Chapter LII
Siege of Petersburg.--Violent Assault upon our Position.--A Cavalry Expedition.--Contest near Ream's Station.--The City invested with Earthworks.--Position of the Forces.--The Mine exploded, and an Assault made.--Attacks on our Lines.--Object of the Enemy.--Our Strength.--Assault on Fort Fisher.--Evacuation of Wilmington.-- Purpose of Grant's Campaign.--Lee's Conference with the President.--Plans.--Sortie against Fort Steadman.--Movements of Grant farther to Lee's right.--Army retires from Petersburg.--The Capitulation.--Letters of Lee.
After the battle of Cold Harbor, the geography of the country no longer enabled General Grant, by a flank movement to his left, to keep himself covered by a stream, and yet draw nearer to his objective point, Richmond. He had now reached the Chickahominy, and to move down the east bank of that stream would be to depart further from the prize he sought, the capital of the Confederacy. His overland march had cost him the loss of more men than Lee's army contained at the beginning of the campaign. He now, from considerations which may fairly be assumed to have been the result of his many unsuccessful assaults on Lee's army, or from other considerations which I am not in a position to suggest, decided to seek a new base on the James River, and to attempt the capture of our capital by a movement from the south. With this view, on the night of June 12th he commenced a movement by the lower crossings of the Chickahominy toward the James River. General Lee learned of the withdrawal on the next morning, and moved to our pontoon-bridge above Drury's Bluff. While Grant's army was making this march to James River, General Smith, with his division, which had arrived at Bermuda Hundred, was, on the night of the 14th, directed to move against Petersburg, with an additional force of two divisions, it being supposed that this column would be sufficient to effect what General Butler's previous attempts had utterly failed to accomplish, the capture of Petersburg and the destruction of the Southern Railroad. On the morning of the 15th the attack was made, the exterior redoubts and rifle-pits were carried, and the column advanced toward the inner works, but the artillery was used so effectively as to impress the commander of the assailants with the idea that there must be a large supporting force of infantry, and the attack was suspended so as to allow the columns in rear to come up.
Hancock's corps was on the south side of the James River, before the attack on Petersburg commenced, and was ordered to move forward, but not informed that an attack was to be made, nor directed to march to Petersburg until late in the afternoon, when he received orders to move to the aid of General Smith. It being night when the junction was made, it was deemed prudent to wait until morning. Had they known how feeble was the garrison, it is probable that Petersburg would have been captured that night; but with the morning came another change, as marked as that from darkness to light. Lee crossed the James River on the 15th, and by a night march his advance was in the entrenchments of Petersburg before the morning for which the enemy was waiting. The artillery now had other support than the old men and boys of the town.
The Confederates promptly seized the commanding points and rapidly strengthened their lines, so that the morning's reconnaissance indicated to the enemy the propriety of postponing an attack until all his force should arrive.
On the 17th an assault was made with such spirit and force as to gain a part of our line, in which, however, the assailants suffered severely. Lee had now constructed a line in rear of the one first occupied, having such advantages as gave to our army much greater power to resist. On the morning of the 18th Grant ordered a general assault, but finding that the former line had been evacuated, and a new one on more commanding ground had been constructed, the assault was postponed until the afternoon; then attacks were made by heavy columns on various parts of our line, with some partial success, but the final result was failure everywhere, and with extraordinary sacrifice of life.
With his usual persistence, he had made attack after attack, and for the resulting carnage had no gain to compensate. The eagerness manifested leads to the supposition that it was expected to capture the place while Lee with part of his force was guarding against an advance on Richmond by the river road. The four days' experience seems to have convinced Grant of the impolicy of assault, for thereafter he commenced to lay siege to the place. On the 21st a heavy force of the enemy was advanced more to our right, in the vicinity of the Weldon Railroad, which runs southward from Petersburg. But General Lee, observing an interval between the left of the Second and right of the Sixth of the enemy's corps, sent forward a column under General A. P. Hill, which, entering the interval, poured a fire into the flank of one corps on the right and the other on the left, doubling their flank divisions up on their center, and driving them with disorder and with heavy loss. Several entire regiments, a battery, and many standards were captured, when Hill, having checked the advance which was directed against the Weldon Railroad, withdrew with his captures to his former position, bringing with him the guns and nearly three thousand prisoners.
On the same night, a cavalry expedition, consisting of the divisions of Generals Wilson and Kautz, numbering about six thousand men, was sent west to cut the Weldon, Southside, and Danville Railroads, which connected our army with the south and west. This raid resulted in important injury to our communications. The enemy's cavalry tore up large distances of the tracks of all three of the railroads, burning the wood-work and laying waste the country around. But they were pursued and harassed by a small body of cavalry under General W. H. F. Lee, and, on their return near Ream's Station, were met, near Sapponey Church, by a force of fifteen hundred cavalry under General Hampton. That officer at once attacked. The fighting continued fiercely throughout the night, and at dawn the enemy's cavalry retreated in confusion. Near Ream's Station, at which point they attempted to cross the Weldon Railroad, they were met by General Fitzhugh Lee's horsemen and a body of infantry under General Mahone, and the force completed their discomfiture. After a brief attempt to force their way, they broke in disorder, leaving behind them twelve pieces of artillery, and more than a thousand prisoners, and many wagons and ambulances. The railroads were soon repaired, and the enemy's cavalry was for the time rendered unfit for service.
Every attempt made to force General Lee's lines having proved unsuccessful, General Grant determined upon the method of slow approaches, and proceeded to confront the city with a line of earthworks, and, by gradually extending the line to his left, he hoped to reach out toward the Weldon and Southside Railroads. To obtain possession of these roads now became the special object with him, and all his movements had regard to that end. Petersburg is twenty-two miles south of Richmond, and is connected with the south and west by the Weldon and Southside Railroads, the latter of which crosses the Danville Railroad, the main line of communication between Richmond and the Gulf States. With the enemy once holding these roads and those north of the city, Richmond would be isolated, and it would have been necessary for the Confederate army to evacuate eastern Virginia.
It will be seen from what has been written that, though the operations against Petersburg have been ordinarily called a siege, it could not in strictness of language be so denominated, as the communications in the rear, as well as to the north and south, were still open. It was really a conflict between opposing intrenchments.
General Grant had crossed a force into Charles City, on the north bank of the James, and thus menaced Richmond with an assault from that quarter. His line extended thence across the neck of the peninsula of Bermuda Hundred, and east and south of Petersburg, where it gradually stretched westward, approaching nearer and nearer to the railroads bringing the supplies for our army and for Richmond. The line of General Lee conformed to that of General Grant. In addition to the works east and southeast of Richmond, an exterior line of defense had been constructed against the hostile forces at Deep Bottom, and, in addition to a fortification of some strength at Drury's Bluff, obstructions were placed in the river to prevent the ascent of the Federal gunboats. The lines thence continued facing those of the enemy north of the Appomattox, and, crossing that stream, extended around the city of Petersburg, gradually moving westward with the works of the enemy. The struggle that ensued consisted chiefly of attempts to break through our lines. These it is not my purpose to notice seriatim; some of them, however, it is thought necessary to mention. While at Petersburg, the assaults of the enemy were met by a resistance sufficient to repel his most vigorous attacks; our force confronting Deep Bottom was known to be so small as to suggest an attempt to capture Richmond by a movement on the north side of the James. On the 26th of July a corps of infantry was sent over to Deep Bottom to move against our pontoon-bridges near to Drury's Bluff, so as to prevent Lee from sending reënforcements to the north side of the James, while Sheridan with his cavalry moved to the north side of Richmond to attack the works which, being poorly garrisoned, it was thought might be taken by assault. Lee, discovering the movement after the enemy had gained some partial success, sent over reënforcements, which drove him back and defeated the expedition. On the night of the 28th the infantry corps (Hancock's) was secretly withdrawn from the north side of the river, to coöperate in the grand assault which Grant was preparing to make upon Lee's intrenchments. The uniform failure, as has been stated, of the assaults upon our lines had caused the conclusion that they could only succeed after a breach had been made in the works. For that purpose a subterranean gallery for a mine was run under one of our forts. General Burnside, who conducted the operation, thus describes the work:
"The main gallery of the mine is five hundred and twenty-two feet in length, the side-galleries about forty feet each. My suggestion is that eight magazines be placed in the lateral galleries, two at each end, say a few feet apart, at right angles to the side-gallery, and two more in each of the side-galleries, similarly placed by pairs, situated equidistant from each other, and the end of the galleries, thus:
"I proposed to put in each of the eight magazines from twelve to fourteen hundred pounds of powder, the magazines to be connected by a trough of powder instead of a fuse."
It appears that it was decided that the charge should be eight thousand pounds instead of the larger amount proposed.[119] Between four and five o'clock on the morning of the 30th of July the mine was exploded, and simultaneously the enemy's batteries commenced firing, when, as previously arranged, the column of attack moved forward to the breach, with instructions to rush through it and seize the crest of a ridge in rear of our fort, so as to interpose a force between our troops and in rear of our batteries. A question had arisen as to whether the assaulting column should consist of white or negro troops; of each, there were brigades in General Burnside's division, which occupied that part of the line nearest to the mine, and therefore seems to have been considered as the command from which the troops to constitute the storming column must be selected. The explosion was destructive to our artillery and its small supporting force immediately above the mine.
An opening, one hundred and fifty feet long, sixty feet wide, and thirty feet deep, suddenly appeared in the place of the earthworks, and the division of the enemy selected for the charge rushed forward to pierce the opening. A Southern writer[120] thus describes what ensued:
"The white division charged, reached the crater, stumbled over the debris, were suddenly met by a merciless fire of artillery fusillading them right and left and of infantry fusillade them in front; faltered, hesitated, were badly led, lost heart, gave up the plan of seizing the crest in rear, huddled into the crater man on top of man, company mingled with company; and upon this disordered, unstrung, quivering mass of human beings, white and black--for the black troops had followed--was poured a hurricane of shot, shell, canister, musketry, which made the hideous crater a slaughter-pen, horrible and frightful, beyond the power of words. All order was lost; all idea of charging the crest abandoned. Lee's infantry was seen concentrating for the carnival of death; his artillery was massing to destroy the remnants of the charging divisions; those who deserted the crater, to scramble over the debris and run back, were shot down; then all that was left to the shuddering mass of blacks and whites in the pit was to shrink lower, evade the horrible mitraille, and wait for a charge of their friends to rescue them or surrender."
The forces of the enemy finally succeeded in making their way back, with a loss of about four thousand prisoners, and General Lee, whose casualties were small, reestablished his line without interruption. This affair was subsequently investigated by a committee of the Congress of the United States, and their report declared that "the first and great cause of the disaster was the employment of white instead of black troops to make the charge."
Attacks continued to be made on our lines during the months of August and September, but, as in former instances, they were promptly repulsed. On August 18th the enemy seized on a portion of the Weldon Railroad near Petersburg, and on the 25th this success was followed up by an attempt, under General Hancock, to take possession of Reams's Station on the same road, farther south. He was defeated by Heth's division and a portion of Wilcox's, under the direction of General A. P. Hill, and, having lost heavily, was compelled to retreat. These events did not, however, materially affect the general result. The enemy's left gradually reached farther and farther westward, until it had passed the Vaughan, Squirrel Level, and other roads running southwestward from Petersburg, and in October was established on the left bank of Hatcher's Run. The movement was designed to reach the Southside Railroad. A heavy column crossed Hatcher's Run, and made an obstinate attack on our lines, in order to break through to the railroad. This column was met in front and flank by Generals Hampton and W. H. F. Lee, with dismounted sharpshooters. Infantry was hastened forward by General Lee, and the enemy was driven back. This closed for the winter active operations against our lines at Petersburg.
When the campaign opened on the Rapidan, General Lee's effective strength was in round numbers sixty thousand of all arms; that of General Grant at the same time one hundred and forty thousand. In the many battles fought before the close of the campaign. Grant's loss had been a multiple of that sustained by Lee; but the large reënforcements he had received, both before and after he crossed the James River, repaired his losses, and must have increased the numerical disparity between the two armies; yet, notwithstanding the great superiority in the number of his force, the long-projected movement for the reduction of Fort Fisher and the capture of Wilmington was delayed, because of Grant's unwillingness to detach any of his troops for that purpose until after active operations had been suspended before Petersburg.
It was proposed to make a combined land and naval attack-- Major-General B. F, Butler to command the land-forces, and Admiral D. D. Porter the fleet. The enemy seems about this time to have conceived a new means of destroying forts; it was, to place a large amount of powder in a ship, and, having anchored off the fort, to explode the powder and so destroy the works and incapacitate the garrison as to enable a storming party to capture them. How near to Fort Fisher it was expected to anchor the ship I do not know, nor have I learned how far it was supposed the open atmosphere could be made to act as a projectile. General Whiting, the brave and highly accomplished soldier, who was in command of the defenses of Wilmington, stated that the powder-ship did not come nearer to Fort Fisher than twelve or fifteen hundred yards. He further stated that he heard the report of the explosion at Wilmington, and sent a telegram to Colonel Lamb, the commanding officer at the fort, to inquire what it meant, and was answered, "Enemy's gunboat blown up." No effect, as might have been anticipated, was produced on the fort.[121] From the same source it is learned that the combined force of this expedition was about six thousand five hundred land-troops and fifty vessels of war of various sizes and classes, several ironclads, and the ship charged with two hundred and thirty-five tons of powder. Some of the troops landed, but after a reconnaissance of the fort, which then had a garrison of about six thousand five hundred men, the troops were reembarked, and thus the expedition ended.
On January 15, 1865, the attempt was renewed with a larger number of troops, amounting, after the arrival of General Schofield, to twenty-odd thousand. Porter's fleet also received additional vessels, making the whole number fifty-eight engaged in the attack. The garrison of Fort Fisher had been increased to about double the number of men there on the 24th of December. The iron-clad vessels of the enemy approached nearer the fort than on a former occasion, and the fire of the fleet was more concentrated and vastly more effective. Many of the guns in the fort were dismounted, and the parapets seriously injured, by the fire. The garrison stood bravely to their guns, and, when the assault was made, fought with such determined courage as to repulse the first column, and obstinately contended with another approaching from the land-side, continuing the fight long after they had got into the fort. Finally, overwhelmed by numbers, and after the fort and its armament had been mainly destroyed by a bombardment--I believe greater than ever before concentrated upon a fort--the remnant of the garrison surrendered. The heroic and highly gifted General Whiting was mortally, and the gallant commander of the fort, Colonel Lamb, was seriously, wounded. They both fell into the hands of the enemy. General Hoke, distinguished by brilliant service on other fields, had been ordered down to support the garrison, and under the directions of General Bragg, commanding the department, had advanced to attack the investing force, but a reconnaissance convinced them both that his command was too weak to effect the object. The other forts, of necessity, fell with the main work, Fisher, and were abandoned. Hoke, with his small force retiring through Wilmington, after destroying the public vessels and property, to prevent them from falling into the hands of the enemy, slowly fell back, fighting at several points, and seeking to find in the separation of the vastly superior army which was following him opportunity to attack a force the number of which should not greatly exceed his own, and finally made a junction with General Johnston, then opposing Sherman's advance through North Carolina.
The fixed purpose of General Grant's campaign of 1864 was the capture of Richmond, the Confederate capital. For this he had assembled the large army with which he crossed the Rapidan and fought the numerous battles between there and the James River. For this he had moved against Petersburg, the capture of which in itself was not an object so important as to have justified the effort made to that end. It was only valuable because it was on the line of communication with the more southern States, and offered another approach to Richmond. In his attack upon Petersburg it will be seen from the events already described that he adopted neither of the two plans which were open to him: the one, the concentration of all his efforts to break the line covering Petersburg; the other, to move his army round it and seize the Weldon and Southside Railroads, so as to cut off the supplies of Lee's army and compel the evacuation of both Petersburg and Richmond. Had there been approximate equality between his army and that of Lee, he could not wisely have ventured upon the latter movement against a soldier so able as his antagonist; but the vast numerical superiority of Grant's army might well have induced him to invite Lee to meet him in the open field. He did, however, neither the one nor the other, but something of both.
In the opening of the campaign of 1865, he continued, as he had done in 1864, to extend his line to the left, seeking, after having gained the Weldon Railroad, to reach still farther to that connecting Petersburg with the Richmond and Danville Railroad. Lee, with a well-deserved confidence in his troops and his usual intrepidity, drew from his lines of defense men enough to enable him for a long time to defeat the enemy in these efforts, by extension to turn his right flank. After Grant's demonstration on the north side of the James by sending over Hancock's corps had been virtually abandoned by its withdrawal, Longstreet's corps, which had been sent to oppose it, remained for a long time on the north side of the James. Finally, General Ewell with a few troops, the Richmond reserves, and a division of the navy under Admiral Semmes, held the river and land defenses on the east side of Richmond.
General A. R. Lawton, who had become the quartermaster-general of the Confederate army, ably supported by Lewis E. Harvie, President of the Richmond and Danville Railroad, increased the carrying capacity of that line so as to compensate for our loss of the use of the Weldon Railroad. At the same time, General St. John, chief of the commissariat, by energetic efforts and the use of the Virginia Canal, kept up the supplies of General Lee's army, so as to secure from him the complimentary acknowledgment, made about a month before the evacuation of Petersburg, that the army there had not been so well supplied for many months.
During the months of February and March, Lee's army was materially reduced by the casualties of battle and the frequency of absence without leave. I will not call these absentees deserters, because they did not leave to join the enemy, and again, because in some instances where the facts were fully developed, they had gone to their necessitous families with intent to return and resume their places in the line of battle. His cavalry force had been also diminished by the absence of General Hampton's division, to which permission had been given to go to their home, South Carolina, to get fresh horses, and also to fill up their ranks. Long, arduous, and distant service had rendered both necessary.
In the early part of March, as well as my memory can fix the date, General Lee held with me a long and free conference. He stated that the circumstances had forced on him the conclusion that the evacuation of Petersburg was but a question of time. He had early and fully appreciated the embarrassment which would result from losing the workshops and foundry at Richmond, which had been our main reliance for the manufacture and repair of arms as well as the preparation of ammunition. The importance of Richmond in this regard was, however, then less than it had been by the facilities which had been created for these purposes at Augusta, Selma, Fayetteville, and some smaller establishments; also by the progress which was being made for a large armory at Macon, Georgia. To my inquiry whether it would not be better to anticipate the necessity by withdrawing at once, he said that his artillery and draught horses were too weak for the roads in their then condition, and that he would have to wait until they became firmer. There naturally followed the consideration of the line of retreat. A considerable time before this General Hood had sent me a paper, presenting his views and conclusion that, if it became necessary for the Army of Northern Virginia to retreat, it should move toward Middle Tennessee. The paper was forwarded to General Lee and returned by him with an unfavorable criticism, and the conclusion that, if we had to retreat, it should be in a southwardly direction toward the country from which we were drawing supplies, and from which a large portion of our forces had been derived. In this conversation the same general view was more specifically stated, and made to apply to the then condition of affairs. The programme was to retire to Danville, at which place supplies should be collected and a junction made with the troops under General J. E. Johnston, the combined force to be hurled upon Sherman in North Carolina, with the hope of defeating him before Grant could come to his relief. Then the more southern States, freed from pressure and encouraged by this success, it was expected, would send large reënforcements to the army, and Grant, drawn far from his base of supplies into the midst of a hostile population, it was hoped, might yet be defeated, and Virginia be delivered from the invader. Efforts were energetically continued, to collect supplies in depots where they would be available, and, in furtherance of the suggestion of General Lee as to the necessary improvement in the condition of his horses, the quartermaster-general was instructed to furnish larger rations of corn to the quartermaster at Petersburg.
Though of unusually calm and well-balanced judgment, General Lee was instinctively averse to retiring from his enemy, and had so often beaten superior numbers that his thoughts were no doubt directed to every possible expedient which might enable him to avoid retreat. It thus fell out that, in a week or two after the conference above noticed, he presented to me the idea of a sortie against the enemy near to the right of his line. This was rendered the more feasible, from the constant extension of Grant's line to the left, and the heavy bodies of troops he was employing to turn our right. The sortie, if entirely successful, so as to capture and hold the works on Grant's right, as well as three forts on the commanding ridge in his rear, would threaten his line of communication with his base, City Point, and might compel him to move his forces around ours to protect it; if only so far successful as to cause the transfer of his troops from his left to his right, it would relieve our right, and delay the impending disaster for the more convenient season for retreat.
Fort Steadman was the point against which the sortie was directed; its distance from our lines was less than two hundred yards, but an abatis covered its front. For this service, requiring equal daring and steadiness, General John B. Gordon, well proved on many battle-fields, was selected. His command was the remnant of Ewell's corps, troops often tried in the fiery ordeal of battle, and always found true as tempered steel. Before daylight, on the morning of the 25th of March, Gordon moved his command silently forward. His pioneers were sent in advance to make openings through the obstructions, and the troops rushed forward, surprised and captured the garrison, then turned the guns upon the adjacent works and soon drove the enemy from them. A detachment was now sent to seize the commanding ground and works in the rear, the batteries of which, firing into the gorges of the forts on the right and left, would soon make a wide opening in Grant's line. The guides to this detachment misled it in the darkness of a foggy dawn far from the point to which it was directed. In the mean time the enemy, recovering from his surprise and the confusion into which he had been extensively thrown, rallied and with overwhelming power concentrated both artillery and infantry upon Gordon's command. The supporting force which was to have followed him, notwithstanding the notice which was given by the victorious cheer of his men when they took Fort Steadman, failed to come forward, and Gordon's brilliant success, like the Dead Sea fruit, was turned to ashes at the moment of possession. It was hopeless, with his small force unsupported, to retain the position he had gained. It only remained as far as practicable to withdraw his command to our line, and this the valiant soldier promptly proceeded to do; some of his men were killed on the retreat, many became prisoners--I believe all, or nearly all, of those who had been detached to seize other works, and had not rejoined the main body.
The following letter from General Gordon furnishes some important details of the attack:
"ATLANTA, GEORGIA, October 16, 1880.
"MY DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: The attack upon Fort Steadman was made on the night of the 25th March, or rather before light on the morning of the 26th March, 1865. A conference had been held between General Lee and myself at his headquarters the 10th of March, which resulted in General Lee's decision to transfer my corps from the extreme right of our army to the trenches in and around Petersburg, with the purpose of enabling me to carefully examine the enemy's lines, and report to him my belief as to the practicability of breaking them at any point. Within a week after being transferred to this new position, I decided that Fort Steadman could be taken by a night assault, and that it might be possible to throw into the breach thus made in Grant's lines a sufficient force to disorganize and destroy the left wing of his army before he could recover and concentrate his forces, then lying beyond the James and Appomattox Rivers. Fort Steadman was the point at which the earthworks of General Grant most nearly approached our own. This fort was located upon what was known as Hare's Hill, and was in front of the city of Petersburg, and of the point on our lines known as Colquitt's Salient. The two hostile lines could not have been more than two hundred to two hundred and fifty yards apart at this point; and the pickets were so close together that it was difficult to prevent constant conversation between those of the Confederate and Federal armies. Fort Steadman was upon the main line of General Grant's works, and flanked on either side by a line of earthworks and other forts, which completely commanded every foot of the intervening space between the hostile lines. In rear of Fort Steadman were three other forts, two of which, and perhaps all three, could command Fort Steadman, in case of its capture by our forces. These forts in rear of Steadman were protected by an almost impenetrable abatis, while, in front of Fort Steadman itself, and of the main line of which it was a part, was a line of sharpened fence-rails, with the lower ends buried deeply in the ground, their middle resting upon horizontal poles and wrapped with telegraph-wires, and their upper ends sharpened and elevated to the height of four and a half or five feet. These rails, which formed the obstruction in front of General Grant's lines at Fort Steadman and along the flanking works, were, as I said, wrapped with telegraph-wire where they rested on the horizontal poles, so as to prevent an attacking force from pressing them apart, and buried in the ground too deeply to be pulled up, and, sharpened at the upper end, were too high to be mounted by my men. This obstruction, therefore, had to be cut away with axes before the attacking force could enter the fort or lines.
"General Lee, after considering the plan of assault and battle which I submitted to him, and which I shall presently describe, gave me orders to prepare for the movement, which was regarded by both of us as a desperate one, but which seemed to give more promise of good results than any other hitherto suggested. General Lee placed at my disposal, in addition to my own corps, a portion of A. P, Hill's and a portion of Longstreet's, and a detachment of cavalry--in all, about one half of the army.
"The general plan of the assault and battle was this: To take the fort by a rush across the narrow space that lay between it and Colquitt's Salient, and then surprise and capture, by a stratagem, the commanding forts in the rear, thus opening a way for our troops to pass to the rear, and upon the bank of the left wing of Grant's army, which was to be broken to pieces by a concentration of all the forces at my command moving upon that flank. During the night of the 25th my preparations were made for the movement before daylight. I placed three officers in charge of three separate bodies of men, and directed them, as soon as the lines of Fort Steadman should be carried by the assaulting column, to rush through the gap thus produced to the three rear forts--one of these officers and bodies of men to go to each fort, and to approach them from their rear by the only avenue left open and seize those forts. A guide was placed with each of these officers, who was to conduct him and his troops to the rear of the front, which he was to surprise. A body of the most stalwart of my men was organized to move in advance of all the troops, armed with axes, with which they were to cut down the obstruction of sharpened and wire-fastened rails in front of the enemy's lines.
"Next to these were to come three hundred men, armed with bayonets fixed and empty muskets, who were to mount and enter the fort as the axemen cut away the obstruction of sharpened rails, bayoneting the pickets in front and gunners in the fort if they resisted, or sending them to our rear if they surrendered. Next were to cross the three officers and their detachments, who were to capture the three rear forts. Next, a division of infantry was to cross, moving by the left flank, so as to be in position when halted, and fronted to move without any confusion or delay immediately down General Grant's lines, toward his left, capturing his troops, or forcing them to abandon their works and form under our advancing fire at right angles to his line of works.
"Next was to cross the cavalry, who were to ride to the rear, cut the enemy's telegraph-lines, capture his pontoons, and prevent or delay the crossing of reënforcements from beyond the Appomattox. Next, my whole force was to swell the column of attack. Then, as the front of our lines were cleared of the enemy's troops, our divisions were to change front and join in pressing upon the enemy and driving him farther from the other wing of General Grant's army, and widening the breach. Strips of white cloth were tied around the shoulders of our men, so as to designate them in the darkness.
"Just before daylight, when all was ready, I gave the signal, and the axemen rushed across, followed by the bodies armed with bayonets and empty muskets, who captured and sent to the rear the enemy's pickets. The axemen cut away the sharpened rails so rapidly as scarcely to cause a halt of the troops following, who mounted the enemy's works and seized his guns and gunners in the fort, clearing the way and giving safe passage to detachments and larger bodies which were to follow and which did follow. The fort and most of the lines between the fort and the river were captured with the loss of but one man, so far as I could learn. We captured eleven heavy guns, nine mortars, about seven hundred prisoners, as I now recollect, among whom was the brigadier commanding that portion of the line, General McLaughlin.
"Everything was moving as well as I could have desired, when, one after another, all three of the officers, sent to the rear to capture by stratagem the rear forts, sent messengers to inform me that they had passed successfully through the lines of the enemy's reserves in rear of Fort Steadman, and were certainly beyond the rear forts, but that their guides had been lost or had deserted, and that they could not find the forts.
"Although I heard nothing afterward of these guides, yet I did learn of the fate of the three officers and their commands. Some were shot down after daylight, some were captured, and a few, very few, made their way back to our lines. The failure of that portion of the programme left, of course, these three forts manned by the enemy, and his heavy guns made it impossible to carry out literally the details of the plan. Then a large body of the troops sent by General Lee from General Longstreet's corps were delayed by the breaking down of trains, or by some other cause, and did not arrive at the appointed hour, which caused so great a delay that we did not get in the fort and upon the enemy's flank at as early an hour as was expected, and daylight found us with the plan only half executed. At daylight, all the commanding forts in the rear, which we had failed to capture, opened upon Fort Steadman and that portion of the enemy's lines held by our troops. Reënforcements were rapidly brought up, so that it became too hazardous, as General Lee thought, to go forward or attempt it. So he ordered me back (I may say here that I entirely approved of this decision of General Lee). Up to this hour we had lost but few men, and these had been killed or wounded mainly by artillery. But now the enemy's infantry came up and made several assaults. They were repulsed by our troops in Fort Steadman and in the enemy's works on its flanks. It was in the effort to withdraw the troops that our principal loss occurred. A raking tire was kept up across the intervening space over which we had moved in capturing the fort, I was wounded in recrossing to Colquitt's Salient, and many of our men were killed and wounded in making the same passage back to our works.
"As I said at the outset, this attack was regarded by both General Lee and myself as very hazardous; but it seemed necessary to do more than sit quietly waiting for General Grant to move upon our right, while each day was diminishing our strength by disease and death.
"Let me also add that the movement made at Hare's Hill mast have proved a great success but for the unforeseen and unavoidable miscarriages to which I have referred.
"I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
"J. B. GORDON.
"Hon. JEFFERSON DAVIS, Mississippi."
Immediately following, and perhaps in consequence of this sortie, an extensive attack was made upon our lines to the left of Fort Steadman, but without any decisive results. On the 27th of March the main part of Grant's forces confronting Richmond were moved over to the lines before Petersburg, and his left was on the same day joined by Sheridan's division of cavalry. It will be remembered that Lee had sent Longstreet to the north side of the James as soon as he discovered that Grant had sent a corps across with the supposed purpose of attacking Richmond from that side. It was intended that Longstreet should return whenever the enemy withdrew his main force from the north side of the James; but it appears that this was so secretly done as to conceal the fact from General Longstreet, and that both Hancock and Ord had joined Grant, to swell his forces by two corps before our troops returned to join Lee. Grant, thus strengthened, made a more determined movement to gain the right of Lee's position; before, however, he was ready to make his assault, Lee marched with a comparatively very small force, took the initiative, and on the 31st struck the enemy's advance, and repulsed him in great confusion, following until confronted by the heavy masses formed in open ground in the rear, when Lee withdrew his men back to their intrenchments.
A strategic position of recognized importance was that known as Five Forks. Lee had stationed there Major-General Pickett with his division, and some additional force. On the next day, the 1st of April, this position was assaulted, and our troops were driven from it in confusion. The unsettled question of time was now solved.
Grant's massive columns, advancing on right, left, and center, compelled our forces to retire to the inner line of defense, so that, on the morning of the 2d, the enemy was in a condition to besiege Petersburg in the true sense of that term. Battery Gregg made an obstinate defense, and, with a garrison of about two hundred and fifty men, held a corps in check for a large part of the day. The arrival of Longstreet's troops, and the strength of the shorter line now held by Lee, enabled him to make several attempts to dislodge his assailant from positions he had gained. In one of these, the distinguished soldier whose gallantry and good conduct it has frequently been my pleasure to notice, Lieutenant-General A. P. Hill, who had so often passed unscathed through storms of shot and shell, yielded up the life he had, in the beginning of the war, consecrated to the Confederate cause; and his comrades, while mourning his loss, have drawn consolation from the fact that he died before our flag was furled in defeat.
Retreat was now a present necessity. All that could be done was to hold the inner lines during the day, and make needful preparations to withdraw at night. In the forenoon of Sunday, the 2d, I received, when in church, a telegram announcing that the army would retire from Petersburg at night, and I went to my office to give needful directions for the evacuation of Richmond, the greatest difficulty of which was the withdrawal of the troops who were on the defenses east of the city, and along the James River.
The event had come before Lee had expected it, and the announcement was received by us in Richmond with sorrow and surprise; for, though it had been foreseen as a coming event which might possibly, though not probably, be averted, and such preparation as was practicable had been made to meet the contingency when it should occur, it was not believed to be so near at hand.
At nightfall our army commenced crossing the Appomattox, and, before dawn, was far on its way toward Amelia Court-House, Lee's purpose being, as previously agreed on in conference with me, to march to Danville, Virginia. By a reference to the map, it will be seen that General Grant, starting from the south side of the Appomattox, had a shorter line to Danville than that which General Lee must necessarily follow, and, if Grant directed his march so as to put his forces between Danville and those of Lee, it was quite possible for him to effect it. This was done, and thus Lee was prevented from carrying out his original purpose, and directed his march toward Lynchburg. The enemy, having first placed himself across the route to Danville, at Jetersville, subsequently took up the line of Lee's retreat. His large force of cavalry, and the exhausted condition of the horses of our small number of that arm, gave the pursuing foe a very great advantage; but, worn and reduced in numbers as Lee's army was, the spirit it had always shown flashed out whenever it was pressed. A division would turn upon a corps and drive it; and General Fitzhugh Lee, the worthy successor of the immortal Stuart, with a brigade of our emaciated cavalry, would drive a division of their pursuers. These scenes were repeatedly enacted during the long march from Petersburg to Appomattox Court-House, and have been so vividly and fully described by others that I will pass to the closing event.
Lee had never contemplated surrender. He had, long before, in language similar to that employed by Washington during the Revolution, expressed to me the belief that in the mountains of Virginia he could carry on the war for twenty years, and, in directing his march toward Lynchburg, it may well be that as an alternative he hoped to reach those mountains, and, with the advantage which the topography would give, yet to baffle the hosts which were following him. On the evening of the 8th General Lee decided, after conference with his corps commanders, that he would advance the next morning beyond Appomattox Court-House, and, if the force reported to be there should prove to be only Sheridan's cavalry, to disperse it and continue the march toward Lynchburg; but, if infantry should be found in large force, the attempt to break through it was not to be made, and the correspondence which General Grant had initiated on the previous day should be reopened by a flag, with propositions for an interview to arrange the terms of capitulation. Gordon, whose corps formed the rear-guard from Petersburg, and who had fought daily for the protection of the trains, had now been transferred to the front. On the next morning, before daylight, Lee sent Colonel Venable, one of his staff, to Gordon, commanding the advance, to learn his opinion as to the chances of a successful attack, to which Gordon replied, "My old corps is reduced to a frazzle, and, unless I am supported by Longstreet heavily, I do not think we can do anything more." When Colonel Venable returned with this answer to General Lee, he said, "Then there is nothing left me but to go and see General Grant."
At that time Longstreet, covering the rear, was threatened by Meade, so that there was no ability to reënforce Gordon, and thus to explain why General Lee then realized that the emergency had arisen for the surrender of his army which, in his note to General Grant of the previous day, he had said he did not believe to exist. Colonel Venable, at early dawn, had left Gordon with about five thousand infantry, and Fitzhugh Lee with about fifteen hundred cavalry, and Colonel Carter's battalion of artillery, forming his line of battle to attack the enemy, which, so far as then known, consisted of Sheridan's cavalry, which had got in front of our retreating column. The assault was made with such vigor and determination as to drive Sheridan for a considerable distance; and, if this had been the only obstacle, the road would have been opened for Lee to resume his march toward Lynchburg. After Gordon had advanced nearly a mile, he was confronted by a large body of infantry, subsequently ascertained to be about eighty thousand. To attack that force was, of course, hopeless, and Gordon commenced falling back, and simultaneously the enemy advanced, but suddenly came to a halt. Lee had sent a flag to Grant, who had consequently ordered a suspension of hostilities.
A leader less resolute, an army less heroically resisting fatigue, constant watching, and starvation, would long since have reached the conclusion that surrender was a necessity. Lee had left Petersburg with not more than twenty thousand infantry, five thousand cavalry, and four thousand artillery. Men and horses all reduced below the standard of efficiency by exposure and insufficient supplies of clothing, food,[122] and forage, only the mutual confidence between the men and their commander could have sustained either under the trials to which they were subjected. It is not a matter of surprise that the army had wasted away to a mere remnant, but rather that it had continued to exist as an organized body still willing to do battle. All the evidence we have proves that the proud, cheerful spirit both of the army and its leader had resisted the extremes of privation and danger, and never sunk until confronted by surrender.
General Grant, in response to a communication under a white flag made by General Lee, as stated above, came to Appomattox, where a suitable room was procured for their conference, and, the two Generals being seated at a small table. General Lee opened the interview thus:
"General, I deem it due to proper candor and frankness to say at the very beginning of this interview that I am not willing even to discuss any terms of surrender inconsistent with the honor of my army, which I am determined to maintain to the last."
General Grant replied:
"I have no idea of proposing dishonorable terms, General, but I would be glad if you would state what you consider honorable terms."
General Lee then briefly stated the terms upon which he would be willing to surrender. Grant expressed himself as satisfied with them, and Lee requested that he would formally reduce the propositions to writing.
To present a full and satisfactory account of the circumstances and terms of the surrender, as well as the events immediately preceding the evacuation of Petersburg, and the retreat thence to Appomattox Court-House, I annex the subjoined letters:
"APPOMATTOX COURT-HOUSE, April 9, 1865.
"General R. E. LEE, commanding Confederate States Army:
"In accordance with the substance of my letter to you of the 8th inst., I propose to receive the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia on the following terms, to wit:
"Rolls of all the officers and men to be made in duplicate, one copy to be given to an officer designated by me, the other to be retained by such officers as you may designate.
"The officers to give their individual parole not to take arms against the Government of the United States until properly exchanged, and each company or regimental commander to sign a like parole for the men of their commands.
"The arms, artillery, and public property to be parked and stacked and turned over to the officers appointed by me to receive them.
"This will not embrace the side-arms of the officers, nor their private horses or baggage.
"This done, each officer and man will be allowed to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by the United States authority so long as they observe their parole and the laws in force where they may reside.
"Very respectfully,
"U. S. GRANT, Lieutenant-General."
"HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA, April 9, 1865.
"GENERAL: I have received your letter of this date containing the terms of surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, as proposed by you. As they are substantially the same as those expressed in your letter of the 8th inst., they are accepted. I will proceed to designate the proper officers to carry the stipulations into effect.
"Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
"R. E. LEE."
"PETERSBURG, VIRGINIA, 3 P.M., April 2, 1865.
"His Excellency JEFFERSON DAVIS, Richmond, Virginia.
"MR. PRESIDENT: Your letter of the 1st is just received. I have been willing to detach officers to recruit negro troops, and sent in the names of many who are desirous of recruiting companies, battalions, or regiments, to the War Department. After receiving the general orders on that subject establishing recruiting depots in the several States, I supposed that this mode of raising the troops was preferred. I will continue to submit the names of those who offer for the service, and whom I deem competent, to the War Department; but, among the numerous applications which are presented, it is difficult for me to decide who are suitable for the duty. I am glad your Excellency has made an appeal to the Governors of the States, and hope it will have a good effect. I have a great desire to confer with you upon our condition, and would have been to Richmond before this, but, anticipating movements of the enemy which have occurred, I felt unwilling to be absent. I have considered our position very critical; but have hoped that the enemy might expose himself in some way that we might take advantage of, and cripple him. Knowing when Sheridan moved on our right that our cavalry would be unable to resist successfully his advance upon our communications, I detached Pickett's division to support it. At first Pickett succeeded in driving the enemy, who fought stubbornly; and, after being reënforced by the Fifth Corps (United States Army), obliged Pickett to recede to the Five Forks on the Dinwiddie Court-House and Ford's road, where, unfortunately, he was yesterday defeated. To relieve him, I had to again draw out three brigades under General Anderson, which so weakened our front line that the enemy last night and this morning succeeded in penetrating it near the Cox road, separating our troops around the town from those on Hatcher's Run. This has enabled him to extend to the Appomattox, thus inclosing and obliging us to contract our lines to the city. I have directed the troops from the lines on Hatcher's Run, thus severed from us, to fall back toward Amelia Court-House, and I do not see how I can possibly help withdrawing from the city to the north side of the Appomattox to-night. There is no bridge over the Appomattox above this point nearer than Goode's and Bevil's over which the troops above mentioned could cross to the north side, and be made available to us; otherwise I might hold this position for a day or two longer, but would have to evacuate it eventually; and I think it better for us to abandon the whole line on James River to-night, if practicable. I have sent preparatory orders to all the officers, and will be able to tell by night whether or not we can remain here another day; but I think every hour now adds to our difficulties. I regret to be obliged to write such a hurried letter to your Excellency, but I am in the presence of the enemy, endeavoring to resist his advance.
"I am most respectfully and truly yours,
"R. E. LEE, General."
[Footnote 119: Testimony of General Burnside, "Report of Committee on the Conduct of the War," vol. i, pp. 16, 17, 1865.]
[Footnote 120: John Esten Cooke, "Life of General R. E. Lee."]
[Footnote 121: "Report of Committee on the Conduct of the War" 1865, vol. ii, pp. 106, 107.]
[Footnote 122: Falsehood and malignity have combined to invent and circulate a baseless story to the effect that food ordered to Amelia Court-House for Lee's troops, was by the Administration at Richmond diverted from its destination, and the soldiers thus left to needless suffering. A further notice will be taken of this slander in a subsequent chapter, and that it had not one atom of truth in it will be shown by conclusive testimony.]
Chapter LIII
General Lee advises the Evacuation of Richmond.--Withdrawal of the Troops.--The Naval Force.--The Conflagration in Richmond.-- Telegram of Lee to the President.--The Evacuation complete.--The Charge of the Removal of Supplies intended for Lee's Army.--The Facts.--Arrangement with General Lee.--Proclamation.--Reports of Scouts.
When, on the morning of the 2d of April, the main line of the defenses of Petersburg was broken, and our forces driven back to the inner and last line, General Lee sent the telegram, to which reference has been already made, and advised that Richmond should be evacuated simultaneously with the withdrawal of his troops that night. This left little time for preparation, especially in the matter of providing transportation for the troops holding the eastern defenses of Richmond. To supply the cavalry, artillery, and army-wagons with horses, had so exhausted the stock of Virginia as to leave the quartermaster's department little ability to supplement the small transportation possessed, or required by troops regarded as a stationary defense. The consequence was, that their withdrawal had to be made under circumstances which involved unusual embarrassments upon the march; but soldiers, sailors, and citizens, constituting the "reserves," vied with each other in the performance of the hard duty to which they were called--a night march over unknown roads, to join a retreating army, pursued by a powerful enemy having large bodies of cavalry. The opposing lines of intrenchment north of the James were so near to each other, that our forces could only withdraw when it was too dark for observation; this required that the movement should be postponed until the moon went down, which was at a late hour of the night.
The circumstances attending the withdrawal of Ewell's corps were such as to make its safety the subject of special solicitude. It was small in comparison to that retiring from Petersburg, had a greater distance to march before a junction could be made with the main body, and most of the men were unused to marching. From reports received long after the event, I am able to give the principal occurrences of their campaign.
General G. W. C. Lee moved his division from Chapin's Bluff across the James River, on the Wilton Bridge; the wagons having been loaded under the preparatory order, were sent up in the afternoon to cross at Richmond, and the division moved on to a short distance beyond Tomahawk Church, where it encamped on the night of the 3d. General Kershaw's division, with dismounted men of Gary's cavalry brigade, crossed at Richmond and moved on to the same encampment. Having ascertained that the Appomattox could not be crossed on the route they were pursuing, the column was turned up to the railroad-bridge at the Mattoax Station, which was prepared for the passage of artillery and troops, and the two divisions, with their trains, crossed on the night of the 4th and encamped on the hills beyond the river. On the next day the column moved on to Amelia Court-House; it was now joined by the Naval Battalion, under Commodore Tucker, and the artillery battalion of Major Frank Smith, which had been withdrawn from Howlett's Bluff; both of these were added to G. W. C. Lee's division. The supply-train not being able to cross the Appomattox River near Meadville, went farther up, and, having effected a crossing, proceeded with safety until about four miles from Amelia Court-House, where it was destroyed by a detachment of the enemy's cavalry on the morning of the 5th, with the baggage of G. W. C. Lee's division and about twenty thousand good rations.
At Amelia Court-House Ewell's corps made a junction with Lee's army, but forced marches with men most of whom were untrained by previous campaign had greatly reduced the number of Ewell's command, and the want of rations now was impairing their efficiency. From that place his corps moved in rear of Anderson's, followed by the train of Lee's army, which was covered in rear by Gordon's corps. The march was much impeded by the wagon-trains, consequently slow, and, from frequent halts, fatiguing. About noon of the 6th, after crossing a small stream within several miles of Sailor's Creek, the enemy's cavalry made an attack at the point where the wagon-train turned off to the right. Skirmishers from Lee's division were thrown out, and soon repelled the attack; but it was thought necessary to retain these troops in that position until the trains had passed. General Gordon, who protected the rear, had frequent combats with the pursuers. As soon as the trains were out of the way, Ewell's troops moved on after Anderson's corps. On crossing Sailor's Creek, General Ewell reports that he met General Fitzhugh Lee, from whom he learned that a large force of cavalry held the road in front of Anderson, and was so strongly posted that he had halted. Lee's and Kershaw's divisions moved on to close upon Anderson; but Gordon having followed the wagon and artillery train, the enemy's cavalry and also infantry appeared in the rear, and commenced an attack upon Kershaw's division. Anderson had proposed to Ewell that, if he would hold the enemy in check who was coming up on the rear, he would attack the cavalry in front, to open our line of march in that direction. Lee's and Kershaw's divisions were therefore formed in line of battle faced to the rear. Anderson made the attack, but failed. Meantime an artillery-fire was opened on Kershaw's and Lee's divisions; they, having no artillery to reply, were subjected to the severe trial of standing under a fire which they could not return. In their praise, it was said they unflinchingly bore the test. Supposing probably that their artillery-fire had demoralized our troops, the enemy's infantry advanced. They were repulsed, and that portion which attacked G. W. C. Lee's artillery brigade was charged by it, and driven back across Sailor's Creek. The enemy had now turned the flank of Kershaw's division and obliged it to retire. Ewell, while seeking some route by which his command might be extricated, was captured, and the enemy closed in on Lee's division, surrounding it on every side. Firing ceased, and the division was captured. A like fate befell the division of Kershaw. A portion of Anderson's corps escaped, but Ewell's was all captured. This corps, when it left Richmond, numbered about six thousand men. At the battle of Sailor's Creek there remained about three thousand. The fatigue of constant marching for days and nights to men unaccustomed to such service might sufficiently explain the diminution; but to this must be added the want of rations for the last two days of their campaign. Twenty-eight hundred were taken prisoners, and about a hundred and fifty killed and wounded. From General Ewell's report, I learn that the force of the enemy engaged at Sailor's Creek amounted to thirty thousand men. In closing his report be says:
"The discipline preserved by General G. W. C. Lee in camp and on the march, and the manner in which he handled his troops in action, fully justified the request I had made for his promotion. General Kershaw, who had only been a few days under my command, behaved with his usual coolness and judgment."
Lest any should suppose, from the remark of General Ewell, that I had been unwilling or reluctant to promote my aide-de-camp. Colonel G. W. C. Lee, it is proper to state that the only obstacle to be overcome was Lee's objection to receiving promotion. With refined delicacy he shrank from the idea of superseding men who had been actively serving in the field, and in one case where the objection did not seem to me to have any application, he so decidedly preferred to remain with me, that I yielded to his wishes; but gave him additional rank to command the local troops for the defense of Richmond. His valuable services in that capacity, on various occasions, sustained my high opinion of him as a soldier, and his conduct on that retreat, and in the battle of "Sailor's Creek," for which he is commended, was only what I anticipated.
Of the forces constituting the defense of Richmond on the 2d of April, it only remains to account for the naval force in the James. After General Ewell had withdrawn his command, Admiral Semmes embarked the crews of his gunboats on some small steamers, set fire to his war-vessels, and proceeded up the river to the landing opposite Richmond. Here he found no land transportation awaiting him, and the last railroad train had left at early dawn. He, however, with the energy and capacity so often elsewhere displayed by him, on finding the railroad station deserted, commenced a search for material which, with his steam engineers, he could make available. He states that a few straggling passenger-cars lay uncoupled along the track, and that there was also a small engine, but no fire, and no fuel to make one. They coupled the cars together, his marine sappers and miners cut up a fence for steam-fuel, and thus he got under way, but the engine proved insufficient to draw the train, and at an up-grade he was brought to a halt immediately after starting. One of his engineers, however, found in the workshops another engine; with the two he was able to proceed, and thus to transport his sailors to Danville, the best mode known to him to execute the order sent to him by the Secretary of the Navy, "You will join General Lee in the field with all your forces." [123] When General Longstreet was withdrawn from the north side of the James, Colonel Shipp, Commandant of the Virginia Institute, with the Battalion of Cadets, youths whose gallantry at the battle of New Market has been heretofore noticed, and such convalescents in Richmond as were able to march, moved down to supply the vacancy created by the transfer of Longstreet's force to Petersburg. General Ewell, in command at Richmond, had for its defense the naval force at Drury's Bluff under Commander Tucker, which was organized as a regiment and armed with muskets. On the north side of the James were General Kershaw's division of Confederate troops and General G. W. C, Lee's division, composed mostly of artillery-men armed as infantry, and the "reserves," or "local troops," coöperating with these was Admiral Semmes's naval force on the James. On the night of the 2d of April these forces were withdrawn, and took up their line of march to join General Lee's army on its retreat.
In obedience to a law of the Congress, General Ewell had made arrangements to burn the tobacco at Richmond whenever the evacuation of the city should render the burning necessary, to prevent the tobacco from falling into the hands of the enemy. Orders were also given to destroy certain property of the Confederate States, exceptions being made as in the case of the arsenal, the burning of which would endanger the city. To prevent the possibility of a general conflagration he had advised with the Mayor and City Council, and the necessary precautions were believed to have been taken. General Ewell's report, December 20, 1865, published in the "Historical Society Papers" (vol. i, p. 101), satisfactorily establishes the fact that the conflagration in Richmond of April 3, 1865, did not result from any act of the public authorities. The burning of the tobacco was only resorted to when the alternative was to burn or allow it to fall into the hands of the enemy, who, there was no doubt, would take it without making compensation to the owners. It was a disagreeable necessity, and therefore every opportunity was allowed to the owners of that and other articles of export to place them, if possible, beyond the danger of being applied to the use of the hostile Government. There is no similitude between the destruction of public property made by us and the like act of the invader in our country. The property we destroyed belonged to the Confederate States only. Armories and ship-yards destroyed by them-- those, for instance, at Harper's Ferry and Norfolk--were the property of the States in common, which the Federal Government had emphatically declared it was its bounden duty to preserve, and which was its first plea in justification of the act of sending an armed force against the Southern States.
The conflagration at Richmond occurred on the morning of the 3d of April, after I had left the city, and I therefore have only such knowledge in regard to it as was subsequently acquired from others. Those who would learn specifically the facts and speculations in regard to it are referred to the report of General Ewell, which has been above cited. Suffice it to say, the troops of neither army were considered responsible for that calamity.
On Sunday, the 2d of April, while I was in St. Paul's church. General Lee's telegram, announcing his speedy withdrawal from Petersburg, and the consequent necessity for evacuating Richmond, was handed to me. I quietly rose and left the church. The occurrence probably attracted attention, but the people of Richmond had been too long beleaguered, had known me too often to receive notice of threatened attacks, and the congregation of St. Paul's was too refined, to make a scene at anticipated danger. For all these reasons, the reader will be prepared for the announcement that the sensational stories which have been published about the agitation caused by my leaving the church during service were the creations of fertile imaginations. I went to my office and assembled the heads of departments and bureaus, as far as they could be found on a day when all the offices were closed, and gave the needful instructions for our removal that night, simultaneously with General Lee's withdrawal from Petersburg. The event was not unforeseen, and some preparation had been made for it, though, as it came sooner than was expected, there was yet much to be done. My own papers were disposed as usual for convenient reference in the transaction of current affairs, and as soon as the principal officers had left me the executive papers were arranged for removal. This occupied myself and staff until late in the afternoon. By this time the report that Richmond was to be evacuated had spread through the town, and many who saw me walking toward my residence left their houses to inquire whether the report was true. Upon my admission of the painful fact, qualified, however, by the expression of my hope that we would under better auspices again return, the ladies especially, with generous sympathy and patriotic impulse, responded, "If the success of the cause requires you to give up Richmond, we are content."
The affection and confidence of this noble people in the hour of disaster were more distressing to me than complaint and unjust censure would have been.
In view of the diminishing resources of the country on which the Army of Northern Virginia relied for supplies, I had urged the policy of sending families as far as practicable to the south and west, and had set the example by requiring my own to go. If it was practicable and desirable to hold the south side of the James, then, even for merely material considerations, it was important to hold Richmond, and this could best have been done if there had been none there save those who could aid in its defense. If it was not practicable and desirable to hold the south side of the James, then Richmond would be isolated, and if it could have been defended, its depots, foundries, workshops, and mills could have contributed nothing to the armies outside, and its possession would no longer have been to us of military importance. Ours being a struggle for existence, the indulgence of sentiment would have been misplaced.
Being alone in Richmond, the few arrangements needful for my personal wants were soon made after reaching home. Then, leaving all else in care of the housekeeper, I waited until notified of the time when the train would depart; then, going to the station, started for Danville, whither I supposed General Lee would proceed with his army.
In a previous chapter I promised to expose the fiction which imputed to me the removal of supplies intended for Lee's army at Amelia Court-House, Though manufactured without one fiber of truth, it has been copied into so many books, formed the staple of so many jeremiads, and pointed so many malignant reflections, that I deem it proper for myself and others concerned now to present the evidence which will overthrow this baseless fabric.
General I. M. St. John, Commissary-General of the Confederate Army, was requested by me, after the close of the war, to prepare a report in reply to the widely circulated story that Lee's army had been compelled to evacuate Petersburg, and subsequently to surrender because the Administration had failed to provide food for their support. On the 14th of July, 1873, General St. John addressed to me a report of the operations and condition of the commissariat immediately preceding the surrender of Lee's and Johnston's armies. That report, together with confirmatory statements, will be found in the "Southern Historical Society Papers" for March, 1877. From it and the accompanying documents I propose to make brief extracts.
General St. John says that in February, 1865, when he took charge of the commissary bureau, on account of the military status he
"found that the Army of Northern Virginia was with difficulty supplied day by day with reduced rations. . . . I at once proceeded to organize a system of appeal and of private contribution as auxiliary to the regular operations of the commissary service. With the earnest and very active aid of leading citizens of Virginia and North Carolina, this effort was attended with results exceeding expectation. . . . On or before March 15, 1865, the Commissary-General was able to report to the Secretary of War that, in addition to the daily issue of rations to the Army of Northern Virginia, there lay in depot along the railroad between Greensboro, North Carolina, Lynchburg, Staunton, and Richmond, at least ten days' rations of bread and meat, collected especially for that army, and subject to the requisition of its chief commissary officer; also that considerably over 300,000 rations were held in Richmond as a special reserve. . . . There was collected by April 1, 1865, in depot, subsistence stated in detail as follows:
"At Richmond, Virginia, 300,000 rations bread and meat; at Danville, 500,000 rations bread; at Danville, 1,500,000 rations meat; at Lynchburg, 180,000 rations bread and meat; at Greensboro, North Carolina, and vicinity, 1,500,000 rations bread and meat.
"In addition, there were considerable supplies of tea, coffee, and sugar carefully reserved for hospital issues chiefly. These returns did not include the subsistence collections by the field-trains of the Army of Northern Virginia, under orders from its own headquarters, nor the depot collections at Charlottesville, Staunton, and other points upon the Virginia Central Railroad, to meet requisitions from the Confederates operating in the Valley and western Virginia. South and west of Greensboro, North Carolina, the depot accumulations were reserved first to meet requisitions for the forces operating in the Carolinas, and the surplus for Virginia requisitions. . . ."
The report then refers to a conference between the Secretary of War (Breckinridge) and the General commanding (Lee) with the Quartermaster-General (Lawton) and the Commissary-General (St. John). After a general discussion of the wants of the army in clothing, forage, and subsistence, to an inquiry by General Lee, General St. John replied:
"That a daily delivery by cars and canal-boats, at or near Richmond, of about five hundred tons of commissaries' stores was essential to provide for the Richmond siege reserve and other accumulations desired by the General commanding; that the depot collections were already sufficient to assure the meeting of these requisitions, and, if the then existing military lines could be held, the Commissary-General felt encouraged as to the future of his own immediate department."
The procuring of supplies was only one of the difficulties by which we were beset. The deteriorated condition of the railroads and the deficiency of rolling-stock embarrassed transportation, and there was yet another: the cavalry raids of the enemy frequently broke the railroads and destroyed trains. General Lawton, with great energy and good judgment, under the heavy pressure of the circumstances, improved the railroad transportation. I quote again from the report of General St. John:
"Upon the earliest information of the approaching evacuation, instructions were asked from the War Department and the General commanding for the final disposition of the subsistence reserve in Richmond, then reported by Major Claiborne, post commissary, to exceed in quantity 350,000 rations. The reply, 'Send up the Danville Railroad if Richmond is not safe,' was received from the army headquarters, April 2, 1865, and too late for action, as all railroad transportation had then been taken up, by superior orders, for the archives, bullion, and other Government service, then deemed of prior importance. All that remained to be done was to fill every accessible army-wagon; and this was done, and the trains were hurried southward."
It will be seen from this statement that the reply was only directed to the removal of the subsistence reserve if Richmond was not safe. It can not be supposed that such a reply emanated from General Lee, as he surely never contemplated an attempt to hold Richmond after Petersburg was evacuated. General St. John then adds:
"On March 31st, or possibly the morning of April 1st, a telegram was received at the bureau in Richmond, from the commissary officer of the Army of Northern Virginia, requesting breadstuffs to be sent to Petersburg. Shipment was commenced at once, and was pressed to the extreme limit of transportation permitted by the movement of General Longstreet's corps (then progressing southward). No calls, by letter or requisition, from the General commanding, or from any other source, official or unofficial, had been received either by the Commissary-General or the Assistant Commissary-General; nor (as will be seen by the appended letter of the Secretary of War) was any communication transmitted through the department channels to the bureau of subsistence, for the collection of supplies at Amelia Court-House. Had any such requisition or communication been received at the bureau as late as the morning of April 1st, it could have been met from the Richmond reserve with transportation on south-bound trains, and most assuredly so previous to General Longstreet's movement."
On the morning of the 3d the Commissary-General left Richmond and joined General R. E. Lee at Amelia Springs. There were at that time about eighty thousand rations at Farmville, "there held on trains for immediate use." On the morning of the 6th the Commissary-General asked General Lee whether he should send those rations down the railroad or hold them at Farmville. Not receiving instructions, the rations remained at Farmville, and on the 7th the army passing there took a portion of them. On the morning of the 8th the subsistence trains on the railroad at Pamphlin's Station, twenty miles west of Farmville, were attacked by the enemy's cavalry and captured, or burned to avoid capture. The surrender followed on the subsequent day. The foregoing extracts, I think, prove unquestionably that no orders were received to place supplies for Lee's army at Amelia Court-House; that sufficient supplies were in depot to answer the immediate wants of the army, and that the failure to distribute them to the troops on their retreat was due to the active operations of the enemy on all our lines of communication; hence, when the Commissary-General applied to General Lee for instructions as to where supplies should be placed, he says, "General Lee replied in substance that the military situation did not permit an answer." Lest, however, what has been given should not seem conclusive to others, I add confirmatory testimony. General John C. Breckinridge, in a letter to General I. M. St. John, of date May 16, 1871, wrote:
"A few days before the evacuation of Richmond you reported to me that besides supplies accumulated at different distant points in Virginia and North Carolina, you had ten days' rations accessible by rail to [General Lee] and subject to the orders of his chief commissary. I have no recollection of any communication from General Lee in regard lo the accumulation of rations at Amelia Court-House. . . . The second or third day after the evacuation, I recollect you said to General Lee in my presence that you had a large number of rations (I think eighty thousand) at a convenient point on the railroad, and desired to know where you should place them. The General replied that the military situation made it impossible to answer."
In a letter of the date of September, 1865, Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas G. Williams, assistant commissary-general, wrote to General St. John, and from his letter I make the following extract:
"On the morning of April 2, 1865, the chief commissary of General Lee's army was asked by telegram what should be done with the stores in Richmond. No reply was received until night; he then suggested that, if Richmond was not safe, they might be sent up on the Richmond and Danville Railroad. As the evacuation of Richmond was then actively progressing, it was impracticable to move those supplies. . . . In reply to your question with regard to the establishment of a depot of supplies at Amelia Court-House, I have to say that I had no information of any such requisition or demand upon the bureau."
Major J. H. Claiborne, assistant commissary-general, in a letter to General I. M. St. John, from Richmond, June 3, 1873, wrote:
"No order was received by me, and (with full opportunities of information if it had been given) I had no knowledge of any plan to send supplies to Amelia Court-House. Under such circumstances, with transportation afforded, there could readily have been sent about three hundred thousand rations, with due regard to the demand upon this post."
During the retreat, supplies were found at Pamphlin's Depot, Farmville, Danville, Saulsbury, and Charlotte. Major B. P. Noland, chief commissary for Virginia, wrote to General St. John, April 16, 1874. After saying that he had read with care the report of General St. John, and expressing the opinion that it was entirely correct, of which no one in the Confederacy had better opportunities to judge, he writes:
"I think the plan adopted by your predecessor, Colonel Northrop (which was continued by you), for obtaining for the use of the army the products of the country, was as perfect and worked as effectively as any that could have been devised. . . . I left Richmond at one o'clock of the night Richmond was evacuated, with orders from you to make Lynchburg my headquarters, and be ready to forward supplies from that point to the army. I never heard of any order for the accumulation of supplies at Amelia Springs."
Lewis E. Harvie, a distinguished citizen of Virginia, and who at the close of the war was President of the Richmond and Danville and Piedmont Railroads, wrote to General St. John on January 1, 1876. From his letter I make the following extracts, referring to the condition of affairs in 1865. He writes:
"The difficulties of obtaining supplies were very great, particularly when the roads under my charge were cut, and transportation suspended on them, which was the case on one or two occasions for several weeks. Engines and care, and machinery generally, on these roads were insufficient and inadequate from wear and tear to accomplish the amount of transportation required for the Government. . . . The Richmond and Danville and Piedmont Railroads were kept open, and about that time we added largely to its rolling-stock by procuring engines and cars from the different roads on the route of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad west. Starvation had stared the Army of Northern Virginia in the face; and the commissary department organized an appeal to the people on the line of the Richmond and Danville Railroad for voluntary contributions of supplies, and a number of gentlemen of influence, character, and position, including the most eminent clergymen of the State, addressed them in several counties, urging them to furnish the supply wanted.
"No one who witnessed can ever forget the results. Contribution was universal, and supplies of food sufficient to meet the wants of the army at the time were at once sent to the depots on the road until they were packed and groaned under their weight; and I affirm that at the time of the evacuation of Richmond, the difficulty of delivering supplies sufficient for the support of the Army of Northern Virginia under General Lee was solved and surmounted, for I know that abundant supplies were in reach of transportation on the Richmond and Danville Railroad, being massed in Danville, Charlotte, and at other points; and, from the increased motive power above referred to, they could have been delivered as fast as they were required. . . . At the time of the evacuation of the city, there were ample supplies in it, as well as on the railroad west of Amelia Court-House, to have been delivered at the latter place for the retreating army, if its numbers had been double what they were. No orders were ever given to any officers or employee of the Richmond and Danville Railroad to transport any supplies to Amelia Court-House for General Lee's army, nor did I ever bear that any such orders were sent to the commissary department on the occasion of the evacuation of Richmond, until after the surrender of the army."
Mr. Harvie then recites his interview, held on Saturday, the day before evacuation, with the Quartermaster-General, the Secretary of War, and myself, from whom he learned that he might go home for a fortnight, there being no expectation that Richmond would be evacuated in the mean time. He adds that the next day he was informed by telegraph of the proposed evacuation, and returned to Richmond, at which place he conferred with myself and the Secretary of War about the route to be taken by the wagon supply-train, and that he had a long conversation with me on the care, during our night-ride to Danville.
In regard to sending supplies to Amelia Court-House, he writes:
"I have never believed that any orders to place supplies of food at Amelia Court-House were received by the commissary department at the time of the evacuation of the city, because from Richmond, or from the upper portions of the railroad, if required, they could at once have been transported without any delay or difficulty. Neither the road nor the telegraph was cut or disturbed until the day after the evacuation of the city."
It may perhaps be thought that the amount of evidence adduced is greater than necessary to disprove the very improbable assertion that, instead of burden-cars, a passenger train had been loaded with provisions for Lee's army at Amelia Court-House, and that these passenger-cars, without being permitted to unload the freight, had, in reckless disregard of the wants of our worn and hard-pressed defenders, been ordered to proceed immediately to Richmond, thus leaving them to starvation, and the necessity to surrender, in order to enable the executive department to escape; but, as I had no personal knowledge of the matter, it was necessary to quote those whose functions brought them into closer communication with the subject to which the calumny related.
In the night of the 2d, the same on which General Ewell evacuated the defenses of the capital and General Lee withdrew from Petersburg, I left Richmond and reached Danville on the next morning.
Neither the president of the railroad, who was traveling with me, nor I knew that there was anything which required attention at Amelia Court-House or other station on the route. Had General Lee's letter to me, written on the afternoon of the 2d, been received at Richmond, which I think it was not, the fact that he proposed to march to Amelia Court-House would have been known; but it would have been unjust to the officers of the commissary department to doubt that any requisition made or to be made for supplies had received or would receive the most prompt and efficient attention. If, however, I had known that General Lee wanted supplies placed at Amelia Court-House, I would certainly have inquired as to the time of reaching that station, and have asked to have the train stopped so as to enable me to learn whether the supplies were in depot or not. The unfounded calumny, after perhaps having given it more consideration than it was worth, is now dismissed.
Though the occupation of Danville was not expected to be permanent, immediately after arriving there rooms were obtained, and the different departments resumed their routine labors. Nothing could have exceeded the kindness and hospitality of the patriotic citizens. They cordially gave as an "Old Virginia welcome," and with one heart contributed in every practicable manner to cheer and aid us in the work in which we were engaged.
The town was surrounded by an intrenchment as faulty in location as construction. I promptly proceeded to correct the one and improve the other, while energetic efforts were being made to collect supplies of various kinds for General Lee's army.
The design, as previously arranged with General Lee, was that, if he should be compelled to evacuate Petersburg, he would proceed to Danville, make a new defensive line of the Dan and Roanoke Rivers, unite his army with the troops in North Carolina, and make a combined attack upon Sherman; if successful, it was expected that reviving hope would bring reënforcements to the army, and Grant, being then far removed from his base of supplies, and in the midst of a hostile population, it was thought we might return, drive him from the soil of Virginia, and restore to the people a government deriving its authority from their consent. With these hopes and wishes, neither seeking to diminish the magnitude of our disaster nor to excite illusory expectations, I issued, on the 5th, the following proclamation, of which, viewed by the light of subsequent events, it may fairly be said it was over-sanguine:
"The General-in-Chief found it necessary to make such movements of his troops as to uncover the capital. It would be unwise to conceal the moral and material injury to our cause resulting from its occupation by the enemy. It is equally unwise and unworthy of us to allow our energies to falter and our efforts to become relaxed under reverses, however calamitous they may be. For many months the largest and finest army of the Confederacy, under a leader whose presence inspires equal confidence in the troops and the people, has been greatly trammeled by the necessity of keeping constant watch over the approaches to the capital, and has thus been forced to forego more than one opportunity for promising enterprise. It is for us, my countrymen, to show by our bearing under reverses, how wretched has been the self-deception of those who have believed us less able to endure misfortune with fortitude than to encounter danger with courage.
"We have now entered upon a new phase of the struggle. Relieved from the necessity of guarding particular points, our army will be free to move from point to point, to strike the enemy in detail far from his base. Let us but will it, and we are free.
"Animated by that confidence in your spirit and fortitude which never yet failed me, I announce to you, fellow-countrymen, that it is my purpose to maintain your cause with my whole heart and soul; that I will never consent to abandon to the enemy one foot of the soil of any of the States of the Confederacy; that Virginia--noble State, whose ancient renown has been eclipsed by her still more glorious recent history; whose bosom has been bared to receive the main shock of this war; whose sons and daughters have exhibited heroism so sublime as to render her illustrious in all time to come--that Virginia, with the help of the people and by the blessing of Providence, shall be held and defended, and no peace ever be made with the infamous invaders of her territory.
"If, by the stress of numbers, we should be compelled to a temporary withdrawal from her limits or those of any other border State, we will return until the baffled and exhausted enemy shall abandon in despair his endless and impossible task of making slaves of a people resolved to be free.
"Let us, then, not despond, my countrymen, but, relying on God, meet the foe with fresh defiance and with unconquered and unconquerable hearts.
"JEFFERSON DAVIS."
While thus employed, little if any reliable information in regard to the Army of Northern Virginia was received, until a gallant youth, the son of General Henry A. Wise, came to Danville, and told me that, learning Lee's army was to be surrendered, he had during the night mounted his fleet horse, and, escaping through and from the enemy's cavalry, some of whom pursued him, had come quite alone to warn me of the approaching event. Other unofficial information soon followed, and of such circumstantial character as to prove that Lieutenant Wise's anticipation had been realized.
Our scouts now reported a cavalry force to be moving toward the south around the west side of Danville, and we removed thence to Greensboro, passing a railroad-bridge, as was subsequently learned, a very short time before the enemy's cavalry reached and burned it. I had telegraphed to General Johnston from Danville the report that Lee had surrendered, and, on arriving at Greensboro, conditionally requested him to meet me there, where General Beauregard at the time had his headquarters, my object being to confer with both of them in regard to our present condition and future operations.
[Footnote 123: "Memoirs of Service Afloat," Admiral Semmes, pp. 811-815.]
Chapter LIV
Invitation of General Johnston to a Conference.--Its Object.--Its Result.--Provisions on the Line of Retreat.--Notice of President Lincoln's Assassination.--Correspondence between Johnston and Sherman.--Terms of the Convention.--Approved by the Confederate Government.--Rejected by the United States Government.-- Instructions to General Johnston.--Disobeyed.--Statements of General Johnston.--His Surrender.--Movements of the President South.--His Plans.--Order of General E. E. Smith to his Soldiers.-- Surrender.--Numbers paroled.--The President overtakes his Family.-- His Capture.--Taken to Hampton Roads, and imprisoned in Fortress Monroe.
The invitation to General Johnston for a conference, noticed in a previous chapter, was as follows:
"GREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA, April 11 1865--12 M.
"General J. E. JOHNSTON, headquarters, via Raleigh:
"The Secretary of War did not join me at Danville. Is expected here this afternoon.
"As your situation may render best, I will go to your headquarters immediately after the arrival of the Secretary of War, or you can come here; in the former case our conference must be without the presence of General Beauregard. I have no official report from General Lee. The Secretary of War may be able to add to information heretofore communicated.
"The important question first to be solved is, At what point shall concentration be made, in view of the present position of the two columns of the enemy, and the routes which they may adopt to engage your forces before a proposed junction with General Walker and others. Your more intimate knowledge of the data for the solution of the problem deters me from making a specific suggestion on that point.
"JEFFERSON DAVIS."
In compliance with this request, General J. E. Johnston came up from Raleigh to Greensboro, and with General Beauregard met me and most of my Cabinet at my quarters in a house occupied by Colonel J. Taylor Wood's family. Though I was fully sensible of the gravity of our position, seriously affected as it was by the evacuation of the capital, the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, and the consequent discouragement which these events would produce, I did not think we should despair. We still had effective armies in the field, and a vast extent of rich and productive territory both east and west of the Mississippi, whose citizens had evinced no disposition to surrender. Ample supplies had been collected in the railroad depots, and much still remained to be placed at our disposal when needed by the army in North Carolina.
The failure of several attempts to open negotiations with the Federal Government, and notably the last by commissioners who met President Lincoln at Hampton Roads, convinced me of the hopelessness under existing circumstances to obtain better terms than were then offered, i. e., a surrender at discretion. My motive, therefore, in holding an interview with the senior generals of the army in North Carolina was not to learn their opinion as to what might be done by negotiation with the United States Government, but to derive from them information in regard to the army under their command, and what it was feasible and advisable to do as a military problem.
The members of my Cabinet were already advised as to the object of the meeting, and, when the subject was introduced to the generals in that form, General Johnston was very reserved, and seemed far less than sanguine. His first significant expression was that of a desire to open correspondence with General Sherman, to see if he would agree to a suspension of hostilities, the object being to permit the civil authorities to enter into the needful arrangements to terminate the existing war. Confident that the United States Government would not accept a proposition for such negotiations, I distinctly expressed My conviction on that point, and presented as an objection to such an effort that, so far as it should excite delusive hopes and expectations, its failure would have a demoralizing effect both on the troops and the people. Neither of them had shown any disposition to surrender, or had any reason to suppose that their Government contemplated abandoning its trust--the maintenance of the Constitution, freedom, and independence of the Confederate States. From the inception of the war, the people had generally and at all times expressed their determination to accept no terms of peace that did not recognize their independence; and the indignation manifested when it became known that Mr. Lincoln had offered to our commissioners at Hampton Roads a surrender at discretion as the only alternative to a continuance of the war assured me that no true Confederate was prepared to accept peace on such terms. During the last years of the war the main part of the infantry in the Army of Northern Virginia was composed of men from the farther South. Many of these, before the evacuation of Petersburg and especially about the time of Lee's surrender, had absented themselves to go homeward, and, it was reported, made avowal of their purpose to continue the struggle. I had reason to believe that the spirit of the army in North Carolina was unbroken, for, though surrounded by circumstances well calculated to depress and discourage them, I had learned that they earnestly protested to their officers against the surrender which rumor informed them was then in contemplation. If any shall deem it a weak credulity to confide in such reports, something may be allowed to an intense love for the Confederacy to a thorough conviction that its fall would involve ruin, both material and moral, and to a confidence in the righteousness of our cause, which, if equally felt by my compatriots, would make them do and dare to the last extremity.
But if, taking the gloomiest view, the circumstances were such as to leave no hope of maintaining the independence of the Confederate States--if negotiations for peace must be on the basis of reunion and the acceptance of the war legislation--it seemed to me that certainly better terms for our country could be secured by keeping organized armies in the field than by laying down our arms and trusting to the magnanimity of the victor.
For all these considerations I was not at all hopeful of any success in the attempt to provide for negotiations between the civil authorities of the United States and those of the Confederacy, believing that, even if Sherman should agree to such a proposition, his Government would not ratify it; but, after having distinctly announced my opinion, I yielded to the judgment of my constitutional advisers, of whom only one held my views, and consented to permit General Johnston, as he desired, to hold a conference with General Sherman for the purpose above recited.
Then, turning to what I supposed would soon follow, I invited General Johnston to an expression of his choice of a line of retreat toward the southwest. He declared a preference for a different route from that suggested by me, and, yielding the point, I informed him that I would have depots of supplies for his army placed on the route he had selected. The commissary-general, St. John, executed the order, as shown in his report published in the "Southern Historical Society Papers," vol. viii, pp. 103-107.
Referring to the period which followed the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, General I. M. St. John, Commissary-General Confederate States Army, writes:
"The bureau headquarters were continued in North Carolina until the surrender of that military department. During the interval preparations were made for the westward movement of forces as then contemplated. In these arrangements the local depots were generally found so full and supplied so well in hand, from Charlotte southwest, that the commissary-general was able to report to the Secretary of War that the requisitions for which he was notified to prepare could all be met. The details of this service were executed, and very ably, by Major J. H. Claiborne, then, and until the end, assistant commissary-general."
Major Claiborne, in his report, writes:
"Being placed under orders as assistant commissary-general, I forwarded supplies from South Carolina to General J. E. Johnston's army, and also collected supplies at six or seven named points in that State for the supposed retreat of General Johnston's army through the State. This duty, with a full determination at the evacuation of this city [Richmond] to follow the fortunes of our cause, gave me opportunity of ascertaining the resources of the country for my department. The great want was that of transportation, and specially was it felt by all collecting commissaries for a few months before the surrender."
It will thus be seen that my expectations, referred to above, caused adequate provision to be made for the retreat of our army, if that result should become necessary by the failure of the attempt to open negotiations for an honorable peace. I had never contemplated a surrender, except upon such terms as a belligerent might claim, as long as we were able to keep the field, and never expected a Confederate army to surrender while it was able either to fight or to retreat. Lee had only surrendered his army when it was impossible for him to do either one or the other, and had proudly rejected Grant's demand, in the face of overwhelming numbers, until he found himself surrounded and his line of retreat blocked by a force much larger than his own.
After it had been decided that General Johnston should attempt negotiation with General Sherman, he left for his army headquarters; and I, expecting that he would soon take up his line of retreat, which his superiority in cavalry would protect from harassing pursuit, proceeded with my Cabinet and staff toward Charlotte, North Carolina. While on the way, a dispatch was received from General Johnston announcing that General Sherman had agreed to a conference, and asking that the Secretary of War, General J. C. Breckinridge, should return to coöperate in it. The application was complied with, and the Postmaster-General, John H. Reagan, also went at my request. He, however, was not admitted to the conference.
We arrived at Charlotte on April 18, 1865, and I there received, at the moment of dismounting, a telegram from General Breckinridge announcing, on information received from General Sherman, that President Lincoln had been assassinated. An influential citizen of the town, who had come to welcome me, was standing near me, and, after remarking to him in a low voice that I had received sad intelligence, I handed the telegram to him. Some troopers encamped in the vicinity had collected to see me; they called to the gentleman who had the dispatch in his hand to read it, no doubt supposing it to be army news. He complied with their request, and a few, only taking in the fact, but not appreciating the evil it portended, cheered, as was natural at news of the fall of one they considered their most powerful foe. The man, who invented the story of my having read the dispatch with exultation, had free scope for his imagination, as he was not present, and had no chance to know whereof he bore witness, even if there had been any foundation of truth for his fiction.
For an enemy so relentless in the war for our subjugation, we could not be expected to mourn; yet, in view of its political consequences, it could not be regarded otherwise than as a great misfortune to the South. He had power over the Northern people, and was without personal malignity toward the people of the South; his successor was without power in the North, and the embodiment of malignity toward the Southern people, perhaps the more so because he had betrayed and deserted them in the hour of their need. The war had now shrunk into narrow proportions, but the important consideration remained to so conduct it that, if failing to secure our independence, we might obtain a treaty or quasi-treaty of peace which would secure to the Southern States their political rights, and to the people thereof immunity from the plunder of their private property.
I found some cavalry at Charlotte, and soon had the satisfaction to increase them to five brigades, They had been on detached service, and were much reduced in numbers. Among the troopers who assembled there was the remnant of the command which had spread terror north of the Ohio, under the command of their dauntless leader, General John Hunt Morgan. Their present chief, worthy to be the successor of that hero, was General Basil Duke. Among the atrocious, cowardly acts of vindictive malice which marked the conduct of the enemy, none did or could surpass the brutality with which the dying and dead body of Morgan was treated. Hate, the offspring of fear, they might feel for the valorous soldier while he lived, but even the ignoble passion, vengeance, might have been expected to stop when life was extinct.
On April 13, 1865, General Johnston wrote to General Sherman as follows:
"The results of the recent campaign in Virginia have changed the relative military condition of the belligerents. I am therefore induced to address you, in this form, the inquiry whether, to stop the further effusion of blood and the devastation of property, you are willing to make a temporary suspension of active operations; . . . the object being to permit the civil authorities to enter into the needful arrangements to terminate the existing war."
General Sherman replied, on the 14th:
"I am fully empowered to arrange with you any terms for the suspension of hostilities between the armies commanded by you and those commanded by myself, and will be willing to confer with you to that end," etc., etc.[124]
In the same volume, at page 327, General Sherman describes an interview with Mr. Lincoln, held at City Point on the 27th and 28th of March preceding, in which he says:
"Mr. Lincoln distinctly authorized me to assure Governor Vance and the people of North Carolina that, as soon as the rebel armies laid down their arms, and resumed their civil pursuits, they would at once be guaranteed all their rights as citizens of a common country; and that, to avoid anarchy, the State governments then in existence, with their civil functionaries, would be recognized by him as the government de facto till Congress could provide others."
In a letter of D. D. Porter, vice-admiral, written in 1866, giving his recollections of that interview, in the same volume, page 330, is found the following paragraph:
"The conversation between the President and General Sherman, about the terms of surrender to be allowed Joe Johnston, continued. Sherman energetically insisted that he could command his own terms, and that Johnston would have to yield to his demands; but the President was very decided about the matter, and insisted that the surrender of Johnston's army must be obtained on any terms."
Hence it appears that Sherman was authorized to say that he was fully empowered to arrange for the suspension of hostilities; and, moreover, that he was instructed by Mr. Lincoln to give "any terms" to obtain the surrender of Johnston's army.
In regard to the memorandum or basis of agreement, Sherman states, in the same volume, page 353, that, while in consultation with General Johnston, a messenger brought him a parcel of papers from Mr. Reagan, Postmaster-General; that Johnston and Breckinridge looked over them, and handed one of them to him, which he found inadmissible, and proceeds:
"Then, recalling the conversation with Mr. Lincoln at City Point, I sat down at the table and wrote off the terms which I thought concisely expressed his views and wishes."
But, while these matters were progressing, Mr. Lincoln had been assassinated, and a vindictive policy had been substituted for his, which avowedly was, to procure a speedy surrender of the army upon any terms. His evident wish was to stop the further shedding of blood; that of his successors, like Sherman's, to extract all which it was possible to obtain. From the memoranda of the interview between Mr. Lincoln and Sherman it is clearly to be inferred that, but for the untimely death of Mr. Lincoln, the agreement between Generals Sherman and Johnston would have been ratified; and the wounds inflicted on civil liberty by the "reconstruction" measures might not have left their shameful scars on the United States.
General Sherman, in his "Memoirs," vol. ii, page 349, referring to a conversation between himself and General Johnston at their first meeting, writes:
"I told him I could not believe that he or General Lee, or the officers of the Confederate army, could possibly be privy to acts of assassination, but I would not say as much for Jeff Davis, George Saunders, and men of that stripe."
On this I have but two remarks to make: First, that I think there were few officers in the Confederate army who would have permitted such a slanderous imputation to be made by a public enemy against the chief executive of their Government; second, that I could not value the good opinion of the man who, in regard to the burning of Columbia, made a false charge against General Wade Hampton, and, having left it to circulate freely for ten years, then in his published memoirs makes this disgraceful admission:
"In my official report of this conflagration, I distinctly charged it to General Wade Hampton, and confess I did so pointedly, to shake the faith of his people in him," etc.
"Memorandum, or basis of agreement, made this 18th day of April, A. D. 1865, near Durham Station, and in the State of North Carolina, by and between General Joseph E. Johnston, commanding the Confederate army, and Major-General W. T. Sherman, commanding the army of the United States in North Carolina, both present:
"1. The contending armies now in the field to maintain their status quo, until notice is given by the commanding General of either one to its opponents, and reasonable time, say forty-eight hours, allowed.
"2. The Confederate armies now in existence to be disbanded and conducted to the several State capitals, there to deposit their arms and public property in the State Arsenal, and each officer and man to execute and file an agreement to cease from acts of war, and abide the action of both Federal and State authorities. The number of arms and munitions of war to be reported to the chief of ordnance at Washington City, subject to future action of the Congress of the United States, and in the mean time to be used solely to maintain peace and order within the borders of the States respectively.
"3. The recognition by the Executive of the United States of the several State governments, on their officers and Legislatures taking the oath prescribed by the Constitution of the United States; and, where conflicting State governments have resulted from the war, the legitimacy of all shall be submitted to the Supreme Court of the United States.
"4. The reestablishment of all Federal courts in the several States, with powers as defined by the Constitution and laws of Congress.
"5. The people and inhabitants of all States to be guaranteed, so far as the Executive can, their political rights and franchises, as well as their rights of person and property, as defined by the Constitution of the United States and of the States respectively.
"6. The Executive authority of the Government of the United States not to disturb any of the people by reason of the late war, so long as they live in peace and quiet, abstain from acts of armed hostility, and obey laws in existence at any place of their residence.
"7. In general terms, war to cease, a general amnesty, so far as the Executive power of the United States can command, or on condition of the disbandment of the Confederate armies, the distribution of arms, and resumption of peaceful pursuits by officers and men, as hitherto composing said armies. Not being fully empowered by our respective principals to fulfill these terms, we individually and officially pledge ourselves to promptly obtain necessary authority, and to carry out the above programme.
"W. T. SHERMAN, Major-General, etc., etc.
"J. E. JOHNSTON, General, etc., etc."
The reader will not fail to observe that the proposition for a suspension of hostilities to allow the civil authorities to negotiate, was not even entertained; that the agreement was, in fact, a military convention, in which all reference to the civil authorities was excluded, except by the admission that the negotiators respectively had principals from whom they must obtain authority, i. e., ratification of the agreement into which they had entered. There seemed to be a special dread on the part of the United States officials lest they should do something which would be construed as the recognition of the existence of a government which for four years they had been vainly trying to subdue. Now, as on previous occasions, I cared little for the form, and therefore only gave my consideration to the substance of the agreement. In consideration of the disbandment of our armies it provided for the recognition of the several State governments, guaranteed to the people of the States their political rights and franchises, as well as their rights of person and property as defined by the Constitution of the United States and other States respectively; promised not to disturb any of the people by reason of the late war, and generally indicated that the United States Government was to be restricted to the exercise of the powers delegated in the Constitution.
Though this convention, if ratified, would not have all the binding force of a treaty, it secured to our people the political rights and safety from pillage, to obtain which I proposed to continue the war. I, therefore, with the concurrence of my constitutional advisers, addressed General Johnston as follows:
"CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA, April 24, 1865.
"General J. E. JOHNSTON, Greensboro, North Carolina.
"The Secretary of War has delivered to me the copy you handed to him of the basis of an agreement between yourself and General Sherman. Your action is approved. You will so inform General Sherman; and, if the like authority be given by the Government of the United States to complete the arrangement, you will proceed on the basis adopted.
"Further instructions will be given after the details of the negotiation and the methods of executing the terms of agreement when notified by you of the readiness on the part of the General commanding United States forces to proceed with the arrangement.
"JEFFERSON DAVIS."
From the terms of this letter it will be seen that I doubted whether the agreement would be ratified by the United States Government. The opinion I entertained in regard to President Johnson and his venomous Secretary of War, Stanton, did not permit me to expect that they would be less vindictive after a surrender of our army had been proposed than when it was regarded as a formidable body defiantly holding its position in the field. Whatever hope others entertained that the existing war was about to be peacefully terminated, was soon dispelled by the rejection of the basis of agreement on the part of the Government of the United States, and a notice from General Sherman of termination of the armistice in forty-eight hours after noon of the 24th of April, 1865.
General Johnston communicated to me the substance of the above information received by him from General Sherman, and asked for instructions. I have neither his telegram nor my reply, but can give it substantially from memory. It was that he should retire with his cavalry, and as many infantry as could be mounted upon draught-horses, and some light artillery, the rest of the infantry to be disbanded, and a place of rendezvous appointed. It was unnecessary to say anything of the route, as that had been previously agreed on, and supplies placed on it for his retreating army. This order was disobeyed, and he sought another interview with Sherman, to renew his attempt to reach an agreement for a termination of hostilities. Meantime, General Hampton, commanding the cavalry of Johnston's army, came to me at Charlotte, told me that he feared the army was to be surrendered, and wished permission to withdraw his part of it and report to me. I gave the permission, extending it to all the cavalry, which was in accordance with the instructions I had sent to General Johnston. He returned immediately, but I have since learned from him that the cavalry had been included in a proposition to surrender, before he reached them.
After the expiration of the armistice, I rode out of Charlotte, attended by the members of my Cabinet (except Attorney-General Davis, who had gone to see his family, residing in that section, and the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Trenholm, who was too ill to accompany me), my personal staff, and the cavalry which had been concentrated from different, and some of them distant, fields of detached service. The number was about two thousand, and they represented six brigade organizations; though so much reduced in numbers, they were in a good state of efficiency, and among their officers were some of the best in our service. To the troops of this command, whose gallantly had been displayed on many fields, there is due from me a special acknowledgment for the kind consideration shown to me on the marches from Charlotte, when the dark shadows which gathered round us foretold the coming night. General Hampton, finding his troops had been included in the surrender, endeavored to join me to offer his individual service, and to share my fate whatever it might be. He accidentally failed to meet me.
I must now recur to two extraordinary statements made by General J. E. Johnston in regard to myself while at Charlotte, North Carolina, on pages 408 and 409, Johnston's "Narrative." The first is that at Greensboro, on the 19th of April--
"Colonel Archer Anderson, adjutant-general of the army, gave me two papers, addressed to me by the President. The first directed me to obtain from Mr. J. N. Hendren, Treasury Agent, thirty-nine thousand dollars in silver, which was in his hands, subject to my order, and to use it as the military chest of the army. The second, received subsequently by Colonel Anderson, directed me to send this money to the President at Charlotte. This order was not obeyed, however. As only the military part of our Government had then any existence, I thought that a fair share of the fund still left should be appropriated to the benefit of the army."
And so, as revealed in his "Narrative," he took the money, and divided it among the troops.
When my attention was called to this statement by one who had read the "Narrative," I wrote to Colonel Anderson, referred to book and page, and inquired what letters from me as there described he had received. He responded:
"I do not remember anything connected with the subject, except that there was a payment of silver coin to the army at Greensboro, and I have no papers which would afford information."
My letter-book contains no such correspondence, but has a letter which renders more than doubtful the assertion that I wrote others such as described. The only letter found in my letter-book on the subject of the funds in charge of Hendren is the following:
"GREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA, April 15, 1865.
"Mr. HENDREN, C. S. Treasurer, Greensboro, North Carolina.
"SIR: You will report to General Beauregard with the treasure in your possession, that he may give to it due protection as a military chest to be moved with his army train. For further instructions you will report to the Secretary of the Treasury.
"JEFFERSON DAVIS.
"Official: F. R. LUBBOCK, Colonel and A. D. C."
From the above it will be seen that, while I exercised authority to assign officers to their posts or places of duty, I assumed no control over the public Treasury; but in that connection referred the subordinate to his chief, the Secretary of the Treasury, by whom alone could warrants be drawn against the public funds. How very improbable, then, it is, that I wrote to have the money in the hands of a treasurer sent to me personally! Yet this is what General Johnston claims to have resisted, when without any lawful authority he distributed the money himself. The second statement is:
"As there was reason to suppose that the Confederate Executive had a large sum in specie in its possession, I urged it earnestly, in writing, to apply a part of it to the payment of the army. This letter was intrusted to Lieutenant-Colonel Mason, who was instructed to wait for an answer. Its receipt was acknowledged by telegraph, and an answer promised. After waiting several days to no purpose. Colonel Mason returned without one."
Not recollecting to have met Colonel Mason at Charlotte, I wrote to him, calling his attention to the statement, and asking what was the fact. Not receiving a reply, I renewed the inquiry, but, though considerable time has elapsed, he has not answered. It is quite possible that I might have met the gentleman without recollecting it, but not at all probable that I should have received such a letter and have forgotten it. Such intrusion of advice as to what should be done with the money in the Treasury, and the speculative opinion as to the amount there, I must suppose would have been very promptly rejected if it had been presented to me. For years there had been irregularity and delay in the payment of the troops, and surely no one regretted it more than myself, or had for years tried more sedulously to correct it; but, expecting the army to continue in the field, it was indispensable to have the means of obtaining the necessary supplies for it.
The Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Trenholm, was ill before we reached Charlotte, and quite so during our stay there, but he knew there was not a large sum of specie in the Treasury, and with patriotic desire had been using it to supply the troops after Confederate money became unavailable for purchases. He did not contemplate the abandonment of our cause, and it would not have taken him a minute to answer that more than all the money he had would be needed in future military operations.
On the 26th, the day on which the armistice terminated, General Johnston again met General Sherman, who offered the same terms which had been made with General Lee, and he says, "General Johnston, without hesitation, agreed to, and we executed the following," which was the surrender of General Johnston's troops, with the condition of their being paroled and the officers being permitted to retain their side-arms, private horses, and baggage.
It is true that these were the terms accepted by Lee, but the condition of the two armies was very different. Lee's supplies had been cut off, his men were exhausted by fatigue and hunger; he had no reënforcements in view; notwithstanding the immense superiority in numbers and equipments of the enemy pursuing, he had from point to point fought them in rear and on both flanks, and had, the day before his line of retreat was closed, rejected the demand for surrender, and only yielded to it after his starving little army had been surrounded by masses through which he tried to, but could not, cut his way.
Johnston's line of retreat was open, and supplies had been placed upon it. His cavalry was superior to that of the enemy, as had been proved in every conflict between them. Maury and Forrest and Taylor still had armies in the field--not large, but strong enough to have collected around them the men who had left Johnston's army and gone to their homes to escape a surrender, as well as those who under similar circumstances had left Lee. The show of continued resistance, I then believed, as I still do, would have overcome the depression which was spreading like a starless night over the country, and that the exhibition of a determination not to leave our political future at the mercy of an enemy which had for four years been striving to subjugate the States would have led the United States authorities to do, as Mr. Lincoln had indicated--give any terms which might be found necessary speedily to terminate the existing war.
Those who look back upon the period when the States were treated as subject provinces, and the Congress left to legislate at its will-- when a war professedly waged to bring the seceding States back to the Union, with all the rights and privileges guaranteed by the Constitution, was followed by the utter disregard of those rights, and the miscalled peace was a state of vindictive hostility--will probably think continued war was not the greatest of evils.
I quote again from the "Memoirs" of Sherman, vol. ii, p. 349. Referring to the first interview, he writes:
"I then told Johnston that he must be convinced that he could not oppose my army, and that, since Lee had surrendered, he could do the same with honor and propriety. He plainly and repeatedly admitted this, and added that any further fighting would be 'murder'; but he thought that, instead of surrendering piecemeal, we might arrange terms that would embrace all the Confederate armies."
Sherman further writes that he told Johnston that the terms given to General Lee's army were most generous and liberal, which he states Johnston "admitted, but always recurred to the idea of a universal surrender, embracing his own army, that of Dick Taylor, in Louisiana and Texas, and of Maury, Forrest, and others, in Alabama and Georgia." Considering the character of the authority cited, and the extraordinary proposition to provide for a universal surrender by a district commander, it may be well supposed to require confirmation. I therefore quote from General Richard Taylor, "Destruction and Reconstruction," page 224:
"Intelligence of the Johnston-Sherman convention reached us, and Canby and I were requested by the officers making it to conform to its terms until the civil authorities acted."
The advice may have been well enough, but, as there was an established channel of communication, and an order of responsibility necessary for effective coöperation in the public service, something more than courtesy required that the Executive should have been advised if not consulted. I had left Charlotte with no other sure reliance against any cavalry movement of the enemy than the force which was with me; that, however, I believed to be sufficient for any probable exigency, if the reënforcements hoped for should not join us on the way. We proceeded at easy stages; some of the command thought we went too slow. After making two halts of about half a day each, we reached the Savannah River. I crossed early in the morning of the 4th of May, with a company, which had been detailed as my escort, and rode some miles to a farmhouse, where I halted to get breakfast and have our horses fed. Here I learned that a regiment of the enemy were moving upon Washington, Georgia, which was one of our depots of supplies, and I sent back a courier with a pencil-note addressed to General Vaughn, or the officer commanding the advance, requesting him to come on and join me immediately. After waiting a considerable time, I determined to move on with my escort, trusting that the others would overtake us, and that, if not, we should arrive in Washington in time to rally the citizens to its defense. When I reached there, scouts were sent out on the different roads, and my conclusion was that we had had a false alarm. The Secretary of State, Mr. Benjamin, being unaccustomed to traveling on horseback, parted from me, at the house where we stopped to breakfast, to take another mode of conveyance and a different route from that which I was pursuing, with intent to rejoin me in the trans-Mississippi Department. At Washington, the Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Mallory, left me temporarily to attend to the needs of his family. The Secretary of War, Mr. Breckinridge, had remained with the cavalry at the crossing of the Savannah River. During the night after my arrival in Washington, he sent in an application for authority to draw from the treasure, under the protection of the troops, enough to make to them a partial payment. I authorized the acting Secretary of the Treasury to meet the requisition by the use of the silver coin in the train. When the next day passed without the troops coming forward, I sent a note to the Secretary of War, showing the impolicy of my longer delay, having there heard that General Upton had passed within a few miles of the town on his way to Augusta to receive the surrender of the garrison and military material at that place, in conformity with orders issued by General Johnston. This was my first positive information of his surrender. Not receiving an immediate reply to the note addressed to the Secretary of War, General Breckinridge, I spoke to Captain Campbell, of Kentucky, commanding my escort, explained to him the condition of affairs, and telling him that his company was not strong enough to fight, and too large to pass without observation, asked him to inquire if there were ten men who would volunteer to go with me without question wherever I should choose. He brought back for answer that the whole company volunteered on the terms proposed. Gratifying as this manifestation was, I felt it would expose them to unnecessary hazard to accept the offer, and told him, in any manner he might think best, to form a party of ten men. With these. Captain Campbell, Lieutenant Barnwell, of South Carolina, Colonels F. E. Lubbock, John Taylor Wood, and William Preston Johnston, of my personal staff, I left Washington. Secretary Reagan remained for a short time to transfer the treasure in his hands, except a few thousand dollars, and then rejoined me on the road. This transfer of the treasure was made to Mr. Semple, a bonded officer of the navy, and his assistant, Mr. Tidball, with instructions, as soon as it could be safely done, to transport it abroad and deliver it to the commercial house which had acted as the financial agent of the Confederate Government, and was reported to have incurred liabilities on its account.
Mr. Reagan overtook me in a few hours, but I saw no more of General Breckinridge, and learned subsequently that he was following our route, with a view to overtake me, when he heard of my capture, and, turning to the east, reached the Florida coast unmolested. On the way he met J. Taylor Wood, and, in an open boat, they crossed the straits to the West Indies. No report reached me at that time, or until long afterward, in regard to the cavalry command left at the Savannah River; then it was to the effect that paroled men from Johnston's army brought news of its surrender, and that the condition of returning home and remaining unmolested embraced all the men of the department who would give their parole, and that this had exercised a great influence over the troops, inclining them to accept those terms. Had General Johnston obeyed the order sent to him from Charlotte, and moved on the route selected by himself, with all his cavalry, so much of the infantry as could be mounted, and the light artillery, he could not have been successfully pursued by General Sherman. His force, united to that I had assembled at Charlotte, would, it was believed, have been sufficient to vanquish any troops which the enemy had between us and the Mississippi River.
Had the cavalry with which I left Charlotte been associated with a force large enough to inspire hope for the future, instead of being discouraged by the surrender in their rear, it would probably have gone on, and, when united with the forces of Maury, Forrest, and Taylor, in Alabama and Mississippi, have constituted an army large enough to attract stragglers, and revive the drooping spirits of the country. In the worst view of the case it should have been able to cross the trans-Mississippi Department, and there uniting with the armies of E. K. Smith and Magruder to form an army, which in the portion of that country abounding in supplies, and deficient in rivers and railroads, could have continued the war until our enemy, foiled in the purpose of subjugation, should, in accordance with his repeated declaration, have agreed, on the basis of a return to the Union, to acknowledge the Constitutional rights of the States, and by a convention, or quasi-treaty, to guarantee security of person and property. To this hope I persistently clung, and, if our independence could not be achieved, so much, at least, I trusted might be gained.
Those who have endured the horrors of "reconstruction," who have, under "carpet-bag rule," borne insult, robbery, and imprisonment without legal warrant, can appreciate the value which would have attached to such limited measure of success.
When I left Washington, Georgia, with the small party which has been enumerated, my object was to go to the south far enough to pass below the points reported to be occupied by Federal troops, and then turn to the west, cross the Chattahoochee, and then go on to meet the forces still supposed to be in the field in Alabama. If, as now seemed probable, there should be no prospect of a successful resistance east of the Mississippi, I intended then to cross to the trans-Mississippi Department, where I believed Generals E. K. Smith and Magruder would continue to uphold our cause. That I was not mistaken in the character of these men, I extract from the order issued by General E. K. Smith to the soldiers of the trans-Mississippi Army on the 21st of April, 1865:
"Great disasters have overtaken us. The Army of Northern Virginia and our General-in-Chief are prisoners of war. With you rest the hopes of our nation, and upon you depends the fate of our people. . . . Prove to the world that your hearts have not failed in the hour of disaster. . . . Stand by your colors--maintain your discipline. The great resources of this department, its vast extent, the numbers, the discipline, and the efficiency of the army, will secure to our country terms that a proud people can with honor accept."
General Magruder, with like heroic determination, invoked the troops and people of Texas not to despond, and pointed out their ability in the interior of that vast State to carry on the war indefinitely.
General D. H. Maury, after his memorable defense of Mobile, withdrew his forces on the 12th of April, at the last moment, and moved toward Meridian. Commodore Farrand, commanding our navy at Mobile Bay, withdrew his armed vessels and steamers up the Tombigbee River, and planted torpedoes in the Alabama below. Forrest and Maury had about eight thousand men, but these were veterans, tried in many hard engagements, and trained to the highest state of efficiency. Before Maury withdrew from Mobile, news had been received of Lee's surrender. Taylor says the news was soon disseminated through his army, but that the men remained steadfast, and manifested a determination to maintain the honor of our aims to the last. On pages 224 and 225 of his book, he gives an account of the intelligence received of the Johnston-Sherman convention of the 18th of April, and of the meeting between Canby and himself to arrange terms for his army, and an agreement that there should be an armistice; but he says, two days after that meeting, news was received of Johnston's surrender, and the capture of President Davis. The latter was untrue, and he does not say who communicated it, but that he was at the same time notified that the Johnston-Sherman convention had been disavowed by the United States Government, and notice given for the termination of the armistice. Under these circumstances he asked General Canby to meet him again, and on the 8th of May, two days before I was actually captured, but which he supposed had already occurred, he agreed with Canby on terms for the surrender of the land and naval forces in Mississippi and Alabama. These terms were similar to those made between Johnston and Sherman; the mounted men were to retain their horses, being their private property.
On the 26th of May, the chief of staff of General E. Kirby Smith, and the chief of staff of General Canby, at Baton Rouge, arranged similar terms for the surrender of the troops in the trans-Mississippi Department. On May 11th, after the last army east of the Mississippi had surrendered, but before Kirby Smith had entered into terms, the enemy sent an expedition from the Brazos Santiago against a little Confederate encampment some fifteen miles above. The camp was captured and burned, but, in the zeal to secure the fruits of victory, they remained so long collecting the plunder, that General J. E. Slaughter heard of the expedition, moved against it, and drove it back with considerable loss, sustaining very little injury to his command. This was, I believe, the last armed conflict of the war, and, though very small in comparison to its great battles, it deserves notice as having closed the long struggle--as it opened-- with a Confederate victory.
The total number of prisoners paroled at Greensboro, North Carolina, as reported by General Schofield, was 36,817; in Georgia and Florida, as reported by General Wilson, 52,543; aggregate surrender under the capitulation of General J. E. Johnston, 89,270.[125] How many of this last number were men who left General Johnston's army to avoid the surrender, or were on detached service from the armies of Virginia and North Carolina, I have no means of ascertaining.
The total number in the Department of Alabama and Mississippi paroled by General Canby, under agreement with General Richard Taylor, of the 8th of May, 1865, as reported, was 42,293,[126] to which may be added of the navy a small force--less than 150. The number surrendered by General E. Kirby Smith, commanding the trans-Mississippi Department, as reported, was 17,686.[127] To this small dimension had General Smith's army been reduced when he accepted the terms to which a reference has already been made. This reduction resulted from various causes, but it is believed was mainly due to the reluctance of a large part of his army to accept a parole, preferring to take whatever hazard belonged to absenting themselves without leave and continuing their character of belligerents. A few, but so far as I know very few, even went to the extent of expatriating themselves, and joined Maximilian in Mexico. Against no one as much as myself did the hostility of our victorious enemy manifest itself, but I was never willing to seek the remedy of exile, and always advised those who consulted me against that resort. The mass of our people could not go; the few who were able to do so were most needed to sustain the others in the hour of a common adversity. The example of Ireland after the Treaty of Limerick, and of Canada after its conquest by Great Britain, were instructive as to the duty of the influential men to remain and share the burden of a common disaster.
With General E. K. Smith's surrender the Confederate flag no longer floated on the land; but one gallant sailor still unfurled it on the Pacific. Captain Waddell, commanding the Confederate cruiser Shenandoah, swept the ocean from Australia nearly to Behring's Straits, making many captures in the Okhobak Sea and Arctic Ocean. In August, 1865, he learned from the captain of a British ship that the Confederacy, as an independent Government, had ceased to exist. With the fall of his Government his right to cruise was of course terminated; he therefore sailed for the coast of England, entered the Mersey, and on November 6, 1865, and in due form, surrendered his vessel to the British Government. She was accepted and subsequently transferred to the United States.
After leaving Washington in the manner and for the purpose heretofore described, I overtook a commissary and quartermaster's train, having public papers of value in charge, and, finding that they had no experienced woodsman with it, I gave them four of the men of my small party, and went on with the rest. On the second or third day after leaving Washington, I heard that a band of marauders, supposed to be stragglers and deserters from both armies, were in pursuit of my family, whom I had not seen since they left Richmond, but of whom I heard, at Washington, that they had gone with my private secretary and seven paroled men, who generously offered their services as an escort, to the Florida coast. Their route was to the east of that I was pursuing, but I immediately changed direction and rode rapidly across the country to overtake them. About nightfall the horses of my escort gave out, but I pressed on with Secretary Reagan and my personal staff. It was a bright moonlight night, and just before day, as the moon was sinking below the tree-tops, I met a party of men in the road, who answered my questions by saying they belonged to an Alabama regiment; that they were coming from a village not far off, on their way homeward. Upon inquiry being made, they told me they had passed an encampment of wagons, with women and children, and asked me if we belonged to that party. Upon being answered in the affirmative, they took their leave.
After a short time I was hailed by a voice which I recognized as that of my private secretary, who informed me that the marauders had been hanging around the camp, and that he and others were on post around it, and were expecting an assault as soon as the moon went down. A silly story had got abroad that it was a treasure-train, and the auri sacra fames had probably instigated these marauders, as it subsequently stimulated General J. H. Wilson, to send out a large cavalry force to capture the same train. For the protection of my family I traveled with them two or three days, when, believing that they had passed out of the region of marauders, I determined to leave their encampment at nightfall, to execute my original purpose. My horse and those of my party proper were saddled preparatory to a start, when one of my staff, who had ridden into the neighboring village, returned and told me that he had heard that a marauding party intended to attack the camp that night. This decided me to wait long enough to see whether there was any truth in the rumor, which I supposed would be ascertained in a few hours. My horse remained saddled and my pistols in the holsters, and I lay down, fully dressed, to rest. Nothing occurred to rouse me until just before dawn, when my coachman, a free colored man, who faithfully clung to our fortunes, came and told me there was firing over the branch, just behind our encampment. I stepped out of my wife's tent and saw some horsemen, whom I immediately recognized as cavalry, deploying around the encampment. I turned back and told my wife these were not the expected marauders, but regular troopers. She implored me to leave her at once. I hesitated, from unwillingness to do so, and lost a few precious moments before yielding to her importunity. My horse and arms were near the road on which I expected to leave, and down which the cavalry approached; it was therefore impracticable to reach them. I was compelled to start in the opposite direction. As it was quite dark in the tent, I picked up what was supposed to be my "raglan," a water-proof, light overcoat, without sleeves; it was subsequently found to be my wife's, so very like my own as to be mistaken for it; as I started, my wife thoughtfully threw over my head and shoulders a shawl. I had gone perhaps fifteen or twenty yards when a trooper galloped up and ordered me to halt and surrender, to which I gave a defiant answer, and, dropping the shawl and raglan from my shoulders, advanced toward him; he leveled his carbine at me, but I expected, if he fired, he would miss me, and my intention was in that event to put my hand under his foot, tumble him off on the other side, spring into his saddle, and attempt to escape. My wife, who had been watching, when she saw the soldier aim his carbine at me, ran forward and threw her arms around me. Success depended on instantaneous action, and, recognizing that the opportunity had been lost, I turned back, and, the morning being damp and chilly, passed on to a fire beyond the tent. Our pursuers had taken different roads, and approached our camp from opposite directions; they encountered each other and commenced firing, both supposing they had met our armed escort, and some casualties resulted from their conflict with an imaginary body of Confederate troops. During the confusion, while attention was concentrated upon myself, except by those who were engaged in pillage, one of my aides, Colonel J. Taylor Wood, with Lieutenant Barnwell, walked off unobserved. His daring exploits on the sea had made him, on the part of the Federal Government, an object of special hostility, and rendered it quite proper that he should avail himself of every possible means of escape. Colonel Pritchard went over to their battle-field, and I did not see him for a long time, surely more than an hour after my capture. He subsequently claimed credit, in a conversation with me, for the forbearance shown by his men in not shooting me when I refused to surrender.
Wilson and others have uttered many falsehoods in regard to my capture, which have been exposed in publications by persons there present--by Secretary Reagan, by the members of my personal staff, and by the colored coachman, Jim Jones, which must have been convincing to all who were not given over to believe a lie. For this reason I will postpone, to some other time and more appropriate place, any further notice of the story and its variations, all the spawn of a malignity that shames the civilization of the age. We were, when prisoners, subjected to petty pillage, as described in the publications referred to, and in others; and to annoyances such as military gentlemen never commit or permit.
On our way to Macon we received the proclamation of President Andrew Johnson offering a reward for my apprehension as an accomplice in the assassination of the late President A. Lincoln. Some troops by the wayside had the proclamation, which was displayed with vociferous demonstrations of exultation over my capture. When we arrived at Macon I was conducted to the hotel where General Wilson had his quarters. A strong guard was in front of the entrance, and, when I got down to pass in, it opened ranks, facing inward, and presented arms.
A commodious room was assigned to myself and family. After a while the steward of the hotel called and inquired whether I would dine with General Wilson or have dinner served with myself and family in my room. I chose the latter. After dinner I received a message from General Wilson, asking whether he should wait upon me, or whether I would call upon him. I rose and accompanied the messenger to General Wilson's presence. We had met at West Point when he was a cadet, and I a commissioner sent by the Congress to inquire into the affairs of the Academy. After some conversation in regard to former times and our common acquaintance, he referred to the proclamation offering a reward for my capture. Taking it for granted that any significant remark of mine would be reported to his Government, and fearing that I might never have another opportunity to give my opinion to A. Johnson, I told him there was one man in the United States who knew that proclamation to be false. He remarked that my expression indicated a particular person. I answered that I did, and the person was the one who signed it, for he at least knew that I preferred Lincoln to himself. Some other conversation then occurred in regard to the route on which we were to be carried. Having several small children, one of them an infant, I expressed a preference for the easier route by water, supposing then, as he seemed to do, that I was to go to Washington City. He manifested a courteous, obliging temper, and, either by the authority with which he was invested or by obtaining it from a higher power, my preference as to the route was accorded. I told him that some of the men with me were on parole, and that they all were riding their own horses--private property--that I would be glad they should be permitted to retain them, and I have a distinct recollection that he promised me it should be done; but I have since learned that they were all deprived of their horses, and some who were on parole, viz., Major Moran, Captain Moody, Lieutenant Hathaway, Midshipman Howell, and Private Messec, who had not violated their obligations of parole, but had been captured because they were found voluntarily traveling with my family to protect them from marauders, were sent with me as prisoners of war, and all incarcerated, in disregard of the protection promised when they surrendered. At Augusta we were put on a steamer, and there met Vice-President Stephens; Hon. C. C. Clay, who had voluntarily surrendered himself upon learning that he was included in the proclamation for the arrest of certain persons charged with complicity in the assassination of Mr. Lincoln; General Wheeler, the distinguished cavalry officer, and his adjutant, General Ralls. My private secretary, Burton N. Harrison, had refused to be left behind, and, though they would not allow him to go in the carriage with me, he was resolved to follow my fortunes, as well from sentiment as the hope of being useful. His fidelity was rewarded by a long and rigorous imprisonment. At Port Royal we were transferred to a sea-going vessel, which, instead of being sent to Washington City, was brought to anchor at Hampton Roads. One by one all my companions in misfortune were sent away, we knew not whither, leaving on the vessel only Mr. Clay and his wife and myself and family. After some days' detention, Clay and myself were removed to Fortress Monroe, and there incarcerated in separate cells. Not knowing that the Government was at war with women and children, I asked that my family might be permitted to leave the ship and go to Richmond or Washington City, or to some place where they had acquaintances, but this was refused. I then requested that they might be permitted to go abroad on one of the vessels lying at the Roads. This was also denied; finally, I was informed that they must return to Savannah on the vessel by which we came. This was an old transport-ship, hardly seaworthy. My last attempt was to get for them the privilege of stopping at Charleston, where they had many personal friends. This also was refused--why, I did not then know, have not learned since, and am unwilling to make a supposition, as none could satisfactorily account for such an act of inhumanity. My daily experience as a prisoner shed no softer light on the transaction, but only served to intensify my extreme solicitude. Bitter tears have been shed by the gentle, and stern reproaches have been made by the magnanimous, on account of the needless torture to which I was subjected, and the heavy fetters riveted upon me, while in a stone casemate and surrounded by a strong guard; but all these were less excruciating than the mental agony my captors were able to inflict. It was long before I was permitted to hear from my wife and children, and this, and things like this, was the power which education added to savage cruelty; but I do not propose now and here to enter upon the story of my imprisonment, or more than merely to refer to other matters which concerns me personally, as distinct from my connection with the Confederacy.
[Footnote 124: "Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman," vol. ii, pp. 346, 347.]
[Footnote 125: "Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman," vol. ii, p. 370.]
[Footnote 126: "Annual Cyclopaedia," 1865, p. 11.]
[Footnote 127: Ibid.]
Chapter LV
Number of the Enemy's Forces in the War.--Number of the Enemy's Troops from Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee.--Cruel Conduct of the War.--Statements in 1862.--Statements in 1863.-- Emancipation Proclamation.--Statements in 1864.--General Hunter's Proceedings near Lynchburg.--Cruelties in Sherman's March through South Carolina.
On April 25th, at Raleigh, North Carolina, General J. E. Johnston capitulated to General Sherman, as has been stated, and his army was disbanded. On May 4th General B. Taylor capitulated with the last of our forces east.
The number of men brought into the field by the Government of the United States during the war, according to the official returns in the Adjutant-General's office, Washington, was 2,678,967. In addition to these, 86,724 paid a commutation.
The rapidity with which calls for men were made by that Government during the last eighteen mouths of the war, and the number brought into the field, were as follows:
Men furnished Calls of October 17, 1863, and February 1, 1864, for 500,000 men for three years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317,092 Call of March 14, 1864, for 200,000 men for three years 259,515 Militia for one hundred days, April to July, 1864 . . . . 83,612 Call of July 18, 1864, for 500,000 men . . . . . . . . . 385,163[128] Call of December 19, 1864, for 300,000 men . . . . . . . 211,752 --------- Total men furnished in eighteen months . . . . . . . . 1,257,134
The number of men furnished on call of the United States Government, previous to October 17, 1863, was as follows:
Men furnished Call of April 15, 1861, for 75,000 men for three months 91,816 Call of May 3, 1861, for 500,000 men . . . . . . . . . . 700,680 Men furnished in May and June, 1862, for three months . . 15,007 Call of July 2, 1862, for 300,000 men for three years . . 421,465 Call of August 4, 1862, for 300,000 militia for nine months . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87,588 Proclamation of June 15, 1863, for militia for six months 16,361 Volunteers and militia at various times, of sixty days to one year . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13,760 Volunteers and militia at various times for three years 75,156 --------- Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,421,833
The number of men furnished to the armies of the United States by the States of Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and Tennessee, was as follows:
States. Men furnished. Kentucky . . . . . . . 70,760 equal to 70,832 three years' men. Maryland . . . . . . . 46,638 " 41,275 " " " Missouri . . . . . . . 109,111 " 86,530 " " " Tennessee . . . . . . . 31,092 " 26,394 " " " ------- ------- Total . . . . . . . . 262,601 225,031
The public debt of the Government of the United States on July 1, 1861, and on July 1, 1865 was as follows:
Debt, July 1, 1861 . . . . . . . $90,867,828.68 " July 1, 1865 . . . . . . . 2,682,593,026.53 ---------------- Increase in four years . . . . . $2,591,725,197.85
Of the manner in which our adversaries conducted the war I had frequent occasion to remark. Those observations made at the time present a more correct representation of facts than could be given in more recent statements. In a message to Congress on August 15, 1862, I said:
"The perfidy which disregarded rights secured by compact, the madness which trampled on obligations made sacred by every consideration of honor, have been intensified by the malignancy engendered by defeat. These passions have changed the character of the hostilities waged by our enemies, who are becoming daily less regardful of the usages of civilized war and the dictates of humanity. Rapine and wanton destruction of private property, war upon non-combatants, murder of captives, bloody threats to avenge the death of an invading soldiery by the slaughter of unarmed citizens, orders of banishment against peaceful farmers engaged in the cultivation of the soil, are some of the means used by our ruthless invaders to enforce the submission of a free people to a foreign sway. Confiscation bills, of a character so atrocious as to insure, if executed, the utter ruin of the entire population of these States, are passed by their Congress and approved by their Executive. The moneyed obligations of the Confederate Government are counterfeited by citizens of the United States, and publicly advertised for sale in their cities, with a notoriety that sufficiently attests the knowledge of their Government; and the soldiers of the invading armies are found supplied with large quantities of these forged notes as a means of despoiling the country people by fraud out of such portions of their property as armed violence may fail to reach. Two at least of the generals of the United States are engaged, unchecked by their Government, in exciting servile insurrection, and in arming and training slaves for warfare against their masters, citizens of the Confederacy."
Again, in January, 1863, I said, with regard to the conduct of the war by our adversaries:
"It is my painful duty again to inform you of the renewed examples of every conceivable atrocity committed by the armed forces of the United States at different points within the Confederacy, and which must stamp indelible infamy, not only on the perpetrators, but on their superiors, who, having the power to check these outrages on humanity, numerous and well authenticated as they have been, have not yet in a single instance, of which I am aware, inflicted punishment on the wrong-doers. Since my last communication to you, one General McNeil murdered seven prisoners of war in cold blood, and the demand for his punishment has remained unsatisfied. The Government of the United States, after promising examination and explanation in relation to the charges made against General B. F. Butler, has, by its subsequent silence, after repeated efforts on my part to obtain some answer on the subject, not only admitted his guilt, but sanctioned it by acquiescence. . . . Recently I have received apparently authentic intelligence of another general by the name of Milroy, who has issued orders in West Virginia for the payment of money to him by the inhabitants, accompanied by the most savage threats of shooting every recusant, besides burning his house, and threatening similar atrocities against any of our citizens who shall fail to betray their country by giving him prompt notice of the approach of any of our forces. And this subject has also been submitted to the superior military authorities of the United States, with but faint hope that they will evince any disapprobation of the act.
"A proclamation, dated on January 1, 1863, signed and issued by the President of the United States, orders and declares all slaves within ten of the States of the Confederacy to be free, except such as are found in certain districts now occupied in part by the armed forces of the enemy. We may well leave it to the instinct of that common humanity, which a beneficent Creator has implanted in the breasts of our fellow-men of all countries, to pass judgment on a measure by which several millions of human beings of an inferior race-- peaceful, contented laborers in their sphere--are doomed to extermination, while at the same time they are encouraged to a general assassination of their masters by the insidious recommendation 'to abstain from violence, unless in necessary self-defense.'"
The war, which in its inception was waged for forcing us back into the Union, having failed to accomplish that purpose, passed into a second stage, in which it was attempted to conquer and rule our States as dependent provinces. Defeated in this design, our enemies entered upon another, which could have no other purpose than revenge and plunder of private property. In May, 1864, it was still characterized by the barbarism with which it had been previously conducted. Aged men, helpless women and children appealed in vain to the humanity which should be inspired by their condition, for immunity from arrest, incarceration, or banishment from their homes. Plunder and devastation of the property of non-combatants, destruction of private dwellings, and even of edifices devoted to the worship of God, expeditions organized for the sole purpose of sacking cities, consigning them to the flames, killing the unarmed inhabitants, and inflicting horrible outrages on women and children, were some of the constantly recurring atrocities of the invader.
On June 19, 1864, Major-General Hunter began his retreat from before Lynchburg down the Shenandoah Valley. Lieutenant-General Early, who followed in pursuit, thus describes the destruction he witnessed along the route:
"Houses had been burned, and helpless women and children left without shelter. The country had been stripped of provisions, and many families left without a morsel to eat. Furniture and bedding had been cut to pieces, and old men and women and children robbed of all the clothing they had, except that on their backs. Ladies' trunks had been rifled, and their dresses torn to pieces in mere wantonness. Even the negro girls had lost their little finery. At Lexington he had burned the Military Institute with all its contents, including its library and scientific apparatus. Washington College had been plundered, and the statue of Washington stolen. The residence of ex-Governor Letcher at that place had been burned by orders, and but a few minutes given Mrs. Letcher and her family to leave the house. In the county a most excellent Christian gentleman, a Mr. Creigh, had been hung, because, on a former occasion, he had killed a straggling and marauding Federal soldier while in the act of insulting and outraging the ladies of his family." [129]
A letter dated Charleston, September 14, 1865, written by Rev. Dr. John Bachman, then pastor of the Lutheran Church in that city, presents many facts respecting the devastation and robberies by the enemy in South Carolina. So much as relates to the march of Sherman's army through parts of the State is here presented:
"When Sherman's army came sweeping through Carolina, leaving a broad track of desolation for hundreds of miles, whose steps were accompanied with fire, and sword, and blood, reminding us of the tender mercies of the Duke of Alva, I happened to be at Cash's Depot, six miles from Cheraw. The owner was a widow, Mrs. Ellerbe, seventy-one years of age. Her son, Colonel Cash, was absent. I witnessed the barbarities inflicted on the aged, the widow, and young and delicate females. Officers, high in command, were engaged tearing from the ladies their watches, their ear and wedding rings, the daguerreotypes of those they loved and cherished. A lady of delicacy and refinement, a personal friend, was compelled to strip before them, that they might find concealed watches and other valuables under her dress. A system of torture was practiced toward the weak, unarmed, and defenseless, which, as far as I know and believe, was universal throughout the whole course of that invading army. Before they arrived at a plantation, they inquired the names of the most faithful and trustworthy family servants; these were immediately seized, pistols were presented at their heads; with the most terrific curses, they were threatened to be shot if they did not assist them in finding buried treasures. If this did not succeed, they were tied up and cruelly beaten. Several poor creatures died under the infliction. The last resort was that of hanging, and the officers and men of the triumphant army of General Sherman were engaged in erecting gallows and hanging up these faithful and devoted servants. They were strung up until life was nearly extinct, when they were let down, suffered to rest awhile, then threatened and hung up again. It is not surprising that some should have been left hanging so long that they were taken down dead. Coolly and deliberately these hardened men proceeded on their way, as if they had perpetrated no crime, and as if the God of heaven would not pursue them with his vengeance. But it was not alone the poor blacks (to whom they professed to come as liberators) that were thus subjected to torture and death. Gentlemen of high character, pure and honorable and gray-headed, unconnected with the military, were dragged from their fields or their beds, and subjected to this process of threats, beating, and hanging. Along the whole track of Sherman's army, traces remain of the cruelty and inhumanity practiced on the aged and the defenseless. Some of those who were hung up died under the rope, while their cruel murderers have not only been left unreproached and unhung, but have been hailed as heroes and patriots. The list of those martyrs whom the cupidity of the officers and men of Sherman's army sacrificed to their thirst for gold and silver, is large and most revolting. If the editors of this paper will give their consent to publish it, I will give it in full, attested by the names of the purest and best men and women of our Southern land.
"I, who have been a witness to these acts of barbarity that are revolting to every feeling of humanity and mercy, was doomed to feel in my own person the effects of the avarice, cruelty, and despotism which characterized the men of that army. I was the only male guardian of the refined and delicate females who had fled there for shelter and protection. I soon ascertained the plan that was adopted in this wholesale system of plunder, insult, blasphemy, and brutality. The first party that came was headed by officers, from a colonel to a lieutenant, who acted with seeming politeness, and told me that they only came to secure our firearms, and when these were delivered up nothing in the house should be touched. Out of the house, they said, they were authorized to press forage for their large army. I told them that along the whole line of the march of Sherman's army, from Columbia to Cheraw, it had been ascertained that ladies had been robbed and personally insulted. I asked for a guard to protect the females. They said that there was no necessity for this, as the men dare not act contrary to orders. If any did not treat the ladies with proper respect, I might blow their brains out. 'But,' said I, 'you have taken away our arms, and we are defenseless.' They did not blush much, and made no reply. Shortly after this came the second party, before the first had left. They demanded the keys of the ladies' drawers, took away such articles as they wanted, then locked the drawers and put the keys in their pockets. In the mean time, they gathered up the spoons, knives, forks, towels, table-cloths, etc. As they were carrying them off, I appealed to the officers of the first party; they ordered the men to put back the things; the officer of the second party said he would see them d----d first; and, without further ado, packed them up, and they glanced at each other and smiled. The elegant carriage and all the vehicles on the premises were seized and filled with bacon and other plunder. The smokehouses were emptied of their contents and carried off. Every head of poultry was seized and flung over their mules, and they presented the hideous picture in some of the scenes in 'Forty Thieves.' Every article of harness they did not wish was cut in pieces.
"By this time the first and second parties had left, and a third appeared on the field. They demanded the keys of the drawers, and, on being informed that they had been carried off, coolly and deliberately proceeded to break open the locks, took what they wanted, and when we uttered words of complaint were cursed. Every horse, mule, and carriage, even to the carts, was taken away, and, for hundreds of miles, the last animal that cultivated the widow's corn-field, and the vehicles that once bore them to the house of worship, were carried off or broken into pieces and burned.
"The first party that came promised to leave ten days' provisions, the rest they carried off. An hour afterward, other hordes of marauders from the same army came and demanded the last pound of bacon and the last quart of meal. On Sunday, the negroes were dressed in their best suits. They were kicked, and knocked down and robbed of all their clothing, and they came to us in their shirtsleeves, having lost their hats, clothes, and shoes. Most of our own clothes had been hid in the woods. The negroes who had assisted in removing them were beaten and threatened with death, and compelled to show them where they were concealed. They cut open the trunks, threw my manuscripts and devotional books into a mud-hole, stole the ladies' jewelry, hair ornaments, etc., tore many garments into tatters, or gave the rest to the negro women to bribe them into criminal intercourse. These women afterward returned to us those articles that, after the mutilations, were scarcely worth preserving. The plantation, of one hundred and sixty negroes, was some distance from the house, and to this place successive parties of fifty at a time resorted for three long days and nights, the husbands and fathers being fired at and compelled to fly to the woods.
"Now commenced scenes of licentiousness, brutality, and ravishment that have scarcely had an equal in the ages of heathen barbarity, I conversed with aged men and women, who were witnesses of these infamous acts of Sherman's unbridled soldiery, and several of them, from the cruel treatment they had received, were confined to their beds for weeks afterward. The time will come when the judgment of Heaven will await these libidinous, beastly barbarians. During this time, the fourth party, whom, I was informed by others, we had the most reason to dread, had made their appearance. They came, as they said, in the name of the great General Sherman, who was next to God Almighty. They came to burn and lay in ashes all that was left. They had burned bridges and depots, cotton-gins, mills, barns, and stables. They swore they would make the d---d rebel women pound their corn with rocks, and eat their raw meal without cooking. They succeeded in thousands of instances. I walked out at night, and the innumerable fires that were burning as far as the eye could reach, in hundreds of places, illuminated the whole heavens, and testified to the vindictive barbarity of the foe. I presume they had orders not to burn occupied houses, but they strove all in their power to compel families to fly from their houses that they might afterward burn them. The neighborhood was filled with refugees who had been compelled to fly from their plantations on the seaboard. As soon as they had fled, the torch was applied, and, for hundreds of miles, those elegant mansions, once the ornament and pride of our inland country, were burned to the ground.
"All manner of expedients were now adopted to make the residents leave their homes for the second time. I heard them saying, 'This is too large a house to be left standing, we must contrive to burn it.' Canisters of powder were placed all around the house, and an expedient resorted to that promised almost certain success. The house was to be burned down by firing the outbuildings. These were so near each other that the firing of the one would lead to the destruction of all. I had already succeeded in having a few bales of cotton rolled out of the building, and hoped, if they had to be burned, the rest would also be rolled out, which could have been done in ten minutes by several hundred men who were looking on, gloating over the prospect of another elegant mansion in South Carolina being left in ashes. The torch was applied, and soon the large storehouse was on fire. This communicated to several other buildings in the vicinity, which, one by one, were burned to the ground. At length the fire reached the smoke-house, where they had already carried off the bacon of two hundred and fifty hogs. This was burned, and the fire was now rapidly approaching the kitchen, which was so near the dwelling-house that, should the former burn, the destruction of the large and noble edifice would be inevitable.
"A captain of the United States service, a native of England, whose name I would like to mention here, if I did not fear to bring down upon him the censure of the abolitionists as a friend to the rebels, mounted the roof, and the wet blankets we sent up to him prevented the now smoking roof from bursting into flames. I called for help to assist us in procuring water from a deep well; a young lieutenant stepped up, condemned the infamous conduct of the burners, and called on his company for aid; a portion of them came cheerfully to our assistance; the wind seemed almost by a miracle to subside; the house was saved, and the trembling females thanked God for their deliverance. All this time, about one hundred mounted men were looking on, refusing to raise a hand to help us; laughing at the idea that no efforts of ours could save the house from the flames.
"My trials, however, were not yet over, I had already suffered much in a pecuniary point of view. I had been collecting a library on natural history during a long life. The most valuable of these books had been presented by various societies in England, France, Germany, Russia, etc., who had honored me with membership, and they or the authors presented me with these works, which had never been for sale, and could not be purchased. My herbarium, the labor of myself and the ladies of my house for many years, was also among these books. I had left them as a legacy to the library of the Newbury College, and concluded to send them at once. They were detained in Columbia, and there the torch was applied, and all were burned. The stealing and burning of books appear to be one of the programmes on which the army acted, I had assisted in laying the foundation and dedicating the Lutheran Church at Columbia, and there, near its walls, had recently been laid the remains of one who was dearer to me than life itself. To set that brick church on fire from below was impossible. The building stood by itself on a square but little built up. One of Sherman's burners was sent up to the roof. He was seen applying the torch to the cupola. The church was burned to the ground, and the grave of my loved one desecrated. The story circulated, that the citizens had set their own city on fire, is utterly untrue, and only reflects dishonor on those who vilely perpetrated it. General Sherman had his army under control. The burning was by his orders, and ceased when he gave the command.
"I was now doomed to experience in person the effects of avarice and barbarous cruelty. The robbers had been informed in the neighborhood that the family which I was protecting had buried one hundred thousand dollars in gold and silver. They first demanded my watch, which I had effectually secured from their grasp. They then asked me where the money had been hid. I told them I knew nothing about it, and did not believe there was a thousand dollars worth in all, and what there was had been carried off by the owner, Colonel Cash. All this was literally true. They then concluded to try an experiment on me which had proved so successful in hundreds of other instances. Coolly and deliberately they prepared to inflict torture on a defenseless, gray-headed old man. They carried me behind a stable, and once again demanded where the money was buried, or 'I should be sent to hell in five minutes.' They cocked their pistols and held them to my head. I told them to fire away. One of them, a square-built, broad-faced, large-mouthed, clumsy lieutenant, who had the face of a demon, and who did not utter five words without an awful blasphemy, now kicked me in the stomach until I fell breathless and prostrate. As soon as I was able, I rose again. He once more asked me where the silver was. I answered as before, 'I do not know.' With his heavy, elephant foot he now kicked me on my back until I fell again. Once more I arose, and he put the same question to me. I was nearly breathless, but answered as before. Thus was I either kicked or knocked down seven or eight times. I then told him it was perfectly useless for him to continue his threats or his blows. He might shoot me if he chose. I was ready and would not budge an inch, but requested him not to bruise and batter an unarmed, defenseless old man. 'Now,' said he, 'I'll try a new plan. How would you like to have both your arms cut off?' He did not wait for an answer, but, with his heavy sheathed sword, struck me on my left arm, near the shoulder. I heard it crack; it hung powerless by my side, and I supposed it was broken. He then repeated the blow on the other arm. The pain was most excruciating, and it was several days before I could carve my food or take my arm out of a sling, and it was black and blue for weeks. (I refer to Dr. Kollock, of Cheraw.) At that moment the ladies, headed by my daughter, who had only then been made aware of the brutality practiced upon me, rushed from the house, and came flying to my rescue. 'You dare not murder my father,' said my child; 'he has been a minister in the same church for fifty years, and God has always protected, and will protect him.' 'Do you believe in a God, miss?' said one of the brutal wretches; 'I don't believe in a God, a heaven, nor a hell.' 'Carry me,' said I, 'to your General.' I did not intend to go to General Sherman, who was at Cheraw, from whom, I was informed, no redress could be obtained, but to a general in the neighborhood, said to be a religious man. Our horses and carriages had all been taken away, and I was too much bruised to be able to walk. The other young officers came crowding around me very officiously, telling me that they would represent the case to the General, and that they would have him shot by ten o'clock the next morning. I saw the winks and glances that were interchanged between them. Every one gave a different name to the officers. The brute remained unpunished, as I saw him on the following morning, as insolent and as profane as he had been on the preceding day.
"As yet, no punishment had fallen on the brutal hyena, and I strove to nurse my bruised body and heal my wounds, and forget the insults and injuries of the past. A few weeks after this I was sent for to perform a parochial duty at Mars Bluff, some twenty miles distant. Arriving at Florence in the vicinity, I was met by a crowd of young men connected with the militia. They were excited to the highest pitch of rage, and thirsted for revenge. They believed that among the prisoners that had just arrived on the railroad-car, on their way to Sumter, were the very men who committed such horrible outrages in the neighborhood. Many of their houses had been laid in ashes. They had been robbed of every means of support. Their horses had been seized; their cattle and hogs bayoneted; their mothers and sisters had been insulted, and robbed of their watches, ear and wedding rings. Some of their parents had been murdered in cold blood. The aged pastor, to whose voice they had so often listened, had been kicked and knocked down by repeated blows, and his hoary head had been dragged about in the sand. They entreated me to examine the prisoners and see whether I could identify the men that had inflicted such barbarities on me. I told them I would do so, provided they would remain where they were and not follow me. The prisoners saw me at a distance, held down their guilty heads, and trembled like aspen-leaves. All cruel men are cowards. One of my arms was still in a sling. With the other I raised some of their hats. They all begged for mercy. I said to them, 'The other day you were tigers--you are sheep now.' But a hideous object soon arrested my attention. There sat my brutal enemy--, the vulgar, swaggering lieutenant, who had ridden up to the steps of the house, insulted the ladies, and beaten me most unmercifully. I approached him slowly, and, in a whisper asked him: 'Do you know me, sir?--the old man whose pockets you first searched, to see whether he might not have a penknife to defend himself, and then kicked and knocked him down with your fist and heavy scabbard?' He presented the picture of an arrant coward, and in a trembling voice implored me to have mercy: 'Don't let me be shot; have pity! Old man, beg for me! I won't do it again! For God's sake, save me! O God, help me!' 'Did you not tell my daughter there was no God? Why call on him now?' 'Oh, I have changed my mind; I believe in a God now.' I turned and saw the impatient, flushed, and indignant crowd approaching. 'What are they going to do with me?' said he. 'Do you hear that sound--click, click?' 'Yes,' said he, 'they are cocking their pistols.' 'True,' said I; 'and if I raise a finger you will have a dozen bullets through your brain.' 'Then I will go to hell; don't let them kill me. O Lord, have mercy!' Speak low,' said I, 'and don't open your lips.' The men advanced. Already one had pulled me by the coat. 'Show us the men.' I gave no clew by which the guilty could be identified. I walked slowly through the car, sprang into the waiting carriage, and drove off."
[Footnote 128: Reduced by excess on previous calls.]
[Footnote 129: "Memoir of the Last Year of the War," by Lieutenant-General Early.]
Chapter LVI
Final Subjugation of the Confederate States.--Result of the Contest.--A Simple Process of Restoration.--Rejected by the United States Government.--A Forced Union.--The President's Proclamation examined.--The Guarantee, not to destroy.--Provisional Governors.-- Their Duties.--Voters.--First Movement made in Virginia.-- Government set up.--Proceedings.--Action of So-called Legislature.--Constitutional Amendment.--Case of Dr. Watson.-- Civil Rights Bill.--Storm brewing.--Congress refuses to admit Senators and Representatives to Seats.--Committee on "Reconstruction."--Freedmen's Bureau.--Report of Committee.-- Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.--Extent of Ratification.-- Another Step taken by Congress.--Military Commanders appointed over Confederate States, with Unlimited Powers.--Reconstruction by the Bayonet.--Course of Proceedings required.--Two Governments for Each State.--Major-Generals appointed.--Further Acts of Congress.-- Proceedings commenced by the Major-General at Richmond.--Civil Governor appointed.--Military Districts and Sub-districts.-- Registration.--So-called State Convention.--So-called Legislature.--Its Action.--Measures required by Congress for the Enfranchisement of Negroes adopted by the So-called Legislature.-- Assertion of Senator Garret Davis.--State represented in Congress.
When the Confederate soldiers laid down their arms and went home, all hostilities against the power of the Government of the United States ceased. The powers delegated in the compact of 1787 by these States, i. e., by the people thereof, to a central organization to promote their general welfare, had been used for their devastation and subjugation. It was conceded, as the result of the contest, that the United States Government was stronger in resources than the Confederate Government, and that the Confederate States had not achieved their independence.
Nothing remained to be done but for the sovereigns, the people of each State, to assert their authority and restore order. If the principle of the sovereignty of the people, the cornerstone of all our institutions, had survived and was still in force, it was necessary only that the people of each State should reconsider their ordinances of secession, and again recognize the Constitution of the United States as the supreme law of the land. This simple process would have placed the Union on its original basis, and have restored that which had ceased to exist, the Union by consent. Unfortunately, such was not the intention of the conqueror. The Union of free-wills and brotherly hearts, under a compact ordained by the people, was not his object. Henceforth there was to be established a Union of force. Sovereignty was to pass from the people to the Government of the United States, and to be upheld by those who had furnished the money and the soldiers for the war.
The first step required, therefore, in the process for the reconstruction of the new and forced Union, was to prepare those who had been the late champions of the sovereignty of the people to become suitable subjects under the new sovereign. Standing defenseless, stripped of their property, and exposed, as it was asserted, to the penalties of insurrection on the one hand, and that of treason on the other, the President of the United States, Mr. Andrew Johnson, who, as Vice-President, became President after the death of Mr. Lincoln, on May 29, 1865, thus addressed them:
"To the end, therefore, that the authority of the Government of the United States may be restored, and that peace, order, and freedom may be reestablished, I, Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, do proclaim and declare that I hereby grant to all persons who have directly or indirectly participated in the existing rebellion, except as hereinafter excepted, amnesty and pardon, with restoration of all rights of property, except as to slaves, and except in cases where legal proceedings under the laws of the United States providing for the confiscation of property of persons engaged in the rebellion have been instituted; but on the condition, nevertheless, that every such person shall take and subscribe the following oath or affirmation, and thenceforward keep and maintain said oath inviolate; and which oath shall be registered for permanent preservation, and shall be of the tenor and effect following, to wit:
"I, ---- ----, do solemnly swear, or affirm, in presence of Almighty God, that I will henceforth faithfully support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Union thereunder, and that I will, in like manner, abide by and faithfully support all laws and proclamations which have been made during the existing rebellion with reference to the emancipation of slaves, so help me God."
The permission to take this oath was withheld from large classes of citizens. It will be seen that there are two stipulations in this oath, the first faithfully to support the Constitution of the United States and the Union thereunder. This comprises obedience to the laws made in conformity to the Constitution, and is all that is requisite in the simple oath of allegiance of an American citizen. The second stipulation is:
"To abide by and faithfully support all laws and proclamations which have been made during the existing rebellion with reference to the emancipation of slaves."
What need was thereof this second stipulation? Because the laws were not enacted, nor the proclamation issued under any grant of power in the Constitution or under its authority. Now, the exercise of a power by Government, for which it has no constitutional authority, is not only a usurpation, but it destroys the sanction of all written instruments of government. Also, what has become of the unalienable right of property, which all the State governments were created to protect and preserve? Where was the sovereignty of the people under these proceedings? Yet the Confederate citizen was required to bind himself by an oath to abide by and faithfully support all these usurpations; the alternative being to resist the Government, or to aid and abet a violation of the Constitution.
Meanwhile, each of the late Confederate States was occupied by a military force of the Government of the United States, and military orders were the supreme law; and that Government thereby proceeded to establish a State organization based on the principle of its own sovereignty. In the first place, the President of the United States issued a proclamation in such terms as to be applicable to each of the Confederate States wherever its affairs were in such process of subjugation as to permit the commencement of the proposed organization. This proclamation begins by setting forth four propositions as the basis of his authority: First, the Constitution declares that the United States shall guarantee to every State in the Union a republican form of government, and protect each against invasion and domestic violence. Second, the President is Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, as well as chief civil executive officer, and bound to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. Third, the rebellion, in its revolutionary progress, deprived the people of all civil government. Fourth, it becomes necessary and proper to enforce and carry out the obligations of the United States to the people of the State in securing it in the enjoyment of a republican form of government. Therefore, etc.
These propositions call for a notice as well because of their fallacy as their enormity. The third declares that the so-called rebellion, in its progress, deprived the people of each Confederate State of all civil government. There was a government over each Confederate State, then existing and in full operation. It was, in all its internal relations, the same government which existed when the State was a member of the Union, whereby it was recognized by the Government of the United States and by the other States as a lawful and republican State government. It had been created by the free consent of the people of the State, and they had defended it with their lives and their fortunes. It had been denied by the Government of the United States that any one of the Confederate States was a foreign state or outside the Union by its secession. There was, therefore, neither in law nor in fact, any foundation for the assertion that the so-called rebellion had deprived the people of each Confederate State of all civil government.
Having thus stripped each Confederate State of all civil government, it was asserted that the Constitution declares that the United States shall guarantee to each State a republican form of government. But to guarantee is not to create, to organize, or to bring into existence. This can be done for a State government only by the free and unconstrained action of the whole people of a State. The creation of such a government is beyond the powers of the Government of the United States, as has already been shown. After a republican government has been instituted by the people, the Constitution requires the United States to guarantee its existence, and thereby forbids them or their Government to overthrow it and set up a creature of its own. The duty to guarantee commands the preservation of that which already exists. Such were the governments of the Confederate States before the war and after the war. Thus the power granted in the Constitution to preserve and guarantee State governments was perverted to overthrow and destroy republican governments, and to erect in their places military Governors, Legislatures, and judicial tribunals.
The third proposition is that the President is Commander in-Chief of the Army and Navy and the chief civil executive. His troops already occupied each of these States, and held the people in subjection. His proclamation was therefore merely a military order from the hand of the conqueror. Everything which he can do under such a character partakes of the nature, simply and solely, of martial law. Therefore he proceeds under the fourth proposition, wherein it "becomes necessary and proper to carry out the obligations of the United States to the people" of each Confederate State, "in securing them in the enjoyment of a republican form of government." The American people were now about to witness, on an extensive scale, the tyrannical experiment of instituting republican governments by the processes of martial law. They had declared it to be a self-evident truth that it was "the right of the people to alter or to abolish it [their government], and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." [130] This principle of the sovereignty of the people was now rejected, and the sovereignty of fleets and armies was substituted.
"Now, therefore," says the Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, and the chief civil executive officer of the United States, "in obedience to the high and solemn duties imposed upon me by the Constitution of the United States, and for the purpose of enabling the loyal people of said State (or States) to organize a State government, whereby justice may be established, domestic tranquillity restored, and loyal citizens protected in all their rights of life, liberty, and property, I do hereby appoint ---- ---- provisional Governor of the State" It will be here noticed that all the proceedings are undertaken for the sake of the "loyal" persons in the State. Who is to decide what persons are "loyal"? He who issues the military order--the President and his agent the provisional Governor; and they naturally will decide those to be loyal who support and obey their orders. The free assent and dissent which are the basis of the validity of every political action under our system, are unknown in this case.
The duty of the provisional Governor is declared in the proclamation to be, "to prescribe such rules and regulations as may be necessary and proper for convening a convention composed of delegates to be chosen by that portion of the people of the State who are 'loyal' to the United States, and no others, for the purpose of altering and amending the Constitution thereof." In the third of the four propositions laid down as the basis of authority for the President's proceedings, above mentioned, it is declared that the so-called rebellion, "deprived the people of the State of all civil government"; but here it is made the first duty of the provisional Governor to procure a convention of "loyal" persons "to alter and amend the Constitution" of the State. Thus it seems that there was a State in existence, and a Constitution in full vigor, notwithstanding the above declaration of the President to the contrary. This was that Constitution of the State which was in force during that long and peaceful period through which the Constitution of the United States was observed, and constitutional laws enacted. Now it was to be altered and amended from what the sovereign people of those days had ordained it to be, at the command, and to conform to the views, of another sovereign. The nature of those alterations and amendments will be stated hereafter.
This convention was to possess the authority to exercise all the powers necessary "to restore the State to its constitutional relations with the Federal Government." It was further provided that no person should vote unless he had taken the amnesty oath mentioned on a previous page, and was a qualified voter previous to the secession of the State. The convention or the subsequent Legislature was to prescribe the qualification of all voters afterward--"a power," says the President, "the people of the several States composing the Federal Union have rightfully exercised from the origin of the Government to the present time." The proclamation then continued: "And I do hereby direct: first, that the military commander of the department and all officers and persons in the military and naval service aid and assist the said provisional government in carrying into effect this proclamation; and they are enjoined to abstain from in any way hindering, impeding, or discouraging 'loyal' people from the organization of a State government as herein authorized." The proclamation closed with instructions to the Secretary of each department of the Government to proceed to put in operation his department within the limits of the State.
The first movement for the restoration of the Confederate States to the Union under subjugation was commenced in Virginia. Richmond was occupied by the forces of the United States Government, and the authority of all State officers elected during the war was annulled. Affairs remained in this position until May 9, 1865, when the President of the United States issued an order declaring all the acts and proceedings of the political, military, and civil organizations in the State which had been in insurrection against the United States to be null and void; and that all persons who should attempt to exercise any authority as under the late State or Confederate officers, should be deemed and taken as in rebellion, etc. At this time Francis H. Pierpont, who had assumed to exercise the office of Governor of Virginia over ten counties around Alexandria, was recognized by the President as the true Governor of the State. He was aided to remove the seat of his government from Alexandria to Richmond, and there maintained by the military force. No hostile opposition, however, was anywhere manifested, while at Alexandria delegates from the ten counties had assembled in convention and assumed to amend the State Constitution, and the little so-called legislative body had undertaken to pass various acts of importance. The so-called Governor, in presenting a summary of them, concluded by saying, "Thus, State sovereignty--the status of the African race-- the armed resistance to the Government of the United States--are disposed of." An election for a new Legislature and State officers was held on October 12th. All were allowed to vote who had not held office under the State government or the Confederacy during the war, after they had taken the amnesty oath. The so-called Legislature assembled and entered upon the regulation of all the affairs of the State. A general act of vagrancy was passed, whereupon the major-general in command issued an order "that no magistrate, civil officer, or other person shall, in any way or manner, apply, or attempt to apply, the provisions of the said statute to any colored person in this department." At the municipal election in Richmond, the Mayor, Attorney, and Superintendent of the Poor, elected, were persons who had held office under the Confederate States. They were not allowed by the military authority to qualify, and subsequently declined.
In 1865 the Congress of the United States passed an act which provided that the following amendment to the Constitution should be submitted to the Legislatures of the several States for ratification or rejection:
"SECTION 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to its jurisdiction.
"SECTION 2. Congress shall have full power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."
One Dr. James L. Watson was tried for killing a negro in Rockbridge County, and acquitted. Major-General Schofield, in command of the military forces of the department, immediately ordered his arrest and trial by a military commission. On the assembling of the commission a writ of habeas corpus was sued out of the Circuit Court of Richmond in behalf of Watson, and served on the General. In his answer, he declined compliance with the writ, saying:
"Dr. Watson is held for trial by military commission, under the authority of the act of Congress of July 16, 1866, which act directs and requires the President, through the commissioner and officers of the Freedmen's Bureau, to exercise military jurisdiction over all cases and questions concerning the free enjoyment of the right to have full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings concerning personal liberty, personal security, etc., by all citizens, without respect to race or color, or previous condition of slavery, of the States whose constitutional relations to the Government of the United States have been discontinued by the rebellion, and have not been restored."
In the mean time, the United States Attorney-General having examined the case, and reported that, in his opinion, the military commission had not competent jurisdiction, the President thereupon directed that the commission be dissolved and the prisoner discharged without delay.
Meantime Congress had passed an act, known as the Civil Rights Bill, and a case came before the Circuit Court, at Alexandria, in which one of the parties offered to produce negro evidence. The Judge (Thomas) ruled that, inasmuch as the State laws of Virginia forbade the introduction of negro testimony in civil suits to which white men alone were parties, the evidence of the negro was inadmissible; and that Congressional legislation could not impair the right of the States to decide what classes of persons were competent to testify in her courts.
A storm was now brewing which was soon to involve the President and Congress in open conflict. The reader will remember that, during the period in which these proceedings took place in Virginia, similar ones occurred in all the remaining Confederate States. Not only in Virginia, but in several of the other States, some persons had been voted for as members of Congress, but in no case had they been admitted to seats. This was one of the measures taken by Congress to indicate its disapproval of the President's plan for the treatment of the late Confederate States.
The difficulties that now arose between the President and Congress had reference entirely to the affairs of the Confederate States. The plan of the President left the negroes to the care of the States alone after the establishment of their emancipation. Congress desired them to be made American citizens, secure in all the rights of freemen and voters. The refusal to admit Senators and Representatives to Congress from the Confederate States served to arrest the operation of the President's plans to hold these States in abeyance.
No compromise could be made between the two. Each appealed to the Constitution, forgetful that each had sustained all its ruthless violations during the last four years. Congress, therefore, commenced an independent action, and in its reckless course sought, unsuccessfully, to rid itself of the President by impeachment. Its first act, at the commencement of the session, in December, 1865, was the appointment, by a large majority in each House, of a joint Committee of Fifteen, to which was referred all questions relating to the conditions and manner in which Congress would recognize the late Confederate States as members of the Union. Meantime the credentials of all persons sent as Representatives and Senators from them were laid upon the table in each House, there to remain until the final action of the Committee of Fifteen. This was followed by the passage, in February, 1866, of "an act to establish a bureau for the relief of freedmen, refugees, and abandoned lands." It proposed to establish military jurisdiction over all parts of the United States containing refugees and freedmen. This bill was vetoed by the President, and passed over his veto.
In March an act was passed "to protect all persons in the United States in their civil rights, and furnish the means of their vindication." The first section declared all persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, to be citizens of the United States, and enumerates the rights to be enjoyed by those so declared to be citizens. The second section affords discriminating protection to colored persons in the full enjoyment of all the rights secured to them by the preceding section. This bill was vetoed by the President, and passed over his veto.
On June 8, 1866, a majority and a minority report were made by the Committee of Fifteen. Meanwhile, a report had been made from the same committee, at a previous date, in the form of an amendment to the Constitution, which was debated and amended in each House, and finally passed by the requisite majority in each. Thus was to be secured the political support and votes of the negroes, who were expected to be the controlling citizens of the late Confederate States.
The amendment to the Constitution was now submitted to the Legislatures of all the States, to be valid as a part of the Constitution, when ratified by three fourths, in the following form:
"ARTICLE--, SECTION 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States, and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
"SECTION 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But, when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
"SECTION 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State Legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two thirds of each House remove such disability.
"SECTION 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But the United States shall neither assume nor pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations, and claims shall be held illegal and void.
"SECTION 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."
It may here be stated that the restoration of the late Confederate States to all the rights and privileges of States as co-equal members of the Union, under the plan of President Johnson, received the approval of the executive and judicial branches of the Government soon after the cessation of hostilities. Congress, however, not only withheld its assent, but, during its session in 1866, required as a condition precedent to a recognition of any one of these States, and the admission of its Representatives and Senators to seats, the adoption by its Legislature of the above-mentioned amendment. The question really involved in this amendment was the admission to citizenship and the ballot of the negroes in these States. It was the acknowledged fact that the authority to determine this question resided in the States severally and nowhere else. The amendment itself, in its second section, recognized the authority to grant or withhold the elective franchise as existing in the State governments.
This amendment was submitted to the Legislatures of the States immediately after its adoption by Congress in June, 1866, and by March 30, 1867, it had been ratified by twenty States, including West Virginia, Maryland, Missouri, and Tennessee, and rejected by thirteen, including Delaware and Kentucky, and eleven of the late Confederate States. There were thirty-four States at that time, and thirty had voted. A ratification by three fourths was required to make it valid.
When this amendment was presented for ratification to the Legislature of Virginia at its session commencing December, 1866, it was rejected in the Senate by a unanimous vote, and in the House by a vote of seventy-four to one. Meantime the Freedmen's Bureau was organized and put in operation in the State, but the military occupation continued, and the condition of affairs remained unchanged during the proceedings of Congress to construct its plan for subjugation.
After the vote of the States up to March, 1867, it was manifest that no real advance had been made in the extension of the franchise to the negro population of the States. In this position of affairs Congress, on March 2d, adopted an entirety new system of measures relative to the late Confederate States, The fiction upon which these measures were based is thus expressed in the preamble of the first act:
"Whereas, No legal State governments, or adequate protection for life or property, now exists in the rebel States of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Texas, and Arkansas; and, whereas, it is necessary that peace and good order should be enforced in said States, until loyal and republican State governments can be legally established: therefore, be it enacted," etc.
These States were then divided into five military districts, and it was further provided:
"Until the people of the said rebel States shall by law be admitted to representation to the Congress of the United States, all civil governments that may exist therein shall be deemed provisional only, and shall be in all respects subject to the paramount authority of the United States, at any time to abolish, modify, control, and supersede the same, and in all elections to any office under such provisional governments, all persons shall be entitled to vote under the provisions of the fifth section of this act."
Thus these States, when held by military force as conquered territory, with the sovereignty of the people extinct, were not allowed to claim to possess any rights under the Federal Constitution, or any other than such as might be granted by the will of the conqueror. It was asserted that the right to regulate the elective franchise, recognized as belonging to the States in the Union, could not attach to those out of the Union, and having only provisional political institutions. Congress then proceeded to declare, in the fifth section of the bill, the terms upon which a late Confederate State could become a member of the Union:
"SECTION 5. That, when the people of any one of said rebel States shall have formed a Constitution of government in conformity with the Constitution of the United States in all respects, framed by a convention of delegates elected by the male citizens of said State, twenty-one years old and upward, of whatever race, color, or previous condition, who have been resident in said State for one year previous to the day of such election, except such as may be disfranchised for participation in the rebellion or for felony at common law, and when such Constitution shall provide that the elective franchise shall be enjoyed by all such persons as have the qualifications herein stated for electors of delegates, and when such Constitution shall be ratified by a majority of the persons voting on the question of ratification who are qualified as electors for delegates, and when such Constitution shall have been submitted to Congress for examination and approval, and Congress shall have approved the same, and when said State, by a vote of its Legislature elected under said Constitution, shall have adopted the amendment to the Constitution of the United States, proposed by the Thirty-ninth Congress, and known as Article XIV, and when said article shall have become a part of the Constitution of the United States, said State shall be declared entitled to representation in Congress, and Senators and Representatives shall be admitted therefrom on their taking the oath prescribed by law, and then and thereafter the preceding sections of this act shall be inoperative in said State," etc.
The bill became a law, notwithstanding the veto of the President.
On March 4th a new Congress commenced its session, and on March 23d a supplement to the preceding act was passed. It ordered a registration to be made of the qualified voters in each military sub-district of the State, an election to be held for the State Convention to draft a Constitution for the State, and for delegates to such convention; and that such Constitution should be submitted to the voters for adoption or rejection, and upon its adoption a State government should be organized, etc. The registration was required to be made of all citizens as defined by the "act to protect all persons in the United States in their civil rights," etc. Many disqualifications of voters, arising from participation in the war, were also expressed. This act also became a law, notwithstanding the objections of the President.
It will be seen that this act contemplated two distinct governments in each of the ten States--the one military and the other civil. Both were provisional, and both were to continue until the new State Constitution was framed, and the State was admitted to representation in Congress. The two were to be carried on together, and the people were made subject to both and obliged to obey both. The law was next put in operation by constituting the districts, as follows: 1. Virginia, commander, Major-General Schofield; 2. North Carolina and South Carolina, commander, Major-General Sickles; 3. Georgia, Florida, and Alabama, commander, Major-General John Pope; 4. Mississippi and Arkansas, commander, Major-General Ord; 5. Louisiana and Texas, commander, Major-General Sheridan.
Previous to adjournment, on July 19, 1867, Congress passed an additional supplement to the act of March 3d and the supplement of March 23d. It declared the intent and meaning of the previous acts to have been: that the civil governments of the ten States were not legal governments, and, if continued, were to be subject in all respects to the military commanders and the paramount authority of Congress. It made the acts of the military commanders subject only to the disapproval of the General of the Army, U. S. Grant, and authorized them to remove any person from office under the State government. It further defined the classes disfranchised, and directed that no district commander should be bound in his action by any opinion of any civil officer of the United States.
The President vetoed the bill, and in his message said:
"Thus, over all these ten States, this military government is now declared to have unlimited authority. It is no longer confined to the preservation of the public peace, the administration of criminal law, the registration of voters, and the superintendence of elections; but, 'in all respects,' is asserted to be paramount to the existing civil governments. It is impossible to conceive any state of society more intolerable than this, and yet it is to this condition that twelve millions of American citizens are reduced by the Congress of the United States. Over every foot of the immense territory occupied by these American citizens, the Constitution of the United States is theoretically in full operation. It binds all the people there, and should protect them; yet they are denied every one of its sacred guarantees. Of what avail will it be to any one of these Southern people, when seized by a file of soldiers, to ask for the cause of arrest, or for the production of the warrant? Of what avail to ask for the privilege of bail when in military custody, which knows no such thing as bail? Of what avail to demand a trial by jury, process for witnesses, a copy of the indictment, the privilege of counsel, or that greater privilege, the writ of habeas corpus?"
Congress having thus completed its plan of operations, the crashing wheels of subjugation began to move forward. Let us proceed with the narration of affairs in Virginia.
On the appearance of Major-General Schofield at Richmond, all the proceedings of the so-called civil government, for the organization and restoration of the State to the Union, at once ceased, and he assumed command. A board of army officers was named by the commanding General for the purpose of selecting suitable persons for appointment as registering officers throughout the State. In making the selections, the preference was given, first, to officers of the army and of the Freedmen's Bureau, on duty in the State; second, to persons who had been discharged from the Federal army, after "meritorious" services during the war; third, to "loyal" citizens of the county or city where they were to serve. On April 2d an order appeared from the major-general, suspending all elections, whether State, county, or municipal, "under the provisional government," until after the registration was completed. A lecture on the "Chivalry of the South," advertised to be delivered in Lynchburg, was suppressed by the order of the post commander at that place. A warning was given by the major-general to the editor of the Richmond "Times," which said, "The efforts of your paper to foster enmity, create disorder, and lead to violence, can no longer be tolerated." On the refusal of five magistrates of the Corporation Council of Norfolk to receive the testimony of a negro, they were arrested on a process issued under the Civil Bights Bill, and held to bail to appear before the District Court. All armed organizations in the State were disbanded. Inflammatory meetings of freedmen and those who sought their political alliance were held in different parts of the State.
Military commissioners were appointed over sub-districts for the suppression of disorder and violence, for the protection of all persons in their so-called rights of person and property, and clothed with all the powers of justices of a county or police magistrates of a city. The State was also divided into sub-districts, and commanders appointed over the same. These officers were empowered to exercise a general supervision over the military commissioners, and to furnish them, when necessary, with sufficient military force to enable them to discharge their duties. Further orders relative to the qualification of voters were issued by the major-general, in which it was declared that "all persons who voluntarily joined the rebel army, and all persons in that army, whether volunteers or conscripts, who committed voluntarily any hostile act, were thereby engaged in insurrection or rebellion; and all who voted for the ordinance of secession, gave aid and comfort to the enemy. Also all who voluntarily furnished supplies of food, or clothing, arms, ammunition, horses, or mules, or any other material of war, participated in the rebellion," and were disfranchised. The whole number registered was 116,982 whites and 104,772 blacks. The vote for the Convention was 14,835 whites and 92,507 blacks; against the Convention, 61,249 whites and 638 blacks.
The Convention assembled on December 3d and adjourned on April 17, 1868. The Bill of Eights adopted declared that--
"The State shall ever remain a member of the United States of America, and the people thereof a part of the American nation, and all attempts, from whatever source, and upon whatever pretext, to dissolve said Union, or to sever said Union, are unauthorized, and ought to be resisted with the whole power of the State.
"The Constitution of the United States, and the laws of Congress passed in pursuance thereof, constitute the supreme law of the land, to which paramount allegiance and obedience are due from every citizen, anything in the Constitution, ordinances, or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding."
Suffrage was granted to every male citizen twenty-one years of age. All officers of the State were required to take the following oath:
"I, ---- ----, do solemnly swear that I will support and maintain the Constitution and laws of the United States and the Constitution and laws of the State of Virginia; and that I recognize and accept the civil and political equality of all men before the law," etc.
In addition, all State, city, and county officers were required to take the test-oath prescribed by Congress on July 2, 1862, as follows:
"I do solemnly swear that I have never borne arms against the United States since I have been a citizen thereof; that I have voluntarily given no aid, countenance, counsel, or encouragement to persons engaged in armed hostility thereto; that I have never sought or accepted, nor attempted to exercise the functions of any office whatever, under any authority, or pretended authority, in hostility to the United States; that I have not yielded a voluntary support to any pretended government, authority, power, or Constitution within the United States, hostile or inimical thereto; and I do further swear that, to the best of my knowledge and ability, I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter."
Major-General Schofield, in an address to the Convention in opposition to these stringent provisions, said:
"You can not find in some of the counties a sufficient number of men who are capable of filling the offices, and who can take the oath you have prescribed here, I have no hesitation in saying that I believe it impossible to inaugurate a government upon that basis."
Meantime the so-called Constitution was adopted by the Convention, and June 2d fixed for the popular vote upon it. But no appropriation was made for the expenses of the election, and it was not held. Major-General Stoneman now succeeded Major-General Schofield.
The utter subjugation of the sovereign people of Virginia was now manifest. Not a public act of the least importance could they do without the consent of the military chief who ruled over them, and who was a stranger in their State. Finding the provisions of this Constitution were so restrictive as to exclude from the elective franchise nearly all of the most intelligent and best-educated citizens, on account of their participation in the late war, a movement was commenced for a modification of these clauses or their entire omission. The sovereignty of the people was extinct, so no relief could be secured except through the action of the sovereign sitting in Washington. Congress, therefore, passed an act authorizing the President (Grant), at such time as he might deem best, to submit the Constitution to the registered voters of Virginia, and also submit to a separate vote such provisions of the Constitution as he thought proper. The act also required the Legislature that should be elected to ratify the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the Constitution of the United States, as a condition precedent "to the readmission of the State into the Union."
The fifteenth article of amendment to the Constitution was passed by Congress in February, 1869, and submitted to the Legislatures of the States. It was as follows:
"SECTION 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
"SECTION 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."
On the passage of the amendment by the United States Senate, Senator Garrett Davis, of Kentucky, said:
"Sir, your amendments to the Constitution are all void; they are of no effect. They were proposed by a mutilated Congress; they were proposed by a mutilated House of Representatives and Senate."
The election in Virginia took place on July 6, 1869. The vote on the Constitution was, for it, 206,233; against it, 9,189. For the disfranchising clause, 84,404; against it, 124,361. In favor of the test-oath clause, the votes were, 83,114; against it, 124,106. State officers and a Legislature were chosen.
Meantime the civil or provisional Governor had been removed by the military commander, Major-General Stoneman, and the commander of the first district put in the vacancy. At the same time the President-Judge of the Supreme Court of Appeals was a staff-officer of the General commanding, and assigned to that duty; and another one of the judges of that court was an officer of the Federal army, receiving his appointment from the same source.
On October 5th the Legislature assembled, the State officers-elect having already entered upon their duties. The fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the United States Constitution were adopted, and Senators elected to Congress. On January 26, 1870, a bill for the admission of the State into the Union, "without further condition," was passed. Her subjugation was now completed. The military commanders were withdrawn, and she was left in the hands of "carpet-baggers."
[Footnote 130: Declaration of Independence.]