Republic demanded that slavery should be prohibited forever in all the Territories. Indeed, upon such platform he had been nominated and elected. He, therefore, urged his friends not to yield on this point. His language was : " On the territorial question— that is, the question of extending slavery under national auspices — I am inflexible. I am for no comproraise which assists or permits the extension of the institution on soil owned by the Nation." *

Thus these two great leaders of antagonistic sectional thought were pitted against each other before they had actually taken in hand the reins of hostile governments. The South in her marvellous fecundity had given birth to both these illustrious Americans. Both were of Southern lineage and born under Southern skies. Indeed, they were born within a few months and miles of each other, and nurtured by Kentucky as their common mother. But they were destined in God's mysterious providence to find homes in different sections, to grow up under different institutions, to imbibe in youth and early manhood opposing theories of constitutional construction, to become the most conspicuous representatives of conflicting civilizations, and the respective Presidents of contending republics.