A soldier's recollections; leaves from the diary of a young Confederate, with an oration on the motives and aims of the soldiers of the South

Front matter

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Foreword

T HAVE set down in the pages that follow some of ■■■ my experiences and observations during my service with the Army of Northern Virginia, first as a private soldier, then as a staff officer, and finally as a chaplain in the field. I served in the ranks under Gen. Jos. E. Johnston and Gen. Thos. J. Jackson; as a staff officer under Brigadier-Gen. Geo. H. Steuart in the army of Gen. R. E. Lee; and as a chaplain in the Second Virginia Cavalry under Col. Thos. T. Munford, in the brigade of Gen. Fitzhugh Lee.

It has not been my purpose to write a history of the campaigns in which I took so humble a part, but simply to present a few pen and ink sketches of the life and experience of a Confederate soldier, in the hope that I may thereby contribute in some small degree to a better understanding of the spirit of the epoch — both of the soldiers who fought the battles, and of the people on whose behalf they dared and suffered what they did.

In telling this plain and unvarnished story I have been aided by the diary, or rather the diaries, which I kept during the war, and from which I have freely quoted, just as they were written, without recasting the sentences, or improving the style, or toning down the sentiments they contain. The thoughts and the opinions expressed, and the often crude form in which

vU viii FOREWORD

they are cast, are just those of a young soldier, jotted down on the march, or by the camp-fire, or in the quiescent intervals of battle, without any thought that they would ever be put into print. This I have done, believing that I would thus best attain my object, — to show the mind and the life of the Confederate soldier as they were while the struggle was going on. But there was a hiatus in my material. My diary for the larger part of one of the four years of the war was lost, and therefore I have omitted those months from my narrative.

I have also tried to give the point of view of the young men of the South in espousing the cause of the Confederacy, and to remove some misapprehensions still entertained in regard to the motives which animated the men who followed the banner of the Southern Cross.

In connection with the Gettysburg campaign, I have undertaken to discuss the much mooted question of the action of Gen. J. E. B. Stuart, with the cavalry under his command. This I have felt constrained to do because of the view (erroneous, as I believe) presented by Col. John S. Mosby in his recent book on the subject.

I have also reproduced an article written many years ago by request, and published in the Southern Historical Society Magazine, telling the story of the part taken at Gettysburg by the Third Brigade of Johnson's Division, Ewell's Corps. And in the Appendix I have placed an Oration upon the Motives and Aims of the Soldiers of the South, delivered in 1904 before the United Confederate Veterans.

Fully sensible how much I stand in need of the

FOREWORD ix

reader's indulgent good-will as he follows me in this simple story of an obscure soldier's life in the Army of Northern Virginia, I still hope that what I have recorded may, here and there, throw a side-light on the conditions under which the Confederate soldier lived and fought those four stern, fateful years, and give fresh emphasis to his purity of motive and his heroic constancy in danger and adversity.

One closing word as to the spirit in which I have undertaken this modest contribution to the literature of the Civil War. I am not, in these pages, brooding over the ashes of the past. The soldiers of the Southern Cross have long ago bowed to the decree of Almighty God in the issue of the great conflict. His will is wiser and better than ours. We thank God that to-day the sun shines on a truly reunited country. We love our Southland; we are Southern men; but we are glad that sectionalism is dead and buried, and we claim our full part in working out the great destiny that lies before the American people. We may not forget — we veterans of the Civil War — that the best of our life and work Ues behind us: morituri salutamus. But whatever of life remains to us we have long ago dedicated to the service of our common country. We joyfully accept our share in the responsibilities, the opportunities, the strenuous conflicts, of the future, against foes within and without, for the moral and material glory of our country. We are Americans in every fibre; and nothing that pertains to the honor, to the welfare, to the glory, of America is foreign to us.

CONTENTS lAPTER PAGE

I On the Brink of the Maelstrom 1

University of Virginia, April, 1861 — Secession flag on the rotunda — Excitement among the students — Division of sentiment among the professors — Removal of the flag — How Virginia was transformed from a Union State to a Secession State — Bronze memorial tablets in the rotunda — Great number of alumni in the Confederate Army — University student military companies ordered to Harper's Ferry — Visit to Baltimore — Return to University — Examination.

II The Constitutional Issue Involved in the Civil

War 11

The question of slavery.

III First Experiences of a Raw Recruit .... 23

Departure from the University — En route for Baltimore — News of martial law in that city — A letter — Arrival at Winchester — Decision to enter the army — Expectation of battle at Darksville — My first dinner in ^ camp — First Maryland Infantry — Col. George Steuart — The forced march from Winchester to Manassas — Experiences on the march — Letter to my mother — A letter from home.

IV Our First Battle 34

Six miles at double-quick to the battle field — Charge of the First Maryland —Victory — General Elzey the Bliicher of the day — Gen. Kirby Smith — The New York Zouaves — The rout of the Union Army — Letter to my mother.

V Camp Life 40

Picket duty — Strict discipline of Colonel Steuart — Characteristics of the men of the First Maryland— Colonel Steuart seized by a sentry — Experiences as cook and wood chopper — A famous apple pie — A loaf of bread three feet long — Hard drilling — Rash enthusiasm and its consequence — A letter to my mother — Service at General Johnston's headquarters — A letter. VI Winter Quarters, 1861-62 . 49

Centreville Camp — Approach of winter — Building huts for winter quarters at Fairfax Station — High character of the men of our mess — Letter describing life in our hut — Books read — Subjects discussed — xii CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

Intelligence and education among the rank and file of the Confederate Army — "Evelina " — Two ladies visit camp — Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston — Religious services in camp.

"VII A Winter Furlough 62

Confederate armies melting away — Offer of thirty days furlough for reenlistment — Return to civilization

— Warm welcome everywhere — The Southern people like one family — Every house the soldier's home — My numerous relatives — Millwood — Bollingbrooke — The mischievous boy at the Shenandoah ford — Delights of the Clarke neighborhood — "Saratoga" — "Carter Hall"

— "New Market " — Michelet — Richmond — Inauguration of President Davis — Fall of Fort Donelson — Rev. Peyton Harrison — Visit to Brandon — Jamestown Island

— Fredericksburg — Letter to my mother — Charlottesville — Return to camp — State of the country — Religious feeling among the people.

VIII The Opening of the Campaign of 1862 .... 75 McClellan's strategy — Evacuation of Manassas — On the banks of the Rappahannock — Engagement with the enemy — Severity of the weather — Hard marching

— A bed of three fence rails — No tents for several weeks — Severe exposure — Starvation rations — Letter to my mother — March to Culpeper — To Rapidan and Orange — Hospitality of the people — Patient fortitude of the soldiers — Swimming in the Rapidan — Beauty of the country — Few reenlistments and the reason — Swift Run gap — Stonewall Jackson — Milroy — Columbia bridge — Swift marching — Almost drowned in the Shenandoah — The acme of the Confederate soldier's trials.

IX Stonewall Jackson's Valley Campaign .... 90 Stonewall Jackson — His rise in the face of official prejudice — Characteristics of the man — His rigid discipUne — Contrast between him and Robert E. Lee — Relations between the two men — Opinion of General Miles — Jackson a devout Christian — Jackson unites his two divisions — Attack on Luray — "Maryland whip Maryland" — Gallantry of the Federal Marylanders — Our marching songs — "Maryland, my Maryland " — March on Winchester — Gen. Dick Taylor — First battle of Winchester — Enthusiastic reception by the inhabitants — Death of Robert Breckinridge -McKim — General Banks — Effect of the victory — Alarm in Washington — Transformation of the military situation in Virginia — Failure of our cavalry — Bolivar Heights — Four armies move against Jackson — His masterly retreat — Peril of General Winder's force — Saved by Jackson's astuteness — Fine service of the First Maryland — Engagement near Harrisonburg — Death of Ashby — My promotion — Battle of Cross Keys —

CONTENTS xiii

Defeat of Fremont — General Steuart wounded — My horse shot under me — Sketch of General Ewell — Two panic-stricken men — Battle of Port Republic — Defeat of Shields — Results of campaign.

X Between Campaigns 117

In attendance on my wounded general — Letter to my mother — On duty in Richmond — Maryland Line — Staunton, Virginia — Organization of Second Maryland Regiment — September, 1862, General Steuart at Winchester — Organization of Maryland Line — Post duty

— Hiatus in my diary — Letter to my mother — General Steuart takes furlough — Winter in Staunton — A Cliristmas feast — Decision to enter Episcopal Church — Reasons for so doing — Application for appointment on General Trimble's staff.

XI The Battle of Chancellorsville 126

I report for duty to Fredericksburg — Some account of the battle of Chancellorsville — Hooker's movement

— His over-confidence — The audacious strategy of Lee

— Jackson's flank movement — Mr. Lincoln's advice to Hooker — Stonewall Jackson falls — Battle continued next day — The genius and daring of Lee — Death of Major Wilham Duncan McKim — His interment at Staunton.

XII The Opening of the Gettysburg Campaign . . . 133 Dining with General Lee — Report for duty to General Steuart — The Third Brigade — Its strength — Religious services in camp — We break camp June 3d and march northward — Organization of the army — Rapid march toward Winchester — Rev. George Patterson — Cavalry battle at Brandy Station — J. E. B. Stuart defeats Pleasanton — Fredericksburg to Winchester in seven days

— General Milroy surprised — Works at Winchester captured.

XIII The Battle of Stephenson's Depot 148

Night march — Battle begins before daylight — Milroy's attempt to escape — A severe battle — Outnumbered by the enemy, at first — Dement's battery

— The struggle for the bridge — Conspicuous gallantry of the cannoneers — Arrival of reinforcements — Surrender of the enemy — Spoils of victory — Gallantry of Steuart's brigade.

XrV The March to Gettysburg 155

Crossing the Potomac — Joy of the Maryland men

— The justification of Mary landers joining the Confederate Army — Number of Marylanders in the service

— Their peculiar trials — Second Maryland BattaUon — Warm reception in Shepherdstown — Battle ground of Sharpsburg — Present of a battle flag. — Religious susceptibility of the men — Character of the invasion — Lee's conception of war — General Lee's order respecting private property — Fine conduct of the Confederxiv CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGB

ate soldiers — Expedition to McConnellsburg — Composition of the force — A lonely ride — Major Harry Gilmor — Behavior of the Confederate in contrast with that of the Federal soldiers — General Sherman's definition of war — General Sheridan to Bismarck — Purchase of copies of New Testament — Surprise of storekeeper — Long and fatiguing marches — We rejoin Johnson's division — Orders to countermarch June 29th — Battle of Gettysburg begins.

XV The Battle of Gettysburg: Observations and Personal Incidents 168

Object of the campaign — Lee's intentions — Advance upon Harrisburg — Change of plan and reason — Colonel Mosby's error — Purpose to concentrate at Cashtown

— Battle precipitated by Lieutenant-General Hill — First day's fight — Lee absent — Charge of Gordon's brigade

— Justification of General Lee's decision to attack — General Ewell's fatal error July 1st — General Longstreet's failure and disobedience July 2d — Its disastrous result — Captain Battine's criticism — Charge of Pickett's division — The omens of victory with the Confederates — Failure due to Lee's lieutenants — Failure also to coordinate the attacks — Gettysburg a drawn battle — Lee's army unshaken — He offers battle July 4th — Again for three days near Hagerstown

— Spirit of Lee's army unbroken — Sufferings of the men on the retreat — Personal experiences — Iglehart

— The artillery duel July 2d — ■ Prayer on the battle field — Going to sleep in the midst of the battle, July 3d

— Narrow escapes — Fortitude of the Third Brigade — Their heroic conduct — Retreat from Gulp's Hill, 1.30 A.M., July 4th -- Major Benj. Watkins Leigh — Incident at Williamsport — Another incident — Chaplain Patterson reads the burial service over a living man.

XVI Steuart's Brigade at Gettysburg — A Narrative . 192

XVII Preparation for the Chaplaincy 209

Resignation — Letter to my mother — Studies at Staunton, Virginia — Dr. Sparrow — Hospital work — Unwearied labor of the Southern women — Unity of feeling — Licensed to deliver addresses — Books used — Character of preparation — Anecdote of Dr. Sparrow

— Ordained deacon — Start for the army — My horse "CharUe" — Report for duty in Chew's battalion artillery — Commission not issued — Compelled to leave — Appointed Chaplain Second Virginia Cavalry — Active work in the interim — Rev. Richard H. Pliillips taken prisoner — Confined at Camp Chase.

First Experience as Chaplain in the Field

I join Second Virginia Cavalry — Ordered out to meet the enemy — Composition of the Second Virginia — Religious service twice a day — Cooperation of the officers

— Mass meeting of communicants — Regimental choir

CONTENTS XV

CHAPTER PAGE

— Resolutions adopted — Open mindedness of the men.

XVIII Early's Valley Campaign of 1864 . . . . . .223

Early's advance on Washington — General Sheridan — The Spencer rifle and the Sharp's rifle — Eleven engagements in less than a month — Third battle of Winchester

— Early's defeat — Good service of the cavalry — Front Royal — FeeUngs of a chaplain on the firing Une — General Early and the chaplain — Early's defeat at Fisher's Hill — Death of Captain George Williamson

— Tribute to him — Fighting again — Preaching and marching — Baptism by immersion — Thrilling experi-

' ences on a blind horse — Sheridan's burnings — Wounding of Captain Basil L. Gildersleeve — Death of Prof. Lewis Minor Coleman — Cavalry fight near Waynesboro — Battle of Cedar Creek — Answer to prayer — Service in the breastworks — Conferences on personal religion — Victory at Cedar Creek turned into defeat — Rebukes administered — Organization of Y. M. C. A.

— Offer myself as substitute for Rev. R. H. Phillips — Frequent engagements — Early winter — Supply of New Testaments — Successful engagement — Work in hospital — Cutting down trees — My horse fed with stolen corn.

XIX The Winter Campaign of 1864-65 . . ' . . .243 Expedition to West Virginia — Suffering of the men

— Sleeping under a blanket of snow — A mountay;» march — Hardships of a chaplain — On sick leave — Death of my father — Visit to Edge Hill — Col. Thos. Jefferson Randolph — Virginia Legislature and Emancipation — Revulsion of feeling — Abandonment of the project — Responsibihty of AboUtionists — Virginia's record on slavery — Mr. B. Johnson Barbour — Cleaning out a church — St. Paul's Church, Richmond — Solemnity of services — Building a chapel — My horse breaks down

— Sermon in St. Paul's, Richmond.

XX The Close of the Drama 254

Hampton Roads conference — Preamble and resolutions — Lee made commander-in-chief — Confederacy collapsing — Resources exhausted — Opinion of Lord Wolseley and Charles Francis Adams — Journey to Staunton — Condition of returned Confederate prisoners

— Treatment of Northern prisoners in the South — Scarcity of provisions — Grant's refusal to exchange — Comparative mortality in Northern and Southern prisons — ~ — Arrival at Staunton — Return to the army — Surrender

of General Lee — Desertions from his army — Why Lee could not extricate his army — His plans revealed to Grant — Did Grant outgeneral Lee in the retreat? — Error of James Ford Rhodes — Scene at surrender — Lee's heroic conduct — Tributes to the soldiers of Lee's army — My ride to Staunton — News of the surrender xvi CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

discredited — Second Virginia Cavalry after the surrender — Maryland Cavalry makes the last march for the cause.

Conclusion 277

^. The Soldiers of the South — An Oration . ... 285

B. Gen. J. E. B. Stuart in the Gettysburg campaign

— Areply toCol. JohnS. Mosby 337

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

Lieut.- Gen. Thos. J. ("Stonewall") Jackson .... 90

Lieut. Randolph H. McKim, 1862 110

Gen. Robert Edward Lee 134

Gen. Thomas T, Munford 220

Rev. Dr. R. H. McKim, 1904 286 xva

Chapter I

/^N a bright morning in the month of April, 1861, ^-^ there is a sudden explosion of excitement at the University of Virginia. Shouts and cheers are heard from the various precincts where the students lodge. Evidently something unusual has occurred. The explanation is soon found as one observes all eyes turned to the dome of the rotunda from whose summit the Secession flag is seen waving. It has been placed there during the night by persons then unknown. Of course it has no right there, for the University is a State institution and the State has not seceded; on the contrary the Constitutional Convention has given only a few days before a strong vote for the Union.

But it is evident the foreign flag is a welcome intruder in the precincts of Jefferson's University, for a great throng of students is presently assembled on the lawn in front of the lofty flight of steps leading up to the rotunda, and one after another of the leaders of the young men mounts the steps and harangues the crowd in favor of the Southern Confederacy and the Southern flag waving proudly up there. Among the speakers I recall Wm. Randolph Berkeley, the recently elected orator of the Jefferson Society.

So general was the sympathy with the Southern cause that not a voice was raised in condemnation of the rebeUious and burglarious act of the students who must have been guilty of raising the Southern flag. Not so general was the approval of the professors; some of these were strong Union men, among them one who was deservedly revered by the whole student body, Prof. John B. Minor, the head of the Law Department. Walking up under the arcades to his lecture room, he was shocked at the sight that met his eyes, and (so a wag afterwards reported) broke forth into rhyme as follows:

"Flag of my country, can it be That that rag's up there instead of thee!"

Meantime the excitement waxed greater and greater, so much so that the students forsook their lecture rooms to attend the mass-meeting on the lawn. In vain did Prof. Scheie de Vere endeavor to fix the attention of his class by the swelling periods of his famous lecture on Joan of Arc. The proceedings outside on the lawn interested them much more than the tragic fate of the Maid of Orleans, and one after another they rose and stalked out of the lecture room to join in the overture to another and more tremendous tragedy then unfolding itself to the world, until the baffled professor of modern languages gave up the attempt and abruptly closed his lecture.

At this juncture the burly form of Dr. Albert Taylor Bledsoe, professor of mathematics, was seen mounting the steps of the rotunda, his great head as usual far in advance of the rest of his body. At once there was silence in the throng. To him the students gave a respectful attention, such as, I fear, in their then mood, they would not have given to Professor Minor. For Dr. Bledsoe was an enthusiastic advocate of Secession, to such an extent that he would not infrequently interlard his demonstration of some difficult problem in differential or integral calculus — for example, the lemniscata of Bernouilli — with some vigorous remarks in the doctrine of States' rights.

At this juncture, however, the big-brained professor spoke to the young men in a somewhat different strain. He began by saying he had no doubt the students who had put up that flag were "the very nicest fellows in the University," but, inasmuch as the State of Virginia had not yet seceded, the Secession flag did not really belong on that rotunda, and he hoped the students themselves would take it down, — ''but," he said, "young gentlemen, do it very tenderly."

The facts of the case were these. A group of seven students (of whom I was one) bought the bunting and had the flag made, seven stars and three bars, by some young lady friends who were bound to secrecy, and then, having supplied themselves with augers and small saws, they went to work after midnight and sawed their way through five doors to gain access to the roof of the rotunda, where, in their stocking feet, they at length succeeded, not without risk of a fatal fall, in giving the "Stars and Bars" to the breeze, just as the first faint streaks of dawn appeared on the eastern hills. They then scattered and betook themselves to bed, and were the last men in the University to hear the news that the Secession flag was floating over the rotunda!

It was not many days after this occurrence that Mr. Lincoln issued his proclamation calling upon Virginia to furnish her quota of troops to coerce the seceded States back into the Union, and thereby instantly transformed the old Commonwealth from a Union State into a seceded State. All differences now disappeared among her statesmen and her people, and Virginia with entire unanimity threw in her lot with her Southern sisters ''for better, for worse, for weal or for woe."

It was the threat of invasion that revolutionized the position of the State of Virginia. In illustration of this I refer to the case of a talented young man from Richmond who had been an extreme and uncompromising "Union man" — the most extreme among all the students at the University. He was also bold and aggressive in the advocacy of his opinions, so much so that he became very unpopular, and his friends feared "serious trouble and even bloody collision." The morning President Lincoln's proclamation appeared he had gone down town on personal business before breakfast, and while there happened to glance at a paper. He returned at once to the University, but not to breakfast; spoke not a word to any human being; packed his trunk with his belongings; left a note for the chairman of the faculty explaining his conduct; boarded the first train for Richmond, and joined a military company before going to his father's house or taking so much as a morsel of food. What was the overwhelming force which thus in a moment transformed this splendid youth? Was it not the Godimplanted instinct which impels a man to defend his own hearthstone ? ^

1 The story is told by Major Robert Stiles in his "Four Years under Marse Robert."

The visitor to the University to-day will see on the rotunda porch two large bronze tablets on the right and left of the central door, on which are graven the names of the alumni who laid down their lives in the Civil War for the independence of the South. There are just five hundred and thi*ee names.

The number itself is significant. If five hundred died, there must have been more than two thousand five hundred, perhaps as many as three thousand, on the rolls of the Confederate armies, who called this University mother. We have no accurate register of the number of alumni who were living in 1861 and fit for military service. But we do know that of the six hundred and twenty-five who were students here when the tocsin of war sounded, five hundred and thirty hailed from the seceding States, and about five hundred and fifteen went to the front. Two of the professors followed their students, — our illustrious professor of Greek, Basil L. Gildersleeve, who was wounded fighting with Gordon in the valley of Virginia — he still lives, thank God! to adorn American scholarship — and Lewis Minor Coleman, our right royal professor of Latin, who fell gloriously while commanding a battalion of artillery at Fredericksburg.

These numbers are significant. They bear eloquent witness, not only to the gallantry of our brother alumni, but to the unanimity of the Southern people in that great struggle, and they afford convincing proof of the falsity of the theory, held by some historians of the Civil War, that the uprising of the Southern people was the result of a conspiracy of a few ambitious leaders. When we see five hundred and fifteen out of six hundred and twenty-five students/ representing the flower of the intellect and culture of the South — its yeomen as well as its aristocracy — spring to arms at the first sound of the long roll, we realize that the resistance offered to coercion in 1861 was in no sense artificial, but free and spontaneous, and that it was the act of the people, not of the politicians.

This conclusion may be fortified by a comparison with the record of a great New England university. The memorial tablets at Harvard contain the names of one hundred and seventeen of her alumni who gave their lives to the cause of the Union, while the whole number who entered the Union army and navy was nine hundred and thirty-eight. If the same proportion of loss held among the men of our Alma Mater, then there would have been four thousand students and alumni of the University of Virginia in the army and navy of the Confederate States. But the proportion of killed in action was greater on our side, so that this total must be much reduced. We know from the records that not less than two thousand five hundred of the men who followed the battle flag of the Southern Cross were sons of this Virginia University. The actual number was probably considerably larger. Thus though her students and alumni of military age were less numerous than those of Harvard, in something like the proportion of four to seven, yet there were more than three times as many of them serving with the colors in the great conflict; and while one hundred and seventeen men of the Cambridge university laid down

1 This number represents all the students from all the States, North as well as South. Not a few came from localities which were not in sympathy with the South.

their lives for the Union, five hundred and three of the men of the University of Virginia died for the Southern cause — more than four times as many.

As I think of some of these brave young fellows, I recall the scene that used to be presented many an afternoon on the slope of the hill directly to the south of the University lawn — D'Alphonse, the stalwart professor of gymnastics, leading his numerous pupils in singing the "Marsellaise," or ''Les Girondins." The clear fresh voices of those fine young fellows come back to me as I write, — the fine tenor of Robert Falligant rising above the rest, — singing :

Alas! how soon and how unexpectedly were those words to be exemplified on the field of battle, in the gallant deaths of many who sang them then, with little realization of their possible significance for them.

There were two military companies organized at the University the autumn before the fateful cloud of Civil War burst upon the land. These were in no way connected with the organization of the institution, but were purely private and voluntary. One called itself '^The Sons of Liberty," the other took the name of ''The Southern Guard." To the latter I belonged, and when Virginia joined the Confederacy, these two companies of boys were ordered to Winchester, Va., to join in the movement of Gen. Thomas J. Jackson against Harper's Ferry.

I remember that after a long railway ride in box cars (which sadly tarnished our uniforms) we were detrained at Strasburg, and marched to Winchester, eighteen miles distant, beating handsomely in the march the regular companies of State mihtia that formed part of the expedition.