The sunset of the confederacy

Front matter

o V

4 o

, , . ,0'

II

The lines which Lee's army had held throughout the winter began on the north of Richmond, well out from its suburbs, and after circling them about to the east and south, led to Chaffin's Bluff on the James, some six or seven miles below the city. There they crossed to Drury's Bluff, uniting with a line of great strength that started on the bank of Swift Creek nearly opposite Petersburg, securing the railroad between it and Richmond, and barring all exit to our forces in the angle between the rivers. It was known as the Bermuda Hundred line. Those of Petersburg, the main or outer lines, began on the right bank of the Appomattox, ran eastward a mile or less on the crest of a ravine, then bore away southwestward to Hatcher's Run, and after crossing it turned westward till they came to what is known as the Claiborne Road, which they followed northward to the Run again. There they ended, seven or eight miles southwest of Petersburg, and at least thirty odd miles from where they started west of the Brooke Pike north of Richmond.

From Chaffin's Bluff, on the left bank of the James,

back to Richmond, they were several deep, and consisted generally of strong, traversed breastworks, connecting what is known as detached earthworks with heavy parapets and deep ditches, all fronted with abatis and skirmish-line rifle-pits. They still can be traced; and had you, reader, seen our troops try to carry them, as I did, in front of Petersburg, on a hot July morning in the battle-summer of 1864, you would have discovered how truly formidable they were, and your heart would have beaten, I know, with mine, as the column, with flags flying, white and red bands rippling in the morning sun, moved to the assault and was mowed down by the enemy's guns. The gently upward-sloping ground over which the men advanced toward the Crater, for that was the action, was as blue with the bodies of the dead as a field of gentians. Yes, truly their line of works was strong and they had as brave men as ever lived to hold them.

Longstreet's two divisions. Field's and Kershaw's, were in the works north of the James; Mahone of Hill's corps, on the Bermuda Hundred front; while the rest of Hill's troops and a division of Ewell's old corps under Gordon, the one that struck us so hard in the Wilderness, occupied the long Petersburg lines; Lee's cavalry were veiling his right, but widely scattered, having to forage for themselves.

Richmond and its immediate defenses were under Ewell, a serious, long, lean-faced, doming-browed, pop-eyed man, and unconsciously amusing on account of his natural eccentricities, yet one of the kindest, truest-hearted and most lovable that ever lived. He had lost a leg during the War, and when mounted, had to be strapped to his horse " Rifle,'* a flea-bitten gray, and was famous for his skill in " deviling " turkey-legs. When well along in years he married a Widow Brown, and always in introducing any one to her, would say, " Mrs. Brown, allow me to present my friend So-and-so." Ewell was the man, too, who declared that he believed Stonewall Jackson was a lunatic for claiming that he could not use red pepper on account of its giving him rheumatism in his left leg!

What I am about to say in reference to Jackson is of very little concern to my fellow men, for his star is set high and will shine on long after this narrative is forgotten and its writer turned to obscure dust. But for some reason or other, brilliant as were his military exploits, he never won my admiration as a man, like Ewell, Lee, Longstreet, Stuart, and so many others; and had he died without uttering as sweet a sentiment as ever passed the lips of a dying soldier, his career and personality would not engage this pen for a single moment. But when that cold ruminant nature, just on the point of exchanging mortality for immortality, breathes softly between his ashen lips, " Let us cross over the River and lie down in the shade of the trees," and its spirit mounts on its heavenly way, I am conscious of one of life's mysteries, and feel another proof of God's abundance in blessing the world with tender feeling. Without this utterance, Stonewall Jackson would have been nothing more to me than a belated, uninteresting Roundhead, a dull, cast-iron military hero; but with it he is transfigured; and may the last moments of us all be attended with like visions of rest.

Besides a provisional force made up of employees, clerks, convalescents, and the like, Ewell had a small division of two brigades, chiefly heavy artillery, commanded by Custis Lee, the great general's son, to whom, while Custis was a cadet at West Point, Lee wrote as good a letter as ever father wrote to son.

Such in general was the extent and character of Lee's lines and the troops that occupied them just before the final campaign began. Our lines, conforming to theirs in direction, were built like them, and in many places were so very close that one could almost tell the color of a man's eyes.

What was known as the Army of the James, consisting of the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth corps and a small division of cavalry under my classmate Mackenzie, — peace to his ashes ! — held the lines north of the James and those of the Bermuda Hundred front. Facing Petersburg, with its right resting on the Appomattox, was the Ninth corps, commanded by Parke; next came the Sixth, under Wright; then Humphreys with the Second, joining the Fifth, which had been led so long by the unfortunate Warren, and which now held the extreme left.

Sheridan, who had rejoined the Army of the Potomac with the First and Third divisions of his superb cavalry, having struck boldly across the country from the Shenandoah Valley, — and the ashes of its burned mills, barns, and stacks of harvested grain remember him yet, — had united them with their old comrade-division, which had remained with the army, and posted them all well to the front and left of Warren.

Besides these land forces, we had also a number of war-vessels, several of them heavy iron-clads, lying with steam up in the James, off City Point. That was our base of supplies; and at the edge of the bluff overlooking the James and Appomattox (for it is there they meet), was Grant's headquarters. I have no memory of the War more stirring than that which filled the eye from that bluff by day or by night. The broad rivers at our feet, dotted with craft of all kinds: noisy, stubborn tugs, barges, steamboats, steamships, and delicately-masted sailing ships, some coming, some going, threading their way slowly and carefully through the anchored vessels; the bank lined with wharves and storehouses; the narrow space between them and the sharply-pitching, clay bluff, a swarm of army wagons, ambulances, soldiers, laborers, black and white; the grave, steady rumble; the complaining screech of lifting anchors; the whistles hoarse and deep of the passing ships; and lo, plain coffins going aboard the Washington boat on the way home; all that and much more could be seen and heard from sunrise to sunrise. It was pleasant, when all the tumult was over and the hush of night had come, to look down on the river and see the dim red, blue, and yellow lights of the vessels, and all so still save some busy, puffing tug. It was pleasant, but always half-way sad, to hear the little bells on the men-ofwar striking the lonely hours.

Out in the river among all those lights, at the date this narrative deals with, a trim steamboat called the Mary Martin was lying; and aboard was Abraham Lincoln. Knowing from Grant that he was about to move, the President's anxiety was so great that he could not stay in Washington, so he came down to be near his well-beloved army in its last trial.

Such then was the general character of our lines and theirs, and the forces in them at the beginning of the end.

Various figures have been given estimating the strength of Lee's army. That it was nearer fifty than forty thousand I am inclined to believe. But however that may be. Grant had more than twice as many; and, moreover, his army had had warm clothing and food in abundance, while Lee's had had neither sufficient food nor clothing, and the winter had been one of rigorous, miserable cold.

The following letter from Lee to the Confederate Secretary of War lifts the curtain on his army's dismal state: "Yesterday, Feby. 7th, 1865 — the most inclement day of the winter — the troops had to be maintained in line of battle, having been in the same condition two previous days and nights. I regret to be compelled to state that under these circumstances, heightened by assaults and fire of the enemy, some of the men have been without meat for three days and all are suffering from reduced rations, scant clothing, exposed to battle, cold, hail, and sleet. Their physical strength, if their courage survives, must fail under this treatment."

Although they were true of heart and their faithfulness reached to the clouds, there was something more than the lack of food and clothing that wasted the spirits of his men. Defeat had drawn near and was staring at them, and the future was growing blacker and blacker.

" Eleven men of the 1st regiment," says the historian of McGowan's South Carolina brigade, " quitted camp in the early part of March, 1865, and started for home. Five were captured, four shot; one of these four had been an excellent soldier and bore that day the scars of three wounds received in battle."

On the other hand, for our men a sense of oncoming victory was kindling the sky of their hopes as the sun flushes the dawn.

Ill

Grant, having resolved to bring the issue to its ultimate trial, on the night of March 27 brought Ord from north of the James with three divisions of infantry, two white and one colored, and Mackenzie's cavalry. When they reached Humphreys' and Warren's lines, Ord's troops slipped into them as these two veteran corps drew out preparatory to moving for Lee's right. Leaving Parke, Wright, and Ord in the lines, Grant, with Sheridan leading, started Humphreys and Warren on the morning of Wednesday the twenty-ninth.

Lee was alert to his danger, and on the thirty-first struck Warren, who was feeling for his right, a heavy blow. Meanwhile Sheridan had gained Dinwiddle Court-House, four or five miles beyond Warren, and had moved toward Five Forks on his way to the South Side Railroad, about all of the enemy's cavalry having gathered in to head him off. Lee, realizing how important it was to check Sheridan, sent Pickett and Bushrod Johnson's divisions of infantry to the aid of his cavalry, and together on the thirty-first they drove Sheridan back to Dinwiddle, winning almost a complete victory over him.

But threatened by Warren, who had been ordered by Grant to face about and attack their left rear, they withdrew during the night (Friday) to Five Forks, and there threw up a temporary Kne of entrenchments.

As soon as Lee, in the course of the forenoon of April first, Saturday, heard that Sheridan was likely to renew the offensive, he started several brigades under Anderson to Pickett's help, for at that juncture of his situation it was not only vital that Sheridan should be stayed, but also thrown back from Five Forks; but before Anderson could reach Pickett, Sheridan, reinforced by Warren, assailed him and drove him with great confusion from the field, capturing thousands of prisoners and several guns, the uncaptured Confederates fleeing northward in utter confusion through the darkness, for it was just at nightfall that they met their overwhelming defeat.

Pickett's and Fitz Lee's failure to hold that position was fatal, and offered a singular instance of Fortune's bad turn of her wheel for Lee; inasmuch as, when Sheridan made his attack, the famous, long-haired Pickett, Gettysburg's hero, and the cavalry commanders, blue and gay-eyed Fitz Lee, gigantic, high-shouldered and black-eyed Rosser, were engaged in planking shad on the north bank of Hatcher's Run, two miles or more in the rear of their resolute but greatly outnumbered troops. Although the fire was quick and heavy, it was completely smothered by tlie intervening timber, and notwithstanding the heroic efforts of the gallant Munford and the infantry brigade commanders, before Fitz Lee, Pickett and K-osser got to the front the day was lost; so at least the story was told to me by my friend Rosser, who lately and in honor went to his grave.

The news of this disaster did not reach Lee till about half-past seven Saturday night, whereupon he telegraphed to Longstreet, in the lines north of the James, to come to Petersburg at once with one of his divisions; while Grant, as soon as the same news reached him, — he was sitting alone before a struggling camp-fire in a thick, dripping pine wood, for it was raining hard, — ordered all the guns to open on the Petersburg lines, and the Sixth and Ninth corps to assault at daybreak.

Longstreet, in response to Lee's dispatch, started Field's division by rail, and then set off with his staff across the country for Petersburg and Lee's headquarters. To his dying day he spoke of that night's long ride. ■ Of course, our batteries having opened in obedience to Grant's orders, theirs replied; and, as Longstreet rode on, those revengeful batteries answered each other with jarring thunder, and heavy mortar-shells rose from fort to fort, the small, trailing red lights of their burning, sputtering fuses outlining against the pitchy sky their high curving way. Sometimes one was just rising for its flight as the other, coming down with accelerated speed, exploded with surly, tremendous roar. Few men ever took a ride on a dark night toward the boom of a hundred guns, under a sky like that.

It was about dawn Sunday, April 2nd, when he reached Lee's headquarters at the Turnbull House, several miles southwest of Petersburg. Lee was still on his bed suffering from rheumatism, an ailment which had troubled him, and sometimes seriously, for years. He had Longs treet come to a seat at his bedside, explained what had happened the evening before at Five Forks, and told him to go, as soon as his troops arrived, to the support of Pickett's men, on whom he laid no blame or reproach as they had had to meet greatly superior numbers. But at that very hour, and long before Field of Longstreet's division got to Petersburg, the crisis had come; Lee's lines had been broken, and it was no longer a question of regaining Five Forks, but of holding on to Petersburg itself.

The Sixth and Ninth corps, arrayed several lines deep, their pioneers in front with axes to cut openings through the abatis, made their assaults, the former on Hill's, the latter Gordon's, just as the gray light of morning was sifting in. They carried their points of attack, a mile or so apart, valiantly, but with heavy loss, for the enemy, although greatly overmatched in numbers, defended their lines with uncommon bravery.

Not long since, toward the close of a liazy October day, I stood on the ground the Ninth corps won. The field, over which they advanced so firmly, sloped away to the east, and lay beautifully still in its autumn dream. The shadows were long, and a herd of cows at the lower edge of the pasture were feeding toward the gate, while some barefooted boys were approaching to let them go home through the bars for the evening milking. There were no flaming colors, no roar of guns or crash of bursting shells, no dead and bayoneted Confederates (for they stood to the very last), no wild cheers or trumpets pealing; but I thought I heard the mellow notes of a distant harp, and if I were asked whence they came I should guess that the harp was resting against the breast of Glory, and with swimming eyes her hands were sweeping the strings softly for the dead of both armies.

As soon as A. P. Hill heard of the Sixth corps' successful assault he left his headquarters, which was not far from Lee's, to go to his disrupted lines. Accompanied by a single courier, he came suddenly, at the edge of a wood, upon two of our men belonging to Wright's corps, who had pushed on through the breach. Hill drew his pistol and demanded their immediate surrender, whereupon they skipped behind a big tree, and, resting their guns one above the other against it, fired, killing him instantly. Soon his body was found, taken to Petersburg, and placed in an ambulance which started for Richmond, arriving at the south end of Mayo's Bridge about midnight. There the ambulance had to wait an hour or more, owing to the tide of troops and flight of citizens pouring over the bridge out of the city. Once across, the men drove to an undertaker's shop whose doors had been demolished by the mob, and after groping awhile in the darkness their hands fell on a coffin. They washed the face of the punctilious and ever gallant man, and on pulling off his gauntlets found that the fatal shot had cut off the thumb of his left hand and passed directly through his heart, coming out at the back. Closing the lid tenderly over him, they put the casket into the ambulance, recrossed the bridge and wended their way up the south side of the island-dotted, royal James; and about two o'clock on Monday afternoon they buried him in the old Winston family graveyard. Many fields, as well they may, treasure his name; and when Lee was breathing his last, Hill's image, with Stonewall Jackson's, was in his glazing eye.

That portion of Hill's corps to the left, as they faced their own works, of the point the Sixth corps carried, rallied behind Gordon, who, although he had lost the right of his lines, was holding the Ninth corps under Parke from making further headway. Hill's other brigades, among them Cooke's, Scales's, Lane's, McRae's, and McGowan's, — cut off from falling back on Petersburg by the advance of the

Sixth corps through the gate it had opened with such high valor, — followed what are known as the Cox and the River roads up the south side of the Appomattox, pursued by Miles 's division of Humphreys' corps.

By ten o'clock — it was about this hour Lee sent the telegram whose receipt by Mr. Davis has already been given — all the outer lines of Petersburg, except those stubbornly held by Gordon on the north side, were in our hands.

IV

Grant's and Meade's movements meanwhile are given with detail in the diary of that gallant soldier and cultivated gentleman. Col. Theodore Lyman, on Meade's staff.

"April 2nd. 7.30. Dispatch that McCalHster of 3d. div. 2d. corps had captured the picket line in his front — Humphreys', — a good deal of cheering from the right of the 2d. corps — Seymour of the 6th said to be on the south side track.

" 8.15 A. M. Dispatch that Ord and Hays (2d. div. 2d. corps) have taken the line in their front. (The 19th and 20th Mass. took a work with several guns and some hundreds of prisoners.) In fact the enemy were abandoning this part of the line as fast as possible, and moving to their own right. At this time the General rode off to the left, — i. e. to the west — with myself alone, so that, for some time, I wrote his orders and dispatches.

" 8.45 A. M. Sent telegraph ordering Benham to move up at once to Parke, from City Point. We found Gen. Grant in an open field, in front of Dabney's Mill, and, after a few moments of conversation. Gen. Meade kept on to the left and followed our line of breastworks, the men of Mott's division cheering him loudly.

" 9 A. M. At the Rainie house we found Gen. Humphreys. Miles's division, having been down the plank, was returning, and was ordered up the Claiborne road, while the rest of Humphreys's force was to move by the left flank and pass up the Boydton road. It was presumed (10 a. m.) that Sheridan and 5th. corps would be moving along the Cox and River roads, towards Petersburg, and would join our left (Miles's div.); Sheridan, however, turned N. W. and followed that part of the enemy that went along the Namozine road, the 5th corps being still detached under his orders. Meantime, Wright, finding that no enemy lay between him and the advancing 2d. corps, faced about and moved on Petersburg, so that his left might swing to the Appomattox, while his right should touch the left of the 24th corps that was reaching towards the 9th.

" Now we started for the most interesting ride that perhaps I ever had, a ride straight up the Boydton plank road, where hitherto none might go, save as prisoners of war! We passed the battery, whence came the fatal shot for poor Mills, and the entrenched line, with its abatis. Then descended to Hatcher's Run bridge, where our men planted their flag at the first fight there. We crossed, rode up the ascent and came on the wide space of open land that surrounds the town. As we struck the rear of the column marching onward, the men broke into loud cheers which were continued all along. It was grand! We halted at 12, by the Harmon house, where Gen. Grant already was. Meantime Parke's men were holding on gallantly to their captures, while the enemy knew their only safety lay in disputing to the utmost. One lunette was retaken by them, but the rest remained with us.'* All of the Confederate outer lines to the right of Gordon having now been carried or abandoned, the Sixth, Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth corps, and two divisions of Humphreys' Second corps, began to converge on the extreme right of the inner line of Petersburg's defenses. About one o'clock Foster's and Turner's divisions, under Gibbon, drew up in front of Forts Gregg and Baldwin, the latter a redoubt, the former an enclosed work with heavy parapets and a deep ditch, which one of the heroic defenders says was about fourteen feet wide, eight feet deep and about eleven feet to the top of the parapet. These field-works were connected by an unfinished line of rifle-pits and surmounted a gentle incline, which rose from a sluggish, difficult slough, its clear slope forming a natural glacis to the brave forts. Gregg, named for a very gallant man who laid down his life in the previous autumn in front of their lines north of the James, was stockaded in the rear with loopholes for musketry, and at the time of the assault had a section of three-inch rifled guns, of Captain Chew's Maryland battery commanded by Lieutenant Frank McElroy of the Washington Artillery of New Orleans. These guns, it is said, had been captured at Winchester on Lee's march to Gettysburg in the long June days of 1863.

The garrison consisted mainly of the 12th and 16th Mississippi of Harris' brigade, who, having been brought over from the Bermuda Hundred front the night before to go to the aid of Pickett at Five Forks, in the morning, on account of Hill's lines having been broken, were hurried back from their bivouac beyond the Turnbull house, Lee's headquarters, to the inner line, and sent to man Gregg and Baldwin. On reaching the forts they found some artillerymen and squads of infantry of other commands already there, making, in all, somewhat over three hundred men in Gregg. How many there were in Baldwin, chiefly Mississippians of Harris' brigade, I do not know, but howsoever many there were or from which soever of the southern states they hailed, they and their comrades in Gregg made a defense as glorious as any troops have ever made; for like two glittering peaks their valor ended the war's mountain range of carnage.

Gibbon moved up Foster's division to charging distance, some four or five hundred yards from Gregg. Osborn's brigade on the right, Dandy's and Fairchild's on the left. Turner marshalled two of his brigades. Potter's and Curtis', in close support. And at one p. m. that war-famous Sunday the trumpet sounded the charge, and off with determined faces, under leaning, rippHng colors, our men dashed at Gregg. Osborn's 39th Illinois, moving straight forward, struck the front of the fort, the 67th Ohio, the salient to the right, the 62nd Ohio and 199th Pennsylvania that on the left. Dandy led on the 100th New York, 10th Connecticut and 11th Maine. No sooner had they cleared the hampering slough with its sluggish pools and mane of willows and other water-loving bushes, than the little garrisons opened and from their dominating parapets poured levelled sheets of deadly musketry and canister, for the cannoneers, knowing what was coming, had piled every round they had within close grasp.

By the time our men reached the moat, the glacis that had lovingly held on its sloping bosom many a sheaf of cradled wheat, was strewn with ripened sheaves of Northern courage, but note, alas! the soaked, crimson-stained uniforms and the glazing eyes of the gallant dead. Of course, the moat was a galling and effective obstruction. It soon filled with men struggling frantically to clamber up the high parapet, where they were met with pistol and bayonet, and it was only after twenty-five or thirty minutes of awful slaughter that the heroic garrison was conquered, and Dandy says : "I forbear to describe the scene inside that work after the surrender but I think at least one-fourth of the entire garrison was killed." As soon as Gregg surrendered, its guns were turned on Baldwin and Colonel Jaynes and a number of men were made prisoners.

It appears, according to Captain A. K. Jones of Port Gibson, Mississippi, who was one of the defenders of Gregg, that as the 12th and 16th were filing into the forts. General Cadmus Wilcox, commanding a division of their corps, the 3rd (the body of its spare, brilliant commander, A. P. Hill, was hardly cold) , galloped up to Captain Jones, and dismounting, wanted to know who was in command. " Colonel Duncan! " replied Jones, and then Wilcox, mounting his horse so as to be heard, exclaimed in a loud voice, " Men, the salvation of Lee's army is in your keeping. Don't surrender this fort. If you can check the enemy for two hours, Longstreet will be here and the danger averted." Our artillery cut short his speech. How well the Mississippians and their brother Southerners in the fort answered to that appeal let Gibbon's and Turner's losses tell, — ten officers and one hundred and twelve men killed outright, twenty-seven officers and five hundred and sixty -five men wounded. — And in the fort clad in gray lay fifty-seven Confederate dead. These numbers, I think, fall short of the actual casualties.

By the time these works were carried. Field's division of Longstreet's corps, that had been delayed three or four hours by a breakdown of the trains they were on, arrived from the Richmond lines and under Lee's very eye moved into the inner line of defenses and our men were in neither condition or mood to tackle them.

By half-past three p. M., Miles overtook the forces fleeing westward, who, joining those that had set out to support Pickett, gave him battle at Sutherlands Station, some ten or twelve miles west of Petersburg, but were defeated at last with the loss of guns.

Lee's situation was now exceedingly grave, and although Gordon's men were responding with great steadiness, the chances were barely even that he could hold on till night; and in case he could not, it was manifestly clear that the long-dreaded hour had come when both Petersburg and Richmond would have to be given up.

And what the effects would be of Richmond's downfall its leading paper, the Examiner, had only a few weeks before set forth with seriousness and emphasis. " Our armies," said the able editor, " would lose the incentive inspired by a great and worthy object of defense; our military policy would be totally at sea; we should be without a hope or object, without civil or military organization; without a treasury or commissariat; without the means of keeping alive a wholesome and active public sentiment; without any of the appliances for supporting a cause depending upon a popular faith and enthusiasm; without the emblems or the semblance of nationality."

In view of the end, which we now so clearly see was inevitable, I have sometimes thought it would have been better, sparing lives and days of suffering, had Lee that afternoon asked terms then and there of Grant. For Mr. Lincoln, who, like Solomon, had " wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart," was at City Point, only a few miles away; and, knowing his sagacity and his longing for peace, we can be sure that he would have dealt wisely and been abundantly generous. Besides, it might have proved a stroke on Lee's part attended with far-reaching and beneficent political results, that would have stamped a fitting obverse to his military fame, inasmuch as Mr. Lincoln's terms, backed as they would have been by the honor and good faith of the veteran Army of the Potomac, might have outlined a policy so merciful and practical for bringing the states once more into harmony, that, notwithstanding his cruel and shameful death, the politicians would not have dared to repudiate it.