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THE

RISE AND FALL

OF THE

CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

JEFFERSON DAVIS.

VOLUME II.

NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,

1, 3, ahi) 5 BOND STREET.

1881.

JEFFERSON DAVIS,

1881.

XJ O

CO^TE^TS.

PART IV.— (Continued).

THE WAR.
CHAPTER XV.

PAGE

Review of 1861. — Summary of Hostile Acts of United States Government. —
Fuller Details of some of them. — Third Session of Provisional Congress. —
Message. — Subjugation of the Southern States intended. — Obstinacy of
the Enemy. — Insensibility of the North as to the Crisis. — Vast Prepara-
tion of the Enemy. — Embargo and Blockade. — Indiscriminate War waged.
— Action of Confederate Congress. — Confiscation Act of United States
Congress. — Declared Object of the "War. — Powers of United States Govern-
ment.— Forfeitures inflicted. — Due Process of Law, how interpreted. —
" Who pleads the Constitution ? " — Wanton Destruction of Private Prop-
erty unlawful. — Adams on Terms of the Treaty of Ghent. — Sectional
Hatred. — Order of President Lincoln to Army Officers in Regard to Slaves.
— "Educating the People." — Fremont's Proclamation. — Proclamation of
General T. W. Sherman. — Proclamation of General Halleck and others. —
Letters of Marque. — Our Privateers. — Officers tried for Piracy. — Retali-
atory Orders. — Discussion in the British House of Lords. — Recognition as
a Belligerent of the Confederacy. — Exchange of Prisoners. — Theory of the
United States. — Views of McClellan. — Revolutionary Conduct of United
States Government.— Extent of the War at the Close of 1861. — Victories
of the Year. — New Branches of Manufactures. — Election of Confederate
States President. — Posterity may ask the Cause of such Hostile Actions. —
Answer 1

CHAPTER XVI.

Military Arrangements of the Enemy.— Marshall and Garfield.— Fishing Creek. —
Crittenden's Report.— Fort Henry ; its Surrender.— Fort Donelson ; its Po-
sition.— Assaults. — Surrender. — Losses IS

CHAPTER XVII.

Results of the Surrender of Forts Henry and Donelson.— Retreat from Bowling
Green. — Criticism on General A. S. Johnston. — Change of Plan necessary.

{v CONTENTS.

PAGE

— Evacuation of Nashville. — Generals Floyd and Pillow. — My Letter to
General Johnston. — His Reply. — My Answer. — Defense of General John-
ston.— Battle of Elkhorn. — Topography of Shiloh 36

CHAPTER XVIII.

General Buell's March. — Object of General Johnston. — His Force. — Advance
from Corinth. — Line of Battle. — Telegram. — The Time of the Battle of
Shiloh. — Results of the First Day's Battle. — One Encampment not taken. —
Effects. — Reports on this Failure. — Death of General Johnston. — Remarks 54

CHAPTER XIX.

Retirement of the Army. — Remnants of Grant's Army. — Its Reinforcements. —
Strength of our Army. — Strength of Grant's Army. — Reorganization. —
Corinth. — Advance of General Halleck. — Siege of Corinth. — Evacuation. —
Retreat to Tupelo. — General Beauregard retires. — General Bragg in Com-
mand.— Positions on the Mississippi River occupied by the Enemy. — New
Madrid. — Island Xo. 10. — Fort Pillow. — Memphis. — Attack at Hatteras
Inlet. — Expedition of the Enemy to Port Royal. — Expeditions from Port
Royal. — System of Coast Defenses adopted by us. — Fort Pulaski . . TO

CHAPTER XX.

Advance of General McClellan toward Centreville; his Report. — Our Forces
ordered to the Peninsula. — Situation at Yorktown. — Siege by General Mc-
Clellan.— General Johnston assigned to Command ; his Recommendation.
— Attack on General Magruder at Yorktown. — Movements of McClellan. —
The Virginia. — General Johnston retires. — Delay at Norfolk. — Before Wil-
liamsburg.— Remark of Hancock. — Retreat up the Peninsula. — Sub-terra

Shells used. — Evacuation of Norfolk. — Its Occupation by the Enemy . 81

j «

-♦

CHAPTER XXI.

A New Phase to our Military Problem. — General Johnston's Position. — Defenses
of James River. — Attack on Fort Drury. — Johnston crosses the Chicka-
hominy. — Position of McClellan. — Position of McDowell. — Strength of
Opposing Forces. — Jackson's Expedition down the Shenandoah Valley. —
Panic at Washington and the North. — Movements to intercept Jackson. —
His Rapid Movements. — Repulses Fremont. — Advance of Shields. — Fall of
Ashby. — Port Republic, Battle of. — Results of this Campaign . . . 101

CHAPTER XXII.

Condition of Affairs. — Plan of General Johnston. — The Field of Battle at Seven
Pines. — The Battle. — General Johnston wounded. — Advance of General
Sumner. — Conflict on the Right. — Delay of General Huger. — Reports of the
Enemy. — Losses. — Strength of Forces. — General Lee in Command . .119

CONTENTS. V

CHAPTER XXIII.

PAGE

The Enemy's Position. — His Intention. — The Plan of Operations. — Movements
of General Jackson. — Daring and Fortitude of Lee. — Offensive-Defensive
Policy. — General Stuart's Movement. — Order of Attack. — Critical Position
of McClellan. — Order of Mr. Lincoln creating the Army of Virginia. — Ar-
rival of Jackson. — Position of the Enemy. — Diversion of General Long-
street. — The Enemy forced back south of the Chickahominy. — Abandon-
ment of the Railroad . . 130

CHAPTER XXIV.

Retreat of the Enemy. — Pursuit and Battle.— Night. — Further Retreat of the
Enemy. — Progress of General Jackson. — The Enemy at Frazier's Farm. —
Position of General Holmes. — Advance of General Longstreet. — Remark-
able Features of the Battle. — Malvern Hill. — Our Position. — The Attack. —
Expedition of General Stuart. — Destruction of the Enemy's Stores. — As-
saults on the Enemy. — Retreat to Westover on the James. — Siege of Rich-
mond raised. — Number of Prisoners taken. — Strength of our Forces. —
Strength of our Forces at Seven Pines and after. — Strength of the Enemy . 140

CHAPTER XXV.

Forced Emancipation. — Purposes of the United States Government at the Com-
mencement of 1862. — Subjugation or Extermination. — The Willing Aid of
United States Congress. — Attempt to legislate the Subversion of our Social
Institutions. — Could adopt any Measure Self-Defense would justify. — Sla-
very the Cause of all Troubles, therefore must be removed. — Statements
of President Lincoln's Inaugural. — Declaration of Sumner. — Abolition
Legislation. — The Power based on Necessity. — Its Formula. — The System
of Legislation devised. — Confiscation. — How permitted by the Law of Na-
tions.— Views of Wheaton ; of J. Q. Adams ; of Secretary Marcy ; of Chief- fc
Justice Marshall. — Nature of Confiscation and Proceedings. — Compared/
with the Acts of the United States Congress. — Provisions of the Acts.*—
Five Thousand Millions of Property involved. — Another Feature of the
Act. — Confiscates Property within Reach. — Procedure against Persons. —
Held us as Enemies and Traitors. — Attacked us with the Instruments of
War and Penalties of Municipal Law. — Emancipation to be secured. — Ke-
marks of President Lincoln on signing the Bill. — Remarks of Mr. Adams
compared. — Another Alarming Usurpation of Congress. — Argument for
it. — No Limit to the War-Power of Congress ; how maintained. — The
Act to emancipate Slaves in the District of Columbia. — Compensation
promised. — Remarks of President Lincoln. — The Right of Property vio-
lated.— Words of the Constitution. — The Act to prohibit Slavery in the
Territories. — The Act making an Additional Article of War. — All Officers
forbidden to return Fugitives. — Words of the Constitution. — The Powers
of the Constitution unchanged in Peace or War. — The Discharge of Fugi-
tives commanded in the Confiscation Act. — Words of the Constitution . 158
47

vi CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XXVI.

PAGE

Forced Emancipation concluded.— Emancipation Acts of President Lincoln. —
Emancipation with Compensation proposed to Border States. — Reasons
urged for it. — Its Unconstitutionality. — Order of General Hunter. — Re-
voked by President Lincoln. — Reasons. — " The Pressure " on him. — One
Cause of our Secession. — The Time to throw off the Mask at Hand. —
The Necessity that justified the President and Congress also justified Seces-
sion.— Men united in Defense of Liberty called Traitors. — Conference of
President Lincoln with Senators and Representatives of Border States. —
Remarks of Mr. Lincoln. — Reply of Senators and Representatives. — Fail-
ure of the Proposition. — Three Hundred Thousand more Men called for. —
Declarations of the Antislavery Press. — Truth of our Apprehensions. —
Reply of President Lincoln. — Another Call for Men. — Further Declarations
of the Antislavery Press. — The Watchword adopted. — Memorial of So-
called Christians to the President. — Reply of President Lincoln. — Issue of
the Preliminary Proclamation of Emancipation. — Issue of the Final Proc-
lamation.— The Military Necessity asserted. — The Consummation verbally
reached. — Words of the Declaration of Independence. — Declarations by
the United States Government of what it intended to do. — True Nature of
the Party unveiled. — Declarations of President Lincoln. — Vindication of
the Sagacity of the Southern People. — His Declarations to European Cab-
inets.— Object of these Declarations. — Trick of the Fugitive Thief. — The
Boast of Mr. Lincoln calmly considered 178

CHAPTER XXVII.

Naval Affairs. — Organization of the Navy Department. — Two Classes of Ves-
sels.— Experiments for Floating Batteries and Rams. — The Norfolk Navy-
Yard. — Abandonment by the Enemy. — The Merrimac Frigate made an Iron-
clad.— Officers. — Trial-Trip. — Fleet of the Enemy. — Captain Buchanan. —
Resolves to attack the Enemy. — Sinks the Cumberland. — Burns the Con-
gress.— Wounded. — Executive Officer Jones takes Command. — Retires for
the Night. — Appearance of the Monitor. — The Virginia attacks her. — She
retires to Shoal Water. — Refuses to come out. — Cheers of English Man-of-
war. — Importance of the Navy-Yard. — Order of General Johnston to evac-
uate.— Stores saved. — The Virginia burned. — Harbor Defenses at Wil-
mington.— Harbor Defenses at Charleston. — Fights in the Harbor. — De-
fenses of Savannah. — Mobile Harbor and Capture of its Defenses. — The
System of Torpedoes adopted. — Statement of the Enemy. — Sub-terra
Shells placed in James River. — How made. — Used in Charleston Harbor ;
in Roanoke River ; in Mobile Harbor. — The Tecumseh, how destroyed . 194

CHAPTER XXVIII.
Naval Affairs (continued). — Importance of New Orleans. — Attack feared from up
the River. — Preparations for Defense. — Strength of the Forts. — Other De-
fenses.— The General Plan. — Ironclads. — Raft-Fleet of the Enemy. — Bom-

CONTENTS. vii

PAGE

bardracnt of the Forts commenced. — Advance of the Fleet. — Its Passage
of the Forts. — Batteries below the City. — Darkness of the Night. — Evac-
uation of the City by General Lovell on Appearance of the Enemy. — Ad-
dress of General Duncan to Soldiers in the Forts. — Refusal to surrender. —
Meeting of the Garrison of Fort Jackson. — The Forts surrendered. — Iron-
clad Louisiana destroyed. — The Tugs and Steamers. — The Governor Moore.
— The Enemy's Ship Varuna sunk. — The McRae. — The State of the City
and its Defenses considered. — Public Indignation. — Its Victims. — Efforts
made for its Defense by the Navy Department. — The Construction of the
Mississippi 210

CHAPTER XXIX.

Naval Affairs (continued). — Farragut demands the Surrender of New Orleans. —
Reply of the Mayor. — United States Flag hoisted. — Advent of General
Butler. — Barbarities. — Antecedents of the People. — Galveston. — Its Sur-
render demanded. — The Reply. — Another Visit of the Enemy's Fleet. —
The Port occupied. — Appointment of General Magruder. — Recapture of
the Port. — Capture of the Harriet Lane. — Report of General Magruder. —
Position and Importance of Sabine Pass. — Fleet of the Enemy. — Repulse
by Forty-four Irishmen. — Vessels captured. — Naval Destitution of the
Confederacy at first. — Terror of Gunboats on the Western Rivers. — Their
Capture. — The most Illustrious Example. — The Indianola. — Her Capture.
— The Ram Arkansas. — Descent of the Yazoo River. — Report of her Com-
mander.— Runs through the Enemy's Fleet. — Description of the Vessel. —
Attack on Baton Rouge. — Address of General Breckinridge. — Burning of
the Arkansas 230

CHAPTER XXX.

Naval Affairs (continued). — Necessity of a Navy. — Raphael Semmes. — The Sum-
ter.— Difficulties in creating a Navy. — The Sumter at Sea. — Alarm. — Her
Captures. — James D. Bullock. — Laird's Speech in the House of Commons.
— The Alabama. — Semmes takes Command. — The Vessel and Crew. — Goes
to Sea. — Banks's Expedition.— Magruder at Galveston. — The Steamer Hat-
teras sunk. — The Alabama not a Pirate. — An Aspinwall Steamer ransomed.
—Other Captures. — Prizes burned. — At Cherbourg. — Fight with the Kear-
sarge. — Rescue of the Men. — Demand of the United States Government for
the Surrender of the Drowning Men. — Reply of the British Government. —
Sailing of the Oreto. — Detained at Nassau. — Captain Maffit. — The Ship
half equipped. — Arrives at Mobile. — Runs the Blockade. — Her Cruise. —
Capture and Cruise of the Clarence. — The Captures of the Florida. — Cap-
tain C. M. Morris. — The Florida at Bahia. — Seized by the Wachusett. —
Brought to Virginia and sunk. — Correspondence. — The Georgia. — Cruises
and Captures.— The Shenandoah.— Cruises and Captures.— The Atlanta. —
The Tallahassee. — The Edith 245

viii CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XXXI.

PAGE

Naval Affairs (concluded). — Excitement in the Northern States on the Appear-
ance of our Cruisers. — Failure of the Enemy to protect their Commerce. —
Appeal to Europe not to help the So-called " Pirates.'1 — Seeks Iron-plated
Vessels in England. — Statement of Lord Russell. — What is the Duty of
Neutrals ? — Position taken by President Washington. — Letter of Mr. Jef-
ferson.— Contracts sought by United States Government. — Our Cruisers
went to Sea unarmed. — Mr. Adams asserts that British Neutrality was
violated. — Reply of Lord Russell. — Rejoinder of Mr. Seward. — Duty of
Neutrals relative to Warlike Stores. — Views of Wheaton; of Kent. —
Charge of the Lord Chief Baron in the Alexandra Case. — Action of the
Confederate Government sustained. — Antecedents of the United States
Government. — The Colonial Commissions. — Build and equip Ships in Eu-
rope.— Captain Conyngham's Captures. — Made Prisoner. — Retaliation. —
Numbers of Captures. — Recognition of Greece. — Recognition of South
American Cruisers. — Chief Act of Hostility charged on Great Britain by
the United States Government. — The Queen's Proclamation : its Effect. —
Cause of the United States Charges. — Never called us Belligerents. — Why
not? — Adopts a Fiction. — The Reason. — Why denounce our Cruisers as
11 Pirates " ? — Opinion of Justice Greer. — Burning of Prizes. — Laws of Mari-
time War. — Cause of the Geneva Conference. — Statement of American
Claims. — Allowance. — Indirect Damages of our Cruisers. — Ships trans-
ferred to British Registers. — Decline of American Tonnage. — Decline of
Coasting Tonnage. — Decline of Export of Breadstuffs. — Advance of In-
surance . 266

CHAPTER XXXII.

Attempts of the United States Government to overthrow States. — Military Gov-
ernor of Tennessee appointed. — Object. — Arrests and Imprisonments. —
Measures attempted. — Oath required of Voters. — A Convention to amend
the State Constitution. — Results. — Attempt in Louisiana. — Martial Law. —
Barbarities inflicted. — Invasion of Plantations. — Order of General Butler,
No. 28. — Execution of Mumford. — Judicial System set up. — Civil A *airs
to be administered by Military Authority. — Order of President Lincoln for
a Provisional Court. — A Military Court sustained by the Army. — Words
of the Constitution. — " Necessity," the reason given for the Power to create
the Court. — This Doctrine fatal to the Constitution ; involves its Subver-
sion.— Cause of our Withdrawal from the Union. — Fundamental Prin-
ciples unchanged by Force. — The Contest is not over ; the Strife not ended.
— When the War closed, who were the Victors ? — Let the Verdict of Man-
kind decide 285

CHAPTER XXXIII.

Further Attempts of the United States Government to overthrow States. — Elec-
tion of Members of Congress under the Military Governor of Louisiana. —
The Voters required to take an Oath to support the United States Govern-

CONTEXTS. ix

PAGE

ment. — The State Law violated. — Proposition to hold a State Convention ;
postponed. — The President's Plan for making a Union State out of a Frag-
ment of a Confederate State. — His Proclamation. — The Oath required. —
Message. — " The War-Power our Main Reliance." — Not a Feature of a
Republican Government in the Plan. — What are the True Principles ? —
The Declaration of Independence asserts them. — Who had a Right to in-
stitute a Government for Louisiana ? — Its People only. — Under what Prin-
ciples could the Government of the United States do it ? — As an Invader to
subjugate. — Effrontery and Wickedness of the Administration. — It enforces
a Fiction. — Attempt to make Falsehood as good as Truth. — Proclamation
for an Election of State Officers. — Proclamation for a State Convention. —
The Monster Crime against the Liberties of Mankind. — Proceedings in
Arkansas. — Novel Method adopted to amend the State Constitution. — Per-
version of Republican Principles in Virginia. — Proceedings to create the
State of West Virginia. — A Falsehood by Act of Congress. — Proceedings
considered under Fundamental Principles. — These Acts sustained by the
United States Government. — Assertion of Thaddeus Stevens. — East Vir-
ginia Government. — Removed to Richmond and upheld by the United
States Government. — Such Acts caused Entire Subversion of States. — Mere
Fictions thus constituted 295

CHAPTER XXXIV.

Address to the Army of Eastern Virginia by the President. — Army of General
Pope. — Position of McClellan. — Advance of General Jackson. — Atrocious
Orders of General Pope. — Letter of McClellan on the Conduct of the War.
— Letter of the President to General Lee. — Battle of Cedar Run. — Results
of the Engagement. — Reinforcements to the Enemy. — Second Battle of
Manassas. — Capture of Manassas Junction. — Captured Stores. — The Old
Battle-Field. — Advance of General Longstreet. — Attack on him. — Attack
on General Jackson. — Darkness of the Night. — Battle at Ox Hill. — Losses
of the Enemy 311

CHAPTER XXXV.

Return of the Enemy to Washington. — War transferred to the Frontier. — Con-
dition of Maryland. — Crossing the Potomac. — Evacuation of Martinsburg.
— Advance into Maryland. — Large Force of the Enemy. — Resistance at
Boonesboro. — Surrender of Harper's Ferry. — Our Forces reach Sharps-
burg. — Letter of the President to General Lee. — Address of General Lee
to the People. — Position of our Forces at Sharpsburg. — Battle of Sharps-
burg. — Our Strength. — Forces withdrawn. — Casualties .... 328

CHAPTER XXXVI.

Efforts of the Enemy to obtain our Cotton. — Demands of European Manufac-
turers.— Thousands of Operatives resorting to the Poor-Rates. — Complaint
of her Majesty's Secretary of State. — Letter of Mr. Seward. — Promise to

CONTEXTS.

PAGE

open all the Channels of Commerce. — Series of Measures adopted by the
United States. — Act of Congress. — Its Provisions. — Its Operation. — Uncon-
stitutional Measures. — President Lincoln an Accomplice. — Not authorized
by a State of "War. — Case before Chief -Justice Taney. — His Decision. — Ex-
peditions sent by the United States Government to seize Localities. — An
Act providing for the Appointment of Special Agents to seize Abandoned
or Captured Property. — The Views of General Grant. — Weakening his
Strength One Third. — Our Country divided into Districts, and Federal
Agents appointed. — Continued to the Close of the War .... 343

CHAPTER XXXVII.

The Enemy crosses the Potomac and concentrates at Warrenton. — Advances
upon Fredericksburg. — Its Position. — Our Forces. — The Enemy crosses the
Rappahannock. — Attack on General Jackson.^- The Main Attack. — Re-
pulse of the Enemy on the Right. — Assaults on the Left. — The Enemy's
Columns broke and fled. — Recross the River. — Casualties. — Position during
the Winter. — The Enemy again crosses the Rappahannock. — Also crosses
at Kelly's Ford. — Converging toward Chancellorsville, to the Rear of our
Position. — Inactivity on our Front. — Our Forces concentrate near Chancel-
lorsville and encounter the Enemy. — Position of the Enemy. — Attempt to
turn his Right. — The Enemy surprised and driven in the Darkness. —
Jackson fired upon and wounded. — Stuart in Command. — Battle renewed.
— Fredericksburg reoccupied. — Attack on the Heights. — Repulse of the
Enemy. — The Enemy withdraws in the Night. — Our Strength. — Losses. —
Death of General Jackson. — Another Account 351

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

Relations with Foreign Nations. — The Public Questions. — Ministers abroad. —
Usages of Intercourse between Nations. — Our Action. — Mistake of Eu-
ropean Nations ; they follow the Example of England and France. — Dif-
ferent Conditions of the Belligerents.— Injury to the Confederacy by the
Policy of European Powers relative to the Blockade. — Explanation. — The
Paris Conference. — Principles adopted. — Acceded to by the Confederacy
with a Single Exception. — These Agreements remained inoperative. —
Extent of the Pretended Blockade. — Remonstrances against its Recog-
nition.—Sinking Vessels to block up Harbors. — Every Proscription of
Maritime Law violated by the United States Government. — Protest. — Ad-
dition made to the Law by Great Britain.— Policy pursued favorable to
our Enemies. — Instances. — Mediation proposed by France to Great Britain,
and Russian Letter of French Minister. — Reply of Great Britain. — Reply
of Russia. — Letter to French Minister at Washington. — Various Offensive
Actions of the British Government. — Encouraging to the United States. —
Hollow Profession of Neutrality 36*7

CONTENTS. xi

CHAPTER XXXIX.

PAGE

Advance of General E. K. Smith. — Advance of General Bragg. — Retreat of Gen-
eral Buell to Louisville. — Battle at Perryville, Kentucky. — GeDeral Morgan
at Hartsville. — Advance of General Rosecrans. — Battle of Murf reesboro. —
General Yan Dorn and General Price. — Battle at Iuka. — General Van Dora.
— Battle of Corinth. — General Little. — Captures at Holly Springs. — Re-
treat of Grant to Memphis. — Operations against Vicksburg. — The Canal. —
Concentration. — Raid of Grierson. — Attack near Port Gibson. — Orders of
General Johnston. — Reply of General Pemberton. — Baker's Creek. — Big
Black Bridge. — Retreat to Vicksburg. — Siege. — Surrender. — Losses. — Sur-
render of Port Hudson. — Some Movements for its Relief .... 382

CHAPTER XL.

Inactivity in Tennessee. — Capture of Colburn's Expedition. — Capture of
Streight's Expedition. — Advance of Rosecrans to Bridgeport. — Burnside
in East Tennessee. — Our Force at Chattanooga. — Movement against Burn-
side. — The Enemy moves on our Rear near Ringgold. — Battle at Chicka-
mauga. — Strength and Distribution of our Forces. — The Enemy with-
draws.— Captures. — Losses. — The Enemy evacuates Passes of Lookout
Mountain. — His Trains captured. — Failure of General Bragg to pursue. —
Reinforcements to the Enemy, and Grant to command. — His Description
of the Situation. — Movements of the Enemy. — Conflict at Chattanooga . 426

CHAPTER XLI.

Movement to draw forth the Enemy. — Advance to Culpeper Court-House. —
Cavalry Engagement at Beverly's and Kelly's Fords. — Movement against
Winchester. — Milroy's Force captured. — Prisoners. — The Enemy retires
along the Potomac. — Maryland entered. — Advance into Pennsylvania. — The
Enemy driven back toward Gettysburg. — Position of the Respective Forces.
— Battle at Gettysburg. — The Army retires. — Prisoners. — The Potomac
swollen. — No Interruption by the Enemy. — Strength of our Force. —
Strength of the Enemy. — The Campaign closed. — Observations. — Kelly's
Ford. — Attempt to surprise our Army. — System of Breastworks. — Pris-
oners 437

CHAPTER XLIL

xii CONTEXTS.

PAGE

its Government ; thus denies the Fundamental Principle of Popular Lib-
erty.— Founded a New State Government based on the Sovereignty of the
United States Government. — Annihilation of Unalienable Rights. — Quali-
fication of Voters fixed by Military Power. — Condition of the Voter's Oath.
— Who was the Sovereign in Tennessee ? — Case of Louisiana. — Registra-
tion of Voters. — None allowed to register who could not or would not
take a Certain Oath ; its Conditions. — Election of State Officers. — Part of
the State Constitution declared void. — All done under the Military Force
of the United States Government 460

CHAPTER XLIII.

Subjugation of the Border States, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri. — A Mili-
tary Force invades Maryland and occupies Baltimore.— Martial Law de-
clared.— A Military Order. — Banishment from the State. — Civil Government
of the State suspended. — Unalienable Rights of the Citizens invaded. —
Arrests of Citizens commenced. — Number. — Case of John Merryman. —
Opinion of Chief-Justice Taney. — Newspapers seized. — Houses searched
for Arms. — Order of Commanding General to Marshals to put Test to
Voters. — The Governor appeals to the President. — His Reply. — Voters
imprisoned. — Statement of the Governor. — Result of the Election. — State
Constitutional Convention. — Emancipation hardly carried. — First Open
Measures in Kentucky. — Interference at the State Election by the United
States Government. — Voters excluded. — Martial Law declared. — Soldiers
keeping the Polls. — The Vote. — Statement of the Governor. — Attempt to
enroll Able-bodied Negroes. — The Governor visits Washington. — The Re-
sult.— Arrests, Imprisonment, and Exile of Citizens. — Suspension of the
Writ of Habeas Corpus by President Lincoln. — Interference with the State
Election. — Order to the Sheriffs. — Proclamation of the Governor. — Enlist-
ment of Slaves. — Emancipation by Constitutional Amendment. — Violent
Measures in Missouri. — The Governor calls out the Militia. — His Words. —
The Plea of the Invader. — " The Authority of the United States is Para-
mount," said President Lincoln. — Bravery of the Governor. — Words of
the Commanding General. — Troops poured into the State. — Proceedings of
the State Convention. — Numberless Usurpations. — Provisional Governor.
— Emancipation Ordinance passed 460

CHAPTER XLIV.

Subjugation of the Northern States. — Humiliating Spectacle of New York. —
u Ringing of a Little Bell." — Seizure and Imprisonment of Citizens. — Num-
ber seized. — Paper Safeguards of Liberty. — Other Safeguards. — Suspension
of the Writ of Habeas Corpus absolutely forbidden with One Exception. —
How done. — Not able to authorize another. — Abundant Protective Provi-
sions in New York, but all failed. — Case of Pierce Butler. — Arrest of Sec-
retary Cameron. — The President assumes the Responsibility of the Crime.
— No Heed given to the Writ of Habeas Corpus issued by the Court. —

CONTENTS. xiii

PAGE

The Governor passive. — "Words of Justice Nelson. — Prison overflowing. —
How relieved. — Oath required of Applicants for Relief. — Oath declined by
some. — Reasons. — Order forbidding the Employment of Counsel by Pris-
oners.— Victims in almost Every Northern State. — Defeat at the Elec-
tions.— Result. — Suit for Damages commenced. — Congress interferes to
protect the Guilty. — State Courts subjugated. — How suspend Habeas Cor-
pus.— Congress violates the Constitution. — What was New York ? — Writ
suspended throughout the United States. — What is " Loyalty " ? — Military
Domination. — Correspondence between General Dix and Governor Sey-
mour.— Seizure of Newspapers. — Governor orders Arrest of Offenders. —
Interference with the State Election. — Vote of the Soldiers. — State Agents
arrested. — Provost-Marshals appointed in Every Northern State. — Their
Duties. — Sustained by Force. — Trials by Military Commission. — Trials at
Washington. — Assassination of the President. — Trial of Henry Wirz. —
Efforts to implicate the Author. — Investigation of a Committee of Con-
gress as to Complicity in the Assassination. — Arrest, Trial, and Banish-
ment of Clement C. VallandigHam. — Assertions of Governor Seymour on
the Case 477

CHAPTER XLV.

Inactivity of the Army of Northern Virginia. — Expeditions of Custer, Kilpatrick,
and Dahlgren for the Destruction of Railroads, the Burning of Richmond,
and Killing the Officers of the Government. — Repelled by Government
Clerks. — Papers on Dahlgren's Body. — Repulse of Butler's Raid from Ber-
muda Hundred. — Advance of Sheridan repulsed at Richmond. — Stuart re-
sists Sheridan. — Stuart's Death. — Remarks on Grant's Plan of Campaign.
— Movement of General Butler. — Drury's Bluff. — Battle there. — Campaign
of Grant in Virginia . 504

CHAPTER XLVI.

General Grant assumes Command in Virginia. — Positions of the Armies. — Plans
of Campaign open to Grant's Choice. — The Rapidan crossed. — Battle of
the Wilderness. — Danger of Lee. — The Enemy driven back. — Flank Attack.
— Longstreet wounded. — Result of the Contest. — Rapid Flank Movement
of Grant. — Another Contest. — Grant's Reinforcements. — Hanover Junc-
tion.— The Enemy moves in Direction of Bowling Green. — Crosses the Pa-
munkey. — Battle at Cold Harbor. — Frightful Slaughter. — The Enemy's
Soldiers decline to renew the Assault when ordered. — Loss. — Asks Truce
to bury the Dead. — Strength of Respective Armies. — General Pember-
ton. — The Enemy crosses the James. — Siege of Petersburg begun . .515

CHAPTER XLVII.

Situation in the Shenandoah Valley. — March of General Early. — The Object. —
At Lynchburg. — Staunton. — His Force. — Enters Maryland. — Attack at
Monocacy. — Approach to Washington. — The Works. — Recrosses the Po-

xiv CONTEXTS.

PAGE

tomac. — Battle at Kernstown. — Captures. — Outrages of the Enemy. — State-
ment of General Early. — Retaliation on Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. —
Battle near Winchester. — Sheridan's Force routed. — Attack subsequently
renewed with New Forces. — Incapacity of our Opponent. — Early falls
back. — The Enemy retires. — Early advances. — Report of a Committee of
Citizens on Losses by Sheridan's Orders. — Battle at Cedar Creek. — Losses,
Subsequent Movements, and Captures. — The Red River Campaign. — Re-
pulse and Retreat of General Banks. — Capture of Fort Pillow . . . 527

CHAPTER XLVIII.

Assignment of General J. E. Johnston to the Command of the Army of Ten-
nessee.— Condition of his Army. — An Offensive Campaign suggested. —
Proposed Objects to be accomplished. — General Johnston's Plans. — Ad-
vance of Sherman. — The Strength of the Confederate Position. — General
Johnston expects General Sherman to give Battle at Dalton. — The Enemy's
Flank Movement via Snake-Creek Gap to Rcsaca. — Johnston falls back
to Resaca. — Further Retreat to Adairsville. — General Johnston's Reasons.
— Retreat to Cassville. — Projected Engagement at Kingston frustrated. —
Retreat beyond the Etowah River. — Strong Position at Alatoona aban-
doned.— Nature of the Country between Marietta and Dallas. — Engage-
ments at New Hope Church. — Army takes Position at Kenesaw. — Senator
Hill's Letter. — Death of Lieutenant-General Polk. — Battle at Kenesaw
Mountain. — Retreat beyond the Chattahoochee. — Results reviewed. —
Popular Demand for Removal of General Johnston. — Reluctance to re-
move him. — Reasons for Removal. — Assignment of General J. B. Hood to
the Command. — He assumes the Offensive. — Battle of Peach-tree Creek. —
Death of General W. H. T. Walker. — Sherman's Movement to Jonesboro. —
Defeat of Hardee. — Evacuation of Atlanta. — Sherman's Inhuman Order. —
Visit to Georgia. — Suggested Operations. — Want of Cooperation by the
Governor of Georgia. — Conference with Generals Beauregard, Hardee, and
Cobb, at Augusta. — Departure from Original Plan. — General Hood's Move-
ment against the Enemy's Communications. — Partial Successes. — With-
drawal of the Army to Gadsden and Movement against Thomas. — Sher-
man burns Atlanta and begins his March to the Sea. — Vandalism. —
Direction of his Advance. — General Wheeler's Opposition. — His Valuable
Service. — Sherman reaches Savannah. — General Hardee's Command. — The
Defenses of the City. — Assault and Capture of Fort McAlister. — The
Results. — Hardee evacuates Savannah 547

CHAPTER XLIX.

Exchange of Prisoners — Signification of the Word " loyal." — Who is the Sover-
eign ? — Words of President Lincoln. — The Issue for which wc fought. — Posi-
tion of the United States Government. — Letters of Marque granted by us.-—
Officers and Crew First Prisoners of the Enemy. — Convicted as "Pirates." —
My Letter to President Lincoln. — How received. — Act of Congress relating

CONTENTS. XV

PAGE

to Prisoners. — Exchanges, how made. — Answer of General Grant. — Request
of United States Congress. — Result. — Commissioners sent. — Agreement. —
Disputed Points. — Exchange arranged. — Order to pillage issued. — General
Pope's Order. — Proceedings. — Letter of General Lee relative to Barbari-
ties.— Answer of General Halleck. — Case of Mumford. — Effect of Threat-
ened Retaliation. — Mission of Vice-President Stephens. — A Failure. — Ex-
cess of Prisoners. — Paroled Men. — Proposition made by us. — No Answer.
— Another Arrangement. — Stopped by General Grant. — His words, " Put
the Matter offensively." — Exchange of Slaves. — Proposition of Lee to
Grant. — Reply of Grant. — Further Reply. — His Dispatch to General Butler.
— Another Proposition made by us. — No Answer. — Proposition relative to
Sick and Wounded. — Some exchanged. — The Worst Cases asked for to
be photographed. — Proposition as to Medicines. — No Answer. — A Final
Effort. — Deputation of Prisoners sent to Washington. — A Failure. — Cor-
respondence between Ould and Butler. — Order of Grant. — Report of Butler.
— Responsibility of Grant for Andersonville. — Barbarities of the United
States Government. — Treatment of our Men in Northern Prisons. — Deaths
on Each Side 580

CHAPTER L.

Subjugation the Object of the Government of the United States. — The only
Terms of Peace offered to us. — Rejection of all Proposals. — Efforts of the
Enemy. — Appearance of Jacques and Gilmore at Richmond. — Proposals. —
Answer. — Commissioners sent to Canada. — The Object. — Proceedings. —
Note of President Lincoln. — Permission to visit Richmond granted to
Francis P. Blair. — Statement of my Interview with him. — My Letter to him.
— Response of President Lincoln. — Three Persons sent by me to an In-
formal Conference. — Their Report. — Remarks of Judge Campbell. — Oath
of President Lincoln. — The Provision of the Constitution and his Procla-
mation compared. — Reserved Powers spoken of in the Constitution. —
What are they, and where do they exist ? — Terms of Surrender offered to
our Soldiers 608

CHAPTER LI.

General Sherman leaves Savannah. — His March impeded. — Difficulty in collect-
ing Troops to oppose him. — The Line of the Salkehatchie. — Route of the
Enemy's Advance. — Evacuation of Columbia. — Its Surrender by the Mayor.
— Burning the City. — Sherman responsible. — Evacuation of Charleston. —
The Confederate Forces in North Carolina. — General Johnston's Estimate.
— General Johnston assigned to the Command. — The Enemy's Advance
from Columbia to Fayetteville, North Carolina. — "Foraging Parties." —
Sherman's Threat and Hampton's Reply. — Description of Federal " Treas-
ure-Seekers " by Sherman's Aide-de-Camp. — Failure of Johnston's Projected
Attack at Fayetteville. — Affair at Kinston. — Cavalry Exploits. — General

xvi CONTEXTS.

PAGE

Johnston withdraws to Smithfield. — Encounter at Averysboro. — Battles of
Bentonville. — Union of Sherman's and Schofield's Forces. — Johnston's Re-
treat to Raleigh 625

CHAPTER LII.

Siege of Petersburg. — Violent Assault upon our Position. — A Cavalry Expedi-
tion.— 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 Stead-
man. — Movements of Grant farther to Lee's right. — Army retires from
Petersburg. — The Capitulation. — Letters of Lee 637

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 661

CHAPTER LTV.

Invitation of General Johnston to a Conference. — Its Object. — Its Result. —
Provisions on the Line of Retreat. — Notice of President Lincoln's Assas-
sination.— 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. K. Smith to his Sol-
diers.— Surrender. — Numbers paroled. — The President overtakes his Fam-
ily.— His Capture. — Taken to Hampton Roads, and imprisoned in Fortress
Monroe 678

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 Procla-
mation.— Statements in 1864. — General Hunter's Proceedings near Lynch-
burg.— Cruelties in Sherman's March through South Carolina . . . 705

CHAPTER LVI.

Final Subjugation of the Confederate States. — Result of the Contest. — A Simple
Process of Restoration. — Rejected by the United States Government. — A

CONTENTS. xvii

PAGE

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. Wat-
son.— Civil Rights Bill. — Storm brewing. — Congress refuses to admit Sen-
ators 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 Con-
gress.— Military Commanders appointed over Confederate States, with Un-
limited 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-Gen-
eral at Richmond. — Civil Governor appointed. — Military Districts and Sub-
districts. — Registration. — So-called State Convention. — So-called Legisla-
ture.— 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 718

CHAPTER LVn.

Final Subjugation of the Confederate States (continued). — Slaves declared free
by Military Commanders in North Carolina. — Provisional Governor. — Con-
vention.— Military Commander. — Governor-elect turned out. — His Protest.
— Members of Congress admitted. — Proceedings in South Carolina. — Arrest
of Judge Aldrich. — Military Reversal of Sentence of the Court. — Post Com-
manders.— Jurors. — Proceedings in Georgia. — President's Plan. — Plan of
Congress enforced. — Other Events. — Proceedings in Florida. — Rival Con-
ventions.— Plan of Congress enforced. — Proceedings in Alabama. — Suspen-
sion of Bishop Wilmer by the Military Commander. — Military Authority. —
Action of Congress. — Proceedings in Mississippi. — Constitutionality of the
Act of Congress before the Supreme Court. — Remarks of Chief-Justice
Chase. — Military Arrests. — Removals. — The Chief-Justice of the State re-
signs.— The So-called Constitution rejected. — Ames appointed Governor. —
Proceedings in Louisiana. — Plan of Congress enforced. — Other Measures.
— Arkansas. — Texas. — Opinion of the United States Attorney-General on
Military Commanders. — Consequences that followed the Measures of Con-
gress.— Increase in State Debts. — Increase in Frauds and Crimes. — Ex-
amples.— Investigating Committees of Congress. — The Unalienable Rights
of Man. — The Sovereignty of the People and the Supremacy of Law gone . 737

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Jefferson Davis .

General Braxton Bragg

Dayis House, at Richmond

Lieutenant- General T. J. Jackson .

Members of the Confederate Cabinet .

Lieutenant-General Jame3 Longstreet

General "Wade Hampton .

General J. E. Johnston

General John B. Hood

Lieutenant- General William J. Hardee

Frontispiece
Face page 54

102
. 106

374
. 442

505
. 558

573
. 627

MAPS.

Battle-Field of Fort Donelson .
Map used by the Confederate Generals at Shiloh
Battle of Shiloh .....
Port Hudson .....

YoRKTOWN AND "WlLLIAMSBURG

Operations in Northern Virginia

Operations around Richmond and Petersburg .

Battle of Fredericksburg

Operations in Mississippi ....

Operations in Kentucky and Tennessee

Battle-Field of Chickamauga

Battle of Gettysburg

Operations in Georgia and Tennessee .

Fort Fisher .....

Petersburg ......

Retreat from Richmond and Petersburg .
Operations in Georgia and South Carolina .

. Page 27
53
58
421
At end of volume

PAET I Y— (Continued).

THE WAR.

CHAPTER XV.

Review of 1861. — Summary of Hostile Acts of United States Government. — Fuller
Details of some of them. — Third Session of Provisional Congress. — Message. —
Subjugation of the Southern States intended. — Obstinacy of the Enemy. — In-
sensibility of the North as to the Crisis. — Vast Preparation of the Enemy. —
Embargo and Blockade. — Indiscriminate War waged. — Action of Confederate
Congress. — Confiscation Act of United States Congress. — Declared Object of
the War. — Powers of United States Government. — Forfeitures inflicted. — Due
Process of Law, how interpreted. — " Who pleads the Constitution ? " — Wanton
Destruction of Private Property unlawful. — Adams on Terms of the Treaty
of Ghent. — Sectional Hatred. — Order of President Lincoln to Army Officers in
Regard to Slaves. — "Educating the People." — Fremont's Proclamation. — Proc-
lamation of General T. W. Sherman. — Proclamation of General Halleck and
others. — Letters of Marque. — Our Privateers. — Officers tried for Piracy. — Re-
taliatory Orders. — Discussion in the British House of Lords. — Recognition
as a Belligerent of the Confederacy. — Exchange of Prisoners. — Theory of the
United States. — Views of McClellan. — Revolutionary Conduct of United States
Government. — Extent of the War at the Close of 1861. — Victories of the Year.
— New Branches of Manufactures. — Election of Confederate States President.
— Posterity may ask the Cause of such Hostile Actions. — Answer.

The inauguration of the permanent government, amid the
struggles of war, was welcomed bj our people as a sign of the
independence for which all their sacrifices had been made, and
the increased efforts of the enemy for our subjugation were
met by corresponding determination on our part to maintain
the rights our fathers left us at whatever cost. We now enter
upon those terrible scenes of wrong and blood in which the

Government of the United States, driven to desperation by

2 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

our successful resistance, broke through every restraint of
the Constitution, of national law, of justice, and of humanity.
But, before commencing this fearful narration, let us sum up
the hostile acts and usurpations committed during the first
year.

Our people had been declared to be combinations of insur-
rectionists, and more than one hundred and fifty thousand men
had been called to arms to invade our territory ; our ports were
blockaded for the destruction of our regular commerce, and
we had been threatened with denunciation as pirates if we mo-
lested a vessel of the United States, and some of our citizens
had been confined in cells to await the punishment of piracy ;
one of our States was rent asunder and a new State constructed
out of the fragment ; every proposition for a peaceful solution
of pending issues had been spurned. An indiscriminate war-
fare had been waged upon our peaceful citizens, their dwellings
burned and their crops destroyed ; a law had been passed im-
posing a penalty of forfeiture on the owner of any faithful slave
who gave military or naval service to the Confederacy, and for-
bidding military commanders to interfere for the restoration of
fugitives ; the United States Government had refused to agree
to an exchange of prisoners, and suffered those we had captured
to languish in captivity ; it had falsely represented us in every
court of Europe, to defeat our efforts to obtain a recognition
from foreign powers ; it had seized a portion of the members of
the Legislature of one State and confined them in a distant mili-
tary prison, because they were thought merely to sympathize
with us, though they had not committed an overt act ; it had
refused all the propositions of another State for a peaceful neu-
trality, invaded her and seized important positions, where not
even a disturbance of the peace had occurred, and perpetrated
the most despotic outrages on her people ; it rejected the most
conciliatory terms offered for the sake of peace by the Governor
of another State, claimed for itself an unrestricted right to move
and station its troops whenever and wherever its officers might
think it to be desirable, and persisted in its aggressions until
the people were involved in conflicts, and a provisional govern-
ment became necessary for their protection. Within the North-

1862] THE ANTECEDENTS OF OPPRESSIVE MEASURES. 3

era States, which professed to be struggling to maintain the
Union, the Constitution, its only bond, and the laws made in
pursuance of it, were in peaceful, undisputed existence; yet
even there the Government ruled with the tyrant's hand, and
the provisions for the freedom of speech, freedom of the press,
and the personal liberty of the citizen, were daily violated, and
these sacred rights of man suppressed by military force.

But some of these hostile actions require here a more specific
consideration. They were the antecedents of oppressive meas-
ures which the enemy strove to enforce upon us during the
entire war.

The third session of the Provisional Congress commenced at
Kichmond on July 20, 1861, and ended on August 31st. At
the previous session, a resolution had been passed authorizing
the President to cause the several executive departments, with
the archives thereof, to be removed to Richmond at such time
as he might determine prior to July 20 th. In my message to the
Congress of that date, the cause of removal was stated to be, that
the aggressive movements of the enemy required prompt, ener-
getic action ; that the accumulation of his forces on the Poto-
mac sufficiently demonstrated that his first efforts were to be
directed against Virginia, and from no point could necessary
measures for her defense and protection be so effectively pro-
vided as from her own capital. My remarks to Congress at this
session were confined to such important facts as had occurred
during the recess, and to the matters connected with the public
defense. " The odious features of the policy and purposes of
the Government of the United States stood revealed ; the recent
grant of a half million of men and four hundred millions of dol-
lars by their Congress, was a confession that their intention was
a subjugation of the Southern States."

The fact thus briefly presented in the message was estab-
lished by the course pursued since the first advent to power of
those who had come into possession of the sword and the purse
of the Union. ISTot only by the legislation cited was the intent
to make war for the purpose of subjugating the Southern States
revealed, but also, and yet more significantly, was the purpose
manifested in the evasion and final rejection of every proposi-

4 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

tion of the Southern States for a peaceful solution of the issues
arising from secession.

Such extreme obstinacy was unnatural, unreasonable, and
contrary to the general precedents of history, except those which
resulted in civil war. This unfavorable indication was also ob-
servable in the original party of abolition. Its intolerance had
a violence which neither truth nor justice nor religion could re-
strain, and it was transferred undiluted to their successors. The
resistance to the demands of the States and persistence in ag-
gressions upon them were the occasion of constant apprehensions
and futile warnings of their suicidal tendency on the part of the
statesmen of the period. For thirty years had patriotism and
wisdom pointed to dissolution by this perverse uncharitableness.
Had the North been contending for a principle only, there would
have been a satisfactory settlement, not indeed by compromis-
ing the principle, but by adjusting the manner of its operation
so that only good results should ensue. But when the contest
is for supremacy on one side and self-defense on the other —
when the aim of the aggressor is " power, plunder, and extended
rule " — there will be no concessions by him, no compromises, no
adjustment of results. The alternative is subjugation by the
sword, or peace by absolute submission. The latter condition
could not be accepted by us. The former was, therefore, to be
resisted as best we might.

An amazing insensibility seemed to possess a portion of the
Northern people as to the crisis before them. They would not
realize that their purpose of supremacy would be so resolutely
resisted ; that, if persisted in, it must be carried to the extent of
bloodshed in sectional war. With them the lust of dominion
was stronger than the sense of justice or of the fraternity and
the equal rights of the States, which the Union was formed to
secure, and so they were blind to palpable results. Otherwise
they must have seen, when the remnants of the old Whig party
joined hands with abolitionism, that it was like a league with
the spirit of evil, in which the conditions of the bond were be-
stowal of power on one side, and the commission of deeds meet
for disunion on the other. The honest masses should have re-
membered that when scheming leaders abandon principle, and

1862] PURPOSE OF WAR REVEALED. 5

adopt the ideas of dreamers and fanatics, the ladder on which
they would mount to power is one on which they can not return,
and up which it would be a fatal delusion to follow.

The reality of armed resistance on our part the North was
slow to comprehend. The division of sentiment at the South
on the question of the expediency of immediate secession, was
mistaken for the existence of a submission party, whereas the
division was confined to expediency, and wholly disappeared
when our territory was invaded. Then was revealed to them
the necessity of defending their homes and liberties against the
ruthless assault on both, and then extraordinary unanimity pre-
vailed. Then, as Hamilton and Madison had stated, war against
the States had effected the deprecated dissolution of the Union.

Adjustment by negotiation the United States Government
had rejected, and had chosen to attempt our subjugation. This
course, adopted without provocation, was pursued with a feroci-
ty that disregarded all the laws of civilized warfare, and must
permanently remain a stain upon the escutcheon of a Government
once bright among the nations. The vast provision made by
the United States in the material of war, the money appropriated,
and the men enrolled, furnished a sufficient refutation to the
pretense that they were only engaged in dispersing rioters, and
suppressing unlawful combinations too strong for the usual
course of judicial proceedings.

Further, they virtually recognized the separate existence of
the Confederate States by an interdictive embargo, and block-
ade of all commerce between them and the United States, not
only by sea but by land ; not only with those who bore arms,
but with the entire population of the Confederate States. They
waged an indiscriminate war upon all : private houses in iso-
lated retreats were bombarded and burned ; grain-crops in the
field were consumed by the torch; and, when the torch was
not applied, careful labor was bestowed to render complete the
destruction of every article of use or ornament remaining in
private dwellings after their female inhabitants had fled from
the insults of brutal soldiers ; a petty war was made on the sick,
including women and children, by carefully devised measures
to prevent them from obtaining the necessary medicines. Were

6 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

these the appropriate means by which to execute the laws, and
in suppressing rioters to secure tranquillity and preserve a vol-
untary union ? Was this a government resting on the consent
of the governed ?

At this session of the Confederate Congress additional
forces were provided to repel invasion, by authorizing the
President to accept the services of any number of volunteers
not exceeding four hundred thousand men. Authority was
also given for suitable financial measures hereafter stated, and
the levy of a tax. An act of sequestration was also adopted as
a countervailing measure against the operations of the confis-
cation law enacted by the Congress of the United States on
August 6, 1861.

This act of the United States Congress, with its complement
passed in the ensuing year, will be considered further on in these
pages. One of the most indicative of the sections, however,
provided that, whenever any person, claimed to be held to labor
or service under the laws of any State, shall be permitted, by the
person to whom such labor or service is claimed to be due, to
take up arms against the United States, or to work, or to be em-
ployed in or upon any fort, intrenchment, etc., or in any military
or naval service whatever against the Government of the United
States, the person to whom such labor is claimed to be due
shall forfeit his claim, and, to any attempt to enforce it, a
statement of the facts shall be a sufficient answer. The Presi-
dent of the United States, in his message of December 3, 1861,
stated that numbers of persons held to service had been liber-
ated and were dependent on the United States, and must be
provided for in some way. He recommended that steps be
taken for colonizing them at some places in a climate congenial
to them.

As the President and the Congress of the United States had
declared this to be a war for the preservation of the Constitu-
tion, it may not be out of place to see what course they now
undertook to pursue under the pretext of preserving the Con-
stitution of the United States. It had been conceded in all
time that the Congress of the United States had no power to
legislate on slavery in the States, and that this was a subject for

1862] "DUE PROCESS OF LAW." 7

State legislation. It was one of the powers not granted in tlie
Constitution, but " reserved to the States respectively." * All
the powers of the Federal Government were delegated to it
by the States, and all which were reserved were withheld from
the Federal Government, as well in time of war as in peace.
The conditions of peace or war made no change in the powers
granted in the Constitution. The attempt, therefore, by Con-
gress, to exercise a power of confiscation, one not granted to
it, was a mere usurpation. The argument of forfeiture for trea-
son does not reach the case, because there could be no for-
feiture until after conviction, and the Constitution says, "No
attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood or forfeiture
except during the life of the person attainted." f The con-
fiscation act of 1861 undertook to convict and sentence with-
out a trial, and entirely to deprive the owner of slaves of his
property by giving final freedom to the slaves. Still further
to show how regardless the United States Government was
of the limitations imposed upon it by the compact of Union,
the reader is referred to the fifth article of the first amend-
ment, being one of those cases in which the people of the sev-
eral States, in an abundance of caution, threw additional pro-
tection around rights which the framers of the Constitution
thought already sufficiently guarded. The last two clauses of
the article read thus : No person " shall be deprived of life,
liberty, or property, without due process of law ; nor shall pri-
vate property be taken for public use, without just compensa-
tion."

Here was a political indictment and conviction by the Con-
gress and President, with total forfeitures inflicted in palpable
violation of each and of all the cited clauses of the Constitu-
tion.

One can scarcely anticipate such effrontery as would argue
that " due process of law " meant an act of Congress, that judi-
cial power could thus be conferred upon the President, and
private property be confiscated for party success, without vio-
lating the Constitution which the actors had sworn to support.

The unconstitutionality of the measure was so palpable that,

* Constitution of the United States, Article X. f Ibid., Article III, section 3.

8 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

when the bill was under consideration, Mr. Thaddeus Stevens,
a member of Congress from Pennsylvania, said : " I thought
the time had come when the laws of war were to govern our
action ; when constitutions, if they stood in the way of the laws
of war in dealing with the enemy, had no right to intervene.
Who pleads the Constitution against our proposed action ? " *
This subject is further considered in subsequent chapters on
the measures of emancipation adopted by the United States
Government.

It is to be remembered in this connection that pillage and
the wanton destruction of private property are not permitted
by the laws of war among civilized nations. When prosecuting
the war with Mexico, we respected private property of the ene-
my; and when in 1781 Great Britain, attempting to reduce her
revolted American colonies, took possession of the country
round and about Point Comfort (Fortress Monroe), the homes
quietly occupied by the rebellious people were spared by the
armies of the self-asserting ruler of the land. At a later date,
war existed between Great Britain and the independent States
of the Union, during which Great Britain got possession of va-
rious points within the States. At the Treaty of Ghent, 1815,
by which peace was restored to the two countries, it was stipu-
lated in the first article that all captured places should be re-
stored " without causing any destruction, or carrying away any
of the artillery or other public property originally captured in
the said forts or places, and which shall remain therein upon
the exchange of the ratifications of this treaty ; or any slaves or
other private property." Persistent efforts were made to avoid
the return of deported slaves, and it was attempted to put them
in the category of artillery which had been removed before the
exchange of ratification. Mr. John Quincy Adams, first as
United States Minister to England, and subsequently as United
States Secretary of State, conducted with great vigor and ear-
nestness a long correspondence to maintain the true construc-
tion of the treaty as recognizing and guarding the right of pri-
vate property in slaves. In his letter to Yiscount Castlereagh,
the British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, after explain-

* Congress of the United States, July, 1861.

1862] THE WRONG DONE IN DEPORTING SLAVES. 9

ing the distinction between " artillery or other public property "
and " slaves or other private property," as nsed in the treaty,
and why it might be impracticable, if they had been removed,
to return the former, but that the reasons did not apply to the
latter, for, he proceeds to say, " Private property, not having
been subject to legitimate capture with the places, was not lia-
ble to the reason of limitation." In the same letter, Mr. Ad-
ams writes : " Merchant-vessels and effects captured on the
high-seas are, by the laws of war between civilized nations,
lawful prize, and by the capture become the property of the
captors. . . . But, as by the same usages of civilized nations,
private property is not the subject of lawful capture in war
upon the land, it is perfectly clear that, in every stipulation,
private property shall be respected ; or that, upon the restora-
tion of places taken during the war, it shall not be carried
away." (See " American State Papers," vol. iv, pp. 122, 123.)
Sectional hostility and party zeal had not then so far under-
mined the feeling of fraternity which generated the Union as
to make a public officer construe the Constitution as it might
favor or injure one section or another, and Great Britain
was, from a sense of right, compelled to recognize the wrong
done in deporting slaves, the private property of American
citizens.

On the 4th of December, 1861, the President of the United
States issued an order to the commander-in-chief relative to
slaves as above mentioned, in which he said, " Their arrest as
fugitives from service or labor should be immediately followed
by the military arrest of the parties making the seizure." Had
Congress and the President made new laws of war ?

Although the Government of the United States did not
boldly proclaim the immediate emancipation of all slaves, the
tendency of all its actions was directly to that end. To use a
favorite expression of its leaders, the Northern people were not
at that time " educated up to the point." A revolt from too
sudden a revelation of its entire policy was apprehended. Even
as late as July 7, 1862, General McClellan wrote to the authori-
ties at Washington from the vicinity of Richmond, " A decla-
ration of radical views, especially upon slavery, will rapidly dis-

10 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

integrate our armies." Nevertheless, when policy indicated it,
the declaration came, as will be seen hereafter. Meantime,
General Fremont, in command in Missouri, issued a proclama-
tion on August 31, 1861, declaring the property, real and per-
sonal, of all persons in arms against the United States, or taking
an active part with their enemies, to be confiscated, and their
slaves to be free men. This was subsequently modified to con-
form to the terms of the above-mentioned confiscation act.
General Thomas W. Sherman, commanding at Port Royal, in
South Carolina, was instructed, on October 14, 1861, to receive
all persons, whether slaves or not, and give them employment,
" assuring all loyal masters that Congress will provide just com-
pensation to them for the loss of the services of the persons so
employed." To others no relief was to be given. This was,
by confiscation, to punish a class of citizens, in the emancipa-
tion of every slave whose owner rendered support to the Con-
federate States. Finally, General Halleck, who succeeded Fre-
mont, and General Dix, commanding near Fortress Monroe,
issued orders not to permit slaves to come within their lines.
They were speedily condemned for this action, because it put
a stop to the current of emancipation, which will be hereafter
narrated.

Reference has been made to our want of a navy, and the
efforts made to supply the deficiency. The usual resort under
such circumstances to privateers was, in our case, without the
ordinary incentive of gain, as all foreign ports were closed
against our prizes, and, our own ports being soon blockaded, our
vessels, public or private, had but the alternative of burning or
bonding their captures. To those who, nevertheless, desired
them, letters of marque were granted by us, and there was soon a
small fleet of vessels composed of those which had taken out these
letters, and others which had been purchased and fitted out by the
Navy Department. They hovered on the coasts of the North-
ern States, capturing and destroying their vessels, and filling the
enemy with consternation. The President of the United States
had already declared in his proclamation of April 19th, as above
stated, that " any person, who, under the pretended authority of
the said (Confederate) States, should molest a vessel of the

1862] THE LITTLE SCHOONER SAVANNAH. H

United States, or the persons or cargo on board," should be held
amenable to the laws of the United States for the prevention
of piracy. This was another violation of international law,
another instance of arrogant disregard for universal opinion.
The threat, if meant for intimidation, and to deprive the Con-
federacy of one of the usual weapons of war, was unbecoming
the head of a Government. To have executed it upon a help-
less prisoner, would have been a crime intensified by its coward-
ice. Happily for the United States, the threat was not executed,
but the failure to carry out the declared purpose was coupled
with humiliation, because it was the result of a notice to retaliate
as fully as might need be to stop such a barbarous practice.
To yield to the notice thus served, was a practical admission by
the United States Government that the Confederacy had be-
come a power among the nations.

On June 3, 1861, the little schooner Savannah, previously a
pilot-boat in Charleston Harbor and sailing under a commission
issued by authority of the Confederate States, was captured by
the United States brig Perry. The crew were placed in irons
and sent to New York. It appeared, from statements made
without contradiction, that they were not treated as prisoners of
war, whereupon a letter was addressed by me to President Lin-
coln, dated July 6th, stating explicitly that, " painful as will be
the necessity, this Government will deal out to the prisoners
held by it the same treatment and the same fate as shall be ex-
perienced by those captured on the Savannah ; and, if driven to
the terrible necessity of retaliation by your execution of any of
the officers or crew of the Savannah, that retaliation will be
extended so far as shall be requisite to secure the abandonment
of a practice unknown to the warfare of civilized man, and so
barbarous as to disgrace the nation which shall be guilty of in-
augurating it." A reply was promised to this letter, but none
came. Still later in the year the privateer Jefferson Davis was
captured, the captain and crew brought into Philadelphia, and
the captain tried and found guilty of piracy and threatened
with death. Immediately I instructed General "Winder, at Rich-
mond, to select one prisoner of the highest rank, to be confined
in a cell appropriated to convicted felons, and treated in all re-

12 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

spects as if convicted, and to be held for execution in the same
manner as might be adopted for the execution of the prisoner
of war in Philadelphia. He was further instructed to select
thirteen other prisoners of the highest rank, to be held in the
same manner as hostages for the thirteen prisoners held in New
York for trial as pirates. By this course the infamous attempt
made by the United States Government to commit judicial mur-
der on prisoners of war was arrested.

The attention of the British House of Lords was also at-
tracted to the proclamation of President Lincoln, threatening the
officers and crew of privateers with the punishment of piracy.
It led to a discussion in which the Earl of Derby said : " He
apprehended that, if one thing was clearer than another, it was
that privateering was not piracy ; and that no law could make
that piracy, as regarded the subjects of one nation which was
not piracy by the law of nations. Consequently, the United
States must not be allowed to entertain this doctrine, and to
call upon her Majesty's Government not to interfere." The
Lord Chancellor said : " There was no doubt that, if an English-
man engaged in the service of the Southern States, he violated the
laws of his country and rendered himself liable to punishment,
and that he had no right to trust to the protection of his native
country to shield him from the consequences of his act. But,
though that individual would be guilty of a breach of the law
of his own country, he could not be treated as a pirate, and those
who treated him as a pirate would be guilty of murder."

The appearance of this little fleet on the ocean made it ne-
cessary for the powers of Europe immediately to define their
position relative to the contending powers. Great Britain,
adopting a position of neutrality, and recognizing both as bel-
ligerents, interdicted the armed ships and privateers of both from
carrying prizes into the waters of the United Kingdom or its
colonies. All the other powers recognized the Confederate
States to be belligerents, but closed their ports against the ad-
mission of prizes captured by either belligerent.

It is worthy of notice that the United States Government
(though it had previously declined) at this time notified the
English and French Governments that it was now willing to

1862] WHY WERE THEY NOT HUNG? 13

adhere to all the conditions of the Paris Congress of 1856, pro-
vided the clause abolishing privateers might apply to the Con-
federate States. The offer, with the proviso, was honorably
declined by both France and England.

In the matter of the exchange of prisoners, which became
important in consequence of these retaliatory measures, and the
number taken by our troops at Manassas, the people of the
Northern States were the victims of incessant mortification and
distress through the vacillating and cruel conduct of their Gov-
ernment. It based all its immense military movements on the
theory that " the laws of the United States have been for some
time past and now are opposed and the execution thereof ob-
structed, ... by combinations too powerful to be suppressed"
by the ordinary methods. Under this theory the United States
are assumed to be one nation, and the distinctions among them
of States are as little recognized as if they did not exist. This
theory was false, and thereby led its originators into constant
blunders. When the leaders of a government aspire to the
acquisition of absolute, unlimited power, and the sword is
drawn to hew the way, it would be more logical and respectable
to declare the laws silent than to attempt to justify unlawful
acts by unwarranted legislation. If their theory had been true,
then their prisoners of war were insurrectionists and rebels, and
guilty of treason, and hanging would have been the legitimate
punishment. Why were they not hung ? Not through pity,
but because the facts contradicted the theory. The " combina-
tions " spoken of were great and powerful States, and the danger
was that the North would be the greater sufferer by our retali-
ation. There was no humane course but to exchange prisoners
according to the laws of war. With this the Government of
the United States refused to comply, lest it might be construed
into an acknowledgment of belligerent rights on our part, which
would explode their theory of insurrectionary combinations, tend
to restore more correct views of the rights and powers of the
States, and expose in its true light their efforts to establish the
supreme and unlimited sovereignty of the General Government.
The reader may observe the tenacity with which the authorities
at Washington, and, behind them, the Northern States, clung

14 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

to this theory. Upon its strict maintenance depended the suc-
cess of their bloody revolution to secure absolute supremacy
over the States. Upon its failure, the dissolution of the Union
would have been established ; constitutional liberty would have
been vindicated ; the hopes of mankind in the modern institu-
tions of federation fulfilled ; and a new Union might have been
formed and held together with a bond of fraternity and not by
the sword, as under the above revolutionary theory.

By the exchange of prisoners, nothing was conceded except
what was evident to the world — that actual war existed, and
that a Christian people should at least conduct it according to
the usages of civilized nations. But sectional hate and the vain
conceit of newly acquired power led to the idle prophecy of our
speedy subjection, and hence the Government of the United
States refused to act as required by humanity and the usages of
civilized warfare. At length, moved by the clamors of the rela-
tives and friends of the prisoners we held, and by fears of retali-
ation, it covertly submitted to abandon its declared purpose,
and to shut its eyes while the exchanges were made by various
commanders under nags of truce. Thus some were exchanged
in New York, "Washington, Cairo, and Columbus, Kentucky,
and by General McClellan in western Yirginia and elsewhere.
On the whole, the partial exchanges were inconsiderable and
inconclusive as to the main question. The condition at the
close of the year 1861, summarily stated, was that soldiers cap-
tured in battle were not protected by the usage of " exchange,"
and citizens were arrested without due process of law, deported
to distant States, and incarcerated without assigned cause. All
this by persons acting under authority of the United States
Government, but in disregard of the United States Constitution,
which provides that " no person shall be held to answer for a
capital or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or
an indictment of a grand jury, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or
property without due process of law."* " The right of the peo-
ple to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,
against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be vio-
lated." f These provisions were of no avail to protect the citi-

* Constitution of the United States, Article Y. f Ibid., Article IV.

1862] WHAT CAUSE. WAS THERE FOR SUCH ACTS? 15

zens from the outrages, because those who derived their author-
ity from the Constitution used that authority to violate its guar-
antees. It has been stated that the rule upon which the United
States Government was conducting affairs was entirely revolu-
tionary. Its efforts to clothe the Government of the Union with
absolute power involved the destruction of the rights of the
States and the subversion of the Constitution. Hence on
every occasion the provisions of the Constitution afforded no
protection to the citizens : their rights were spurned ; their
persons were seized and imprisoned beyond the reach of
friends ; their houses sacked and burned. If they pleaded the
Constitution, the Government of the Constitution was deaf to
them, unsheathed its sword, and said the Union was at stake ;
and the Constitution, which was the compact of union, must
stand aside. This was indeed a revolution. A constitutional
government of limited powers derived from the people was
transformed into a military despotism. The Northern people
were docile as sheep under the change, reminding one of the
words of the Psalmist : " All we, like sheep, have gone astray."
Posterity may ask with amazement, What cause could there
have been for such acts by a government that was ordained " to
form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic
tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the gen-
eral welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and
our posterity " ? Posterity may further ask, "Where could a gov-
ernment of limited powers, constructed only for certain general
purposes — and on the principle that all power proceeds from the
people, and that " the powers not delegated by the Constitution,
nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States
respectively, or to the people " — find a grant of power, or an
authority to perpetrate such injuries upon the States and the
people ? As to the first question, it may be said : There was
no external cause for such acts. All foreign nations were at
peace with the United States. No hostile fleets were hovering
on her coasts, nor immense foreign armies threatening to invade
her territory. The cause, if any plausible one existed, was
entirely internal. It lay between it and its citizens. If it had
treated them with injustice and oppression, and threatened so

16 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

to continue, it had departed from the objects of its creation, and
they had the resulting right to dissolve it.

"Who was to be the umpire in such a case ? Not the United
States Government, for it was the creature of the States ; it pos-
sessed no inherent, original sovereignty. The Constitution says,
" The powers not delegated to the United States by the Consti-
tution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the
States respectively, or to the people." * The umpireship is, there-
fore, expressly on the side of the States, or the people. When
the State of South Carolina, through a sovereign convention,
withdrew from the Union, she exercised the umpireship which
rightly belonged to her, and which no other could exercise for
her. This involved the dissolution of the Union, and the ex-
tinction of the Government of the United States so far as she
was concerned ; but the officers of that Government, instead of
justly acquiescing in that which was constitutionally and legally
inevitable, drew the sword, and resolved to maintain by might
that which had no longer existence by right. A usurpation
thus commenced in wrong was the mother of all the usurpations
and wrongs which followed. The unhallowed attempt to estab-
lish the absolute sovereignty of the Government of the United
States, by the subjugation of States and their people, brought
forth its natural fruit. Well might the victim of the guillo-
tine exclaim, " O Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy
name ! "

As to the other question — Where could a government of
limited powers find authority to perpetrate such injuries upon
its own constituents ? — an answer will be given in succeeding
pages.

Up to the close of the year the war enlarged its proportions
so as to include new fields, until it then extended from the shores
of the Chesapeake to the confines of Missouri and Arizona.
Sudden calls from the remotest points for military aid were met
with promptness enough not only to avert disaster in the face of
superior numbers, but also to roll back the tide of invasion on
the border.

At the commencement of the war the enemy were possessed

* Constitution of the United States, Article X.

1862] STRONGER AT THE END OF THE YEAR. 17

of certain strategic points and strong places within the Confed-
erate States. They greatly exceeded us in numbers, in available
resources, and in the supplies necessary for war. Military es-
tablishments had been long organized, and were complete ; the
navy and the army, once common to both, were in their posses-
sion. To meet all this we had to create not only an army in the
face of war itself, but also military establishments necessary to
equip and place it in the field. The spirit of the volunteers and
the patriotism of the people enabled us, under Providence, to
grapple successfully with these difficulties. A succession of
glorious victories at Bethel, Manassas, Springfield, Lexing-
ton, Leesburg, and Belmont, checked the invasion of our soil.
After seven months of war the enemy had not only failed to
extend their occupancy of the soil, but new States and Terri-
tories had been added to our confederacy. Instead of their
threatened march of unchecked conquest, the enemy were driven
at more than one point to assume the defensive ; and, upon a
fair comparison between the two belligerents, as to men, mili-
tary means, and financial condition, the Confederate States were
relatively much stronger at the end of the year than when the
struggle commenced.

The necessities of the times called into existence new
branches of manufactures, and gave a fresh impulse to the activ-
ity of those previously in operation, and we were gradually
becoming independent of the rest of the world for the supply
of such military stores and munitions as were indispensable for
war.

At an election on November 6, 1861, the chief executive
officers of the provisional Government were unanimously chosen
to similar positions in the permanent Government, to be inaugu-
rated on the ensuing 22d of February, 1862.

18 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

CHAPTER XVI.

Military Arrangements of the Enemy. — Marshall and Garfield. — Fishing Creek. — Crit-
tenden's Report. — Fort Henry ; its Surrender. — Fort Donelson ; its Position. —
Assaults. — Surrender. — Losses.

Important changes in the military arrangements of the
enemy were made about this time. Major-General George B.
McClellan was assigned to the chief command of his army, in
place of Lieutenant-General Scott, retired. A Department of
Ohio was constituted, embracing the States of Ohio, Michigan,
Indiana, and Kentucky east of the Cumberland and Tennessee
Rivers; and Brigadier-General D. C. Buell was assigned to its
command. At the same time, General Henry W. Halleck su-
perseded General John C. Fremont in command of the United
States Department of the West. General W. T. Sherman was
removed from Kentucky and sent to report to General Halleck.
General A. S. Johnston was now confronted by General Hal-
leck in the West and by General Buell in Kentucky. The
former, with armies at Cairo and Paducah, under Generals
Grant and C. F. Smith, threatened equally Columbus, the key
of the lower Mississippi River, and the water-lines of the Cum-
berland and the Tennessee, with their defenses at Forts Donel-
son and Henry. The right wing of General Buell also men-
aced Donelson and Henry, while his center was directed against
Bowling Green, and his left was advancing against General
ZollicofTer at Mill Spring, on the upper Cumberland. If the
last-named position could be forced, the way seemed open to
East Tennessee, by either the Jacksboro or the Jamestown
routes, on the one hand, and to Nashville on the other. At the
northeastern corner of Kentucky there was a force under Colo-
nel Garfield, of Ohio, opposed to the Confederate force under
General Humphrey Marshall.

The strength of Marshall's force in effective men was about
sixteen hundred. Knowing that a body of the enemy under
Colonel Garfield was advancing to meet him, and that a small
force was moving to his rear, he fell back some fifteen miles,

1862] MY LEFT WING NEVER FIRED A SHOT. 19

and took position on Middle Creek, near Prestonburg. On Janu-
ary 10, 1862, Garfield attacked him. The firing was kept up,
with some intervals, about four hours, and was occasionally very
sharp and spirited. Marshall says in his report : " The enemy
did not move me from any one position I assumed, and at night-
fall withdrew from the field, leaving me just where I was in
the morning. . . . He came to attack, yet came so cautiously
that my left wing never fired a shot, and he never came up
sufficiently to engage my center or left wing." Garfield was
said to have fallen back fifteen miles to Paintsville, and
Marshall seven miles, where he remained two days, then
slowly pursued his retreat. He stated his loss at ten killed
and fourteen wounded, and that of the enemy to have been
severe.

The battle of Fishing Creek has been the subject of harsh
criticism, and I think it will be seen by the report herein in-
serted that great injustice has been done to General George B.
Crittenden, who commanded on that occasion.

In July, 1880, I wrote to him requesting a statement of the
affair at Fishing Creek, and a short time before his decease he
complied with my request by writing as follows :

"In November, 1862, I assumed, by assignment, the command
of a portion of East Tennessee and southeastern Kentucky,
which embraced the troops stationed at Mill Springs, on the Cum-
berland River, and under the command of General Zollicoffer,
who, as I understood the matter, had been stationed there by
General Johnston to prevent the enemy under Schopf, and con-
fronting him on the opposite side of the river, from crossing and
penetrating into Tennessee. Schopf's camp was at Somerset, on
Fishing Creek, a tributary of the Cumberland, emptying into it a
mile above Mill Springs. He was several miles away from the
bank of the Cumberland, so that both the river and creek inter-
vened between him and General Zollicoffer. While I was detained
in Knoxville, on business connected with my command, I received
an official communication from General Zollicoffer, informing me
that he had crossed the Cumberland by fording, and was fortify-
ing a camp on the right bank, etc. By the messenger who bore
me this' communication I ordered him to recross the river and

20 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

resume his original position on the left bank. Early in January,
I reached Mill Springs, and found, to my surprise, General Zolli-
coffer still on the right bank. He called on me immediately, and
informed me that his messenger who bore back my order had lost
several days in returning, and that when it was received he sup-
posed that I would arrive almost immediately ; and, hoping to be
able to convince me that it would be better to remain on the right
bank, he had postponed crossing until, by a rise in the river, it
had become impossible to do so ; that all his artillery and a large
portion of his wagons were on the right bank, and his only means
of transferring them to the other bank were a small ferry-boat and
a very small stern-wheel steamer, entirely inadequate to the pur-
pose. I was dissatisfied, but, as I knew that the General had been
actuated by pure motives, I accepted his excuse. Details were
promptly placed in the woods, to prepare timber for flat-boats to
transport the artillery and wagons to the left bank of the river.
The weather was execrable, and the men unskilled, so that the
work progressed slowly.

" Such was the posture of affairs, when, on the 18th of Janu-
ary, I was informed that General Thomas was approaching with
a large force of all arms, and would encamp that night within a
few miles of us. Here was thrust upon me the very contingency
which my order to General Zollicoffer was intended to obviate.
It rained violently throughout this day until late in the afternoon.
It occurred to me that Fishing Creek must so rise as to render it
impossible for Schopf to connect with Thomas. Acting upon this
idea, I summoned a council of superior officers, and, laying before
them the circumstances of the case, asked their advice. There
was not one of them who did not concur with me in the opinion
that Thomas must be attacked immediately, and, if possible, by
surprise ; that such attack, if successful merely in repulsing him,
would probably give us time to cross the Cumberland with artil-
lery and wagons, by means of our boats, then being built.

"Accordingly, at twelve o'clock in the night, we marched
for the position of the enemy, ascertained to be some six miles
away. We had scarcely taken up the line of march, when the
rain began to fall, the darkness became intense, and the conse-
quent confusion great, so that day dawned before we reached his
position. The attack, as a surprise, failed ; nevertheless, it was
promptly made. It rained violently throughout the action, ren-

1862] THE BATTLE WAS A NECESSITY. 21

dering all the flint-lock guns useless. The men bearing them were
allowed to fall back on the reserve.

"The action was progressing successfully, when the fall of
General Zollicoffer was announced to me. Apprehending disas-
trous consequences, I hastened to the front. My apprehensions
were well founded. I found the line of battle in confusion and
falling back, and, after a vain effort to restore the line, yielded to
necessity, and, by the interposition of the reserve, covered the
shattered line and effected my retreat to camp without loss.

" I reached camp late in the afternoon. Not long afterward
the enemy opened fire at long range ; night coming on, he ceased
to fire. The few shot and shells that fell in the camp so plainly
demonstrated the demoralization of the men, that I doubted, even
if I had had rations, which I had not, whether the camp could
have been successfully defended for twenty-four hours. There
was not, and had not been for some time in the camp, rations be-
yond the daily need. This state of affairs was due to the exhaus-
tion of the neighboring country, and the impracticability of the
roads.

" It became now my sole object to transfer the men with their
arms, the cavalry-horses, and teams to the left bank of the river.
This was successfully accomplished by dawn of the next day.

"I attributed the loss of the battle, in a great degree, to the
inferiority of our arms and the untimely fall of General Zolli-
coffer, who was known and highly esteemed by the men, who were
almost all Tennesseeans. I think I have shown that the battle of
Fishing Creek was a necessity, and that I ought not to be held
responsible for that necessity. As to how I managed it, I have
nothing further to say."

General Crittenden's gallantry had been too often and too
conspicuously shown in battle during the war with Mexico
and on the Indian frontier to admit of question, and the
criticism has been directed solely to the propriety of the attack
at Fishing Creek. His explanation is conclusive against any
arraignment of him for the presence of the troops on the right
bank of the Cumberland, or for his not immediately with-
drawing them to the left bank when his position was threat-
ened. Under these circumstances, to attack one portion of the
enemy, when a junction with the other part could not be ef-

22 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

fected, was to act in accordance with one of the best-settled
rules of war.

The unforeseen accident of renewed rain, with intense dark-
ness, delayed his march beyond reasonable expectation ; and,
whereas the whole force should have reached the enemy's
encampment before dawn, the advance of two regiments only
reached there after broad daylight. To hesitate, would have
been to give the enemy time for preparation, and I think it
was wisely decided to attack at once and rely upon the rear
coming up to support the advance ; but the rear, encumbered
with their artillery, were so far behind that, though the advance
were successful in their first encounter, they did not receive
the hoped-for support until they had suffered severely, and then
the long-known and trusted commander of the forces there, the
gallant and most estimable Zollicoffer, fell ; whence confusion
resulted. General Crittenden had been but a few days with the
troops, a disadvantage which will be readily appreciated. Had
the whole force been in position at early dawn, so as to have sur-
prised the enemy, the plan would have been executed, and vic-
tory would have been the probable result ; after which, Schopf 's
force might have been readily disposed of. But, had the attack
done no more than to check the advance of Thomas until the
boats under construction could have been finished, so as to en-
able Crittenden to save his artillery and equipments, it would
have justified the attempt. I therefore think the strategy not
only defensible but commendable, and the affair to be ranked
with one of the many brilliant conceptions of the war. The
reader will not fail to remark the evidence which General Crit-
tenden's report affords of the fallacy of representing the South
as having been prepared by supplying herself with the materiel
necessary for war. The heart of even a noble enemy must be
moved at the spectacle of citizens defending their homes, with
muskets of obsolete patterns and shot-guns, against an invader
having all the modern improvements in arms. The two regi-
ments constituting the advance were Battle's Twentieth Tennes-
see and the Fifteenth Mississippi, commanded by Lieutenant-
Colonel E. C. Walthall. "With dauntless courage they engaged
the whole array of the enemy, and drove him from his first

1862] LET PRAISE, NOT CENSURE, BE GIVEN. 23

position. When at length our forces fell back to their in-
trenched camp, it was with sullen determination, and the pur-
suit was so cautious that whenever it ventured too near it was
driven back by our rear guard. The valiant advance — the
Fifteenth Mississippi and Twentieth Tennessee — bore the bur-
den of the day. The Mississippians lost two hundred and
twenty out of four hundred engaged, and the Tennesseeans lost
half as many, this being about three fourths the casualties in
our force.

That night General Crittenden crossed his troops over the
river, with the exception of those too badly wounded to travel.
He was compelled to leave his artillery and wagons, not having
the means of transporting them across, and moved with the
remnant of his army toward Nashville.

Both by General Crittenden and those who haVe criticised
him for making the attack at Fishing Creek, it is assumed that
General Zollicoffer made a mistake in crossing to the right bank
of the Cumberland, and that thence it resulted as a consequence
that General Johnston's right flank of his line through Bowling
Green was uncovered. I do not perceive the correctness of the
conclusion, for it must be admitted that General Zollicoffer's com-
mand was not adequate to resist the combined forces of Thomas
and Schopf, or that the Cumberland River was a sufficient ob-
stacle to prevent them from crossing either above or below the
position at Mill Springs. General Zollicoffer may well have
believed that he could better resist the crossing of the Cumber-
land by removing to the right bank rather than by remaining
on the left. The only difference, it seems to me, would have
been that he could have retreated without the discomfiture of
his force or the loss of his artillery and equipments, but, in
either case, Johnston's right flank would have been alike un-
covered.

To Zollicoffer and the other brave patriots who fell with
him, let praise, not censure, be given ; and to Crittenden, let
tardy justice render the meed due to a gallant soldier of the
highest professional attainments, and whose fault, if fault it
be, was a willingness to dare much in his country's service.

When the State of Tennessee seceded, measures were im-

24 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

mediately adopted to occupy and fortify all the strong points on
the Mississippi, as Memphis, Eandolph, Fort Pillow, and Island
jSo. 10. As it was our purpose not to enter the State of Ken-
tucky and construct defenses for the Cumberland and Ten-
nessee Rivers on her territory, they were located within the
borders of Tennessee, and as near to the Kentucky line as suit-
able sites could be found. On these were commenced the con-
struction of Fort Donelson on the west side of the Cumberland,
and Fort Henry on the east side of the Tennessee, and about
twelve miles apart. The latter stood on the low lands adjacent
to the river about high- water mark, and, being just below a bend
in the river and at the head of a straight stretch of two miles, it
commanded the river for that distance. It was also commanded
by high ground on the opposite bank of the river, which it was
intended should be occupied by our troops in case of a land at-
tack. The power of ironclad gunboats against land defenses
had not yet been shown, and the low position of the fort brought
the battery to the water-level, and secured the advantage of
ricochet firing, the most effective against wooden ships.

Fort Donelson was placed on high ground ; and, with the
plunging fire from its batteries, was thereby more effective
against the ironclads brought to attack it on the water side.
But on the land side it was not equally strong, and required
extensive outworks and a considerable force to resist an attack
in that quarter.

In September, 1861, Lieutenant Dixon, of the Engineer
Corps, was instructed to make an examination of the works at
the two forts. He reported that Fort Henry was nearly com-
pleted. It was built, not at the most favorable position, but it
was a strong work, and, instead of abandoning it and building
at another place, he advised that it should be completed, and
other works constructed on the high lands just above the fort
on the opposite side of the river. Measures for the accomplish-
ment of this plan were adopted as rapidly as the means at dis-
posal would allow.

In relation to Donelson, it was his opinion that, although a
better position might have been chosen for this fortification
on the Cumberland, under the circumstances surrounding the

1862] BEST TO CONCENTRATE THE RESOURCES. 25

command, it would be better to retain and strengthen the posi-
tion chosen.

General Polk, in a report to General Johnston just previous
to the battle of Shiloh, said : " The principal difficulty in the
way of a successful defense of the rivers, was the want of an
adequate force — a force of infantry and a force of experienced
artillerists." This was the unavoidable result of the circum-
stances heretofore related, but tells only half of the story. To
match the vessels of the enemy (floating forts) we required
vessels like theirs, or the means of constructing them. We had
neither.

The efforts which were put forth to resist the operations on
the Western rivers, for which the United States made such vast
preparations, were therefore necessarily very limited. There
was a lack of skilled labor, of ship-yards, and of materials for
constructing ironclads, which could not be readily obtained or
prepared in a beset and blockaded country. Proposals were con-
sidered both for building gunboats and for converting the ordi-
nary side-wheel, high-pressure steamboats into gunboats. But
the engineer department, though anxious to avail itself of
this means of defense, decided that it was not feasible. There
was not plate-iron with which to armor a single vessel, and even
railroad-iron could not be spared from its uses for transportation.
Unless a fleet could have been built to match the enemy's,
we had to rely on land-batteries, torpedoes, and marching
forces. It was thought best to concentrate the resources on
what seemed practicable. One ironclad gunboat, however, the
Eastport, was undertaken on the Tennessee Eiver, but under
so many difficulties that, after the surrender of Fort Henry,
while still unfinished, it was destroyed, lest it should fall to the
enemy.*

The fleet of gunboats prepared by the United States for the
Mississippi and its tributaries consisted of twelve, seven of which
were iron-clad, and able to resist all except the heaviest solid shot.
The boats were built very wide in proportion to their length, so
that in the smooth river-waters they might have almost the
steadiness of land-batteries when discharging their heavy guns.

* " The Life of Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston," by his son.

2G RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

This flotilla carried one hundred and fortj-three guns, some
sixty-four pounders, some thirty-two pounders, and some seven-
inch rifled guns carrying eighty-pound shells.

On February 2d General Grant started from Cairo with sev-
enteen thousand men on transports. Commodore Foote accom-
panied him with seven gunboats. On the 4th the landing of the
troops commenced three miles or more below Fort Henry. Gen-
eral Grant took command on the east bank with the main column,
while General Charles F. Smith, with two brigades of some five
to six thousand men, landed on the left bank, with orders to
take the earthwork opposite Fort Henry, known as Fort Hind-
man. On the 5th the landing was completed, and the attack
was made on the next day. The force of General Tilghman,
who was in command at Fort Henry, was about thirty-four
hundred men. It is evident that on the 5th he intended to
dispute Grant's advance by land ; but on the 6th, before the
attack by the gunboats, he changed his purpose, abandoned
all hope of a successful defense, and made arrangements for
the escape of his main body to Fort Donelson, while the
guns of Fort Henry should engage the gunboats. He or-
dered Colonel Hindman to withdraw the command to Fort
Donelson, while he himself would obtain the necessary delay
for the movement by use of the battery, and standing a bom-
bardment in Fort Henry. For this purpose he retained his
heavy artillery company — seventy-five men — to work the guns,
a number unequal to the strain and labor of the defense.*

Noon was the time fixed for the attack ; but Grant, impeded
by the overflow of water, and unwilling to expose his men to the
heavy guns of the fort, held them back to await the result of the
gunboat attack. In the mean time the Confederate troops were
in retreat. Four ironclads, mounting forty-eight heavy guns, ap-
proached and took position within six hundred yards of the fort,
firing as they advanced. About half a mile behind these came
three unarmored gunboats, mounting twenty-seven heavy guns,
which took a more distant position, and kept up a bombardment
of shells that fell within the works. Some four hundred of the
formidable missiles of the ironclad boats were also thrown into

•55- «

The Life of Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston," by his son.

1862]

WERE NOT SLOW TO RESPOND.

the fort. The officers and men inside were not slow to respond,
and as many as fifty-nine of their shots were counted as striking
the gunboats. On the ironclad Essex a cannon-ball ranged her
whole length ; another shot, passing through the boiler, caused

28 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

an explosion that scalded her commander, Porter, and many of
the seamen and soldiers on board.

Five minutes after the fight began, the twenty-four pounder
rifled gun, one of the most formidable in the fort, burst, disabling
every man at the piece. Then a shell exploded at the muzzle
of one of the thirty-two pounders, ruining the gun, and killing or
wounding all the men who served it. About the same moment
a premature discharge occurred at one of the forty-twTo pounder
guns, killing three men and seriously injuring others. The ten-
inch columbiad, the only gun able to match the artillery of the
assailants, was next rendered useless by a priming-wire that was
jammed and broken in the vent. An heroic blacksmith labored
for a long time to remove it, under the full fire of the enemy,
bnt in vain. The men became exhausted and lost confidence ;
and Tilghman, seeing this, in person served a thirty-two pounder
for some fifteen minutes. Though but four of his guns were
disabled, six stood idle for want of artillerists, and but two were
replying to the enemy. After an engagement of two hours and
ten minutes, he ceased firing and lowered his flag. For this sol-
dierly devotion and self-sacrifice the gallant commander and his
brave band must be honored while patriotism has an advocate
and self-sacrifice for others has a votary. Our casualties were
five killed and sixteen wounded ; those of the enemy were sixty-
three of all kinds. Twelve officers and sixty-three non-com-
missioned officers and privates were surrendered with the fort.
The Tennessee River was thus open, and a base by short lines
was established against Fort Donelson.

The next movement was a combined attack by land and
water upon Fort Donelson. This fort was situated on the left
bank of the Cumberland, as has been stated, hear its great
bend, and about forty miles from the mouth of the river. It
was about one mile north of the village of Dover, where the
commissary and quartermaster's supplies were in depot. The
fort consisted of two water-batteries on the hillside, protected
by a bastioned earthwork of irregular outline on the summit,
inclosing about one hundred acres. The water-batteries were
admirably placed to sweep the river approaches, with an arma-
ment of thirteen guns ; eight thirty-two pounders, three thirty-

1862] CRASHED THROUGH ONE OF HER PORTS. 29

two pound carronade, one ten-inch columbiad, and one rifled
gun of thirty-two pound caliber. The field-work, which was
intended for infantry supports, occupied a plateau about one
hundred feet above the river, commanding and protecting the
water-batteries at close musket range. These works afforded a
fair defense against gunboats ; but they were not designed or
adapted for resistance to a land attack or investment by an
enemy.

Generals Pillow and Floyd were ordered with their sepa-
rate commands to Fort Donelson. General Buckner also was
sent with a division from Bowling Green ; so that the Confed-
erate effective force at the fort during the siege was between
fourteen thousand five hundred and fifteen thousand men.*
The force of General Grant was not less than thirty to thirty-
five thousand men. On February 12th he commenced his
movement across from Fort Henry, and the investment of Donel-
son was made without any serious opposition. On the 13th
General Buckner reports that "the fire of the enemy's artillery
and riflemen was incessant throughout the day ; but was re-
sponded to by a well-directed fire from the intrenchments, which
inflicted upon the assailant a considerable loss, and almost si-
lenced his fire late in the afternoon." The object of the enemy
undoubtedly was to discover the strength and position of our
forces. The artillery-fire was continued at intervals during
the night. Nearly every Confederate regiment reported a few
casualties from the shot and shell which frequently fell inside
of the works. Meanwhile, a gunboat of thirteen guns arrived
in the morning, and, taking a position behind a headland, fired
one hundred and thirty-eight shots, when our one hundred and
twenty-eight pound shot crashed through one of her ports, in-
juring her machinery and crippling her. The enemy's fire did
no damage to the fort itself, but a shot disabled a gun and
killed Captain Dixon, a valuable engineer, whose loss was
greatly deplored.

The weather became cold during the night, and a driving
snow-storm prevailed, so that some of the soldiers were frozen,
and the wounded between the lines suffered extremely. The

* " The Life of Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston," by his son.

30 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

fleet of gunboats under Commodore Foote arrived, bringing re-
enforcements to the enemy. These were landed during the
night and the next day, which was occupied with placing them
in position. Nevertheless, though no assault was made, a ram-
bling and ineffective fire was kept up. About 3 p. m. the com-
mander of the naval force, expecting an easy victory, like that
at Fort Henry, brought his four ironclads, followed by two gun-
boats, up to the attack. Each of the ironclads mounted thir-
teen guns and the gunboats nine. Any one of them was more
than a match for the guns of the fort. Their guns were eight,
nine, and ten inch, three in the bow of each. Our columbiad
and the rifled gun were the only two pieces effective against the
ironclads. The enemy moved directly toward the water-bat-
teries, firing with great weight of metal. It was the intention
of Commodore Foote to silence these batteries, pass by, and take
a position where he could enfilade the fort with broadsides.
The gunboats opened at a mile and a half distance, and advanced
until within three or four hundred yards. The shot and shell
of the fleet tore up the earthworks, but did no further injury.
Eut the Confederate guns, aimed from an elevation of not less
than thirty feet by cool and courageous hands, sent their shot
with destructive power, and overcame all the enemy's advan-
tages in number and weight of guns. The bolts of our two
heavy guns went crashing through iron and massive timbers
with resistless force, scattering slaughter and destruction through
the fleet. * Hoppin, in his " Life of Commodore Foote," says :

" The Louisville was disabled by a shot, which cut away her
rudder-chains, making her totally unmanageable, so that she
drifted with the current out of action. Very soon the St. Louis
was disabled by a shot through her pilot-house, rendering her
steering impossible, so that she also floated down the river. The
other two armored vessels were also terribly struck, and a rifled
cannon on the Carondelet burst, so that these two could no longer
sustain the action ; and, after fighting for more than an hour, the
little fleet was forced to withdraw. The St. Louis was struck
fifty-nine times, the Louisville thirty-six times, the Carondelet

* " The Life of Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston," by his son.

1862] OPERATIONS FOR THE NEXT DAY. 31

twenty-six, the Pittsburg twenty, the four vessels receiving no
less than one hundred and forty-one wounds. The fleet, gathering
itself together, and rendering mutual help to its disabled mem-
bers, proceeded to Cairo to repair damages."

The loss of the enemy was fifty-four killed and wounded.
The report of Major Gilmer, who laid out these works, says :

"Our batteries were uninjured, and not a man in them killed.
The repulse of the gunboats closed the operations of the day, ex-
cept a few scattering shots along the land defenses."

In consequence of reinforcements to the enemy, the plan of
operations for the next day was determined by the Confederate
generals about midnight. The whole of the left wing of the
army except eight regiments was to move out of the trenches,
attack, turn, and drive the enemy's right until the Wynn's Ferry
road, which led to Charlotte through a good country, was
cleared, and an exit thus secured.

The troops, moving in the small hours of the night over the
icy and broken roads, which wound through the obstructed
area of defense, made slow progress, and delayed the projected
operations. At 4 a. m. on the 15th, Pillow's troops were ready,
except one brigade, which came late into action. By six
o'clock, Baldwin's brigade was engaged with the enemy, only
two or three hundred yards from his lines, and the bloody con-
test of the day had begun. At one o'clock the enemy's right
was doubled back. The Wynn's Ferry road was cleared, and
it only remained for the Confederates to do one of two things :
The first was, to seize the golden moment and, adhering to the
original purpose and plan of the sortie, move off rapidly by the
route laid open by such strenuous efforts and so much blood-
shed ; the other depended on the inspiration of a master-mind,
equal to the effort of grasping every element of the combat, and
which should complete the partial victory by the utter rout and
destruction of the enemy.

" While one or the other alternative seems to have been the
only possible safe solution," says the author of " The Life of Gen.
Albert Sidney Johnston," " the Confederate commander tried nei-

32 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

thcr. A fatal middle policy was suddenly but dubiously adopted,
and not carried out. The spirit of vacillation and divided coun-
sels prevented that unity of action which is essential to success.
For seven hours the Confederate battalions had been pushing over
rough ground and through thick timber, at each step meeting fresh
troops massed, where the discomfited regiments rallied. Hence
the vigor of assault slackened, though the wearied troops were
still ready and competent to continue their onward movement.
Ten fresh regiments, over three thousand men, had not fired a
musket. But in the turmoil of battle no one knew the relations
of any command to the next, or indeed whether his neighbor was
friend or foe.

" General Buckner had halted, according to the preconcerted
plan, to allow the army to pass out by the opened road and to
cover their retreat. At this point of the fight, Pillow, finding
himself at Hindman's position, heard of (or saw) preparations by
General C. F. Smith for an assault on the Confederate right ; but,
whether he understood this to be the purpose or construed the
movement as the signs of a flight, was left uncertain by his lan-
guage at the time. . . . He ordered the regiments which had
been engaged to return to the trenches, and instructed Buckner to
hasten to defend the imperiled point. Buckner, not recognizing
him as a superior authorized to change the plan of battle, or the
propriety of such change, refused to obey, and, after receiving
reiterated orders, started to find Floyd, who at that moment joined
him. He urged upon Floyd the necessity of carrying out the
original plan of evacuation. Floyd assented to this view, and
told Buckner to stand fast until he could see Pillow. He then
rode back and saw Pillow, and, hearing his arguments, yielded to
them. Floyd simply says that he found the movement so nearly
executed that it was necessary to complete it. Accordingly,
Buckner was recalled. In the mean time, Pillow's right brigades
were retiring to their places in the trenches, under orders from
the commanders."

The conflict on the left soon ended. Three hundred pris-
oners, five thousand stand of small-arms, six guns, and other
spoils of victory, had been won by our forces. But the ene-
my, cautiously advancing, gradually recovered most of his lost
ground. It was about 4 p. m. when the assault on the right was

1862] I TURN OVER THE COMMAND. 33

made by General C. F. Smith. The enemy succeeded in carry-
ing the advanced work, which General Buckner considered the
key to his position. The loss of the enemy during the siege
was four hundred killed, seventeen hundred and eighty-five
wounded, and three hundred prisoners. Our losses were about
three hundred and twenty-five killed and one thousand and
ninety-seven wounded ; including missing, it was estimated at
fifteen hundred.

After nightfall a consultation of the commanding officers
was held, and, after a consideration of the question in all its as-
pects as to what should be done, it was decided that a surrender
was inevitable, and, that to accomplish its objects, it must be
made before the assault, which was expected at daylight. Gen-
eral Buckner in his report, says :

"I regarded the position of the army as desperate, and that
the attempt to extricate it by another battle, in the suffering and
exhausted condition of the troops, was almost hopeless. The
troops had been worn down with watching, with labor, with fight-
ing. Many of them were frosted by the cold, all of them were
suffering and exhausted by their incessant labors. There had
been no regular issue of rations for several days, and scarcely any
means of cooking. The ammunition was nearly expended. We
.were completely invested by a force fully four times the strength
of our own."

The decision to surrender having been made, it remained to
determine by whom it should be made. Generals Flo/d and
Pillow declared they would not surrender and become prison-
ers ; the duty was therefore allotted to General Buckner. Floyd
said, " General Buckner, if I place you in command, will you
allow me to draw out my brigade ? " General Buckner replied,
" Yes, provided you do so before the enemy act upon my com-
munication." Floyd said, "General Pillow, I turn over the
command." General Pillow, regarding this as a mere technical
form by which the command was to be conveyed to Buckner,
then said, "I pass it." Buckner assumed the command, sent
for a bugler to sound the parley, for pen, ink, and paper, and
opened the negotiations for surrender.
50

34 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

There were but two roads by which it was possible for the
garrison to retire. If they went by the upper road, they would
certainly have to cut through the main body of the enemy ; if
by the lower road, they would have to wade through water three
feet deep. This, the medical director stated, would be death
to more than one half the command, on account of the severity
of the weather and their physical prostration.

To cut through the enemy, if effected, would, it was sup-
posed, involve the loss of three fourths of the command, a sac-
rifice which, it was conceded, would not be justifiable.

The enemy had, in the conflict of the preceding day, gained
possession of our rifle-pits on the right flank, and General
Buckner, an experienced soldier, held that the fort would im-
mediately fall when the enemy attacked in the morning. Gen-
eral Pillow dissented from this conclusion, believing that the
fort could be defended until boats could be obtained to convey
the garrison across the river, and also advocated an attempt to
cut through the investing lines of the enemy. Being overruled
on both points, he announced his determination to leave the
post by any means available, so as to escape a surrender, and he
advised Colonel TsT. B. Forrest, who was present, to go out with
his cavalry regiment, and any others he could take with him
through the overflow. General Floyd's brigade consisted of
two Tirginia regiments and one Mississippi regiment ; these, as
before mentioned, it was agreed that General Floyd might with-
draw before the surrender. Two of the field-officers, Colonel
Russell and Major Brown, of the Mississippi regiment, the twen-
tieth, had been officers of the First Mississippi Riflemen in the
war with Mexico ; and the twentieth, their present regiment, was
reputed to be well instructed and under good discipline. This
regiment was left to be surrendered with the rest of the garri-
son, under peculiar circumstances, of which Major Brown, then
commanding, gives the following narrative :

"About twelve o'clock of the night previous to the surrender,
I received an order to report in person at headquarters. On ar-
riving I met Colonel N. B. Forrest, who remarked : ' I have been
looking for you ; they are going to surrender this place, and I

1862] SORROWFULLY I GAVE THE ORDERS. 35

wanted you with your command to go out with me, but they have
other orders for you.' On entering the room, Generals Floyd and
Pillow also informed me of the proposed proceedings. General
Floyd ordered me to take possession of the steamboat-landing
with my command ; that he had reserved the right to remove his
brigade ; that, after having guarded the landing, my command
should be taken aboard the boat ; the Virginia regiments, first
crossing to the other side of the river, could make their way to
Clarksville.

" I proceeded at once with my command to the landing ; there
was no steamboat there, but I placed my regiment in a semicir-
cular line so as to cover the landing-place. About daylight the
steamer came down, landed, and was soon loaded with the two
Virginia regiments, they passing through my ranks. At the same
time the General and staff, or persons claiming to belong to the
staff, passed aboard. The boat, being a small one, was consider-
ably crowded. While the staging of the boat was being drawn
aboard, General Floyd hallooed to me, from the * hurricane-roof,'
that he would cross the river with the troops aboard and return
for my regiment. But, about the time of the departure of the
boat, General S. B. Buckner came and asserted that he had turned
over the garrison and all the property at sunrise ; that, if the boat
was not away immediately, he would be charged by the enemy
with violating the terms of the surrender. I mention this inci-
dent as furnishing, I suppose, the reason why my regiment was
left on the bank of the river.

" Sorrowfully I gave the necessary orders to stack arms and
surrender ....

" Both morally and materially the disaster was a severe blow
to us. Many, wise after the event, have shown their skill in tell-
ing what all knew afterward, but nobody told before."

36 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

CHAPTER XVII.

Results of the Surrender of Forts Henry and Donelson. — Retreat from Bowling
Green. — Criticism on General A. S. Johnston. — Change of Plan necessary. —
Evacuation of Nashville. — Generals Floyd and Pillow. — My Letter to General
Johnston. — His Reply. — My Answer. — Defense of General Johnston. — Battle
of Elkhorn. — Topography of Shiloh.

The loss of Forts Henry and Donelson opened the river
routes to Nashville and north Alabama, and thus turned the
positions both at Bowling Green and Columbus. These disas-
ters subjected General Johnston to very severe criticism, of
which we shall take notice further on in these pages. A con-
ference was held on February 7th by Generals Johnston, Beau-
regard (who had been previously ordered to report to Johnston),
and Hardee, as to the future plan of campaign. It was deter-
mined, as Fort Henry had fallen and Donelson was untenable,
that preparations should at once be made for a removal of the
army to Nashville, in rear of the Cumberland River, a strong
point some miles below that city being fortified forthwith to
defend the river from .the passage of gunboats and transports.
From Nashville, should any further retrograde movement be-
come necessary, it would be made to Stevenson, and thence
according to circumstances.

As the possession of the Tennessee river by the enemy sepa-
rated the army at Bowling Green from the one at Columbus,
Kentucky, they must act independently of each other until they
could be brought together : the first one having for its object
the defense of the State of Tennessee along its line of opera-
tion ; and the other, of that part of the State lying between
the Tennessee Biver and the Mississippi. But, as the possession
of the former river by the enemy rendered the lines of com-
munication of the army at Columbus liable to be cut at any
time by a movement from the Tennessee Biver as a base, and
an overpowering force of the enemy was rapidly concentrating
from various points on the Ohio, it was necessary, to prevent
such a calamity, that the main body of the army should fall
back to Humboldt, and thence, if necessary, to Grand Junction,

1862] NOT A POUND OF AMMUNITION LOST. 37

so as to protect Memphis from either point and still have a line
of retreat to the latter place, or to Grenada, and, if needful,
to Jackson, Mississippi.

Captain Hollins's fleet of improvised gunboats and a suffi-
cient garrison was to be left at Columbus for the defense of
the river at that point, with transports near at hand for the
removal of the garrison when the position became no longer
tenable.

Every preparation for the retreat was silently made. The
defenses of Bowling Green, originally slight, had been greatly
enlarged by the addition of a cordon of detached forts, mounted
with heavy field-guns; yet the garrison was only sufficiently
strong to withstand an assault, and it was never proposed to sub-
mit to a siege. The ordnance and army supplies were quietly
moved southward, and measures were taken to remove from
Nashville the immense stores accumulated there. Only five
hundred men were in the hospital before the army commenced
to retreat, but, when it reached Nashville, five thousand four
hundred out of fourteen thousand required the care of the
medical officers. On February 11th the troops began to move,
and at nightfall on the 16th General Johnston, who had estab-
lished his headquarters at Edgeville, on the northern bank of
the Cumberland, saw the last of his wearied columns defile
across and safely establish themselves beyond the river. The
evacuation was accomplished by a force so small as to make the
feat remarkable, not a pound of ammunition nor a gun being
lost, and the provisions were nearly all secured. The first in-
timation which the enemy had of the intended evacuation, so
far as has been ascertained, was when Generals Hindman and
Breckinridge, who were in advance near his camp, were seen
suddenly to retreat toward Bowling Green. The enemy pur-
sued, and succeeded in shelling the town, while Hindman was
still covering the rear. Not a man was lost.* At the same
time Crittenden's command was brought back within ten miles
of Nashville, and thence to Murfreesboro.

Scarcely had the retreat to Nashville been accomplished,
when the news of the fall of Donelson was received. The state

* Colonel R. W. Woolley; in " New Orleans Picayune," March, 1863.

38 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

of feeling which it produced is described by Colonel Munford,
an aide-de-camp of General Johnston, in an address delivered in
Memphis. " Dissatisfaction was general. Its mutterings, already
heard, began to break out in denunciations. The demagogues
took up the cry, and hounded on one another and the people in
hunting down a victim. The public press was loaded with
abuse. The Government was denounced for intrusting the
public safety to hands so feeble. The Lower House of Con-
gress appointed a select committee to inquire into the conduct
of the war in the Western Department. The Senators and
Representatives from Tennessee, with the exception of Judge
Swann, waited upon the President." Their spokesman, Senator
G. A. Henry, stated that they came for and in behalf of Ten-
nessee to ask for the removal of General A. S. Johnston, and
the assignment of a competent officer to the defense of their
homes and people. It was further stated that they did not
come to recommend any one as the successor ; that it was con-
ceded that the President was better able than they were to select
a proper officer, and they only asked that he would give them
a general.

Painfully impressed by this exhibition of distrust toward an
officer whose place, if vacated, I was sure could not be filled by
his equal, realizing how necessary public confidence was to suc-
cess, and wounded by the injustice done to one I had known
with close intimacy in peace and. in war, and believed to be one
of the noblest men with whom I had ever been associated, and
one of the ablest soldiers I had ever seen in the field, I paused
under conflicting emotions, and after a time merely answered,
" If Sidney Johnston is not a general, the Confederacy has none
to give you."

On February 17th the rear guard from Bowling Green
reached Nashville, and on the 18th General Johnston wrote to
the Secretary of War at Richmond, saying :

"I have ordered the army to encamp to-night midway be-
tween Nashville and Murfreesboro. My purpose is to place the
force in such a position that the enemy can not concentrate his
superior strength against the command, and to enable me to as-
semble as rapidly as possible such other troops in addition as it

1862] A SPEEDY CHANGE OF PLAN NECESSARY. 39

may be in my power to collect. The complete command which
their gunboats and transports give them upon the Tennessee and
Cumberland renders it necessary for me to retire my line between
the rivers. I entertain the hope that this disposition will enable
me to hold the enemy for the present in check, and, when my
forces are sufficiently increased, to drive him back."

The fall of Fort Donelson made a speedy change of his
plans necessary. General Johnston was now compelled to with-
draw his forces from the north bank of the Cumberland, and to
abandon the defense of Nashville ; in a word, to evacuate Nash-
ville or sacrifice the army. Not more than eleven thousand
effective men were left to him with which to oppose General
Buell wTith not less than forty thousand men, moving by Bowl-
ing Green, while another superior force, under General Thomas,
was on the eastern flank ; and the armies from Fort Donelson,
with the gunboats and transport, had it in their power to ascend
the Cumberland, so as to interrupt all communication with the
south.

On February 17th and 18th the main body of the command
was moved from Nashville to Murfreesboro, while a brigade
remained under General Floyd to bring on the stores and prop-
erty upon the approach of the enemy, all of which would have
been saved except for the heavy and general rains. By the
junction of the command of General Crittenden and the fugi-
tives from Donelson, who were reorganized, the force of Gen-
eral Johnston was increased to seventeen thousand men. The
stores not required for immediate use were ordered to Chatta-
nooga, and those which were necessary on the march were or-
dered to Hunts ville and Decatur. On February 28th the march
was commenced for Decatur through Shelby ville and Fayette-
ville. Halting at those points for the purpose, lie saved his
provisions and stores, removed his depots and machine-shops,
obtained new arms, and finally, at the close of March, joined
Beauregard at Corinth with twenty thousand men, making their
aggregate force fifty thousand.

Considering the great advantage which the means of trans-
portation upon the Tennessee and Cumberland afforded the
enemy, and the peculiar topography of the State, General John-

40 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

ston found that lie could not with the force under his command
successfully defend the whole line against the advance of the
enemy. He was, therefore, compelled to elect whether the
enemy should be permitted to occupy Middle Tennessee, or
turn Columbus, take Memphis, and open the valley of the Mis-
sissippi. Deciding that the defense of the valley was of para-
mount importance, he therefore crossed the Tennessee and
united with Beauregard.

The evacuation of Nashville and the evident intention of
General Johnston to retreat still further, created a panic in
the public mind which spread over the whole State. Those
who had refused to listen to his warning voice, when it called
them to arms, were loudest in their passionate outcry at what
they considered a base surrender of them to the mercies of the
invader. He was accused of imbecility, cowardice, and treason.
An appeal from every class was made to the President demand-
ing his removal. Congress took the matter in hand, and, though
the feeling there resulted merely in a committee of inquiry, it
was evident that the case was prejudged. The Confederate
House of Representatives created a special committee " to in-
quire into the military disasters at Fort Henry and Fort Donel-
son, and the surrender of Nashville to the enemy," and as to the
conduct, number, and disposition of the troops under General
Johnston. Great feeling was shown in the debates.

Generals Floyd and Pillow, the senior officers at Fort Don-
elson, after it had been decided to surrender, withdrew, to avoid
being made prisoners. The Secretary of War (Mr. Benjamin)
wrote, March 11th, to General Johnston as follows :

" The reports of Brigadier-Generals Floyd and Pillow are un-
satisfactory, and the President directs that both these generals be
relieved from command until further orders. In the mean time
you will request them to add to their reports such statements as
they may deem proper on the points submitted. You are further
requested to make up a report, from all the sources of information
accessible to you, of all the particulars connected with the unfor-
tunate affair, which can contribute to enlighten the judgment of
the Executive and of Congress, and to fix the blame, if blame
there be, on those who were delinquent in duty."

1862] YOUR FORCE HAS BEEN MAGNIFIED. 41

This state of affairs, under the command of General John-
ston, was the occasion of the following correspondence :

Letter from President Davis to General A. S. Johnston.

" Richmond, March 12, 1862.

" My dear General : The departure of Captain Wickliffe
offers an opportunity, of which I avail myself, to write you an
unofficial letter. We have suffered great anxiety because of re-
cent events in Kentucky and Tennessee, and I have been not a
little disturbed by the repetitions of reflections upon yourself. I
expected you to have made a full report of events precedent and
consequent to the fall of Fort Donelson. In the mean time, I
made for you such defense as friendship prompted, and many
years of acquaintance justified ; but I needed facts to rebut the
wholesale assertions made against you to cover others and to con-
demn my administration. The public, as you are aware, have no
correct measure for military operations, and the journals are very
reckless in their statements.

"Your force has been magnified, and the movements of an
army have been measured by the capacity for locomotion of an
individual.

" The readiness of the people, among whom you are operating,
to aid you in every method, has been constantly asserted ; the
purpose of your army at Bowling Green wholly misunderstood ;
and the absence of an effective force at Nashville ignored. You
have been held responsible for the fall of Donelson and the cap-
ture of Nashville. It is charged that no effort was made to save
the stores at Nashville, and that the panic of the people was caused
by the army.

" Such representations, with the sad forebodings naturally be-
longing to them, have been painful to me, and injurious to us
both ; but, worse than this, they have undermined public confi-
dence and damaged our cause. A full development of the truth
is necessary for future success.

" I respect the generosity which has kept you silent, but would
impress upon you that the question is not personal but public in
its nature ; that you and I might be content to suffer, but neither
of us can willingly permit detriment to the country. As soon as
circumstances will permit, it is my purpose to visit the field of
your present operations ; not that I shall expect to give you any

42 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

aid in the discharge of your duties as a commander, but with the
hope that my position would enable me to effect something in
bringing men to your standard. With a sufficient force, the au-
dacity which the enemy exhibits would no doubt give you the
opportunity to cut some of his lines of communication, to break
up his plan of campaign, and, defeating some of his columns,
to drive him from the soil as well of Kentucky as of Ten-
nessee.

" We are deficient in arms, wanting in discipline, and inferior
in numbers. Private arms must supply the first want ; time and
the presence of an enemy, with diligence on the part of command-
ers, will remove the second ; and public confidence will overcome
the third. General Bragg brings you disciplined troops, and you
will find in him the highest administrative capacity. General E.
K. Smith will soon have in East Tennessee a sufficient force to
create a strong diversion in your favor ; or, if his strength can
not be made available in that way, you will best know how to
employ it otherwise. I suppose the Tennessee or the Mississippi
River will be the object of the enemy's next campaign, and I
trust you will be able to concentrate a force which will defeat
either attempt. The fleet which you will soon have on the Mis-
sissippi River, if the enemy's gunboats ascend the Tennessee, may
enable you to strike an effective blow at Cairo ; but, to one so
well informed and vigilant, I will not assume to offer suggestions
as to when and how the ends you seek may be attained. With
the confidence and regard of many years, I am very truly your
friend, Jefferson Davis."

Letter of General Johnston in answer to the above.

" Decatur, Alabama, March IS, 18G2.

" My dear General : I received the dispatches from Rich-
mond, with your private letter by Captain Wickliffe, three days
since ; but the pressure of affairs and the necessity of getting my
command across the Tennessee prevented me from sending you
an earlier reply.

" I anticipated all that you have told me as to the censure
which the fall of Fort Donelson drew upon me, and the attacks to
which you might be subjected ; but it was impossible for me to
gather the facts for a detailed report, or to spare time which was
required to extricate the remainder of my troops and save the

1862] NECESSARY AS AN ACT OF SELF-DEFENSE. 43

large accumulation of stores and provisions after that dishearten-
ing disaster.

" I transmitted the reports of Generals Floyd and Pillow with-
out examining or analyzing the facts, and scarcely with time to
read them.

"When about to assume command of this department, the
Government charged me with the duty of deciding the question
of occupying Bowling Green, Kentucky, which involved not only
military but political considerations. At the time of my arrival
at Nashville, the action of the Legislature of Kentucky had put
an end to the latter by sanctioning the formation of camps men-
acing Tennessee, by assuming the cause of the Government at
Washington, and by abandoning the neutrality it professed ; and,
in consequence of their action, the occupation of Bowling Green
became necessary as an act of self-defense, at least in the first
step.

"About the middle of September General Buckner advanced
with , a small force of about four thousand men, which was in-
creased by the 15th of October to twelve thousand ; and, though
accessions of force were received, it continued at about the same
strength until the end of November — measles and other diseases
keeping down the effective force. The enemy's force then was
reported to the War Department at fifty thousand, and an ad-
vance was impossible. No enthusiasm, as we imagined and hoped,
but hostility, was manifested in Kentucky. Believing it to be of
the greatest moment to protract the campaign, as the dearth of
cotton might bring strength from abroad and discourage the
North, and to gain time to strengthen myself by new troops from
Tennessee and other States, I magnified my forces to the enemy,
but made known my true strength to the department and the
Governors of States. The aid given was small.. At length, when
General Beauregard came out in February, he expressed his sur-
prise at the smallness of my force, and was impressed with the
danger of my position. I admitted what was so manifest, and
laid before him my views for the future, in which he entirely con-
curred, and sent me a memorandum of our conference, a copy of
which I send to you. I determined to fight for Nashville at Don-
elson, and gave the best part of my army to do it, retaining only
fourteen thousand men to cover my front, and giving sixteen
thousand to defend Donelson. The force at Donelson is stated in

4± RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

General Pillow's report at much less, and I do not doubt the cor-
rectness of his statement, for the force at Bowling Green, wThich
I supposed to be fourteen thousand effective men (the medical
report showing only a little over five hundred sick in the hospi-
tal), was diminished more than five thousand by those who were
unable to stand the fatigue of a march, and made my force on
reaching Nashville less than ten thousand men. I inclose medical
director's report. Had I wholly uncovered my front to defend
Donelson, Buell would have known it, and marched directly on
Nashville. There were only ten small steamers in the Cumber-
land, in imperfect condition, only three of which were available
at Nashville, while the transportation of the enemy was great.

" The evacuation of Bowling Green was imperatively neces-
sary, and was ordered before, and executed while the battle was
being fought at Donelson. I had made every disposition for
the defense of the fort my means allowed, and the troops were
among the best of my forces. The generals, Floyd, Pillow, and
Buckner, were high in the opinion of officers and men for skill
and courage, and among the best officers of my command. They
were popular with the volunteers, and all had seen much service.
No reinforcements were asked. I awaited the event opposite
Nashville. The result of the conflict each day was favorable.
At midnight on the 15th I received news of a glorious victory ;
at dawn, of a defeat.

"My column during the day and night was thrown over the
river — a battery had been established below the city to secure the
passage. Nashville was incapable of defense, from its position,
and from the forces advancing from Bowling Green and up the
Cumberland. A rear guard was left, under General Floyd, to se-
cure the stores and provisions, but did not completely effect the
object. The people were terrified, and some of the troops were
disheartened. The discouragement was spreading, and I ordered
the command to Murfreesboro, where I managed, by assembling
Crittenden's division and the fugitives from Donelson, to collect
an army able to offer battle. The weather was inclement, the
floods excessive, and the bridges were washed away, but most of
the stores and provisions were saved and conveyed to new depots.
This having been accomplished, though with serious loss, in con-
formity with my original design, I marched southward and crossed
the Tennessee at this point, so as to cooperate or unite with Gen-

1862] LOOK AT EVENTS AS THEY APPEARED. 45

eral Beauregard for the defense of the valley of the Mississippi.
The passage is almost completed, and the head of my column is
already with General Bragg at Corinth. The movement was
deemed too hazardous by the most experienced members of my
staff, but the object warranted the risk. The difficulty of effect-
ing a junction is not wholly overcome, but it approaches comple-
tion. Day after to-morrow (the 22d), unless the enemy intercepts
me, my force will be with Bragg, and my army nearly fifty thou-
sand strong. This must be destroyed before the enemy can attain
his object.

" I have given this sketch, so that you may appreciate the em-
barrassment which surrounded me in my attempts to avert or
remedy the disaster of Fort Donelson, before alluding to the con-
duct of the generals.

" When the force was detached, I was in hopes that such dis-
position would have been made as would have enabled the forces
to defend the fort or withdraw without sacrificing the army. On
the 14th I ordered General Floyd, by telegraph, ' If he lost the
fort, to get his troops to Nashville.' It is possible that might
have been done, but justice requires us to look at events as they
appeared at the time, and not alone by the light of subsequent
information. All the facts in relation to the surrender will be
transmitted to the Secretary of War as soon as they can be col-
lected, in obedience to his order. It appears from the informa-
tion received that General Buckner, being the junior officer, took
the lead in advising the surrender, and that General Floyd acqui-
esced, and that they all concurred in the belief that their force
could not maintain the position. All concurred that it would in-
volve a great sacrifice of life to extricate the command. Subse-
quent events show that the investment was not so complete as
their information from their scouts led them to believe.

"The conference resulted in the surrender. The command
was irregularly transferred, and devolved on the junior general ;
but not apparently to avoid any just responsibility or from any
want of personal or moral intrepidity. The blow was most disas-
trous, and almost without a remedy. I therefore, in my first
report, remained silent. This silence you were kind enough to
attribute to my generosity. I will not lay claim to the motive to
excuse my course. I observed silence, as it seemed to be the best
way to serve the cause and the country. The facts were not fully

46 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

known, discontent prevailed, and criticism and condemnation were
more likely to augment than to cure the evil. I refrained, well
knowing that heavy censures would fall upon me, but convinced
that it was better to endure them for the present, and defer for a
more propitious time an investigation of the conduct of the gen-
erals ; for, in the mean time, their services were required and their
influence was useful. For these reasons Generals Floyd and Pil-
low were assigned to duty, for I still felt confidence in their gal-
lantry, their energy, and their devotion to the Confederacy.

" I have thus recurred to the motives by which I have been
governed, from a deep personal sense of the friendship and confi-
dence you have always shown me, and from the conviction that
they have not been withdrawn from me in adversity.

" All the reports requisite for a full official investigation have
been ordered. Generals Floyd and Pillow have been suspended
from command.

" You mention that you intend to visit the field of operations
here. I hope soon to see you, for your presence would encourage
my troops, inspire the people, and augment the army. To me
personally it would give the greatest gratification. Merely a sol-
dier myself, and having no acquaintance with the statesmen or
leaders of the South, I can not touch springs familiar to you.
"Were you to assume command, it would afford me the most un-
feigned pleasure, and every energy would be exerted to help you
to victory and the country to independence. Were you to de-
cline, still your presence alone would be of inestimable advan-
tage.

"The enemy are now at Nashville, about fifty thousand strong,
advancing in this direction by Columbia. He has also forces, ac-
cording to the report of General Bragg, landing at Pittsburg,
from twenty-five to fifty thousand, and moving in the direction
of Purdy.

"This army corps, moving to join Bragg, is about twenty thou-
sand strong. Two brigades, Hindman's and Woods's, are, I suppose,
at Corinth. One regiment of Hardee's division (Lieutenant-Colo-
nel Patton commanding) is moving by cars to-day (March 20th),
and Statham's brigade (Crittenden's division). The brigade will
halt at Iuka, the regiment at Burnsville ; Cleburne's brigade,
Hardee's division, except the regiment, at Burnsville ; and Car-
roll's brigade, Crittenden's division, and Helm's cavalry, at Tus-

1862] THE TEST OF MERIT IX MY PROFESSION. 47

cumbia ; Bowen's brigade at Courtland ; Breckinridge's brigade
here ; the regiments of cavalry of Adams and Wharton on the
opposite bank of the river ; Scott's Louisiana regiment at Pulaski,
sending forward supplies ; Morgan's cavalry at Shelbyville, or-
dered on.

" To-morrow Breckinridge's brigade will go to Corinth, then
Bowen's. When these pass Tuscumbia and Iuka, transportation
will be ready there for the other troops to follow immediately
from those points, and, if necessary, from Burnsville. The cav-
alry will cross and move forward as soon as their trains can be
passed over the railroad-bridge. I have troubled you with these
details, as I can not properly communicate them by telegram.

" The test of merit in my profession, with the people, is suc-
cess. It is a hard rule, but I think it right. If I join this corps
to the forces of Beauregard (I confess a hazardous experiment),
then those who are now declaiming against me will be without an

argument.

"Your friend, A. S. Johnston."

To this letter the following reply was made :

" Richmond, Virginia, March 26, 1862.

"My dear General : Yours of the 18th instant was this day
delivered by your aide, Mr. Jack. I have read it with much satis-
faction. So far as the past is concerned, it but confirms the con-
clusions at which I had already arrived. My confidence in you
has never wavered, and I hope the public will soon give me credit
for judgment, rather than continue to arraign me for obstinacy.

" You have done wonderfully well, and now I breathe easier
in the assurance that you will be able to make a junction of your
two armies. If you can meet the division of the enemy moving
from the Tennessee before it can make a junction with that ad-
vancing from Nashville, the future will be brighter. If this can
not be done, our only hope is that the people of the Southwest
will rally en masse with their private arms, and thus enable you
to oppose the vast army which will threaten the destruction of
our country.

" I have hoped to be able to leave here for a short time, and
would be much gratified to confer with you, and share your re-
sponsibilities. I might aid you in obtaining troops ; no one could
hope to do more unless he underrated your military capacity. I

48 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

write in great haste, and feel that it would be worse than useless
to point out to you how much depends on you.

" May God bless you, is the sincere prayer of your friend,

"Jefferson Davis."

Let us now review the events which had brought such
unmeasured censure on General Johnston for some months pre-
ceding this correspondence. We have seen him, with a force
numerically much inferior to that of the enemy in his front,
holding the position of Bowling Green, and, by active operations
of detached commands, keeping up to foe and friend the im-
pression that he had a large army in position. With self-sacri-
ficing fortitude he remained silent under reproaches for not
advancing to attack the enemy. When Forts Donelson and
Henry were more immediately threatened, he gave reinforce-
ments from his small command until his own line became more
like one of skirmishers than an intrenched line of battle ; and
when those forts were surrendered, and his position became both
untenable and useless, he withdrew in such order and with such
skill that his retreat was unmolested by the enemy. Though
he continued to be the subject of unreasoning vituperation, he
sought not to justify himself by blaming others, or telling what
he would have done if his Government had sent him the arms
and munitions he asked for, but which his Government he
learned did not possess.

There are yet those who, self-assured, demand why John-
ston did not go himself to Donelson and Henry, and why his
forces were not there concentrated. A slight inspection of the
map would suffice to show that, Bowling Green abandoned, the
direct road to Nashville would be open to the advance of Buell's
army. Then the forts, if held, would cease to answer their
purpose, and, being isolated, and also between hostile armies
above and below, would be not only valueless but only tempo-
rarily tenable ; and of his critics it may be asked, Who else than
himself could, with the small force retained at Bowling Green,
have held the enemy in check so long, and at last have retired
without disaster?

To collect the widely separated troops of his command so as

1862] WHY DID HE NOT WAIT? 49

to form an army which might offer battle to the invading foe
was a problem which must have been impossible, if the organ-
ized armies by which he was threatened had been guided by a
capacity equal to his own. It was done, and, with the genius
of a great soldier, he seized the opportunity, by the rapid com-
bination of new levies and of forces never before united, to at-
tack the armies of the enemy in detail while they were endeav-
oring to form a junction.

The Southwestern States presented a field peculiarly favor-
able for the application of a new power in war. Deep rivers,
with banks frequently but little elevated above the water, trav-
erse the country. On these rivers iron-plated steamboats with
heavy guns may move with a rapidity incomparably greater
than that of marching armies. It is as if forts, with armaments,
garrison, and stores, were endowed with locomotion more swift
and enduring than that of cavalry.

The Ohio, Mississippi, Cumberland, and Tennessee Rivers
all were in the field of General Johnston's operations, and at
the stage of water most suited to naval purposes. Apart from
the heavy guns which could thus be brought to bear at interior
places upon an army having only field-artillery, the advantage
of rapid transportation for troops and supplies can hardly be
over-estimated. It has been seen how these advantages were
utilized by the enemy at Henry and Donelson, and not less did
they avail him at Shiloh.

As has been elsewhere explained, the condition of the South
did not enable the Confederacy to meet the enemy on the water
except at great odds.

If it be asked, " Why did not General Johnston wait until the
enemv marched from the river instead of attacking him at Shi-
loh or Pittsburg Landing ? " the answer is, " That would have
been to delay until the junction of the enemy's armies had been
effected." To fight them in detail, it was necessary to attack
the first where it lay, backed by its gunboats. That sound judg-
ment and soldierly daring went hand in hand in this attack the
sequel demonstrated.

Meantime some active operations had taken place in that
part of General Johnston's command west of the Mississippi
51

50 HISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

River. Detached conflicts with the enemy had been fonght by
the small forces under Generals Price and McCulloch, but no
definite result had followed. General Earl Yan Dorn had been
subsequently assigned to the command, and assumed it on Jan-
uary 29, 1862. General Curtis was then in command of the
enemy's forces, numbering about twelve thousand men. He had
harassed General Price on his retreat to Fayetteville, Arkansas,
and then had fallen back to Sugar Creek, where he proposed to
make a stand. Yan Dorn, immediately on his arrival at the
Confederate camps on Boston Mountain, prepared to attack
Curtis. His first movement, however, was to intercept General
Sigel, then at Bentonville with sixteen thousand men. The
want of cooperation in Yan Dorn's forces enabled Sigel to es-
cape. Curtis thus concentrated his forces at Sugar Creek, and,
instead of taking him in detail, Yan Dorn was obliged to meet
his entire army. By a circuitous route, he led Price's army
against the enemy's rear, moving McCulloch against the right
flank ; but his progress was so slow and embarrassed, that the
enemy heard of it in season to make his dispositions accord-
ingly.

The battle of Elkhorn, or Pea Ridge, was fought on the
morning of March 5th. Yan Dorn reported his force to be
fourteen thousand men, and Curtis puts his force at about
ten thousand. Yan Dora, with Price's division, encountered
Carr's division which had already advanced, but was driven
back steadily and with heavy loss. Meanwhile, McCulloch's
command met a division under Osterhaus, and, after a sharp,
quick straggle, swept it away. Pushing forward through the
shrub-oak, his wide-extended line met SigeFs, Asboth's, and
Davis's divisions. Here on the ragged spurs of the hills ensued
a fearful combat. In the crisis of the struggle, McCulloch,
dashing forward to reconnoiter, fell a victim to a sharjDshooter.
Almost at the same moment, Mcintosh, his second in command,
fell while charging a battery of the enemy with a regiment of
Texas cavalry. "Without direction or leader, the shattered lines
of our forces left the field to rally, after a wide circuit, on Price's
division. When Yan Dorn heard of this misfortune, he urged
his attack, pressing back the enemy until night closed the bloody

1862] THE ENEMY WAS BADLY CRIPPLED. 51

combat. Yan Dorn's headquarters were then at Elkhorn Tav-
ern, where the enemy's headquarters had been in the morning.
Each army was now on its opponent's line of communication.
Yan Dorn found his troops much disorganized and exhausted,
short of ammunition, and without food, and made his arrange-
ments to retreat. The wagon-trains and all the men not effec-
tive for the coming battle were started by a circuitous route for
Yan Buren. The effectives remained to cover the retreat. The
battle was renewed at 7 a. m., and raged until 10 a. m. The
gallant General Henry Little had the covering line with his
own and Eives's Missouri brigades ; this stout rear-guard hold-
ing off the whole army of the enemy. The trains, artillery, and
most of the army were by that time well on the road. The
order was given to the Missourians to withdraw, and " the gal-
lant fellows faced about with cheers " retired steadily, and en-
camped ten miles from the battle-field at three o'clock. There
was no real pursuit. The attack had failed. Yan Dorn put his
loss at six hundred killed and wounded, and two hundred pris-
oners. Curtis reported his loss at two hundred and three killed,
nine hundred and seventy-two wounded, and a hundred and
seventy-six missing — total, thirteen hundred and fifty-one.*

The object of Yan Dorn had been to effect a diversion in
behalf of General Johnston. This failed ; but the enemy was
badly crippled, and soon fell back to Missouri, of which he still
retained possession.

General Yan Dorn was now ordered to join General John-
ston by the quickest route. Yet only one of his regiments ar-
rived in time to be present at the battle of Shiloh. As has been
already stated, General Beauregard left Nashville on February
14th to take charge in "West Tennessee, and made his headquar-
ters at Jackson, Tennessee, on February 17th. He was some-
what prostrated by sickness, which partially disabled him through
the campaign. The two grand divisions of his army were com-
manded by the able Generals Bragg and Polk. On March 26th
he permanently removed to Corinth. Under his orders the
evacuation of Columbus by General Polk, and the establish-
ment of a new line resting on New Madrid,, Island "No. 10,

* " The Life of Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston," by his son.

52 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

and Humboldt, was completed. On March 2d Brigadier-Gen-
eral J. P. McCown, an "old army" officer, was assigned to
the command of Island No. 10, forty miles below Columbus,
whither he removed his division. A. P. Stewart's brigade was
sent to JSTew Madrid. At these points some seven thousand
troops were assembled, and the remainder marched under Gen-
eral Cheatham to Union City. General Polk says :

" In five days we moved the accumulations of six months, tak-
ing with us all our commissary and quartermaster's stores — an
amount sufficient to supply my whole command for eight months
— all our powder and other ammunition and ordnance stores, ex-
cepting a few shot, and gun-carriages, and every heavy gun in the
fort, except two thirty-two pounders and three carronades in a
remote outwork, which had been rendered useless."

The movement of the enemy up the Tennessee PiVer com-
menced on March 10th. General C. F. Smith led the advance,
with a new division under General Sherman. On the 13th
Smith assembled four divisions at Savannah, on the west bank
of the Tennessee, at the Great Bend. The ultimate design was
to mass the forces of Grant and Buell against our army at Cor-
inth. Buell was still in the occupation of Nashville. On the
16th Sherman disembarked at Pittsburg Landing, and made a
reconnaissance to Monterey, nearly half-way to Corinth. On
the next day General Grant took command. Two more divisions
were added, and he assembled his army near Pittsburg Landing,
which was the most advantageous base for a movement against
Corinth. Here it lay inactive until the battle of Shiloh.

. The Tennessee flows northwest for some distance, until, a
little west of Hamburg, it takes its final bend to the north.
Here two small streams, Owl and Lick Creeksf flowing nearly
parallel, somewhat north of east, from three to five miles apart,
empty into the Tennessee. Owl Creek forms the" northern limit
of the ridge, which Lick Creek bounds on the south. These
streams, rising some ten or twelve miles back, toward Corinth,
were bordered near their mouths by swamps filled with back-
water from the. Tennessee, and impassable except where the
roads crossed them.

1862]

WITH FEW AND DIFFICULT APPROACHES.

The inclosed space is a rolling table-land, about one hundred
feet above the river-level, with its water-shed lying near Lick
Creek, and either slope broken by deep and frequent ravines
draining into the two streams. The acclivities were covered with
forests, and often thick set with undergrowth. Pittsburg Land-
ing, containing three or four log-cabins, was situated about mid-
way between the mouths of the creeks, in the narrow morass
that borders the Tennessee. It was three or four miles below
Hamburg, six or seven above Savannah, the depot of the enemy
on the right bank, and twenty-two miles from Corinth. Thus
the position of the enemy was naturally strong. With few and
difficult approaches, guarded on either flank by impassable
streams and morasses, protected by a succession of ravines and
acclivities, commanded by eminences to the rear, it seemed safe
against attack, and easy to defend. "No defensive works were
constructed.

54 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

CHAPTEK XVIII.

General BueH's March. — Object of General Johnston. — His Force. — Advance from
Corinth.— Line of Battle.— Telegram.— The Time of the Battle of Shiloh.— Re-
sults of the First Day's Battle. — One Encampment not taken. — Effects. — Re-
ports on this Failure. — Death of General Johnston. — Remarks.

General Buell, who was to make a junction with General
Grant, deemed it best that his army should march through by
land, as it would facilitate the occupation of the Memphis and
Charleston Railroad through north Alabama, where General
Mitchell had been assigned. Accordingly, Buell commenced
his march from Nashville on March 15 th, with a rapid move-
ment of cavalry, followed by a division of infantry, to seize
the bridges. The bridge over Duck River being destroyed, it
was the 31st before his army crossed. His advance arrived at
Savannah on Saturday, April 5th, and our attack on Grant at
Pittsburg Landing was made on the next day, the 6th of April.
The advance of General Buell anticipated his orders by two
days, and likewise the calculations of our commanders.

It had been the object of General Johnston, since falling
back from Nashville, to concentrate his army at Corinth, and
fight the enemy in detail — Grant first, and Buell afterward.
The army of General Polk had been drawn back from Colum-
bus. The War Department ordered General Bragg from Pen-
sacola, with his well-disciplined army, to the aid of Johnston.
A brigade was sent by General Lovell from Louisiana, and
Chalmers and Walker were already on the line of the Memphis
and Charleston road with considerable commands. These forces
collected at Corinth, and to them were added such new levies as
the Governors had in rendezvous, and a few regiments raised in
response to General Beauregard's call. General Bragg, in a
sketch of the battle of Shiloh, thus speaks of General John-
ston's army :

"In a period of four weeks, fragments of commands from
Bowling Green, Kentucky, under Hardee ; Columbus, Kentucky,
under Polk ; and Pensacola, Mobile, and New Orleans, under

1862] THE ORDERS FOR MARCH AXD BATTLE. 55

Bragg, with such new levies as could be hastily raised, all badly
armed and equipped, were united at and near Corinth, and, for the
first time, organized as an army. It was a heterogeneous mass,
in which there was more enthusiasm than discipline, more capacity
than knowledge, and more valor than instruction. Rifles, rifled
and smooth-bore muskets — some of them originally percussion,
others hastily altered from flint-locks by Yankee contractors, many
with the old flint and steel — and shot-guns of all sizes and patterns,
held place in the same regiments. The task of organizing such a
command in four weeks, and supplying it, especially with ammu-
nition, suitable for action, was simply appalling. It was under-
taken, however, with a cool, quiet self-control, calling to his aid
the best knowledge and talent at his command, which not only
inspired confidence, but soon yielded the natural fruits of system,
order, and discipline."

This force, about forty thousand of all arms, was divided
into four corps, commanded respectively by Major-Generals
Polk, Bragg, and Hardee, and Brigadier-General Breckinridge.
General Beauregard was second in command under General
Johnston. General Beauregard says, " A want of general offi-
cers needful for the proper organization of divisions and bri-
gades of an army brought thus suddenly together, and other
difficulties in the way of effective organization, delayed the
movements until the night of April 2d."

About one o'clock on the morning of April 3d preliminary
orders were issued to hold the troops in readiness to move at a
moment's notice, with five days' provisions and a hundred rounds
' of ammunition. The orders for march and battle were issued
in the afternoon. At that time General Hardee led the ad-
vance, the Third Corps, from Corinth, by the northernmost
route, known as the Ridge road. Bivouacking that night on
the way, he arrived next morning at Mickey's, a house about
eighteen miles from Corinth and four or five miles from Pitts-
burg. The Second Corps, under Bragg, marched by the direct
road to Pittsburg through Monterey, which it reached about 11
a. m. on the 4th, and bivouacked that night near Mickey's in the
rear of Hardee's corps. The First Corps, under General Polk,
consisted of two divisions, under Cheatham and Clark. The

56 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

latter was ordered to follow Hardee on the Ridge road at an
interval of half an hour, and to halt near Mickey's, so as to
allow Bragg's corps to fall in behind Hardee, at a thousand
yards' interval, and form a second line of battle. Polk's corps
was to form the left wing of the third line of battle ; and
Breckinridge's reserve the right wing. The other division of
Polk, under Cheatham, was on outpost duty, at and near Bethel,
on the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, about as far from Mickey's
as Corinth was. He was ordered to assemble his forces at
Purdy, and pursue the route to Monterey. He effected his
junction on the afternoon of the 5th, and took position on the
left wing of Polk's corps. Breckinridge's reserve corps moved
from Burns ville early on April 4th, by way of Farmington
toward Monterey, distant fourteen miles. It did not effect its
junction with the other corps until, late on the afternoon of
Saturday the 5th, being delayed by the rains on Friday and
Saturday. At daylight on the 5th Hardee moved, and by
seven o'clock was sufficiently out of the way to allow Bragg to
advance. Before ten o'clock Hardee's corps had reached the
outposts and developed the lines of the enemy. The corps was
immediately deployed into line of battle about a mile and a
half west of Shiloh church, where Lick Creek and Owl Creek
approach most nearly, and are about three miles apart. Glad-
den's brigade, of Bragg's corps, was on the right of Hardee's
corps, which was not sufficiently strong to occupy the whole
front. This line extended from creek to creek. Before seven
o'clock Bragg's column was in motion, and the right wing of
his line of battle formed about eight hundred yards in the rear
of Hardee's line. But the division on the left was nowhere to
be seen. Even as late as half -past twelve the missing column
had not appeared, nor had any report from it been received.
General Johnston, " looking first at his watch, then glancing at
the position of the sun, exclaimed : i This is not war ! Let us
have our horses ! ' He rode to the rear until he found the
missing column standing stock-still, with its head some distance
out in an open field. General Polk's reserves were ahead of it,
with their wagons and artillery blocking up the road. General
Johnston ordered them to clear the road, and the missing col-

1862] THUS WAS THE ARMY ARRAYED. 57

umn to move forward. There was much chaffering among
those implicated as to who should bear the blame. ... It was
about four o'clock when the lines were completely formed— too
late, of course, to begin the battle then." *

The road was not clear until 2 p. m. General Polk got
Clark's division of his corps into line of battle by four o'clock ;
and Cheatham, who had come up on the left, promptly fol-
lowed. Breckinridge's line was then formed on Polk's right.
Thus was the army arrayed in three lines of battle late Saturday
afternoon.f

The purpose of General Johnston to attack promptly is
evinced in the correspondence already introduced ; it is further
shown in his telegram of April 3d, as follows :

" To the President, Richmond.

" General Buell in motion, thirty thousand strong, rapidly from
Columbia by Clifton to Savannah. Mitchell behind him, with ten
thousand. Confederate forces forty thousand ; ordered forward
to offer battle near Pittsburg.

" Division from Bethel, main body from Corinth, reserve from
Burnsville, converging to-morrow, near Monterey, on Pittsburg.

"Beauregard second in command, Polk the left, Bragg the
center, Hardee the right wing, Breckinridge the reserve.

" Hope engagement before Buell can form junction." J

On the 5th of April I sent a telegram as follows :

" General A. S. Johnston : Your dispatch of yesterday re-
ceived. I hope you will be able to close with the enemy before
his two columns unite."

Though much inquiry has been made, I have not been able
to recover that dispatch "of yesterday" the 4th. It was
anxiously sought because, in cipher (private between us), he
explained distinctly his plan of battle, as the previous one had
his proposed order of march. It was in every respect impor-
tant to attack at the earliest moment after the advance of Buell's

* Colonel Munford's address at Memphis.

f " The Life of Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston," by his son.

% Original in the possession of Colonel W. P. Johnston.

RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

BATTLE OP.

SHILO H

Part II.

2d. Position (Noon) Cth. April
Federal — — — —
Can/tdtrate — — — — —

command became known. Every delay diminished the chances
of surprising the enemy, and increased the probability of his
being reenforced. Had the attack been made a day sooner, not
only would Buell's army have been absent, but there would have
been no prospect of their timely arrival ; and who can measure
the moral effect this would have produced ? It would be use-
less to review the controversies as to who was responsible for
the confusion and consequent detentions on the march, the evil

1862] WAR CALLED A FICKLE GODDESS. 59

of which might have been greater if the vigilance of the enemy
had been equal to his self -sufficiency.

War has been called a fickle goddess, and its results attrib-
uted to chance. The great soldier of our century said, " Fortune
favors the heavy battalions " ; but is it not rather exact calcula-
tion than chance which controls the events of war, and the just
determination of the relation of time, space, and motion in the
application of force, which decides the effective weight of bat-
talions ? Had the battle of Shiloh opened a day sooner, it
would have been better ; had it been postponed a day, to attack
then would have been impracticable. Had the several columns
moved on different roads, converging toward the field of battle,
the movements of some could not have been obstructed by others,
so that the troops would have been in position and the battle
have been commenced on Saturday morning. The programme
and purpose of General Johnston appear from his dispatch of
the 3d, and from the disappointment evinced by him at the
failure of a portion of the command to be present on the field
on the morning of the 5th (Saturday), as he expected.

General Bragg, in a monograph on the battle of Shiloh, says :

" During the afternoon of the 5th, as the last of our troops
were taking position, a casual and partly accidental meeting of
general officers occurred just in rear of our second line, near the
bivouac of General Bragg. The Commander-in-Chief, General
Beauregard, General Polk, General Bragg, and General Breckin-
ridge, are remembered as present. In a discussion of the causes
of the delay and its incidents, it was mentioned that some of the
troops, now in their third day only, were entirely out of food,
though having marched with five days' rations. General Beau-
regard, confident our movement had been discovered by the ene-
my, urged its abandonment, a return to our camps for supplies,
and a general change of programme. In this opinion no other
seemed fully to concur ; and when it was suggested that ' the
enemy's supplies were much nearer, and could be had for the tak-
ing,' General Johnston quietly remarked, 'Gentlemen, we shall
attack at daylight to-morrow.' The meeting then dispersed upon
an invitation of the commanding general to meet at his tent that
evening. At that meeting a further discussion elicited the same

60 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

views, and the same firm, decided determination. The next morn-
ing, about dawn of day, the 6th, as the troops were being put in
motion, several generals again met at the camp-lire of the general-
in-chief. The discussion was renewed, General Beauregard again
expressing his dissent ; when, rapid firing in the front indicating
that the attack had commenced, General Johnston closed the dis-
cussion by remarking : * The battle has opened, gentlemen ; it is
too late to change our dispositions.' He prepared to move to the
front, and his subordinates promptly joined their respective com-
mands, inspired by his coolness, confidence, and determination.
Few men have equaled him in the possession and display, at the
proper time, of these great qualities of the soldier."

The results of the first day of the famous battle thus begun
are very summarily presented in the following brief report of
General Beauregard :

"At 5 a. m., on the 6th instant, a reconnoitering party of the
enemy having become engaged with our advanced pickets, the
commander of the forces gave orders to begin the movement and
attack as determined upon, except that Trabue's brigade of Breck-
inridge's division was detached and advanced to support the left
of Bragg's corps and line of battle then menaced by the enemy ;
and the other two brigades were directed to advance by the road
to Hamburg to support Bragg's right ; and at the same time Ma-
ney's regiment of Polk's corps was advanced by the same road to
reenforce the regiment, of cavalry and battery of four pieces,
already thrown forward to watch and guard Grier's, Tanner's, and
Borland's Fords of Lick Creek.

"Thirty minutes after 5 a. m., our lines and columns were in
motion, all animated evidently by a promising spirit. The front
line was engaged at once, but advanced steadily, followed in due
order, with equal resolution and steadiness, by the other lines,
which were brought successively into action with rare skill, judg-
ment, and gallantry by the several corps commanders, as the ene-
my made a stand with his masses rallied for the struggle for his
encampments. Like an Alpine avalanche our troops moved for-
ward, despite the determined resistance of the enemy, until after
6 p. m., when we were in possession of all his encampments between
Owl and Lick Creeks but one ; nearly all of his field-artillery,
about thirty flags, colors, and standards, over three thousand pris-

1862j IT WAS THAT ONE ENCAMPMENT. 61

oners including a division commander (General Prentiss), and
several brigade commanders, thousands of small-arms, an immense
supply of subsistence, forage, and munitions of war, and a large
amount of means of transportation, all the substantial fruits of a
complete victory — such, indeed, as rarely have followed the most
successful battles, for never was an army so well provided as that
of our enemy.

" The remnant of his army had been driven in utter disorder
to the immediate vicinity of Pittsburg, under the shelter of the
heavy guns of his iron-clad gunboats, and we remained undis-
puted masters of his well-selected, admirably provided canton-
ments, after our twelve hours of obstiDate conflict with his forces,
who had been beaten from them and the contiguous covert, but
only by the sustained onset of all the men we could bring into
action."

There are two words in this report which, if they could
have been truthfully omitted, it would have been worth to us
the surrender of all " the substantial fruits of a complete vic-
tory." It says : " Our troops moved forward, despite the deter-
mined resistance of the enemy, until after 6 p. m., when we
were in possession of all his encampments between Owl and
Lick Creeks hut oneP It was. that " one " encampment that
furnished a foothold for all the subsequent reinforcements sent
by Buell, and gave occasion for the final withdrawal of our
forces ; whereas, if that had been captured, and the " waters of
the Tennessee " reached, as General Johnston designed, it was
not too much to expect that Grant's army would have surren-
dered ; that Buell's forces would not have crossed the Tennes-
see ; but with a skillful commander, like Johnston, to lead our
troops, the enemy would have sought safety on the north bank
of the Ohio; that Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri would
have been recovered, the Northwest disaffected, and our armies
filled with the men of the Southwest, and perhaps of the North-
west also. •

Let us turn to reports and authorities. The author of " The
Life of Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston " says :

" Of the two armies, one was now an advancing, triumphant
host, with arm uplifted to give the mortal blow ; the other, a

62 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

broken, mangled, demoralized mob, paralyzed and waiting for the
stroke. While the other Confederate brigades, which had shared
most actively in Prentiss's capture, were sending back the prison-
ers and forming again for a final attack, two brigades, under
Chalmers and Jackson, on the extreme right, had cleared away all
in front of them, and, moving down the river-bank, now came
upon the last point where even a show of resistance was made.
Being two very bold and active brigadiers, they at once closed
with the enemy in their front, crossing a deep ravine and difficult
ground to get at him. Here Colonel Webster, of Grant's staff,
had gathered all the guns he could find from batteries, whether
abandoned or still coherent, and with stout-hearted men, picked
up at random, had prepared a resistance. Some infantry, simi-
larly constituted, had been got together ; and Ammen's brigade,
the van of Nelson's division of Buell's corps, had landed, and was
pushing its way through the throng of pallid fugitives at the
landing to take up the battle where it had fallen from the hands
of Grant and Sherman. It got into position in time to do its
part in checking the unsupported assaults of Chalmers and Jack-
son."

General Chalmers, describing this final attack in his report,

says :

" It was then about four o'clock in the evening, and, after dis-
tributing ammunition, we received orders from General Bragg to
drive the enemy into the river. My brigade, together with that
of Brigadier-General Jackson, filed to the right and formed fac-
ing the river, and endeavored to press forward to the water's
edge ; but in attempting to mount the last ridge we were met
by a fire from a whole line of batteries, protected by infantry and
assisted by shells from the gunboats."

In a subsequent memorandum General Chalmers writes :

" One more resolute movement forward would have captured
Grant and his whole army4 and fulfilled to the letter the battle-
plan of the great Confederate general, who died in the belief that
victory was ours. . . ." — ("The Life of Gen. Albert Sidney John-
ston," p. 637.)

Brigadier-General Jackson, in his report, says :

1862] THE DEMORALIZED REMNANT OF HIS FORCES. 63

" My brigade was ordered to change direction again, face to-
ward Pittsburg, where the enemy appeared to have made his last
stand, and to advance upon him, General Chalmers's brigade be-
ing again on my right, and extending to the swamp of the Ten-
nessee River. Without ammunition, and with only their bayo-
nets to rely on, steadily my men advanced under a heavy fire
from light batteries, siege-pieces, and gunboats. Passing through
the ravine, they arrived near the crest of the opposite hill, upon
which the enemy's batteries were, but could not be urged farther
without support. Sheltering themselves against the precipitous
sides of the ravine, they remained under this fire for some time.
Finding an advance without support impracticable, remaining
there under fire useless, and believing that any further forward
movement should have been made simultaneously along our whole
line, I proceeded to obtain orders from General Withers, but,
after seeing him, was ordered by a staff-officer to retire. This
order was communicated to me as coming from General Beaure-
gard."

General Hardee, who commanded the first line, says in his
report :

" Upon the death of General Johnston, the command having
devolved upon General Beauregard, the conflict was continued
until near sunset, and the advance divisions were within a few
hundred yards of Pittsburg, where the enemy were huddled in
confusion, when the order to withdraw was received. The troops
were ordered to bivouac on the field of battle."

General Polk's report says :

" We had one hour or more of daylight still left, were within
one hundred and fifty to four hundred yards of the enemy's posi-
tion, and nothing seemed wanting to complete the most brilliant
victory of the war but to press forward and make a vigorous as-
sault on the demoralized remnant of his forces."

General Gilmer, the chief engineer of the Confederate
States Army, in a letter to Colonel William Preston Johnston,
dated September 17, 1872, writes as follows :

" It is my well-considered opinion that if your father had sur-
vived the day he would have crushed and captured General Grant's

6-1- RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

army before the setting of the sun on the 6th. In fact, at the
time your father received the mortal wound, advancing with Gen-
eral Breckinridge's command, the day was ours. The enemy hav-
ing lost all the strong positions on that memorable field, his troops
fell back in great disorder on the banks of the Tennessee. To
cover the confusion, rapid fires were opened from the gunboats
the enemy had placed in the river ; but the shots passed entirely
over our devoted men, who were exultant and eager to be led for-
ward to the final assault, which must have resulted in a complete
victory, owing to the confusion and general disorganization of the
Federal troops. I knew the condition of General Grant's army at
the moment, as I had reached a high, projecting point on the bank
of the river, about a mile above Pittsburg Landing, and could see
the hurried movements to get the disordered troops across to the
right bank. Several thousand had already passed, and a confused
mass of men crowded to the landing to get on the boats that were
employed in crossing. I rode rapidly to General Bragg's position
to report what I had seen, and suggested that, if he would sus-
pend the fire of his artillery and marshal his infantry for a general
advance, the enemy must surrender. General Bragg decided to
make the advance, and authorized me and other officers to direct
the commanders of the batteries to cease firing.

"In the midst of the preparations, orders reached General
Bragg from General Beauregard directing the troops to be with-
drawn and placed in camp for the night — the intention being to
resume the contest in the morning. This was fatal, as it enabled
General Buell and General Wallace to arrive on the scene of ac-
tion ; that is, they came up in the course of the night. Had Gen-
eral Beauregard known the condition of the enemy as your father
knew it when he received the fatal shot, the order for withdrawal
would certainly not have been given, and, without such order, I
know the enemy would have been crushed."*

To General Gilmer's opinion as a scientific engineer, a sol-
dier of long experience, and a man of resolute will as well as
calm judgment, the greatest respect will be accorded by those
who knew him in the United States Army, as well as his asso-
ciates in the Confederate Army.

General Bragg, in his official report, says :

* " The Life of Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston," pp. 635, 636.

1862] CONDITION OF THE TWO ARMIES. 65

" As soon as our troops could be again put in motion, the
order was given to move forward at all points and sweep the en-
emy from the field. . . . Our troops, greatly exhausted by twelve
hours' incessant fighting without food, mostly responded to the
order with alacrity, and the movement commenced with every
prospect of success, though a heavy battery in our front and the
gunboats on our right seemed determined to dispute every inch
of ground. Just at this time an order was received from the
commanding General to withdraw the forces beyond the enemy's
fire."

In addition to the statements and opinions cited above, I
will introduce from a recent publication by Thomas Worthing-
ton, late colonel of the Forty-sixth Regiment of Ohio Volun-
teers, two statements showing the relative condition of the two
armies in the afternoon of the day of battle. It may be proper
to say that Colonel "Worthington was regularly- educated as a
soldier, and had seen service in Mexico.

He quotes Colonel Geddes, of the Eighth Iowa Volunteers,
as follows :

" About 3 p. m. all communications with the river (landing)
ceased, and it became evident to me that the enemy was turning
the right and left flanks of our army. . . . About 2 p. m. the
whole "Union right, comprising the Forty-sixth Ohio, which had
held that flank two hours or more, was driven back in disorder,
and the Confederate flanking force cut the center off from the
landing, as stated by Colonel Geddes, soon, after General John-
ston's fall."

General Beauregard reports as follows :

" It was after 6 p. m. when the enemy's last position was car-
ried, and his force finally broke and sought refuge behind a com-
manding eminence covering Pittsburg Landing, not more than
half a mile distant, and under the guns of the gunboats, which
opened on our eager columns a fierce and annoying fire with shot
and shell of the heaviest description. Darkness was close at hand.
Officers and men were exhausted by a combat of over twelve
hours, without food, and jaded by the march of the preceding
day through mud and water ; it was, therefore, impossible to col-
52

6$ RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

lect the rich and opportune spoils of war scattered broadcast on
the field left in our possession, and impracticable to make any-
effective dispositions for their removal to the rear.

" I accordingly established my headquarters at the church of
Shiloh, in the enemy's encampment, with Major-General Bragg,
and directed our troops to sleep on their arms in such positions in
advance and rear as corps commanders should determine, hoping,
from news received by a special dispatch, that delays had been
encountered by General Buell in his march from Columbia, and
that his main forces, therefore, could not reach the field of battle
in time to save General Grant's shattered fugitives from capture
or destruction on the following day.

Such are the representations of those having the best means
of information relative to the immediate causes of the failure to
drive the enemy from his last foothold, and gain possession of
it. Some of the more remote causes of this failure may be no-
ticed. The first was the death of General Johnston, which is
thus described by his son :

" General Johnston had passed through the ordeal (the charge
upon the enemy) seemingly unhurt. His noble horse was shot in
four places ; his clothes were pierced by missiles ; his boot-sole
was cut and torn by a Minie" ball ; but, if he himself had received
any severe wound, he did not know it. At this moment Governor
Harris rode up from the right, elated with his own success, and
with the vindication of his Tennesseeans. After a few words, Gen-
eral Johnston sent him with an order to Colonel Statham, which,
having delivered, he speedily returned. In the mean time knots
and groups of Federal soldiers kept up an angry discharge of fire-
arms as they retreated upon their supports, and their last line, now
yielding, delivered volley after volley as they retreated. By the
chance of war a Minie ball from one of these did its fatal work.
As General Johnston, on horseback, sat there, knowing that he
had crushed in the arch which had so long resisted the pressure of
his forces, and waiting until they could collect sufficiently to give
the final stroke, he received a mortal wound. It came in the mo-
ment of victory and triumph from a flying foe. It smote him at
the very instant when he felt the full conviction that the day was

won. "

1862] FELL IN SIGHT OF VICTORY. (57

His wound consisted in the cutting of the artery that runs
down through* the thigh and divides at the knee, and passes
along the separate bones of the lower part of the leg. The
wound was just above the division or branch of the artery. It
was fatal only because the flow of blood was not stopped by a
tourniquet. The narrative continues :

" General Beauregard had told General Johnston that morning
as he rode off, that if it should be necessary to communicate with
him or for him to do anything, he would be found in his ambu-
lance in bed. Governor Harris, knowing this, and how feeble Gen-
eral Beauregard's health was, went first to his headquarters — just
in the rear of where the army had deployed into line the evening
before. Beauregard and his staff were gone on horseback in the
direction of Shiloh Church. He found them there. The Gov-
ernor told General Beauregard that General Johnston had been
killed. Beauregard expressed regret, and then remarked, ' Every-
thing else seems to be going on well on the right.' Governor
Harris assented. ' Then,' said Beauregard, ' the battle may as
well go on.' The Governor replied that he certainly thought it
ought. He offered his services to Beauregard, and they were
courteously accepted. General Beauregard then remained where
he was, waiting the issue of events." *

Sidney Johnston fell in sight of victory ; the hour he had
waited for, the event he had planned for, had arrived. His
fame was vindicated, but far dearer than this to his patriotic
spirit was it with his dying eyes to behold his country's flag, so
lately drooping in disaster, triumphantly advancing. In his fall
the great pillar of the Southern Confederacy was crushed, and
beneath its fragments the best hope of the Southwest lay buried.
A highly educated and richly endowed soldier, his varied experi-
ence embraced also civil affairs, and his intimate knowledge of
the country and people of the Southwest so highly qualified him
for that special command that it was not possible to fill the
place made vacant by his death. Not for the first time did the
fate of an army depend upon a single man, and the fortunes of
a country hang, as in a balance, on the achievements of a single

* u

The Life of Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston," p. 616.

68 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

army. To take an example far from us, in time and place,
when Turenne had, after months of successful manoeuvring,
finally forced his enemy into a position which gave assurance
of victory, and had marshaled his forces for a decisive battle,
he was, when making a preliminary reconnaissance, killed by a
chance shot ; then his successor, instead of attacking, retreated,
and all which the one had gained for France, the other lost.

To take another example, not quite so conclusive, it was epi-
grammatically said by Lieutenant Kingsbury, when writing of
the battle of Buena Yista, that if the last shot, fired at the close
of the second day's conflict, had killed General Taylor, the next
morning's sun would have risen upon the strange spectacle of
two armies in full retreat from each other, the field for which
they had fought being in the possession of neither. What
material consequences would have flowed from the supposed
event — how the Mexican people would have been inspired by
the retreat of our army, how far it would have brought out all
their resources for war, and to what extent results might have
been thereby affected — are speculative inquiries on a subject
from which time and circumstance have taken the interest it
once possessed.

The extracts which have been given sufficiently prove that,
when General Johnston fell, the Confederate army was so fully
victorious that, had the attack been vigorously pressed, General
Grant and his army would before the setting of the sun have
been fugitives or prisoners.

As our troops drew near to the river, the gunboats of the
enemy became ineffective, because to fire over the bank required
such elevation of the guns that the shot and shell passed high
over the heads of our men, falling far away in the rear.

General Polk described the troops in advance for that reason
as quite safe from the fire of the gunboats, though it might seem
terrible to those far in the rear, and expressed the surprise and
regret he felt at the order to retire.

Grant's army being beaten, the next step of General John-
ston's programme should have followed, the defeat of Bu-
ell's and Mitchell's forces as they successively came up, and
a return by our victorious army through Tennessee to Ken-

1862] MUST BE MATTER OF CONJECTURE. 69

tucky. The great embarrassment had been the want of good
military weapons ; these would have been largely supplied by
the conquest hoped for, and, in the light of what had occurred,
not unreasonably anticipated.

What great consequences would have ensued must be mat-
ter of conjecture, but that the people of Kentucky and Mis-
souri generously sympathized with the South was then com-
monly admitted. Our known want of preparation for war and
numerical inferiority may well have caused many to doubt
the wisdom of our effort for independence, and to these a
signal success would have been the makeweight deciding their
course.

I believe that again in the history of war the fate of an
army depended on one man ; and more, that the fortunes of a
country hung by the single thread of the life that was yielded
on the field of Shiloh. So great was my confidence in his ca-
pacity for organization and administration, that I felt, when he
was assigned to the Department of the West, that the undevel-
oped power of that region would be made sufficient not only
for its own safety, but to contribute support if need be to the
more seriously threatened East.

There have been various suppositions as to the neglect of
the wound which caused General Johnston's death. My own
opinion, founded upon the statements of those who were near
him, and upon my long acquaintance with him and close ob-
servation of him under trying circumstances, is, that his iron
nerve and extraordinary concentration of mind made him re-
gardless of his wound, in the fixed purpose to dislodge the
enemy from his last position, and, while thus struggling to com-
plete the victory within his grasp, he unheedingly allowed his
life-blood to flow away.

It often happens that men do not properly value their rich-
est gifts until taken away. Those who had erroneously and un-
justly censured Johnston, convicted of their error by the gran-
deur of his revealed character, joined in the general lamenta-
tion over his loss, and malignity even was silenced by the
devoted manner of his death. My estimation of him was based
on long and intimate acquaintance ; beginning in our youth, it

70 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

had grown with our growth without check or variation, and,
when he first arrived in Richmond, was expressed to some
friends yet living, in the wish that I had the power, by resign-
ing, to transfer to him the Presidency of the Confederate
States.

CHAPTEE XIX.

Retirement of the Army. — Remnants of Grant's Army. — Its Reinforcements. —
Strength of our Army. — Strength of Grant's Army. — Reorganization. — Corinth.
— Advance of General Halleck. — Siege of Corinth. — Evacuation. — Retreat to
Tupelo. — General Beauregard retires. — General Bragg in Command. — Positions
on the Mississippi River occupied by the Enemy. — New Madrid. — Island No.
10. — Fort Pillow. — Memphis. — Attack at Hatteras Inlet. — Expedition of the
Enemy to Port Royal. — Expeditions from Port Royal. — System of Coast De-
fenses adopted by us. — Fort Pulaski.

At the ensuing nightfall our victorious army retired from
the front and abandoned its vantage-ground on the bluffs, which
had been won at such a cost of blood. The enemy thereby had
room and opportunity to come out from their corner, reoccupy
the strong positions from which they had been driven, and dis-
pose their troops on much more favorable ground. Called off
by staff-officers, who gave no specific instructions, our brigades,
according to circumstances, bivouacked on the battle-field,
marched to the rear, or made themselves comfortable on the pro-
fuse spoils of the enemy's encampments. General Buell says :

" Of the army of not less than fifty thousand effective men,
which Grant had on the west bank of the Tennessee River, not
more than five thousand were in ranks and available on the battle-
field at nightfall on the 6th, exclusive of Lew Wallace's division,
say eight thousand five hundred men that only came up during
the night. The rest were either killed, wounded, captured, or
scattered in inextricable and hopeless confusion for miles along
the banks of the river."

In addition to the arrival of Wallace's division, the entire
divisions of Nelson and Crittenden got across the river during
the night, and by daylight that of McCook began to arrive ;

1862] A SERIES OF COMBATS ENSUED. 71

all but the first named belonged to Buell' s army. The work of
reorganization of fragments of Grant's force also occupied the
night. In the morning the arrival of reinforcements to the
enemy continued.

On the morning of the 7th the enemy advanced about six
o'clock, and opened a heavy fire of musketry and artillery, such
as gave assurance that the reinforcements had arrived, to antici-
pate which the battle of the 6th had been fought. A series of
combats ensued, in which the Confederates showed their usual
valor ; but, after the junction had been effected between Grant
and Buell, which Johnston's movement was made to prevent,
our force was unequal to resist the combined armies, and retreat
was a necessity.

The field return of the Army of Mississippi before and after
the battle of Shiloh was as follows : infantry and artillery, effec-
tive before the battle, 35,953 ; cavalry, 4,382 ; total, 40,335.
Infantry and artillery, effective after the battle, 25,555 ; cav-
alry, 4,081 ; total, 29,636. Difference, 10,699. Casualties in
battle : killed, 1,728 ; wounded, 8,012 ; missing, 959.

The effective force of General Grant's army engaged in the
battles of April 6th and 7th at Shiloh was 49,314 ; reinforce-
ments of General Buell, 21,579 ; total, 70,893. The casualties
in the battle of April 6th in Grant's force were as follows :
killed, 1,500 ; wounded, 6,634 ; missing, 3,086 ; total, 11,220 ;
leaving, for duty on the 7th, 59,673.

On April 9th Major-General H. W. Halleck left St. Louis
and proceeded to Pittsburg Landing to assume command of
the enemy's forces in the field. A reorganization was made, in
which General Grant's divisions formed the right wing, those
of General Buell the center, and those of General Pope, brought
from the west side of the Mississippi, the left wing ; and an ad-
vance on Corinth was commenced.

Corinth, the position from which our forces had advanced to
Shiloh or Pittsburg Landing, and to which they had now retired,
was a small village in the northeast corner of the State of Missis-
sippi. It was ninety miles east of Memphis and twenty or
twenty-two west of the Tennessee River. The Memphis and
Charleston Railroad ran from west to east through it, and the

72 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

Mobile and Ohio road from south to north. The country be-
tween it and the Tennessee River was quite rugged, broken
into ridges, and covered with a heavy forest. The position it-
self was flat, the water poor. Being the point at which two
principal railroads crossed, it served admirably for the concen-
tration of our forces.

Corinth was a strategic point of importance, and it was in-
tended to be held as long as circumstances would permit ; but
it was untenable in the face of a largely superior force, owing
to the ease with which the railroad communications in the rear
could be cut by the enemy's cavalry. The small streams and
contiguous flats in its front formed some obstacles which were
not passed by the enemy until after, the retreat of our army.
The defeuses were slight, consisting of rifle-pits and earthworks
of little elevation or strength.

The movement of General Halleck against this position
commenced from Pittsburg Landing on April 28th with a force
exceeding eighty-five thousand effectives. On May 3d he had
reached within eight miles of Corinth, and on the 21st his bat-
teries were within three miles. This slow progress was prob-
ably the result of a conviction that our force was very large,
rather than of the bad state of the roads. So great were his
precautions, that every night his army lay in an intrenched
camp, and by day it was assailed by skirmishers from our army
in more or less force.

General Sherman, in his report of May 30th, says :

" My division has constructed seven distinct intrenched camps
since leaving Shiloh, the men working cheerfully and well all the
time, night and day. Hardly had we finished one camp before we
were called on to move forward and build another. But I have
been delighted at this feature in the character of my division, and
take this method of making it known. Our intrenchments near
Corinth and at Russell's, each built substantially in one night, are
stronger works of art than the much-boasted forts of the enemy
at Corinth."

The line of railroad on the north and east had been cut by
the enemy, and an attempt made on the south. But so well

1862] GENERAL ATTACK NOT TO BE HAZARDED. 73

was his apprehension of our strength maintained, that he con-
tinued his intrenched approaches until within one thousand
yards of our main works.
General Sherman says :

" By 9 a. m. of the 29th our works were substantially done,
and our artillery in position, and at 4 p. m. the siege-train was
brought forward. ... So near was the enemy that we could hear
the sound of his drums and sometimes of voices in command ; and
the railroad-cars arriving and departing at Corinth were easily dis-
tinguished. For some days and nights cars have been arriving
and departing very frequently, especially in the night ; but last
night (the 29th) more so than usual, and my suspicions were
aroused. Before daybreak I instructed the brigade commanders
and the field-officer of the day to feel forward as far as possible ;
but all reported the enemy's pickets still in force in the dense
woods to our front. But about 6 a.m. a curious explosion, sound-
ing like a volley of large siege-pieces, followed by others, singly,
and in twos and threes, arrested our attention, and soon after a
large smoke arose from the direction of Corinth, when I tele-
graphed to General Halleck to ascertain the cause. He answered
that he could not explain it, but ordered me to advance my divi-
sion and feel the enemy, if still in my front. I immediately put
in motion two regiments of each brigade, by different roads, and
soon after followed with the whole division — infantry, artillery,
and cavalry. General M. L. Smith's brigade moved rapidly down
the main road, entering the first redoubt of the enemy at 7 a. m.
It was completely evacuated, and by 8 a. m. all my division was
at Corinth and beyond."

The force of General Beauregard was less than forty-five
thousand effective men. He estimated that of the enemy to
be between eighty-five and ninety thousand men. All the
troops of the enemy in reserve in Arkansas, Missouri, Ken-
tucky, and Illinois were brought forward, except the force of
Curtis, in Arkansas, and placed in front of our position. No
definite idea of their number was formed. In the opinion of
Beauregard, a general attack was not to be hazarded ; but on
May 3d an advance was made to attack the corps of General
Pope, when only one of his divisions was in position, and that

74 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

gave way so rapidly it could not be overtaken. Again, on May
9th, an advance was made, hoping to surprise the enemy. But
a division, which should have been in position at three o'clock
in the morning, or early dawn, was detained until three in the
afternoon by the mistakes of the guide. The enemy thus be-
came informed of the movement, and no surprise could be
effected. General Beauregard commenced the removal of his
sick, preparatory to an evacuation, on May 26th ; on the next
day arrangements for falling back were made, and the work
completed on the 29th. So complete was the evacuation, that
not only was the army successfully withdrawn, but also every
piece of ordnance, only a quantity of damaged ammunition
being left behind. The retreat was continued to Tupelo, with-
out any serious conflict with the enemy; but during the re-
treat seven locomotives were reported to be lost by the burning
of a bridge, and a number of cars, most of which were loaded
with stores, were ordered to be burned.

On June 14th orders were sent to General Bragg, from
Richmond, to proceed to Jackson, Mississippi, and temporarily
to assume command of the department then under command of
General Lovell. The order concluded as follows :

" After General Magruder joins, your further services there
may be dispensed with. The necessity is urgent and absolute.

"J. Davis."

On application to General Beauregard for the necessary
order, he replied :

" You can not possibly go. My health does not permit me to
remain in charge alone here. This evening my two physicians
were insisting that I should go away for one or two weeks, fur-
nishing me with another certificate for that purpose, and I had
concluded to go — intending to see you to-morrow on the subject,
and leave you in command."

The certificate of the physicians was as follows :

"Headquarters, Western Department,
" Tupelo, June U, 1862.

" We certify that, after attendance on General Beauregard
for the past four months, and treatment of his case, in our pro-

1862] EVENTS IN THE WESTERN DEPARTMENT. 75

fessional opinion he is incapacitated physically for the arduous
duties of his present command, and we urgently recommend rest
and recreation. " R. L. Brodie, Surgeon, P. A. C. S.

" Sam Choppix, Surgeon, P. A. O. S"

These facts were telegraphed to me at once by General
Bragg. Soon after, I sent a second dispatch to him, renewing
the order, and expressing my surprise that he should have hesi-
tated to obey, when the original order stated " the necessity is
urgent and absolute." Before this second dispatch was received
by General Bragg, General Beauregard had transferred the
command to him, and had departed for Bladen Springs. Gen-
eral Bragg thus describes the subsequent proceedings :

" Prepared to move, I telegraphed back to the President that
the altered conditions induced me to await his further orders. In
reply to this, I was immediately notified by telegraph of my as-
signment to the 'permanent command of the army,' and was
directed to send General Yan Dorn to execute my first instruc-
tions."

From this statement it appears — 1. That General Beaure-
gard was not, as has been alleged, harshly deprived of his com-
mand, but that he voluntarily surrendered it, after being fur-
nished with medical certificates of his physical incapacity for
its arduous duties. 2. That he did not even notify his Govern-
ment, still less ask permission to retire. 3. That the order, as-
signing another to the command he had abandoned, could not
be sent through him, when he had departed and gone to a place
where there was no telegraph, and rarely a mail. 4. That it is
neither customary nor proper to send orders to the commander
of an army through a general on sick-leave ; and in this case
it would have been very objectionable, as a similar order had
just been sent and disobeyed.

Meanwhile some other events had occurred in the Western
Department which should be mentioned. The movement of
the forces of the enemy up the Tennessee River, as has been
stated, thus flanking some of our positions on the Mississippi
River, was followed by his fitting out a naval fleet to move down
that river. This fleet, consisting of seven ironclads and one gun-

76 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

boat, ten mortar-boats, each carrying a thirteen-inch mortar, a
coal - barge, two ordnance-steamers, and two transports with
troops, left Cairo on March 14th, and arrived at Hickman that
evening. A small force of our cavalry left upon its approach.
Columbus, as has been stated, had previously been evacuated
by our forces and occupied by the enemy. In the morning the
fleet continued down toward Island No. 10. This island is situ-
ated in that bend of the river which touches the border of Ten-
nessee, a few miles further up the river than New Madrid,
although nearly southeast of that point.

In the latter part of February a large force of the enemy under
Major-General Pope left Commerce, Missouri, and moved south
about fifty miles to New Madrid, with the object of capturing
that place. Aided by the gunboats of Commander Hollins, our
small force repulsed the assaults of the enemy three times, but
such was the disparity of numbers that it soon became manifest
that our forces could not successfully hold the position, and it
was evacuated on the night of March 13th. Its defenses con-
sisted of two earthworks, in which about twenty guns were
mounted. These were spiked and rendered unfit for use.

The bombardment of Island No. 10, above described, com-
menced on March 15th, and was continued night and day. Up
to April 1st the enemy fired several thousand thirteen-inch and
rifle shells. On March 17th a general attack with five gunboats
and four mortar-boats was made, and continued nine hours,
without any serious result. Finally, the forces of the enemy
were greatly increased, and began to occupy both banks of the
river, and also the river above and below the island, when a
portion of our force retired, and about April 7th the remainder
surrendered.

The fleet, on April 12th, proceeded next ~to Fort Pillow,
about a hundred and eighty miles below Island No. 10, and a
bombardment was commenced on the next day. This was con-
tinued without effect until the night of June 4th, when both
Forts Pillow and Randolph, the latter some twelve miles below
the former, were evacuated — these positions having become
untenable in consequence of the withdrawal of our forces from
Corinth and the adjacent portion of Tennessee.

1862] THEY MANFULLY ENGAGED THE ENEMY. 77

Nothing now remained to oppose the enemy's fleet but our
gunboats at Memphis, which were, say, seventy miles farther
down the river. The gallantry and efficiency displayed by our
improvised river navy at New Madrid and Island No. 10 gave rise
to hopes scarcely justified by the number of our vessels or their
armament. Our boats had fewer guns than those of the enemy,
and they were less substantially constructed, but their officers
and crews took counsel of their country's need rather than of
their own strength. They manfully engaged the enemy, and
disabled one of his rams, but after an hour's conflict were com-
pelled to retire.

The possession of Memphis being no longer disputed, its
occupation by the enemy promptly followed.

At an early period of the war the Government of the United
States organized some naval and military expeditions, with a
view to capture our harbors, to occupy an extensive tract of
country in their vicinity, and especially to obtain possession of
a portion of our cotton-crop. The first movement of this kind
was by a fleet of naval vessels and transports which appeared
off Hatteras Inlet on August 27, 1861. This inlet is a gap in
the sandy barrier that lines the coast of North Carolina about
eighteen miles southwest of Cape Hatteras. It was the princi-
pal entrance to Pamlico Sound, a large body of water lying be-
tween the sandy beach and the mainland. The channel of the
entrance had about seven feet of water, and was protected by
two small forts constructed on the sand. Our forces were under
the command of Captain Samuel Barron, an officer of distinction,
formerly in the United States Navy. After a short bombard-
ment, which developed the strength of the enemy and his own
comparative weakness, he capitulated.

A much larger fleet of naval vessels and transports, carrying
fifteen thousand men, appeared off the harbor of Port Koyal,
South Carolina, on November 4, 1861. This harbor is situated
midway between the cities of Charleston and Savannah. It is
a broad estuary, into which flow some two or three streams, the
interlacing of which with creeks forms a group of numerous
islands. The parish, of which these are the greater part, con-
stituted the richest agricultural district in the State ; its staples

78 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

being sea-island cotton and rice. The principal defenses were
Fort "Walker, a strong earthwork on Hilton Head, and Fort
Beauregard on Philip's Island. The attack was made by the
enemy on the Tth, by a fleet consisting of eight steamers and a
sloop-of-war in tow. Some of the steamers were of the first
class, as the Wabash and the Susquehanna. The conflict con-
tinued for four hours, when the forts, because untenable, were
abandoned.

In the early part of 1862 several reconnaissances were sent
out from Port Poyal, and subsequently an expedition visited
Darien and Brunswick in Georgia, and Fernandina, Jackson-
ville, and St. Augustine in Florida. Its design was to take and
keep under control this line of seacoast, especially in Georgia.
Some small steamers and other vessels were captured, and some
ports were occupied.

The system of coast defenses which was adopted and the
preparations which had been at that time made by the Govern-
ment to resist these aggressions of the enemy should be stated.
By reference to the topography of our coast, it will be seen that,
in the State of North Carolina, are Albemarle and Pamlico
Sounds, penetrating far into the interior ; then the Cape Fear
River, connecting with the ocean by two channels, the south-
west channel being defended by a small inclosed fort and a
water-battery. On the coast of South Carolina are George-
town and Charleston Harbors. A succession of islands ex-
tends along the coast of South Carolina and Georgia, sep-
arated from the mainland by a channel which is navigable
for vessels of moderate draft from Charleston to Fernandina,
Florida. There are fewer assailable points on the Gulf than on
the Atlantic. Pensacola, Mobile, and the mouth of the Missis-
sippi were defended by works that had hitherto been regarded
as sufficiently strong to repulse any naval attack that might be
made upon them. Immediately after the bombardment of Fort
Sumter, the work of improving the seacoast defense was begun
and carried forward as rapidly as the limited means of the Gov-
ernment would permit.

The work that was now done has been so summarily and
satisfactorily described by General A. L. Long, chief of artil-

1862] DEFENSIVE WORKS ALONG THE COAST. 79

lery, in a paper contributed to the Southern Historical Society,
that I avail myself of a few extracts : *

" Roanoke Island and other points on Albemarle and Pamlico
Sounds were fortified. Batteries were established on the south-
east entrance of Cape Fear River, and the works on the south-
west entrance strengthened. Defenses were constructed at George-
town, and at all assailable points on the northeast coast of South
Carolina. The works of Charleston Harbor were greatly strength-
ened by earthworks and floating batteries. The defenses from
Charleston down the coast of South Carolina and Georgia were
confined chiefly to the islands and salient points bearing upon the
channels leading inland. Defensive works were erected at all
important points along the coast. Many of the defenses, being
injudiciously located and hastily erected, offered but little resist-
ance to the enemy when attacked. These defeats "were not sur-
prising, when we take into consideration the inexperience of the
engineers, and the long line of seacoast to be defended. As soon
as a sufficient naval force had been collected, an expedition under
the command of General B. F. Butler was sent to the coast of
North Carolina, aini captured several important points. A second
expedition, under Admiral Dupont and General Thomas TV. Sher-
man, was sent to make a descent on the coast of South Carolina.
On the 7th of November Dupont attacked the batteries that were
designed to defend Port Royal harbor, as stated above, and al-
most without resistance carried them and gained possession of
Port Royal. This is the best harbor in South Carolina, and is the
strategic key to all the South Atlantic coast. Later, Burnside
captured Roanoke Island, and established himself in eastern North
Carolina without resistance. The rapid fall of Roanoke Island
and Port Royal Harbor struck consternation into the hearts of the
inhabitants along the entire coast. The capture of Port Royal
gave to the Federals the entire possession of Beaufort Island,
which afforded a secure place of rest for the army, while the har-
bor gave a safe anchorage for the fleet. Beaufort Island almost
fills a deep indenture in the main shore, being separated the
greater part of its extent by a narrow channel, which is navigable
its entire circuit. Its northern extremity extends to within a few
miles of the Charleston and Savannah Railroad. The main road

* " Seacoast Defenses of the Carolinas and Georgia."

80 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

from Port Royal to Pocotaligo crosses the channel at this point.
The evacuation of Hilton Head, on the southwestern extremity
of Beaufort Island, followed the capture of Port Royal. This
exposed Savannah, only about twenty-five miles distant, to an
attack from that direction. At the same time, the Federals hav-
ing command of Helena Bay, Charleston was liable to be assailed
from North Edisto or Stono Inlet, and the railroad could have
been reached without opposition by the route from Port Royal to
Pocotaligo.

"Such was the state of affairs when General Lee reached
Charleston, about December 1, 1861, to assume the command of
the Department of North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. His
vigorous mind at once comprehended the situation, and, with his
accustomed energy, he met the difficulties that presented them-
selves. Directing fortifications to be constructed on the Stono
and the Edisto and the Combahee, he fixed his headquarters at
Coosawhatchee, the point most threatened, and directed defenses to
be erected opposite Hilton Head, and on the Broad and Salte-
hatchie, to cover Savannah. These were the points requiring im-
mediate attention. He superintended in person the works over-
looking the approach to the railroad from Port Royal, and soon
infused into his troops a part of his own energy. The works he
had planned rose with magical rapidity. A few days after his
arrival at Coosawhatchee, Dupont and Sherman sent their first re-
connaissance in that direction, which was met and repulsed by
shots from the newly erected batteries ; and now, whether the
Federals advanced toward the railroad or turned in the direction
of Charleston or Savannah, they were arrested by our batteries.
The people, seeing the Federals repulsed at every point, regained
their confidence, and with it their energy.

" The most important points being now secured against imme-
diate attack, the General proceeded to organize a system of sea-
coast defense different from that which had been previously
adopted. He withdrew the troops and material from those works
which had been established on the islands and salient points which
he could not defend to a strong interior line, where the effect of
the Federal naval force would be neutralized. After a careful
reconnaissance of the coast, he designated such points as he con-
sidered it necessary to fortify. The most important positions on
this extensive line were Georgetown, Charleston, Pocotaligo, Coo-

1862] THE ENEMY WOULD SOON ADVANCE. 81

sawhatchee, and Savannah. Coosawhatchee, being central, could
communicate with either Charleston or Savannah in two or three
hours by railroad, and in case of an attack they could support
each other. The positions between Coosawhatchee and Savan-
nah, and those between the former and Charleston, could be re-
enforced from the positions contiguous to them ; there was thus a
defensive relation throughout the entire line, extending from Win-
yaw Bay to the mouth of St. Mary's River, in Georgia, a distance
of about two hundred miles. These detached and supporting
works covered a most important agricultural country, and sufficed
to defend it from the smaller expeditions made against that re-
gion.

"About March 1st the gunboats of the enemy entered the Sa-
vannah River by way of the channel leading from Hilton Head.
Our naval force was too weak to dispute the possession with them,
and they thus cut off the communication of Fort Pulaski with the
city. Soon after, the enemy landed a force, under General Gill-
more, on the opposite side of the fort. By April 1st they had
powerful batteries in position, and on that day opened fire on the
fort. Having no hope of succor, Fort Pulaski, after striking a
blow for honor, surrendered with about five hundred men." *

CHAPTER XX.

Advance of General McClellan toward Centreville; his Report. — Our Forces or-
dered to the Peninsula. — Situation at Yorktown. — Siege by General McClellan.
— General Johnston assigned to Command ; his Recommendation. — Attack on
General Magruder at Yorktown. — Movements of McClellan. — The Virginia. —
General Johnston retires.— Delay at Norfolk.— Before Williamsburg.— Remark
of Hancock.— Retreat up the Peninsula.— Sub-terra Shells used.— Evacuation
of Norfolk. — Its Occupation by the Enemy.

In a previous chapter the retreat of our army from Centre-
ville has been described, and reference has been made to the
anticipation of the commanding general, J. E. Johnston, that
the enemy would soon advance to attack that position. Since
the close of the war we have gained information not at that

* General A. L. Long, in Historical Society Papers.
53

S2 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

time to us attainable, which shows that, as early as the 31st of
January, 1862, the commanding General of the enemy's forces
presented to his President an argument against that line of
operations, setting forth the advantages of a movement by
water-transports down the Chesapeake into the Rappahannock ;
and that in the following February, by the direction of Presi-
dent Lincoln, General McClellan held a council with twelve of
the generals of that army, who decided in favor of the move-
ment by way of Annapolis, and thence to the Rappahannock, to
which their President gave his assent. When General McClel-
lan, then in the city of "Washington, heard that our army had
retired, he ordered a general movement of his troops toward the
position we had lately occupied. A detachment was sent to
make reconnaissance as far as the line of the Rappahannock, by
which it was ascertained that our troops had passed beyond that
river. His account of this movement was given in the follow-
ing report :

" Fairfax Court-House, March 12, 1862, 8.30 p. m.
" I have just returned from a ride of more than forty miles.
Have examined Centreville, Union Mills, Blackburn's Ford, etc.
The rebels have left all their positions, and, from the information
obtained during our ride to-day, I am satisfied that they have
fallen behind the Rapid an, holding Fredericksburg and Gordons-
ville. Their movement from here was very sudden. They left
many wagons, some caissons, clothing, ammunition, personal bag-
gage, etc. Their winter-quarters were admirably constructed,
many not yet quite finished. The works at Centreville are for-
midable ; more so than at Manassas. Except the turnpike, the
roads are horrible. The country entirely stripped of forage and
provisions. Having fully consulted with General McDowell, I pro-
pose occupying Manassas with a portion of Banks's command, and
then at once throwing all forces I can concentrate upon the line
agreed upon last week. The Monitor justifies this course. I tel-
egraphed this morning to have the transports brought to Wash-
ington, to start from there. I presume you will approve this
course. Circumstances may keep me out here some little time
longer.* G. B. McClellan, Major- General.

" Hon. E. M. Stantox, Secretary of War."

* See "Report on the Conduct of the War," Part I, pp. 10-12, 309-311.

1862] THE ENEMY AT FORTRESS MONROE. 83

The reference to the Monitor is to be explained by the
condition previously made in connection with the proposition
of going to Fortress Monroe, that the Merrimac, our Vir-
ginia, should first be neutralized. The order to bring the
" transports " to Washington was due to the fact that they
had not dared to run by our batteries on the Potomac, and in-
tended to avoid them by going to Annapolis for embarkation.
The withdrawal of our batteries from the banks of the Poto-
mac had removed the objection to going down that river, and
the withdrawal of our forces across the Rappahannock was
fatal to the programme of landing on that river, and marching
to Richmond before our forces could be in position to resist an
attack on the capital. Notwithstanding the assurance given
that the destruction of railroads and bridges proved that our
army could not intend to advance, apprehension was still enter-
tained of an attack upon Washington.

As soon as we ascertained that the enemy was concentrating
his forces at Fortress Monroe, to advance upon our capital by
that line of approach, all our disposable force was ordered to
the Peninsula, between the James and York Rivers, to the sup-
port of General John B. Magruder, who, with a force of seven
to eight thousand men, had, by availing himself of the Warwick
River, a small stream which runs through a low, marshy coun-
try, from near Yorktown to the James River, constructed an
intrenched line across the Peninsula, and with equal skill and
intrepidity had thus far successfully checked every attempt to
break it, though the enemy was vastly superior in numbers to
the troops under General Magruder's command. Having a
force entirely inadequate to occupy and defend the whole line,
over thirteen miles long, he built dams in the Warwick River,
so as to form pools, across which the enemy, without bridges,
could not pass, and posted detachments at each dam to prevent
the use of them by attacking columns of the enemy. To de-
fend the left of his line, where the stream became too small to
present a serious obstacle to the passage of troops, redoubts were
constructed, with curtains connecting them.

Between Yorktown and Gloucester Point, on the opposite
shore, the York River is contracted to less than a mile in

84 RISE AXD FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

width, and General Magruder had constructed batteries at both
places, which, by their cross fire, presented a formidable ob-
stacle to the ascent of ordinary vessels. The fortifications at
Norfolk and the navy-yard, together with batteries at SewelFs
Point and Craney Island, in conjunction with the navy, offered
means of defense against any attempt to land troops on the
south side of James River. After the first trial of strength
with our Virginia, there had been an evident disinclination on
the part of the enemy's vessels to encounter her, so that, as long
as she floated, the deep water of the roads and mouth of James
River was not likely to be invaded by ships of war.

As a second line of defense, a system of detached works had
been constructed by General Magruder near to "Williamsburg,
where the width of the Peninsula, available for the passage of
troops, was only three or four miles. The advantage thus se-
cured to his forces, if they should be compelled to retreat, will
be readily appreciated. I am not aware that torpedoes had been
placed in York River to prevent the entrance of the enemy's
vessels ; indeed, at that time, but little progress had been made
in the development of that means of harbor and river defense.
General Rains, as will be seen hereafter, had matured his inven-
tion of sensitive fuse-primers for sub-terra shells, and proposed
their use for floating torpedoes. Subsequently he did much
to advance knowledge in regard to making torpedoes efficient
against the enemy's vessels.

Such was the condition of the Virginia Peninsula between
the York and James Rivers when General McClellan embarked
the mass of the army he commanded in northern Virginia and
proceeded to Fortress Monroe ; and when the greater part of
our army, under the command of General J. E. Johnston, was
directed to move for the purpose of counteracting this new
plan of the enemy.

Early in April, General McClellan had landed about one
hundred thousand men at or near Fortress Monroe.* At this
time General Magruder occupied the lower Peninsula with his
force of seven or eight thousand men. Marshes, creeks, and

* See " Report on the Conduct of the War," p. 319. Letter of President Lin-
coln to General McClellan, April 6, 1862.

1862] ADVANCE UP THE PENINSULA. 85

dense wood gave to that position such advantage that, in his
report, made at a subsequent period, he expressed the belief that
with twenty or twenty-live thousand men he could have held
it against any supposable attack. When McClellan advanced
with his immense army, Magruder fell back to the line of War-
wick River, which has been imperfectly described, and there
checked the enemy ; and the vast army of invasion, repulsed in
several assaults by the most heroic conduct of our troops, com-
menced a siege by regular approaches. After the first advance
of the enemy, General Magruder was reenforced by some troops
from the south side of James River and General Wilcox's bri-
gade, which had been previously detached from the army under
General Johnston. On the 9th of April General Magruder' s
command, thus reenforced, amounted to about twelve thousand.
On that day General Early joined with his division from the
Army of Northern Virginia. It had gone by rail to Richmond
and thence down the York and James Rivers in vessels towed
by tugs — except the trains and -artillery, which moved by land.
This division had about eight thousand officers and men for
duty. General Magruder's force was thus increased to about
twenty thousand. This was the first detachment from the Army
of Northern Yirginia which arrived on the Peninsula.

General McClellan, in a cipher dispatch of the 7th of April,
two days previous, informed Secretary Stanton that prisoners
stated that General J. E. Wharton (no doubt, Johnston) had the
day before arrived in Yorktown with strong reinforcements,
and adds: "It seems clear that I shall have the whole force
of the enemy on my hands, probably not less than one hun-
dred thousand men, and possibly more. . . . When my pres-
ent command all joins, I shall have about eighty-five thousand
men for duty, from which a large force must be taken for
guards, escort, etc." After some remarks about the strength
of our intrenchments, and his conviction that the great battle
which would decide the existing contest would be fought there,
he urges as necessary for his success that there should be an
attack on the rear of Gloucester Point, and adds : " My pres-
ent strength will not admit of a detachment for this purpose
without materially impairing the efficiency of this column.

86 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

Commodore Goldsborough thinks the work too strong for his
available vessels, unless I can turn Gloucester." *

In the cipher dispatch of the 7th of April to President Lin-
coln, General McClellan acknowledges a telegram of the pre-
vious day, and adds, " In reply, I have the honor to state that
my entire force for duty only amounts to about eighty-five
thousand men." f He then mentions the fact that General
"Wool's command is not under his orders, etc.

Subsequent correspondence clearly shows that General Mc-
Clellan would not risk making a detachment from his army to
turn the position at Gloucester Point, and that the navy would
not attempt to operate against the battery at that place. He
therefore urgently pressed for reenforcements to act on the
north side of York River.

General Magruder had, up to and after the time of receiving
the reenforcements before mentioned, worked day and night in
constructing and strengthening his defenses. His small force
had been assisted in this work by a considerable body of negro
laborers, and an active participant and competent judge, General
Early, thus wrote of his conduct :

" The assuming and maintaining this line by Magruder, with
his small force, in the face of such overwhelming odds, was one
of the boldest exploits ever performed by a military commander ;
and he had so manoeuvred his troops, by displaying them rapidly
at different points, as to produce the impression on his opponent
that he had a large army."

As soon as it was definitely ascertained that General McClel-
lan, with his main army, was on the Peninsula, General J. E.
Johnston was assigned to the command of the Department of
the Peninsula and Norfolk, and directed to proceed thither
to examine the condition of affairs there. After spending
a day on General Magruder's defensive line, he returned to
Richmond, and recommended the abandonment of the Penin-
sula, and that we should take a defensive position nearer to
Richmond. The question wras postponed, and an appointment
made for its discussion, to which I proposed to invite the Sec-

* "Report on the Conduct of the War," Part I, p. 320. f Ibid., p. 321.

1862] THE PLAN ANNOUNCED AND DISCUSSED. 87

retaiy of War, General Randolph, and General Lee, then sta-
tioned in Richmond, and in general charge of army operations.
General Johnston asked that he might invite General Long-
street and General G. W. Smith to be present, to which I as-
sented.

At this meeting, General Johnston announced his plan to
be, the withdrawal of General Magruder's troops from the Pen-
insula, and of General Huger's from Norfolk, to be united with
the main body of the Army of Northern Virginia, and the
withdrawal of the troops from South Carolina and Georgia, his
belief being that General Magruder's line was indefensible with
the forces we could concentrate there ; that the batteries at
Gloucester Point could not be maintained; that the enemy
would turn the position at Yorktown by ascending the York
.River, if the defensive line there should possibly be main-
tained. To this plan the Secretary of War objected, because
the navy-yard at Norfolk offered our best if not our only op-
portunity to construct in any short time gunboats for coastwise
and harbor defense. General Lee, always bold in his views
and unusually sagacious in penetrating the designs of the ene-
my, insisted that the Peninsula offered great advantages to a
smaller force in resisting a numerically superior assailant, and,
in the comprehensive view which he usually took of the ne-
cessities of other places than the one where he chanced to be,
objected to withdrawing the troops from South Carolina and
Georgia, as involving the probable capture of Charleston and
Savannah. By recent service in that section he was well in-
formed as to the condition of those important ports. General
G. "W. Smith, as well as I remember, was in full accord with
General Johnston, and General Longstreet partially so.

After hearing fully the views of the several officers named,
I decided to resist the enemy on the Peninsula, and, with the
aid of the navy, to hold Norfolk and keep the command of the
James River as long as possible. Arrangements were made,
with such force as our means permitted, to occupy the country
north of Richmond, and the Shenandoah Valley, and, with the
rest of General Johnston's command, to make a junction with
General Magruder to resist the enemy's forces on the Penin-

88 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

sula. Though General J. E. Johnston did not agree with this
decision, he did not ask to be relieved, and I had no wish to
separate him from the troops with whom he was so intimately
acquainted, and whose confidence I believed he deservedly pos-
sessed.

To recur to General Magruder : soon after the landing of the
enemy, skirmishes commenced with our forces, and the first vig-
orous attempt was made to break the line at Lee's Mills, where
there were some newly constructed defenses. The enemy was so
signally repulsed that he described them as very strong works,
and thereafter commenced the construction of parallels and regu-
lar approaches, having an exaggerated idea as well of the number
of our troops as of the strength of our works at that time. Gen-
eral Magruder, in his report, notices a serious attempt to break
his line of the Warwick at Dam No. 1, about the center of the
line, and its weakest point. Opening with a heavy bombard-
ment at nine in the morning, which continued until three p. m.,
heavy masses of infantry then commenced to deploy, and, with
musketry-fire, were thrown forward to storm our six-pounder
battery, which had been effectively used, and was the only artil-
lery we had there in position. A portion of the column charged
across the dam, but Brigadier-General Howell Cobb met the
attack with great firmness, the enemy was driven with the
bayonet from some of our rifle-pits of which he had gained
possession, and the assaulting column recoiled with loss from
the steady fire of our troops.

The enemy's skirmishers pressed closely in front of the re-
doubts on the left of our line, and with their long-range rifles
had a decided advantage over our men, armed with smooth-bore
muskets. In addition to the rifle-pits they dug, they were cov-
ered by a dwelling-house and a large peach-orchard which ex-
tended to within a few hundred yards of our works. On the
11th of April General Magruder ordered sorties to be made
from all the main points of his line. General Wilcox sent out
a detachment from Wynne's Mill which encountered the ad-
vance of the enemy in his front and drove it back to the main
line. Later in the day General Early sent out from Redoubt
No. 5 Colonel Ward's Florida regiment and the Second Mis-

1862] THE ASSAULT ON YORKTOWN. 89

sissippi Battalion, under Colonel Taylor. They drove the
sharpshooters from their rifle-pits and pursued them to the
main road from Warwick Court-House, encountered a battery
posted at an earthwork, and compelled it precipitately to re-
tire. On the approach of a large force of the enemy's infantry,
Colonel Ward returned to our works, after having set fire to
the dwelling-house above mentioned. These affairs developed
the fact that the enemy was in strong force, both in front of
Wynne's Mill and Redoubts Nos. 4 and 5. On the next night
General Early sent out Colonel Terry's Virginia regiment to
cut down the peach-orchard and burn the rest of the houses
which had afforded shelter to the assailants ; and on the succeed-
ing night Colonel McRae, with his North Carolina regiment,
went further to the front and felled the cedars along the main
road which partially hid the enemy's movements, and subse-
quently our men were not annoyed by the sharpshooters. About
the middle of April a further reenforcement of two divisions
from the Army of Northern Virginia was added to our forces
on the Peninsula, which amounted, when General Johnston as-
sumed command, to something over fifty thousand.

The work of strengthening the defenses was still continued.
On the 16 th of April an assault was made on our line, to the
right of Yorktown, which was repulsed with heavy loss to the
enemy, and such serious discomfiture that henceforward his
plan seemed to be to rely upon bombardment, for which numer-
ous batteries were prepared.

The views of the enemy, as revealed by the testimony before
the Committee on the Conduct of the War, were that he could
gain possession of Gloucester Point only by reinforcements oper-
ating on the north side of York River, or by the previous reduc-
tion of Yorktown. In addition to the answer given by General
McClellan, I quote from the testimony of General Keyes. He
said, " The possession of Gloucester Point by the enemy re-
tarded the taking of Yorktown, and it also enabled the enemy
to close the river at that point," and added, " Gloucester must
have fallen upon our getting possession of Yorktown, and the
York River would then have been open." *

* " Report on the Conduct of the War," Part I, pp. 601, 602.

90 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

With the knowledge possessed by us, General McClellan
certainly might have sent a detachment from his army which,
after crossing the York River, could have turned the position
at Gloucester Point and have overcome our small garrison at
that place ; but this is but one of the frequent examples of war
in which the immunity of one army is derived from the mis-
takes of the other.

An opinion has existed among some of our best-informed
officers that Franklin's division was kept on transports for the
purpose of landing on the north side of York River to capture
our battery at Gloucester Point, and thus open the wray to turn
our position by ascending the York River. Upon the authority
of Swinton, the fairest and most careful of- the Northern writ-
ers on the war, it appears that Franklin's division had disem-
barked before the evacuation of Yorktown; and, upon the
authority of the Prince de Joinville, serving on the staff of
General McClellan, it appears that his commanding general was
not willing to intrust that service to a single division, and plain-
tively describes the effect produced by the refusal of President
Lincoln to send McDowell's corps to reenforce McClellan. He
writes thus :

" The news was received by the Federal army with dissatisfac-
tion, although the majority could not then foresee the deplorable
consequences of an act performed, it must be supposed, with no
evil intention, but with inconceivable recklessness. ... It was
the mainspring removed from a great work already begun. It
deranged everything. Among the divisions of the corps of Mc-
Dowell, there was one — that of Franklin — which was regretted
more than all the rest. . . . He [the commander-in-chief] held it
in great esteem, and earnestly demanded its restoration. It was
sent back to him without any explanation, in the same manner as
it had been withheld. This splendid division, eleven thousand
strong, arrived, and for a moment the commander thought of in-
trusting to it alone the storming of Gloucester, but the idea was
abandoned."

On the 28th of April General J". E. Johnston wrote to Flag-
Officer Tatnall, commanding the naval forces in the James Riv-
er, requesting him, if practicable, to proceed with the Virginia

1862] ANSWER TO AN UNGENEROUS COMPLAINT. 91

to York River for the purpose of destroying the enemy's trans-
ports, to which Commodore Tatnall replied that it could only
be done in daylight, when he would be exposed to the fire of
the forts, and have to contend with the squadron of men-of-war
stationed below them, and that, if this should be safely done,
according to the information derived from the pilots, it would
not be possible for the Virginia to reach the enemy's transports
at Poquosin, while the withdrawal of the Virginia would be to
abandon the defense of Norfolk, and to remove the obstacles
she opposed to " the enemy's operations in the James River." *

Meanwhile, the brilliant movements of the intrepid Jackson
created such apprehension of an attack upon Washington City
by the Army of the Shenandoah, that President Lincoln refused
the repeated requests of General McClellan to send him Mc-
Dowell's corps to operate on the north side of the York River
against our battery at Gloucester Point.

On the 28th of the following June, Mr. Lincoln, noticing
what he regarded as ungenerous complaint, wrote to General
McClellan : " If you have had a drawn battle or a repulse,
it is the price we pay for the enemy not being in "Washington.
We protected Washington, and the enemy concentrated on
you." f

The month of April was cold and rainy, and our men poorly
provided with shelter, and with only the plainest rations ; yet,
under all these discomforts, they steadily labored to perfect the
defenses, and, when they were not on the front line, were con-
stantly employed in making traverses and epaulments in the
rear. Whether General McClellan, under the pressure from
Washington, would have made an early assault, J or have ad-
hered to the policy of regular approaches, and, relying on his
superiority in artillery, have waited to batter our earthworks in
breach, and whether all which had been done, or which it was

* " Life of Commodore Tatnall," pp. 166, 167.

f " Report on the Conduct of the War," p. 340.

X On April 6, 1862, President Lincoln wrote to General McClellan as follows :
" You now have over one hundred thousand troops with you, independent of Gen-
eral Wool's command. I think you had better break the enemy's line from York-
town to Warwick River at once. They will probably use time as advantageously as
you can."— (" Report on the Conduct of the War," pp. 319, 320.)

92 EISE AXD FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

practicable under the circumstances to do, to strengthen the
main line would have made it sufficiently strong to resist the
threatened bombardment, is questionable ; and how soon that
bombardment would have commenced is now indeterminate. A
telegram from President Lincoln to General McClellan is sug-
gestive on this point. It reads thus :

" Washington, May i, 1862.
" Your call for Parrott guns from Washington alarms me —
chiefly because it argues indefinite procrastination. Is anything
to be done ? " *

By the following telegram sent by me to General J. E. John-
ston, commanding at Yorktown, the contents of that which I
had received from him, and of which I am not now possessed,
will be readily inferred :

" Richmond, Virginia, May 1, 1862.
" General J. E. Johnston, Yorktown, Virginia.

"Accepting your conclusion that you must soon retire, ar-
rangements are commenced for the abandonment of the navy-
yard and removal of public property both from Norfolk and Pen-
insula. Your announcement to-day that you would withdraw
to-morrow night takes us by surprise, and must involve enormous
losses, including unfinished gunboats. "Will the safety of your
army allow more time ?

"Jefferson Davis."

My next step was to request the Secretary of War, General
Randolph, and the Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Mallory, to pro-
ceed to Yorktown and Norfolk to see whether the evacuation
could not be postponed, and to make all practicable arrange-
ments to remove the machinery, material, ordnance, and sup-
plies for future use. At the suggestion of the Secretary of War,
I agreed that he should first go with the Secretary of the Navy
to Norfolk and thence pass over to Yorktown.

On the next morning they left for Norfolk. General Ran-
dolph, in his testimony before a joint special committee of the
Confederate Congress, said :

* " Report on the Conduct of the War," p. 324.

1862] REMOVAL OF STORES FROM NORFOLK. 93

"A few hours after we arrived in Norfolk, an officer from
General Johnston's army made his appearance, with an order for
General Huger to evacuate Norfolk immediately. ... As that
would have involved heavy losses in stores, munitions, and arms,
I took the responsibility of giving General Huger a written order
to delay the evacuation until he could remove such stores, muni-
tions, and arms as could be carried off. ... Mr. Mallory was with
me and gave similar instructions to the commandant of the navy-
yard. . . . The evacuation was delayed for about a week. . . .
When the council of war met [the conference with the President
heretofore referred to], it was supposed that, if the enemy assaulted
our army at the Warwick River line, we should defeat them ; but
that, if instead of assaulting they made regular approaches to
either flank of the line and took advantage of their great superior-
ity of heavy artillery, the probability would be that one flank or
both of the army would be uncovered, and thus the enemy, as-
cending the York and James Rivers in transports, could turn the
flank of the army and compel it to retreat. . . . They made
regular approaches, mounted the largest-sized guns, such as we
could not compete with, and made the position of Yorktown
untenable. Nearly all of our heavy rifled guns burst during the
siege. The remainder of the heavy guns were in the water-bat-
teries," etc.

The permanent occupation of Norfolk after our army with-
drew from the lower Peninsula and the enemy possessed it
was so obviously impossible as not to require explanation;
but, while the enemy was engaged in the pursuit of our re-
treating columns, it was deemed justifiable to delay the evac-
uation of Norfolk for the purposes indicated in the above
answer of the Secretary of War. The result justified the de-
cision.

The order for the withdrawal of the army from the line
of the Warwick River on the night of the 2d of April was
delayed until the next night, because, as I have been informed,
some of the troops were not ready to move. Heavy cannonad-
ing, both on the night of the 2d and 3d, concealed the fact of
the purpose to withdraw, and the evacuation was made so suc-
cessfully, as appears by the testimony before the United States

94 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War, that the
enemy was surprised the next morning to find the lines unoc-
cupied.

The loss of public property, as was anticipated, was great,
the steamboats expected for its transportation not having ar-
rived before the evacuation was made. From a narrative by
General Early I make the following extract :

" A very valuable part of the property so lost, and which we
stood much in need of, consisted of a very large number of picks
and spades, many of them entirely new. All of our heavy guns,
including some recently arrived and not mounted, together with
a good deal of ammunition piled up on the wharf, had to be left
behind."

The land transportation was quite deficient. General Ma-
gruder's troops had scarcely any, and others of the more recent
organizations were in a like condition ; as no supplies had been
accumulated at Williamsburg, this want of transportation would
necessarily involve want of rations in the event of delays on the
retreat.

At Williamsburg, about twelve miles from Yorktown, Gen-
eral Magruder, as has been mentioned, had constructed a line of
detached works. The largest of these, Fort Magruder, was con-
structed at a point a short distance beyond where the Lee's Mill
and Yorktown roads united, and where the enemy in his pur-
suit first encountered our retiring forces, and were promptly
repulsed. General Magruder, whose arduous service and long
exposure on the Peninsula has been noticed, was compelled by
illness to leave his division. His absence at this moment was
the more to be regretted, as it appears that the positions of the
redoubts he had constructed were not all known to the com-
manding General, and some of them being unoccupied were
seized by the enemy, and held subsequently to our disadvantage.
General McClellan, in his official report from "bivouac in
front of Williamsburg, May 5, 1862," says, " General Hancock
has taken two redoubts and repulsed Early's rebel brigade by a
real charge of the bayonet, taking one colonel and one hundred
and fifty other prisoners," etc. As this is selected for the bril-

1862] A CHARGE UPON THE ENEMY. 95

liant event in the affair before Williamsburg, I will extract

fully from General Early's report :

" Lynchburg, June 9, 1862.
" In accordance with orders received the evening before, my
brigade was in readiness to take up the line of march from its
camp west of Williamsburg toward Richmond on the 5th of
May. ... I was directed by Major-General D. H. Hill not to
move my infantry, and in a short time I was ordered by him to
march back, and report with my regiments to Major-General
Longstreet at Williamsburg. . . . Between three and four o'clock,
p. m., I was ordered by General Longstreet to move to the support
of Brigadier-General Anderson of his division, at or near Fort
Magruder. . . . Before my command had proceeded far toward
its destination, I received an order from General Longstreet to
send him two regiments. . . . With the remainder of my com-
mand, being my brigade proper, I proceeded, as near as practica-
ble, to the position designated by General Longstreet on the left
and rear of Fort Magruder. ... In a short time Major-General
Hill arrived, and, having ascertained that the enemy had a battery
in front of us, he informed me that he wished me to attack and
capture the battery with my brigade, but before doing so he must
see General Longstreet on the subject. . . . General Hill being on
the right and accompanying the brigade, I placed myself on the
left with the Twenty-fourth Virginia Regiment for the purpose of
directing its movements, as I was satisfied from the sound of the
enemy's guns that this regiment would come directly on the bat-
tery. ... In an open field, in view of Fort Magruder, at the end
farthest from the fort, the enemy had taken position with a bat-
tery of six pieces . . . supported by a brigade of infantry under
the command of Brigadier-General Hancock. In this field were
two or three redoubts, previously built by our troops, of one, at
least, of which the enemy had possession, his artillery being posted
in front of it, near some farmhouses, and supported by a body of
infantry, the balance of the infantry being in the redoubt, and in
the edge of the woods close by. The Twenty -fourth Virginia Regi-
ment, as I had anticipated, came directly upon the battery. . . .
This regiment, without pausing or wavering, charged upon the
enemy under a heavy fire, and drove back his guns and the infan-
try supporting them to the cover of the redoubt. ... I sent
orders to the other regiments to advance ; these orders were an-

96 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

ticipated by Colonel McRae of the Fifth North Carolina Regiment,
who was on the extreme right of my brigade, and marched down
to the support of the Twenty-fourth, traversing the whole front
that should have been occupied by the other two regiments."

General Early, having received a severe wound, soon after
the Twenty-fourth Virginia Regiment charged the battery, was
compelled by exhaustion from loss of blood and intense pain to
leave the field just as the Fifth North Carolina Regiment, led
by its gallant colonel, charged on the enemy's artillery and
infantry. Of that charge General Early writes :

"This North Carolina Regiment, in conjunction with the
Twenty-fourth Virginia Regiment, made an attack upon the vastly
superior forces of the enemy, which for its gallantry is unsur-
passed in the annals of warfare : their conduct was such as to
elicit from the enemy himself the highest praise."

This refers to the chivalric remark made by General Han-
cock to Dr. Cullen, left in charge of our wounded, viz., " The
Fifth North Carolina and Twenty-fourth Virginia deserve to
have the word immortal inscribed on their banners." Colonel
McRae, who succeeded to the command after General Early
retired, states in his report that he sent to General Hill for re-
enforcements in order to advance, and in reply received an order
to retire : that his men were holding the enemy to his shelter
in such way that they were not at all suffering, but, wThen he
commenced retiring, the enemy rose and fired upon his men,
doing the greatest damage that was done. Some of them ob-
liqued too far to the right in going back, and met a regiment of
the enemy concealed in the woods, and were thus captured.
General Early writes : " The two regiments that united in the
assault were not repulsed at all. They drove the enemy to the
cover of the redoubt and the shelter of the woods near it, where
he was held at bay by my two regiments, which had suffered
comparatively little at that time." He confidently expresses the
opinion that, had his attack been supported promptly and vigor-
ously, the enemy's force there engaged must have been captured,
as it had crossed over to that point on a narrow mill-dam, and
had only that way to escape.

1862] OUR FORCE AT WILLIAMSBURG. 97

The claim of the enemy to have achieved a victory at Wil-
liamsburg is refuted by the fact that our troops remained in
possession of the field during the night, and retired the next
morning to follow up the retreat, which was only interrupted
by the necessity of checking the enemy until our trains could
proceed far enough to be out of danger. The fact of our
wounded being left at Williamsburg was only due to our want
of ambulances in which to remove them.

Though General McClellan at this time estimated our force
as " probably greater a good deal " than his own, the fact is, it
was numerically less than half the number he had for duty.
Severe exposure and fatigue must, by sickness, have diminished
our force more than it was increased by absentees returning to
duty after the middle of April, so that at the end of the month
the number was probably less than fifty thousand present for
duty. General McClellan's report on the 30th of April, 1862,
as shown by the certified statement, gives the aggregate present
for duty at one hundred and twelve thousand three hundred
and ninety-two.*

When the Confederates evacuated Yorktown, General Frank-
lin's division had just been disembarked from the transports.
It was reembarked, and started on the morning of the 6th up
the York River.f

After the battle of Williamsburg our army continued its
retreat up the Peninsula. Here, for the first time, sub-terra
shells were employed to check a marching column. The event
is thus described by General Rains, the inventor :

" On the day we left Williamsburg, after the battle, we worked
hard to get our artillery and some we had captured over the
sloughs about four miles distant. On account of the tortuous
course of the road, we could not bring a single gun to bear upon
the enemy who were pursuing us, and shelling the road as they
advanced. Fortunately, we found in a mud-hole a broken-down
ammunition-wagon containing five loaded shells. Four of these,
armed with a sensitive fuse-primer, were planted in our rear, near
some trees cut down as obstructions to the road. A body of the

* " Report on the Conduct of the War," pp. 323, 324.
f "Army of the Potomac," Swinton, p. 117.
54

98 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

enemy's cavalry came upon these sub-terra shells, and they ex-
ploded with terrific effect.

" The force behind halted for three days, and finally turned off
from the road, doubtless under the apprehension that it was mined
throughout. Thus our rear was relieved of the enemy. No sol-
dier will march over mined land, and a corps of sappers, each man
having two ten-inch shells, two primers, and a mule to carry them,
could stop any army."

Accounts, contemporaneously published at the North, repre-
sent the terror inspired by these shells, extravagantly describe
the number of them, and speak of the necessity of leaving the
road to avoid them.

The next morning after the battle of the 5th, at Williams-
burg, Longstreet's and D. H. Hill's divisions, being those there
engaged, followed in the line of retreat, Stuart's cavalry mov-
ing after them — they marched that day about twelve miles. In
the mean time Franklin's division had gone up the York River,
and landed a short distance belowr West Point, on the south
side of York River, and moved into a thick wood in the direc-
tion of the New Kent road, thus threatening the flank of our
line of march. Two brigades of General G. W. Smith's divis-
ion, Hampton's and Hood's, were detached under the command
of General Whiting to dislodge the enemy, which they did
after a short conflict, driving him through the wood to the
protection of his gunboats in York River.

On the next morning the rear divisions joined those in ad-
vance at Barhamsville, and the retreat of the whole army was
resumed — Smith's and Magruder's divisions moving by the
New Kent Court-House to the Baltimore Cross Roads, and
Longstreet's and Hill's to the Long Bridge, where the whole
army remained in line facing to the east for five days.

The retreat had been successfully conducted. In the prin-
cipal action, that at Williamsburg, our forces, after General
Hill's division had been brought back to the support of Gen-
eral Longstreet, did not exceed, probably was not equal to, one
half that of the enemy. Yet, as has been seen, the position
was held as long as was necessary for the removal of our trains,
and our troops slept upon the field of battle. The loss of

1862] GALLANT OFFICERS LOST BY US. 99

the enemy greatly exceeded our own, which was about twelve
hundred ; while General Hooker, commanding one division of
the Federal army, in his testimony stated the loss in his division
to have been seventeen hundred.*

Among the gallant and much regretted of those lost by us,
was Colonel Ward, of Florida, whose conduct at Yorktown
has been previously noticed, and of whom General Early, in his
report of the battle of Williamsburg, says :

" On the list of the killed in the Second Florida Regiment is
found the name of its colonel, George T. Ward, as true a gentle-
man and as gallant a soldier as has drawn a sword in this war, and
whose conduct under fire it was my fortune to witness on another
occasion. His loss to his regiment, to his State, and to the Con-
federacy can not be easily compensated."

Colonel Ward, with his regiment, had been detached from
General Early's command in the early part of the action. I
regret that I have not access to the report of General Long-
street, where, no doubt, may also be found due notice of Colo-
nel Christopher Mott, whom I knew personally. In his youth
he served in the regiment commanded by me during the war
with Mexico. He was brave, cheerful, prompt, and equal to
every trial to which he was subjected, giving early promise of
high soldierly capacity. He afterward held various places of
honor and trust in civil life, and there were many in Mississippi
who, like myself, deeply lamented his death in the height of
his usefulness.

General Huger, commanding at Norfolk, and Captain Lee,
commanding the navy-yard, by the authority of the Secretaries
of War and Navy, delayed the evacuation of both, as stated
by General Randolph, Secretary of War, for about a week after
General Johnston sent orders to General Huger to leave imme-
diately. While he was employed in removing the valuable
stores and machinery, as we learn from the work of the Comte
de Paris, President Lincoln and his Secretary of War arrived
at Fortress Monroe, and on the 8th of May an expedition

* «

Report on the Conduct of the War," p. 579.

100 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

against Norfolk by the troops under General Wool was con-
templated. He writes :

" Being apprised by the columns of smoke which rose on the
horizon that the propitious moment had arrived, Wool proposed
to the President to undertake an expedition against Norfolk. Max
Weber's brigade was speedily embarked, and, to protect his de-
scent, Commodore Goldsborough's fleet was ordered to escort it.
But the Confederate batteries, not yet having been abandoned,
fired a few shots in reply, while the Virginia, which, since the
wounding of the brave Buchanan, had been commanded by Com-
modore Tatnall, showed her formidable shell, and the expedition
was countermanded. Two more days were consumed in waiting.
Finally, on the morning of the 10th, Weber disembarked east of
Sewell's Point. This time the enemy's artillery was silent. There
was found an intrenched camp mounting a few guns, but abso-
lutely deserted. General Wool reached the city of Norfolk,
which had been given up to its peaceful inhabitants the day pre-
vious, and hastened to place a military governor there." *

Reposing on these cheaply won laurels, the expedition re-
turned to Fortress Monroe, leaving Brigadier-General Viele,
with some troops brought from the north side of the river, to
hold the place. The navy-yard and workshops had been set on
fire before our troops withdrew, so as to leave little to the
enemy save the glory of capturing an undefended town. The
troops at Fortress Monroe were numerically superior to the
command of General Huger, and could have been readily com-
bined, with the forces at and about Roanoke Island, for a forward
movement on the south side of the James River. In view of
this probability, General Huger, with the main part of his
force, was halted for a time at Petersburg, but, as soon as it was
ascertained that no preparations were being made by the enemy
for that campaign, so palpably advantageous to him, General
Huger's troops were moved to the north side of the James
River to make a junction with the army of General Johnston.

Previously, detachments had been sent from the force with-
drawn from Norfolk to strengthen the command of Brigadier-

s * " History of the Civil War in America," Comtc de Paris, vol. ii, p. 30.

1862] HIS PLANS AND EXPECTATIONS. 101

General J. E. Anderson, who was placed in observation before
General McDowell, then at Fredericksburg, threatening to ad-
vance with a force four or five times as great as that under
General Anderson, and another detachment had been sent to
the aid of Brigadier-General Branch, who, with his brigade,
had recently been brought up from North Carolina and sent
forward to Gordonsville, for the like purpose as that for which
General Anderson was placed near Fredericksburg.

CHAPTER XXI.

A New Phase to our Military Problem. — General Johnston's Position. — Defenses of
James River. — Attack on Fort Drury. — Johnston crosses the Chickahominy. —
Position of McClellan. — Position of McDowell. — Strength of Opposing Forces.
— Jackson's Expedition down the Shenandoah Valley. — Panic at Washington
and the North. — Movements to intercept Jackson. — His Rapid Movements. — Re-
pulses Fremont. — Advance of Shields. — Fall of Ashby. — Port Republic, Battle
of. — Results of this Campaign.

The withdrawal of our army to the Chickahominy, the
abandonment of Norfolk, the destruction of the Virginia, and
opening of the lower James Eiver, together with the fact that
McClellan's army, by changing his base to the head of York
Eiver, was in a position to cover the approach to Washington,
and thus to remove the objections which had been made to send-
ing the large force, retained for the defense of that city, to
make a junction with McClellan, all combined to give a new
phase to our military problem.

Soon after, General Johnston took position on the north side
of the Chickahominy ; accompanied by General Lee, I rode out
to his headquarters in the field, in order that by conversation
with him we might better understand his plans and expecta-
tions. He came in after we arrived, saying that he had been
riding around his lines to see how his position could be im-
proved. A long conversation followed, which was so incon-
clusive that it lasted until late in the night, so late that we re-
mained until the next morning. As we rode back to Eichmond,

102 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

reference was naturally made to the conversation of the previous
evening and night, when General Lee confessed himself, as I
was, unable to draw from it any more definite purpose than that
the policy was to improve his position as far as practicable, and
wait for the enemy to leave his gunboats, so that an opportunity
might be offered to meet him on the land.

In consequence of the opening of the James River to the
enemy's fleet, the attempts to utilize this channel for transpor-
tation, so as to approach directly to Richmond, soon followed.
We had then no defenses on the James River below Drury's
Bluff, about seven miles distant from Richmond. There an
earthwork had been constructed and provided with an armament
of four guns. Rifle-pits had been made in front of the fort,
and obstructions had been placed in the river by driving piles,
and sinking some vessels. The crew of the Virginia, after her
destruction, had been sent to this fort, which was then in charge
of Commander Farrand, Confederate States Navy.

On the 15th of April the enemy's fleet of five ships of war,
among the number, their much-vaunted Monitor, took position
and opened fire upon the fort between seven and eight o'clock.
Our small vessel, the Patrick Henry, was lying above the ob-
struction, and cooperated with the fort in its defense — the
Monitor and ironclad Galena steamed up to about six hundred
yards' distance ; the others, wooden vessels, were kept at long
range.

The armor of the flag-ship Galena was badly injured, and
many of the crew killed or wounded. The Monitor was struck
repeatedly, but the shot only bent her plates. At about eleven
o'clock the fleet abandoned the attack, returning discomfited
whence they came. The commander of the Monitor, Lieuten-
ant Jeffers, in his report, says that " the action was most gal-
lantly fought against great odds, and with the usual effect against
earthworks." . . . He adds, " It was impossible to reduce such
works, except with the aid of a land force." The enemy in
their reports recognized the efficiency of our fire by both artil- •
lery and riflemen, the sincerity of which was made manifest in
the failure to renew the attempt.

The small garrison at Fort Drury, only adequate to the ser-

1862J AN UNEXPECTED MOVEMENT. 103

vice it had performed, that of repelling an attempt by the
fleet to pass up James River, was quite insufficient to prevent
the enemy from landing below the fort, or to resist an attack by
infantry. To guard against its sudden capture by such means,
the garrison was increased by the addition of Bryan's regiment
of Georgia Rifles.

After the repulse of the enemy's gunboats at Drury's Bluff,
I wrote to General Johnston a letter to be handed to him by my
aide, Colonel G. W. C. Lee, an officer of the highest intelligence
and reputation — referring to him for full information in regard
to the affair at Drury's Bluff, as well as to the positions and
strength of our forces on the south side of the James River.
After some speculations on the probable course of the enemy,
and expressions of confidence, I informed the General that my
aide would communicate freely to him and bring back to me
any information with which he might be intrusted. Not receiv-
ing any definite reply, I soon thereafter rode out to visit Gen-
eral Johnston at his headquarters, and was surprised in the sub-
urbs of Richmond, viz., on the other side of Gillis's Creek, to
meet a portion of the light artillery, and to learn that the whole
army had crossed the Chickahominy.

General Johnston's explanation of this (to me) unexpected
movement was, that he thought the water of the Chickahominy
unhealthy, and had directed the troops to cross and halt at the
first good water on the southern side, which he supposed would
be found near to the river. He also adverted to the advantage
of having the river in front rather than in the rear of him — an
advantage certainly obvious enough, if the line was to be near
to it on either of its banks.

The considerations which induced General McClellan to
make his base on the York River had at least partly ceased to ex-
ist. From the corps for which he had so persistently applied, he
had received the division which he most valued, and the destruc-
tion of the Yirginia had left the James River open to his fleet
and transports as far up as Drury's Bluff, and the withdrawal of
General Johnston across the Chickahominy made it quite prac-
ticable for him to transfer his army to the James River, the
south side of which had then but weak defenses, and thus by a

104 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

short march to gain more than all the advantages which, at a
later period of the war, General Grant obtained at the sacrifice
of a hecatomb of soldiers.

Referring, again, to the work of the Comte de Paris, who
may be better authority in regard to what occurred in the army
of the enemy than when he writes about Confederate affairs, it
appears that this change of base was considered and not adopted
because of General McClellan's continued desire to have Mc-
Dowell's corps with him. The Count states :

" The James River, which had been closed until then by the
presence of the Virginia, as York River had been by the cannon
of Yorktown, was opened by the destruction of that ship, just as
York River had been by the evacuation of the Confederate for-
tress. But it was only open as far as Drury's Bluff ; in order to
overcome this last obstacle interposed between Richmond and the
Federal gunboats, the support of the land forces was necessary.
On the 19th of May Commodore Goldsborough had a conference
with General McClellan regarding the means to be employed for
removing that obstacle. . . . General McClellan, as we have stated
above, might have continued to follow the railway line, and pre-
served his depots at Whitehouse, on the Pamunkey, . . . but he
could also now go to reestablish his base of operations on James
River, which the Virginia had hitherto prevented him from doing.
By crossing the Chickahominy at Bottom's Bridge, and some other
fords situated lower down, . . . could have reached the borders of
the James in two or three days. . . . This flank march effected
at a sufficient distance from the enemy, and covered by a few dem-
onstrations along the upper Chickahominy, offered him great ad-
vantages without involving any risk. ... If McClellan could
have foreseen how deceptive were the promises of reenforcement
made to him at the time, he would undoubtedly have declined the
uncertain support of McDowell, to carry out the plan of campaign
which offered the best chances of success with the troops which
were absolutely at his disposal." *

Without feeling under any obligations for kind intentions
on the part of the Government of the North, it was fortunate
for us that it did, as its friend the Comte de Paris represents,

* " History of the Civil War in America," Comte de Paris, vol. ii, pp. 32-34.

1862] GREAT ALARM IN WASHINGTON. 105

deceive General McClellan, and prevent him from moving to
the south side of James River, so as not only to secure the co-
operation of his gunboats in an attack upon Richmond, but to
make his assault on the side least prepared for resistance, and
where it would have been quite possible to cut our line of com-
munication with the more Southern States on which we chiefly
depended for supplies and for reinforcements.

It is hardly just to treat the failure to fulfill the assurance
given by President Lincoln about reinforcements as " decep-
tive promises," for, as will be seen, the operations in the Yalley
by General Jackson, who there exhibited a rapidity of move-
ment equal to the unyielding tenacity which had in the first
great battle won for him the familiar name " Stonewall," had
created such an alarm in Washington, as, if it had been better
founded, would have justified the refusal to diminish the force
held for the protection of their capital. Indeed, our cavalry, in
observation near Fredericksburg, reported that on the 24th
McDowell's troops started southward, but General Stuart found
that night that they were returning. This indicated that the
anticipated junction was not to be made, and of this the Prince
de Joinville writes :

" It needed only an effort of the will : the two armies were
united, and the possession of Richmond certain ! Alas ! this effort
was not made. I can not recall those fatal moments without a
real sinking of the heart." *

General McClellan, in his testimony December 10, 1862,
before the court-martial in the case of General McDowell,
said :

" I have no doubt, for it has ever been my opinion, that the
Army of the Potomac would have taken Richmond had not the
corps of General McDowell been separated from it. It is also my
opinion that, had the command of General McDowell joined the
Army of the Potomac in the month of May, by the way of Hano-
ver Court-House, from Fredericksburg, we would have had Rich-
mond within a week after the junction." f

* "Campaign on the Peninsula," Prince de Joinville, 1862.

f Court-martial of General McDowell, Washington, December 10, 1862.

106 KISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

Let us first inquire what was the size of this army so crippled
for want of reenforcement, and then what the strength of that
to which it was opposed. On the 30th of April, 1862, the
official report of McClellan's army gives the aggregate present
for duty as 112,392 ; * that of the 20th of June — omitting the
army corps of General Dix, then, as previously, stationed at
Fortress Monroe, and including General McCall's division,
which had recently joined, the strength of which was reported
to be 9,514 — gives the aggregate present for duty as 105,825,
and the total, present and absent, as 156,838.f

Two statements of the strength of our army under General
J. E. Johnston during the month of May — in which General
McClellan testified that he was greatly in need of McDowell's
corps — give the following results : First, the official return, 21st
May, 1862, total effective of all arms, 53,688 ; subsequently,
five brigades were added, and the effective strength of the army
under General Johnston on May 31, 1862, was 62,696. J

I now proceed to inquire what caused the panic at Wash-
ington.

On May 23d, General Jackson, with whose force that of
General Ewell had united, moved with such rapidity as to sur-
prise the enemy, and Ewell, who was in advance, captured most
of the troops at Front Royal, and pressed directly on to Win-
chester, while Jackson, turning across to the road from Stras-
burg, struck the main column of the enemy in flank and drove
it routed back to Strasburg. The pursuit was continued to
Winchester, and the enemy, under their commander-in-chief,
General Banks, fled across the Potomac into Maryland. Two
thousand prisoners were taken in the pursuit. General Banks
in his report says, " There never were more grateful hearts in
the same number of men, than when, at mid-day on the 26th,
we stood on the opposite shore."

When the news of the attack on Front Eoyal, on May 23d,
reached General Geary, charged with the protection of the
Manassas Gap Bailroad, he immediately moved to Manassas
Junction. At the same time, his troops, hearing the most ex-

* " Report on the Conduct of the War," Part I, p. 322. f Ibid-> P- 33^

% " Four Years with General Lee," by Walter H. Taylor, p. 50.

t-'L

tffo.

1862] THE CALLS FOR MORE TROOPS. 107

travagant stories, burned their tents and destroyed a quantity of
arms. General Duryea, at Catlett's Station, becoming alarmed
on bearing of tbe withdrawal of Geary, took bis three New
York regiments, leaving a Pennsylvania one behind, hast-
ened back to Centreville, and telegraphed to Washington for
aid. He left behind a large quantity of army stores. The
alarm spread to Washington, and the Secretary of War, Stan-
ton, issued a call to the Governors of the " loyal " States for
militia to defend that city.

The following is the dispatch sent to the Governor of Mas-
sachusetts :

" Washington, Sunday, May 25, 1862.
" To the Governor of Massachusetts.

" Intelligence from various quarters leaves no doubt that the
enemy in great force are marching on Washington. You will
please organize and forward immediately all the militia and vol-
unteer force in your State.

" Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War."

This alarm at Washington, and the call for more troops for
its defense, produced a most indescribable panic in the cities of
the Northern States on Sunday the 25th, and two or three days
afterward. The Governor of New York on Sunday night tele-
graphed to Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and other cities, as fol-
lows :

" Orders from Washington render it necessary to send to that
city all the available militia force. What can you do ?

" E. D. Morgan."

Governor Curtin, of Pennsylvania, issued the following
order :

" (General Order, No. 23.)

"Headquarters of Pennsylvania Militia,
" Harrisburg, May 26, 1862.

" On pressing requisition of the President of the United States
in the present emergency, it is ordered that the several major-gen-
erals, brigadier-generals, and colonels of regiments throughout the
Commonwealth muster without delay all military organizations

108 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

within their respective divisions or under their control, together
with all persons willing to join their commands, and proceed
forthwith to the city of Washington, or such other points as may-
be designated by future orders. By order :

"A. G. Curtin,
" Governor and Commander-in-Chief"

The Governor of Massachusetts issued the following proc-
lamation :

" Men of Massachusetts I

" The wily and barbarous horde of traitors to the people, to
the Government, to our country, and to liberty, menace again the
national capital. They have attacked and routed Major-General
Banks, are advancing on Harper's Ferry, and are marching on
Washington. The President calls on Massachusetts to rise once
more for its rescue and defense.

" The whole active militia will be summoned by a general or-
der, issued from the office of the adjutant-general, to report on
Boston Common to-morrow. They will march to relieve and
avenge their brethren and friends, and to oppose, with fierce zeal
and courageous patriotism, the progress of the foe. May God
encourage their hearts and strengthen their arms, and may he
inspire the Government and all the people !

" Given at headquarters, Boston, eleven o'clock, this (Sunday)
evening, May 25, 1862. John A. Andrew."

The Governor of Ohio issued the following proclamation :

" Columbus, Ohio, May 26, 1862.
" To the gallant men of Ohio.

" I have the astounding intelligence that the seat of our be-
loved Government is threatened with invasion, and am called upon
by the Secretary of War for troops to repel and overwhelm the
ruthless invaders. Rally, then, men of Ohio, and respond to this
call, as becomes those who appreciate our glorious Government !
. . . The number wanted from each county has been indicated by
special dispatches to the several military committees.

" David Tod, Governor."

At the same time the Secretary of War at Washington
caused the following order to be issued :

1862] THE PANIC IN THE NORTHERN STATES. 109

" Washington, Sunday, May 25, 1862.
" Ordered: By virtue of the authority vested by an act of
Congress, the President takes military possession of all the rail-
roads in the United States from and after this date, and directs
that the respective railroad companies, their officers and servants,
shall hold themselves in readiness for the transportation of troops
and munitions of war, as may be ordered by the military authori-
ties, to the exclusion of all other business.
" By order of the Secretary of War :

" M. C. Meigs,
" Quartermaster- General."

At the first moment of the alarm, the President of the
United States issued the following order :

"Washington, May 24, 1862.
" Major- General McDowell.

" General Fremont has been ordered by telegraph to move to
Franklin and Harrisonburg to relieve General Banks and capture or
destroy Jackson's and Ewell's forces. You are instructed, laying
aside for the present the movement on Richmond, to put twenty
thousand men in motion at once for the Shenandoah, moving on
the line or in advance of the line of the Manassas Gap Railroad.
Your object will be to capture the forces of Jackson and Ewell,
either in cooperation with General Fremont, or, in case want of
supplies or transportation has interfered with his movement, it is
believed that the force which you move will be sufficient to ac-
complish the object alone. The information thus far received
here makes it probable that, if the enemy operates actively against
General Banks, you will not be able to count upon much assist-
ance from him, but may have even to release him. Reports re-
ceived this morning are that Banks is fighting with Ewell, eight
miles from Harper's Ferry.

" Abraham Lincoln."

When the panic thus indicated in the headquarters of the
enemy had disseminated itself through the military and social
ramifications of Northern society, the excitement was tumultu-
ous. Meanwhile, General Jackson, little conceiving the alarm
his movements had caused in the departments at Washington

HO RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

and in the offices of the Governors of States, in addition to the
diversion of McDowell from cooperation in the attack upon
Richmond, after driving the enemy out of "Winchester, pressed
eagerly on, not pausing to accept the congratulations of the
overjoyed people at the sight of their own friends again among
them, for he learned that the enemy had garrisons at Charles-
town and Harper's Ferry, and he was resolved they should
not rest on Virginia soil. General Winder's brigade in the
advance found the enemy drawn up in line of battle at Charles-
town. Without waiting far reinforcements, he engaged them,
and after a short conflict drove them in disorder toward the
Potomac. The main column then moved on near to Harper's
Ferry, where General Jackson received information that Fre-
mont was moving from the west, and the whole or a part of
General McDowell's corps from the east, to make a junction
in his rear and thus cut off his retreat. At this time General
Jackson's effective force was about fifteen thousand men, much
less than either of the two armies which were understood to be
marching to form a junction against him. We now know that
General McDowell had been ordered to send to the relief of
General Banks in the Valley twenty to thirty thousand men.
The estimated force of General Fremont when at Harrison-
burg was twenty thousand. General Jackson had captured in
his campaign down the Valley a very large amount of valu-
able stores, over nine thousand small-arms, two pieces of ar-
tillery, many horses, and, besides the wounded and sick, who
had been released on parole, was said to have twenty-three
hundred prisoners. To secure these, as well as to save his
army, it was necessary to retreat beyond the point where his
enemies could readily unite. The amount of captured stores
and other property which he was anxious to preserve were
said to require a wagon-train twelve miles long. This, under
the care of a regiment, was sent forward in advance of the
army, which promptly retired up the Valley.

On his retreat, General Jackson received information con-
firmatory of the report of the movements of the enemy, and of
the defeat of a small force he had left at Front Royal in charge
of some prisoners and captured stores — the latter, however, the

1862] NOT WASTE TIME CHASING FREMONT. HI

garrison before retreating had destroyed. Strasburg being
General Jackson's objective point, he had farther to march to
reach that position than either of the columns operating against
him. The rapidity of movement which marked General Jack-
son's operations had given to his command the appellation of
" foot cavalry " ; and never had they more need to show them-
selves entitled to the name of Stonewall.

On the night of the 31st of May, by a forced march, Gen-
eral Jackson arrived with the head of his column at Stras-
burg, and learned that General Fremont's advance was in the
immediate vicinity. To gain time for the rest of his army to
arrive, General Jackson decided to check Fremont's march
by an attack in the morning. This movement was assigned to
General Ewell, General Jackson personally giving his attention
to preserving his immense trains filled with captured stores.
The repulse of Fremont's advance was so easy that General
Taylor describes it as offering a temptation to go beyond Gen-
eral Jackson's orders and make a serious attack upon Fremont's
army, but recognizes the justice of the restraint imposed by the
order, "as we could not waste time chasing Fremont," for it
was reported that General Shields was at Front Royal with
troops of a different character from those of Fremont's army,
who had been encountered near Strasburg, id est, the corps
"commanded by General O. O. Howard, and called by both
sides 'the flying Dutchmen.'" This more formidable com-
mand of General Shields therefore required immediate atten-
tion.

Leaving Strasburg on the evening of June 1st, always intent
to prevent a junction of the two armies of the enemy, Jackson
continued his march up the Yalley. Fremont followed in pur-
suit, while Shields moved slowly up the Yalley via Luray, for
the purpose of reaching New Market in advance of Jackson.
On the morning of the 5th Jackson reached Harrisonburg, and,
passing beyond that town, turned toward the east in the direc-
tion of Port Republic. General Ashby had destroyed all the
bridges between Front Royal and Port Republic, to prevent
Shields from crossing the Shenandoah to join Fremont. The
troops were now permitted to make shorter marches, and were

112 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

allowed some halts to refresh them after their forced marches
and frequent combats. Early on the 6th of June Fremont's re-
enforced cavalry attacked our cavalry rear-guard under General
Ashby. A sharp conflict ensued, which resulted in the repulse
of the enemy and the capture of Colonel Percy Wyndham, com-
manding the brigade, and sixty-three others. General Ashby
was in position between Harrisonburg and Port Republic, and,
after the cavalry combat just described, there were indications of
a more serious attack. Ashby sent a message to Ewell, inform-
ing him that cavalry supported by infantry was advancing upon
his position. The Fifty-eighth Virginia and the First Mary-
land Regiments were sent to his support. Ashby led the Fifty-
eighth Virginia to attack the enemy, who were under cover of
a fence. General Ewell in the mean time had arrived, and, see-
ing the advantage the enemy had of position, directed Colonel
Johnson to move with his regiment so as to approach the flank
instead of the front of the enemy, and he was now driven from
the field with heavy loss. Our loss was seventeen killed, fifty
wounded, and three missing. Here fell the stainless, fearless
cavalier, General Turner Ashby, of whom General Jackson in
his report thus forcibly speaks :

"As a partisan officer I never knew his superior. His dar-
ing was proverbial ; his power of endurance almost incred-
ible ; his tone of character heroic ; and his sagacity almost
intuitive in divining the purposes and movements of the en-
emy."

The main body of General Jackson's command had now
reached Port Republic, a village situated in the angle formed
by the junction of the North and South Rivers, tributaries of
the South Fork of the Shenandoah. Over the North River was
a wooden bridge, connecting the town with Harrisonburg. Over
the South River there was a ford. Jackson's immediate com-
mand was encamped on the high ground north of the village and
about a mile from the river. Ewell was some four miles dis-
tant, near the road leading from Harrisonburg to Port Republic.
General Fremont had arrived with his forces in the vicinity
of Harrisonburg, and General Shields was moving up the east

1862] ADVANCE OF GENERAL SHIELDS ENCOUNTERED. H3

side of the Shenandoah, and had reached Conrad's Store. Each
was about fifteen miles distant from Jackson's position. To
prevent a junction, the bridge over the river, near Shields's
position, had been destroyed.

As the advance of General Shields approached on the 8th,
the brigades of Taliaferro and "Winder were ordered to occupy
positions immediately north of the bridge. The enemy's cav-
alry, accompanied by artillery, then appeared, and, after direct-
ing a few shots toward the bridge, crossed South River, and,
dashing into the village, planted one of their pieces at the
southern entrance of the bridge. Meantime our batteries were
placed in position, and, Taliaferro's brigade having approached
the bridge, was ordered to dash across, capture the piece, and
occupy the town. This was gallantly done, and the enemy's
cavalry dispersed and driven back, abandoning another gun.
A considerable body of infantry was now seen advancing, when
our batteries opened with marked effect, and in a short time the
infantry followed the cavalry, falling back three miles. They
were pursued about a mile by our batteries on the opposite
bank, when they disappeared in a wood.

This attack of Shields had scarcely been repulsed when
Ewell became seriously engaged with Fremont, moving on the
opposite side of the river. The enemy pushed forward, driving
in the pickets, which, by gallant resistance, checked their ad-
vance until Ewell had time to select his position on a com-
manding ridge, with a rivulet and open ground in front, woods
on both flanks, and the road to Port Republic intersecting his
line. Trimble's brigade was posted on the right, the batteries
of Courtney, Lusk, Brockenbrough, and Rains in the center,
Stuart's brigade on the left, and Elzey's in rear of the center.
Both wings were in the woods. About ten o'clock the enemy
posted his artillery opposite our batteries, and a fire was kept
up for several hours, with great spirit on both sides. Mean-
time a brigade of the enemy advanced, under cover, upon
General Trimble, who reserved his fire until they reached
short range, when he poured forth a deadly volley, under which
they fell back ; Trimble, supported by two regiments of Elzey's
reserve, now advanced, with spirited skirmishing, more than a
55

114; RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

mile from his original line, driving the opposing force back to
its former position. Ewell, finding no attack on his left was
designed by the enemy, advanced and drove in their skirmish-
ers, and at night was in position on ground previously occu-
pied by the foe. This engagement has generally been known
as the battle of Cross Keys.

As General Shields made no movement to renew the action
of the 8th, General Jackson determined to attack him on the
9th. Accordingly, E well's forces were moved at an early hour
toward Port Republic, and General Trimble was left to hold
Fremont in check, or, if hard pressed, to retire across the
river and burn the bridge, which subsequently was done, under
orders to concentrate against Shields.

Meanwhile the enemy had taken position about two miles
from Port Republic, their right on the river-bank, their left on
the slope of the mountain which here threw out a spur, between
which and the river was a smooth plain of about a thousand
yards wide. On an elevated plateau of the mountain was
placed a battery of long-range guns to sweep the plain over
which our forces must pass to attack. In front of that plateau
was a deep gorge, through which flowed a small stream, trend-
ing to the southern side of the promontory, so as to leave its
northern point in advance of the southern. The mountain-side
was covered with dense wood.

Such was the position which Jackson must assail, or lose the
opportunity to fight his foe in detail — the object for which
his forced marches had been made, and on which his best hopes
depended.

General "Winder's brigade moved down the river to attack,
when the enemy's battery upon the plateau opened, and it was
found to rake the plain over which we must approach for a
considerable distance in front of Shields' s position. Our guns
were brought forward, and an attempt made to dislodge the
battery of the enemy, but our fire proved unequal to theirs ;
whereupon General Winder, having been reenforced, at-
tempted by a rapid charge to capture it, but encountered such
a heavy fire of artillery and small-arms as to compel his com-
mand, composed of his own and another brigade, with a light

1862] JACKSON IN ADVANCE. 115

battery, to fall back in disorder. The enemy advanced steadily,
and in such numbers as to drive back our infantry supports
and render it necessary to withdraw our guns. Ewell was
hurrying his men over the bridge, and there was no fear, if
human effort would avail, that he would come too late. But
the condition was truly critical. General Taylor describes his
chief at that moment thus : " Jackson was on the road, a little
in advance of his line, where the fire was hottest, with reins on
his horse's neck, seemingly in prayer. Attracted by my ap-
proach, he said, in his usual voice, ' Delightful excitement.' "
He then briefly gave Taylor instructions to move against the
battery on the plateau, and sent a young officer from his staff
as a guide. The advance of the enemy was checked by an
attack on his flank by two of our regiments, under Colonel
Scott ; but this was only a temporary relief, for this small com-
mand was soon afterward driven back to the woods, with severe
loss. Our batteries during the check were all safely withdrawn
except one six-pounder gun.

In this critical condition of Winder's command, General
Taylor made a successful attack on the left and rear of the ene-
my, which diverted attention from the front, and led to a con-
centration of his force upon him. Moving to the right along
the mountain acclivity, he was unseen before he emerged from
the wood, just as the loud cheers of the enemy proclaimed their
success in front. Although opposed by a superior force in
front and flank, and with their guns in position, with a rush
and shout the gorge was passed, impetuously the charge was
made, and the battery of six guns fell into our hands. Three
times was this battery lost and won in the desperate and deter-
mined efforts to capture and recover it, and the enemy finally
succeeded in carrying off one of the guns, leaving both caisson
and limber. Thus occupied with Taylor, the enemy halted in
his advance, and formed a line facing to the mountain. Win-
der succeeded in rallying- his command, and our batteries were
replaced in their former positions. At the same time reinforce-
ments were brought by General Ewell to Taylor, who pushed
forward with them, assisted by the well-directed fire of our ar-
tillery.

116 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

Of this period in the battle, than which there has seldom
been one of greater peril, or where danger was more gallantly
met, I copy a description from the work of General Taylor :

"The fighting in and around the battery was hand-to-hand,
and many fell from bayonet-wounds. Even the artillerymen used
their rammers in a way not laid down in the manual, and died at
their guns. I called for Hayes, but he, the promptest of men, and
his splendid regiment could not be found. Something unexpected
had occurred, but there was no time for speculation. With a
desperate rally, in which I believe the drummer-boys shared, we
carried the battery for the third time, and held it. Infantry and
riflemen had been driven off, and we began to feel a little com-
fortable, when the enemy, arrested in his advance by our attack,
appeared. He had countermarched, and, with left near the river,
came into full view of our situation. Wheeling to the right, with
colors advanced, like a solid wall he marched straight upon us.
There seemed nothing left but to set our back to the mountain
and die hard. At the instant, crashing through the underwood,
came Ewell, outriding staff and escort. He produced the effect of
a reenforcement, and was welcomed with cheers. The line before
us halted and threw forward skirmishers. A moment later a shell
came shrieking along it, loud Confederate cheers reached our de-
lighted ears, and Jackson, freed from his toils, rushed up like a
whirlwind." *

The enemy, in his advance, had gone in front of the pla-
teau where his battery was placed, the elevation being suffi-
cient to enable the guns without hazard to be fired over the ad-
vancing line ; so, when he commenced retreating, he had to pass
by the position of this battery, and the captured guns were
effectively used against him — that dashing old soldier, " Ewell,
serving as a gunner." Mention was made of the inability to
find Hayes when his regiment was wanted. Jt is due to that
true patriot, who has been gathered to his fathers, to add Tay-
lor's explanation : " Ere long my lost Seventh Regiment, sadly
cut up, rejoined. This regiment was in rear of the column
when we left Jackson to gain the path in the woods, and, before
it filed out of the road, his thin line was so pressed that Jack-

* "Destruction and Reconstruction," pp. 75, 76.

1862] EFFECT OF THESE MOVEMENTS. 117

6011 ordered Hayes to stop the enemy's rush. This was done,
for the Seventh would have stopped a herd of elephants — but at
a fearful cost."

The retreat of the enemy, though it was so precipitate as to
cause him to leave his killed and wounded on the field, was
never converted into a rout. " Shields's brave ' boys ' preserved
their organization to the last ; and, had Shields himself, with
his whole command, been on the field, we should have had
tough work indeed."

The pursuit was continued some five miles beyond the bat-
tle-field, during which we captured four hundred and fifty pris-
oners, some wagons, one piece of abandoned artillery, and about
eight hundred muskets. Some two hundred and seventy-five
wounded were paroled in the hospitals near Port Republic. On
the next day Fremont withdrew his forces, and retreated down
the Yalley. The rapid movements of Jackson, the eagle-like
stoop with which he had descended upon each army of the
enemy, and the terror which his name had come to inspire, cre-
ated a great alarm at Washington, where it was believed he must
have an immense army, and that he was about to come down
like an avalanche upon the capital. Milroy, Banks, Fremont,
and Shields were all moved in that direction, and peace again
reigned in the patriotic and once happy Yalley of the Shenan-
doah.

The material results of this very remarkable campaign are
thus summarily stated by one who had special means of informa-
tion :

"In three months Jackson had marched six hundred miles,
fought four pitched battles, seven minor engagements, and daily
skirmishes ; had defeated four armies, captured seven pieces of
artillery, ten thousand stand of arms, four thousand prisoners, and
a very great amount of stores, inflicting upon his adversaries a
known loss of two thousand men, with a loss upon his own part
comparatively small." *

The general effect upon the affairs of the Confederacy was
even more important, and the motives which influenced Jackson

* " Stonewall Jackson," military biography by John Esten Cooke, p. 194.

118 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

present him in a grander light than any military success could
have done. Thus, on the 20th of March, 1862, he learned that
the large force of the enemy before which he had retired was re-
turning down the Valley, and, divining the object to be to send
forces to the east side of the mountain to cooperate in the at-
tack upon Richmond, General Jackson, with his small force of
about three thousand infantry and two hundred- and ninety cav-
alry, moved with his usual celerity in pursuit. He overtook
the rear of the column at Kernstown, attacked a very supe-
rior force he found there, and fought with such desperation
as to impress the enemy with the idea that he had a large
army ; therefore, the detachments, which had already started for
Manassas, were recalled, and additional forces were also sent into
the Valley. Nor was this all. McDowell's corps, under orders
to join McClellan, was detained for the defense of the Federal
capital.

Jackson's bold strategy had effected the object for which his
movement was designed, and he slowly retreated to the south
bank of the Shenandoah, where he remained undisturbed by
the enemy, and had time to recruit his forces, which, by the
28th of April, amounted to six or seven thousand men. General
Banks had advanced and occupied Harrisonburg, about fifteen
miles from Jackson's position. Fremont, with a force estimated
at fifteen thousand men, was reported to be preparing to join
Banks's command.

The alarm at "Washington had caused McDowell's corps to
be withdrawn from the upper Rappahannock to Fredericksburg.
Jackson, anxious to take advantage of the then divided condi-
tion of the enemy, sent to Richmond for reinforcements, but
our condition there did not enable us to furnish any, except
the division of Ewell, which had been left near Gordon sville in
observation of McDowell, now by his withdrawal made dis-
posable, and the brigade of Edward Johnson, which confronted
Schenck and Milroy near to Staunton. Jackson, who, when he
could not get what he wanted, did the best he could with what
he had, called Ewell to his aid, left him to hold Banks in check,
and marched to unite with Johnson ; the combined forces at-
tacked Milroy and Schenck, who, after a severe conflict, retreated

1862] THE PLANS AND PURPOSES. 119

in the night to join Fremont. Jackson then returned toward
Harrisonburg, having ordered Ewell to join him for an attack
on Banks, who in the mean time had retreated toward Winches-
ter, where Jackson attacked and defeated him, inflicting great
loss, drove him across the Potomac, and, as has been repre-
sented, filled the authorities at Washington with such dread of
its capture as to disturb the previously devised plans against
Richmond, and led to the operations which have already been
described, and brought into full play Jackson's military genius.
In all these operations there conspicuously appears the self-
abnegation of a devoted patriot. He was not seeking by great
victories to acquire fame for himself ; but, always alive to the
necessities and dangers elsewhere, he heroically strove to do
what was possible for the general benefit of the cause he main-
tained. His whole heart was his country's, and his whole coun-
try's heart was his.

CHAPTER XXII.

Condition of Affairs. — Plan of General Johnston. — The Field of Battle at Seven
Pines. — The Battle. — General Johnston wounded. — Advance of General Sum-
ner.— Conflict on the Right. — Delay of General Huger. — Reports of the Enemy.
— Losses. — Strength of Forces. — General Lee in Command.

Our army having retreated from the Peninsula, and with-
drawn from the north side of the Chickahominy to the imme-
diate vicinity of Richmond, I rode out occasionally to the lines
and visited the headquarters of the commanding General. There
were no visible preparations for defense, and my brief conver-
sations with the General afforded no satisfactory information as
to his plans and purposes. We had, under the supervision of
General Lee, perfected as far as we could the detached works
before the city, but these' were rather designed to protect it
against a sudden attack than to resist approaches by a great
army. They were, also, so near to the city that it might have
been effectually bombarded by guns exterior to them. Anxious
for the defense of the ancient capital of Yirginia, now the capi-

120 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

tal of the Confederate States, and remembering a remark of
General Johnston, that the Spaniards were the only people who
now undertook to hold fortified towns, I had written to him
that he knew the defense of Richmond must be made at a dis-
tance from it. Seeing no preparation to keep the enemy at a
distance, and kept in ignorance of any plan for such purpose, I
sent for General R. E. Lee, then at Richmond, in general charge
of army operations, and told him why and how I was dissatisfied
with the condition of affairs.

He asked me what I thought it was proper to do. Recur-
ring to a conversation held about the time we had together
visited General Johnston, I answered that McClellan should be
attacked on the other side of the Chickahominy before he ma-
tured his preparations for a siege of Richmond. To this he
promptly assented, as I anticipated he would, for I knew it had
been his own opinion. He then said : " General Johnston
should of course advise you of what he expects or proposes to
do. Let me go and see him, and defer this discussion until I
return."

It may be proper here to say that I had not doubted that
General Johnston was fully in accord with me as to the purpose
of defending Richmond, but I was not content with his course
for that end. It had not occurred to me that he meditated a
retreat which would uncover the capital, nor was it ever sus-
pected until, in reading General Hood's book, published in
1880, the evidence was found that General Johnston, when
retreating from Yorktown, told his volunteer aide, Mr. McFar-
land, that " he [Johnston] expected or intended to give up Rich-
mond." *

"When General Lee came back, he told me that General
Johnston proposed, on the next Thursday, to move against the
enemy as follows : General A. P. Hill was to- move down on
the right flank and rear of the enemy. General G. "W. Smith,
as soon as Hill's guns opened, was to cross the Chickahominy at
the Meadow Bridge, attack the enemy in flank, and by the con-
junction of the two it was expected to double him up. Then

* For recital and correspondence of 1874, see "Advance and Retreat," by J. B.
Hood, Lieutenant-General in the Confederate Army, pp. 153-155.

1862] THE PLAN NOT ATTEMPTED. 121

Longstreet was to cross on the Mechanicsville Bridge and attack
him in front. From this plan the best results were hoped by
both of us.

On the morning of the day proposed, I hastily dispatched
my office business, and rode out toward the Meadow Bridge to
see the action commence. On the road I found Smith's division
halted, and the men dispersed in the woods. Looking for some
one from whom I could get information, I finally saw General
Hood, and asked him the meaning of what I saw. He told me
he did not know anything more than that they had been halted.
I asked him where General Smith was ; he said he believed he
had gone to a farmhouse in the rear, adding that he thought he
was ill. Riding on to the bluff which overlooks the Meadow
Bridge, I asked Colonel Anderson, posted there in observation,
whether he had seen anything of the enemy in his front. He
said that he had seen only two mounted men across the bridge,
and a small party of infantry on the other side of the river, some
distance below, both of whom, he said, he could show me if I
would go with him into the garden back of the house. There, by
the use of a powerful glass, were distinctly visible two cavalry
vicfettes at the further end of the bridge, and a squad of infantry
lower down the river, who had covered themselves with a screen
of green boughs. The Colonel informed me that he had not
heard Hill's guns ; it was, therefore, supposed he had not ad-
vanced. I then rode down the bank of the river, followed by a
cavalcade of sight-seers, who, I supposed, had been attracted by
the expectation of a battle. The little squad of infantry, about
fifteen in number, as we approached, fled over the ridge, and were
lost to sight. Near to the Mechanicsville Bridge I found General
Howell Cobb, commanding the support of a battery of artillery.
He pointed out to me on the opposite side of the river the only
enemy he had seen, and which was evidently a light battery.
Riding on to the main road which led to the Mechanicsville
Bridge, I found General Longstreet, walking to and fro in an
impatient, it might be said fretful, manner. Before speaking to
him, he said his division had been under arms all day waiting for
orders to advance, and that the day was now so far spent that he
did not know what was the matter. I afterward learned from

122 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

General Smith that he had received information from a citizen
that the Beaver-dam Creek presented an impassable barrier,
and that he had thus fortunately been saved from a disaster.
Thus ended the offensive-defensive programme from which Lee
expected much, and of which I was hopeful.

In the mean while the enemy moved up, and, finding the
crossing at Bottom's Bridge unobstructed, threw a brigade of the
Fourth Corps across the Chickahominy as early as the 20th of
May, and on the 23d sent over the rest of the Fourth Corps ; on
the 25th he sent over another corps, and commenced fortifying
a line near to Seven Pines. In the forenoon of the 31st of May,
riding out on the New Bridge road, I heard firing in the direc-
tion of Seven Pines. As I drew nearer, I saw General Whiting,
with part of General Smith's division, file into the road in front
of me ; at the same time I saw General Johnston ride across the
field from a house before which General Lee's horse was stand-
ing. I turned down to the house, and asked General Lee what
the musketry-firing meant. He replied by asking whether I had
heard it, and was answered in the affirmative ; he said he had
been under that impression himself, but General Johnston had
assured him that it could be nothing more than an artillery
duel. It is scarcely necessary to add that neither of us had been
advised of a design to attack the enemy that day.

We then walked out to the rear of the house to listen, and
were satisfied that an action, or at least a severe skirmish, must
be going on. General Johnston states in his report that the
condition of the air was peculiarly unfavorable to the transmis-
sion of sound.

General Lee and myself then rode to the field of battle,
which may be briefly described as follows :

The Chickahominy flowing in front is a deep, sluggish, and
narrow river, bordered by marshes, and covered with tangled
wood. The line of battle extended along the JSTine-mile road,
across the York Kiver Kailroad and Williamsburg stage-road.
The enemy had constructed redoubts, with long lines of rifle-pits
covered by abatis, from below Bottom's Bridge to within less
than two miles of New Bridge, and had constructed bridges to
connect his forces on the north and south sides of the Chicka-

1862] THE BATTLE AT SEVEN PINES. 123

hominy. The left of his forces, on the south side, was thrown
forward from the river ; the right was on its bank, and covered
by its slope. Our main force was on the right flank of our posi-
tion, extending on both sides of the Williamsburg road, near to
its intersection with the Nine-mile road. This wing consisted of
Hill's, Huger's, and Longstreet's divisions, with light batteries,
and a small force of cavalry; the division of General G. W.
Smith, less Hood's brigade ordered to the right, formed the left
wing, and its position was on the Nine-mile road. There were
small tracts of cleared land, but most of the ground was wooded,
and much of it so covered with water as to seriously embarrass
the movements of troops.

When General Lee and I riding down the Nine-mile road
reached the left of our line, we found the troops hotly engaged.
Our men had driven the enemy from his advanced encampment,
and he had fallen back behind an open field to the bank of the
river, where, in a dense wood, was concealed an infantry line,
with artillery in position. Soon after our arrival, General
Johnston, who had gone farther to the right, where the conflict
was expected, and whither reenforcement from the left was
marching, was brought back severely wounded, and, as soon as
an ambulance could be obtained, was removed from the field.

Our troops on the left made vigorous assaults under most
disadvantageous circumstances. They made several gallant
attempts to carry the enemy's position, but were each time
repulsed with heavy loss.

After a personal reconnaissance on the left of the open in
our front, I sent one, then another, and another courier to Gen-
eral Magruder, directing him to send a force down by the
wooded path, just under the bluff, to attack the enemy in flank
and reverse. Impatient of delay, I had started to see General
Magruder, when I met the third courier, who said he had not
found General Magruder, but had delivered the message to
Brigadier-General Griffith, who was moving by the path desig-
nated to make the attack.

On returning to the field, I found that the attack in front
had ceased ; it was, therefore, too late for a single brigade to
effect anything against the large force of the enemy, and mes-

124 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

sengers were sent through the woods to direct General Griffith
to go back.

The heavy rain during the night of the 30th had swollen
the Chickahominy ; it was rising when the battle of Seven Pines
was fought, but had not reached such height as to prevent the
enemy from using his bridges ; consequently, General Sumner,
during the engagement, brought over his corps as a reenforce-
ment. He was on the north side of the river, had built two
bridges to connect with the south side, and, though their cov-
erings were loosened by the upward pressure of the rising water,
they were not yet quite impassable. With the true instinct of
the soldier to march upon fire, when the sound of the battle
reached him, he formed his corps and stood under arms waiting
for an order to advance. He came too soon for us, and, but for
his forethought and promptitude, he would have arrived too
late for his friends. It may be granted that his presence saved
the left wing of the Federal army from defeat.

As we had permitted the enemy to fortify before our attack,
it would have been better to have waited another day, until the
bridges should have been rendered impassable by the rise of the
river.

General Lee, at nightfall, gave instructions to General Smith,
the senior officer on that part of the battle-field, and left with
me to return to Richmond.

Thus far I have only attempted to describe events on the
extreme left of the battle-field, being that part of which I had
personal observation ; but the larger force and, consequently, the
more serious conflict were upon the right of the line. To these
I will now refer. Our force there consisted of the divisions of
Major-Generals D. H. Hill, Huger, and Longstreet, the latter in
chief command. In his report, first published in the " Southern
Historical Society Papers," vol. iii, pp. 277, 278, he writes:

"Agreeably to verbal instructions from the commanding Gen-
eral, the division of Major-General D. H. Hill was, on the morning
of the 31st ultimo, formed at an early hour on the Williamsburg
road, as the column of attack upon the enemy's front on that
road. . . . The division of Major-General Huger was intended to
make a strong flank movement around the left of the enemy's

1862] THE SERIOUS CONFLICT OX THE RIGHT. 125

position, and attack him in rear of that flank. . . . After waiting
some six hours for these troops to get into position, I determined
to move forward without regard to them, and gave orders to that
effect to Major-General D. H. Hill. The forward movement began
about two o'clock, and our skirmishers soon became engaged with
those of the enemy. The entire division of General Hill became
engaged about three o'clock, and drove the enemy steadily back,
gaining possession of his abatis and part of his intrenched camp,
General Rodes, by a movement to the right, driving in the ene-
my's left. The only reinforcements on the field in hand were my
own brigades, of which Anderson's, Wilcox's, and Kemper's were
put in by the front on the Williamsburg road, and Colston's and
Pryor's by my right flank. At the same time the decided and
gallant attack made by the other brigades gained entire posses-
sion of the enemy's position, with his artillery, camp-equipage, etc.
Anderson's brigade, under Colonel Jenkins, pressing forward rap-
idly, continued to drive the enemy till nightfall. . . . The conduct
of the attack was left entirely to Major-General Hill. The entire
success of the affair is sufficient evidence of his ability, courage,
and skill."

This tribute to General Hill was no more than has been ac-
corded to him by others who knew of his services on that day,
and was in keeping with the determined courage, vigilance, and
daring exhibited by him on other fields.

The reference, made, without qualification, in General Long-
street's report, to the failure of General Huger to make the
attack expected of him, and the freedom with which others
have criticised him, renders it proper that some explanation
should be given of an apparent dilatoriness on the part of that
veteran soldier, who, after long and faithful service, now fills
an honored grave.

It will be remembered tkat General Huger was to move by
the Charles City road, so as to turn the left* of the enemy and
attack him in flank. The extraordinary rain of the previous
night had swollen every rivulet to the dimensions of a stream,
and the route prescribed to General Huger was one especially
affected by that heavy rain, as it led to the head of the White-
Oak Swamp. The bridge over the stream flowing into that

126 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

swamp had been carried away, and the alternatives presented to
him was to rebuild the bridge or leave his artillery. He chose
the former, which involved the delay that has subjected him to
criticism. If any should think an excuse necessary to justify
this decision, they are remanded to the accepted military maxim,
that the march must never be so hurried as to arrive unfit for
service ; and, also, they may be reminded that Huger's specialty
was artillery, he being the officer who commanded the siege-
guns with which General Scott marched from Yera Cruz to the
city of Mexico. To show that the obstacles encountered were
not of such slight character as energy would readily overcome,
I refer to the report of an officer commanding a brigade on that
occasion, Brigadier-General R. E. Rodes, whose great merit
and dashing gallantry caused him to be admired throughout the
army of the Confederacy. He said :

" On the morning of the 31st the brigade was stationed on the
Charles City road, three and a half miles from the point on the
Williamsburg road from which it had been determined to start
the columns of attack. ... I received a verbal order from Gen-
eral Hill to conduct my command at once to the point at which
the attack was to be made. . . . The progress of the brigade was
considerably delayed by the washing away of a bridge near the
head of White-Oak Swamp, by reason of which the men had to
wade in water waist-deep, and a large number were entirely sub-
merged. At this point the character of the crossing was such
that it was absolutely necessary to proceed with great caution to
prevent the loss of both ammunition and life. In consequence of
this delay, and notwithstanding that the men were carried at dou-
ble-quick time over very heavy ground for a considerable dis-
tance to make up for it, when the signal for attack was given,
only my line of skirmishers, the Sixth Alabama and the Twelfth
Mississippi Regiments, was in position. . . . The ground over
which we were to move being covered with thick undergrowth,
and the soil being marshy — so marshy that it was with great
difficulty that either horses or men could get over it — and being
guided only by the fire in front, I emerged from the woods
from the Williamsburg road under a heavy fire of both artil-
lery and musketry, with only five companies of the Fifth Ala-
bama."

1862] THE LACK OF COOPERATION. 127

General Huger's line of march was farther to the right,
therefore nearer to White-Oak Swamp, and the impediments
consequently greater than where General Rodes found the
route so difficult as to be dangerous even to infantry.

On the next day, the 1st of June, General Longstreet states
that a serious attack was made on our position, and that it was
repulsed. This refers to the works which Hill's division had
captured the day before, and which the enemy endeavored to
retake.

From the final report of General Longstreet, already cited,
it appears that he was ordered to attack on the morning of the
31st, and he explains why it was postponed for six hours ;
then he states that it was commenced by the division of Gen-
eral D. H. Hill, which drove the enemy steadily back, press-
ing forward until nightfall. The movement of Rodes's bri-
gade on the right flank is credited with having contributed
much to the dislodgment of the enemy from their abatis
and first intrenchments. As just stated, General Longstreet
reports a delay of some six hours in making this attack, be-
cause he was waiting for General Huger, and then made it
successfully with Hill's division and some brigades from his
own. These questions must naturally arise in the mind of the
reader : Why did not our troops on the left, during this long
delay, as well as during the period occupied by Hill's assault,
cooperate in the attack ? and Why, the battle having been pre-
conceived, were they so far removed as not to hear the first
guns ? The officers of the Federal army, when called before a
committee appointed by their Congress to inquire into the
conduct of the war, have by their testimony made it quite plain
that the divided condition of their troops and the length of
time required for their concentration after the battle com-
menced, rendered it practicable for our forces, if united — as,
taking the initiative, they well might have been — to have
crushed or put to flight first Keyes's and then Heintzelman's
corps before Sumner crossed the Chickahominy, between Hve
and six o'clock in the evening.

By the official reports our aggregate loss was, "killed,
wounded, and missing," 6,084, of which 4,851 were in Long-

128 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

street's command on the right, and 1,233 in Smith's command
on the left.

The enemy reported his aggregate loss at 5,739. It may
have been less than ours, for we stormed his successive defenses.

Our success upon the right was proved by our possession of
the enemy's works, as well as by the capture of ten pieces of
artillery, four flags, a large amount of camp- equipage, and more
than one thousand prisoners.

Our aggregate of both wings was about 40,500. The force
of the enemy confronting us may be approximated by taking
his returns for the 20th of June and adding thereto his casual-
ties on the 31st of May and 1st of June, because between the
last-named date and the 20th of June no action had occurred
to create any material change in the number present. From
these data, viz., the strength of Heintzelman's corps, 18,810,
and of Keyes's corps, 14,610, on June 20th, by adding their
casualties of the 31st of May and 1st of June— 4,516 — we de-
duce the strength of these two corps on the 31st of May to
have been 37,936 as the aggregate present for duty.

It thus appears that, at the commencement of the action on
the 31st of May, we had a numerical superiority of about 2,500.
Adopting the same method to calculate the strength of Sum-
ner's corps, we find it to have been 18,724, which would give
the enemy in round numbers a force of 16,000 in excess of
ours after General Sumner crossed the Chickahominy.

Both combatants claimed the victory. I have presented the
evidence in support of our claim. The withdrawal of the Con-
federate forces on the day after the battle from the ground on
which it was fought certainly gives color to the claim of the
enemy, though that was really the result of a policy much
broader than the occupation of the field of Seven Pines.

On the morning of June 1st I rode out toward the position
where General Smith had been left on the previous night, and
where I learned from General Lee that he would remain. Af-
ter turning into the Nine-mile road, and before reaching that
position, I was hailed by General Whiting, who saw me at a dis-
tance, and ran toward the road to stop me. He told me I was
riding into the position of the enemy, who had advanced on the

1862] GENERAL LEE PLACED IN COMMAND. 129

withdrawal of our troops, and there, pointing, he said, "is a
battery which I am surprised has not fired on you." I asked
where our troops were. He said his was the advance, and the
others behind him. He also told me that General Smith was
at the house which had been his (Whiting's) headquarters, and
I rode there to see him. To relieve both him and General Lee
from any embarrassment, I preferred to make the announce-
ment of General Lee's assignment to command previous to his
arrival.

After General Lee arrived, I took leave, and, being subse-
quently joined by him, we rode together to the Williamsburg
road, where we found General Longstreet, his command being
in front, and then engaged with the enemy on the field of the
previous day's combat. The operations of that day were nei-
ther extensive nor important, save in the collection of the arms
acquired in the previous day's battle.

General R. E. Lee was now in immediate command, and
thenceforward directed the movements of the army in front of
Richmond. Laborious and exact in details, as he was vigilant
and comprehensive in grand strategy, a power, with which the
public had not credited him, soon became manifest in all that
makes an army a rapid, accurate, compact machine, with respon-
sive motion in all its parts. I extract the following sentence
from a letter from the late Colonel R. H. Chilton, adjutant
and inspector-general of the army of the Confederacy, because
of his special knowledge of the subject :

"I consider General Lee's exhibition of grand administrative
talents and indomitable energy, in bringing up that army in so
short a time to that state of discipline which maintained aggre-
gation through those terrible seven days' fights around Richmond,
as probably his grandest achievement."

130 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

CHAPTER XXIII.

The Enemy's Fosition. — His Intention. — The Plan of Operations. — Movements of
General Jackson. — Daring and Fortitude of Lee. — Offensive-Defensive Policy. —
General Stuart's Movement. — Order of Attack. — Critical Position of McClellan. —
Order of Mr. Lincoln creating the Army of Virginia. — Arrival of Jackson. — Po-
sition of the Enemy. — Diversion of General Longstreet. — The Enemy forced
back south of the Chickahominy. — Abandonment of the Railroad.

When riding from the field of battle with General Robert
E. Lee on the previous day, I informed him that he would be
assigned to the command of the army, vice General Johnston,
wounded, and that he could make his preparations as soon as he
reached his quarters, as I should send the order to him as soon
as I arrived at mine. On the next morning, as above stated,
he proceeded to the field and took command of the troops.
During the night our forces on the left had fallen back from
their position at the close of the previous day's battle, but those
on the right remained in the one they had gained, and some
combats occurred there between the opposing forces. The
enemy proceeded further to fortify his position on the Chicka-
hominy, covering his communication with his base of supplies
on York River. His left was on the south side of the Chicka-
hominy, between White-Oak Swamp and New Bridge, and was
covered by a strong intrenchment, with heavy guns, and with
abatis in front. His right wing was north of the Chicka-
hominy, extending to Mechanicsville, and the approaches de-
fended by strong works.

Our army was in line in front of Richmond, but without
intrenchments. General Lee immediately commenced the con-
struction of an earthwork for a battery on our left flank, and a
line of intrenchment to the right, necessarily feeble because of
our deficiency in tools. It seemed to be the intention of the
enemy to assail Richmond by regular approaches, which our
numerical inferiority and want of engineer troops, as well as the
deficiency of proper utensils, made it improbable that we should
be able to resist. The day after General Lee assumed com-
mand, I was riding out to the army, when I saw at a house on

1862] WHAT WAS MOST ADVISABLE TO DO. 131

my left a number of horses, and among them one I recognized
as belonging to him. I dismounted and entered the house, where
I found him in consultation with a number of his general offi-
cers. The tone of the conversation was quite despondent, and
one, especially, pointed out the inevitable consequence of the
enemy's advance by throwing out boyaux, and constructing suc-
cessive parallels. I expressed, in marked terms, my disappoint-
ment at hearing such views, and General Lee remarked that he
had, before I came in, said very much the same thing. I then
withdrew and rode to the front, where, after a short time, Gen-
eral Lee joined me, and entered into conversation as to what,
under the circumstances, I thought it most advisable to do. I
then said to him, substantially, that I knew of nothing better
than the plan he had previously explained to me, which was to
have been executed by General Johnston, but which was not
carried out ; that the change of circumstances would make one
modification necessary — that, instead, as then proposed, of bring-
ing General A. P. Hill, with his division, on the rear flank of the
enemy, it would, because of the preparation for defense made in
the mean time, now be necessary to bring the stronger force of
General T. J. Jackson from the Yalley of the Shenandoah. So
far as we were then informed, General Jackson was hotly en-
gaged with a force superior to his own, and, before he could be
withdrawn, it was necessary that the enemy should be driven
out of the Yalley. For this purpose, as well as to mask the de-
sign of bringing Jackson's forces to make a junction with those
of Lee, a strong division under General Whiting was detached
to go by rail to the Yalley to join General Jackson, and, by a
vigorous assault, to drive the enemy across the Potomac. As
soon as he commenced a retreat which unmistakably showed
that his flight would not stop within the limits of Yirginia,
General Jackson was instructed, with his whole force, to move
rapidly on the right flank of the enemy north of the Chicka-
hominy. The manner in which the division was detached to
reenforce General Jackson was so open that it was not doubted
General McClellan would soon be apprised of it, and would
probably attribute it to any other than the real motive, and
would confirm him in his exaggerated estimate of our strength.

132 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

By tlie rapidity of movement and skill with which General
Jackson handled his troops, he, after several severe engage-
ments, finally routed the enemy before the reenforcement of
Whiting arrived ; and he then, on the 17th of June, proceeded,
with that celerity which gave to his infantry its wonderful
fame and efficiency, to execute the orders which General Lee
had sent to him.

As evidence of the daring and unfaltering fortitude of
General Lee, I will here recite an impressive conversation which
occurred between us in regard to this movement. His plan
was to throw forward his left across the Meadow Bridge, drive
back the enemy's right flank, and then, crossing by the Mechan-
icsville Bridge with another column, to attack in front, hoping
by his combined forces to be victorious on the north side of
the Chickahominy ; while the small force on the intrenched
line south of the Chickahominy should hold the left of the
enemy in check. I pointed out to him that our force and in-
trenched line between that left flank and Richmond was too
weak for a protracted resistance, and, if McClellan was the man
I took him for when I nominated him for promotion in a new
regiment of cavalry, and subsequently selected him for one of
the military commission sent to Europe during the War of the
Crimea, as soon as he found that the bulk of our armv was on
the north side of the Chickahominy, he would not stop to try
conclusions with it there, but would immediately move upon
his objective point, the city of Richmond. If, on the other
hand, he should behave like an engineer officer, and deem it
his first duty to protect his line of communication, I thought
the plan proposed was not only the best, but would be a suc-
cess. Something of his old esprit de corps manifested itself
in General Lee's first response, that he did not know engineer
officers were more likely than others to make such mistakes,
but, immediately passing to the main subject, he added, " If
you will hold him as long as you can at the intrenchment, and
then fall back on the detached works around the city, I will
be upon the enemy's heels before he gets there."

Thus was inaugurated the offensive-defensive campaign
which resulted so gloriously to our arms, and turned from the

1862] THE CAMPAIGN IN THE VALLEY COMMENCED. 133

capital of the Confederacy a danger so momentous that, looking
at it retrospectively, it is not seen how a policy less daring or
less firmly pursued could have saved the capital from capture.

To resume the connected thread of our narrative. Prepara-
tory to this campaign, a light intrenchment for infantry cover,
with some works for field-guns, was constructed on the south
side of the Chickahominy, and General "Whiting, with two bri-
gades, as before stated, was sent to reenforce General Jackson
in the Valley, so as to hasten the expulsion of the enemy, after
which Jackson was to move rapidly from the Valley so as to
arrive in the vicinity of Ashland by the 24th of June, and, by
striking the enemy on his right flank, to aid in the proposed
attack. The better to insure the success of this movement,
General Lawton, who was coming with a brigade from Georgia
to join General Lee, was directed to change his line of march
and unite with General Jackson in the Valley.

As General Whiting went by railroad, it was expected that
the enemy would be cognizant of the fact, but not, probably,
assign to it the real motive; and that such was the case is
shown by an unsuccessful attack of the 26th, made on the
Williamsburg road, with the apparent intention of advancing
by that route to Richmond.

To observe the enemy, as well as to prevent him from learn-
ing of the approach of General Jackson, General J. E. B. Stu-
art was sent with a cavalry force on June 8th to cover the
route by which the former was to march, and to ascertain
whether the enemy had any defensive works or troops in posi-
tion to interfere with the advance of those forces. He re-
ported favorably on both these points, as well as to the natural
features of the country. On the 26th of June General Stuart
received confidential instructions from General Lee, the execu-
tion of which is so interwoven with the seven days' battles as
to be more appropriately noticed in connection with them, of
which it is proposed now to give a brief account.

Our order of battle directed General Jackson to march from
Ashland on the 25th toward Slash Church, encamping for the
night west of the Central Railroad ; to advance at 3 a. m. on
the 26th, and to turn Beaver-Dam Creek. General A. P. Hill

134 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

was to cross the Chickahominy at Meadow Bridge when Jack-
son advanced beyond that point, and to move directly upon
Mechanicsville. As soon as the bridge there should be uncov-
ered, Longstreet and D. H. Hill were to cross, the former to
proceed to the support of A. P. Hill and the latter to that of
Jackson.

The four commands were directed to sweep down the north
side of the Chickahominy toward the York River Railroad —
Jackson on the left and in advance ; Longstreet nearest the
river and in the rear. Huger, McLaws, and Magruder, remain-
ing on the south side of the Chickahominy, were ordered to
hold their positions as long as possible against any assault of the
enemy ; to observe his movements, and to follow him closely if
he should retreat. General Stuart, with the cavalry, was thrown
out on Jackson's left to guard his flank and give notice of the
enemy's movements. Brigadier-General Pendleton was directed
to employ the reserve artillery so as to resist any advance to-
ward Richmond, to superintend that portion of it posted to aid
in the operations on the north bank, and hold the remainder
for use where needed. The whole of Jackson's command did
not arrive in time to reach the point designated on the 25th.
He had, therefore, more distance to move on the 26th, and he
was retarded by the enemy.

Not until 3 p. m. did A. P. Hill begin to move. Then
he crossed the river and advanced upon Mechanicsville. After
a sharp conflict he drove the enemy from his intrenchments,
and forced him to take refuge in his works, on the left bank of
Beaver Dam, about a mile distant. This position was naturally
strong, the banks of the creek in front being high and almost
perpendicular, and the approach to it was over open fields com-
manded by the fire of artillery and infantry under cover on the
opposite side. The difficulty of crossing the stream had been
increased by felling the fringe of woods on its banks and de-
stroying the bridges. Jackson was expected to pass Beaver
Dam above, and turn the enemy's right, so General Hill made
no direct attack. Longstreet and D. H. Hill crossed the Me-
chanicsville Bridge as soon as it was uncovered and could be
repaired, but it was late before they reached the north bank of

1862] CRITICAL POSITION OF McCLELLAN. 135

the Chickahominy. An effort was made by two brigades, one
of A. P. Hill and the other Ripley's of D. H. Hill, to turn the
enemy's left, but the troops were unable in the growing dark-
ness to overcome the obstructions, and were withdrawn. The
engagement ceased about 9 p. m. Our troops retained the
ground from which the foe had been driven.

According to the published reports, General McClellan's po-
sition was regarded at this time as extremely critical. If he
concentrated on the left bank of the Chickahominy, he aban-
doned the attempt to capture Richmond, and risked a retreat
upon the White House and Yorktown, where he had no re-
serves, or reason to expect further support. If he moved to
the right bank of the river, he risked the loss of his communi-
cations with the White House, whence his supplies were drawn
by railroad. He would then have to attempt the capture of
Richmond by assault, or be forced to open new communications
by the James River, and move at once in that direction. There
he would receive the support of the enemy's navy. This latter
movement had, it appears, been thought of previously, and
transports had been sent to the James River. During the
night, after the close of the contest last mentioned, the whole
of Porter's baggage was sent over to the right bank of the
river, and united with the train that set out on the evening of
the 27th for the James River.

It would almost seem as if the Government of the United
States anticipated, at this period, the failure of McClellan's
expedition. On June 27th President Lincoln issued an order
creating the " Army of Virginia," to consist of the forces of
Fremont, in their Mountain Department; of Banks, in their
Shenandoah Department ; and of McDowell, at Fredericksburg.
The command of this army was assigned to Major-General
John Pope. This cut off all reinforcements from McDowell to
McClellan.

In expectation of Jackson's arrival on the enemy's right,
the battle was renewed at dawn, and continued with animation
about two hours, during which the passage of the creek was
attempted, and our troops forced their way to its banks, where
their progress was arrested by the nature of the stream and the

136 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

resistance encountered. They maintained their position while
preparations were being made to cross at another point nearer
the Chickahominy. Before these were completed, Jackson
crossed Beaver Dam above, and the enemy abandoned his in-
trenchments, and retired rapidly down the river, destroying a
great deal of property, but leaving much in his deserted camps.

After repairing the bridges over Beaver Dam, the several
columns resumed their advance, as nearly as possible, as pre-
scribed in the order. Jackson, with whom D. H. Hill had
united, bore to the left, in order to cut off reinforcements to
the enemy or intercept his retreat in that direction. Long-
street and A. P. Hill moved nearer the Chickahominy. Many
prisoners were taken in their progress ; and the conflagration of
wagons and stores marked the course of the retreating army.
Longstreet and Hill reached the vicinity of New Bridge about
noon. It was ascertained that the enemy had taken a position
behind Powhite Creek, prepared to dispute our progress. He
occupied a range of hills, with his right resting in the vicinity
of McGhee's house, and his left near that of Dr. Gaines, on a
wooded bluff, which rose abruptly from a deep ravine. The
ravine was filled with sharpshooters, to whom its banks gave
protection. A second line of infantry was stationed on the side
of the hill, overlooking the first, and protected by a breastwork
of logs. A third occupied the crest, strengthened with rifle-
trenches, and crowned with artillery. The approach to this
position was over an open plain, about a quarter of a mile wide,
commanded by a triple line of fire, and swept by the heavy bat-
teries south of the Chickahominy. In front of his center and
right the ground was generally open, bounded on the side of
our approach by a wood, with dense and tangled undergrowth,
and traversed by a sluggish stream, which converted the soil
into a deep morass. The woods on the further side of the
swamp were occupied by sharpshooters, and trees had been
felled to increase the difficulty of its passage, and detain our
advancing columns under the fire of infantry massed on the
slopes of the opposite hills, and of the batteries on their crests.

Pressing on toward the York River Railroad, A. P. Hill,
who was in advance, reached the vicinity of New Cold Har-

1862] BATTLE OF NEW COLD HARBOR. 137

bor about 2 p. m., where he encountered the foe. He immedi-
ately formed his line nearly parallel to the road leading from
that place toward McG-hee's house, and soon became hotly en-
gaged. The arrival of Jackson on our left was momentarily
expected, and it was supposed that his approach would cause
the extension of the opposing line in that direction. Under
this impression, Longstreet was held back until this movement
should commence. The principal part of the enemy's army was
now on the north side of the Chickahominy. Hill's single
division met this large force with the impetuous courage for
which that officer and his troops were distinguished. They
drove it back, and assailed it in its strong position on the ridge.
The battle raged fiercely, and with varying fortune, more than
two hours. Three regiments pierced the enemy's line, and
forced their way to the crest of the hill on his left, but were
compelled to fall back before overwhelming numbers. This
superior force, assisted by the fire of the batteries south of
the Chickahominy, which played incessantly on our columns
as they pressed through the difficulties that obstructed their
way, caused them to recoil. Though most of the men had never
been under fire until the day before, they were rallied, and
in turn repelled the advance of our assailant. Some brigades
were broken, others stubbornly maintained their positions, but
it became apparent that the enemy was gradually gaining ground.
The attack on our left being delayed by the length of Jackson's
march and the obstacles he encountered, Longstreet was ordered
to make a diversion in Hill's favor by a feint on the enemy's
left. In making this demonstration, the great strength of the
position already described was discovered, and General Long-
street perceived that, to render the diversion effectual, the feint
must be converted into an attack. . He resolved, with his char-
acteristic determination, to carry the heights by assault. His
column was quickly formed near the open ground, and, as his
preparations were completed, Jackson arrived, and his right
division — that of "Whiting — took position on the left of Long-
street. At the same time, D. H. Hill formed on our extreme
left, and, after a short but bloody conflict, forced 'his way
through the morass and obstructions, and drove the foe from

138 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

the woods on the opposite side. Ewell advanced on Hill's right,
and became hotly engaged. The first and fourth brigades of
Jackson's own division filled the interval between Ewell and
A. P. Hill. The second and third were sent to the right. The
arrival of these fresh troops enabled A. P. Hill to withdraw
some of his brigades, wearied and reduced by their long and
arduous conflict. The lines being now complete, a general ad-
vance from right to left was ordered. On the right, the troops
moved forward with steadiness, unchecked by the terrible fire
from the triple lines of infantry on the hill, and the cannon on
both sides of the river, which burst upon them as they emerged
upon the plain. The dead and wounded marked the line of
their intrepid advance, the brave Texans leading, closely fol-
lowed by their no less daring comrades. The enemy were
driven from the ravine to the first line of breastworks, over
which our impetuous column dashed up to the intrenchments
on the crest. These were quickly stormed, fourteen pieces of
artillery captured, and the foe driven into the field beyond.
Fresh troops came to his support, and he endeavored repeatedly
to rally, but in vain. He was forced back with great slaughter
until he reached the woods on the banks of the Chickahominy,
and night put an end to the pursuit. Long lines of dead and
wounded marked each stand made by the enemy in his stubborn
resistance, and the field over which he retreated was strewed
with the slain. On the left, the attack was no less vigorous and
successful. D. H. Hill charged across the open ground in front,
one of his regiments having first bravely carried a battery whose
fire enfiladed his advance. Gallantly supported by the troops
on his right, who pressed forward with unfaltering resolution,
he reached the crest of the ridge, and, after a sanguinary strug-
gle, broke the enemy's line, captured several of his batteries,
and drove him in confusion toward the Chickahominy, until
darkness rendered further pursuit impossible. Our troops re-
mained in undisturbed possession of the field, covered with the
dead and wounded of our opponent ; and his broken forces fled
to the river or wandered through the woods. Owing to the
nature of the country, the cavalry was unable to participate in
the general engagement. It, however, rendered valuable ser-

1862] FURTHER RETREAT OF THE EXEMY. 139

vice in guarding Jackson's flank, and took a large number of
prisoners.

On the morning of the 28th it was ascertained that none of
the enemy remained in our front north of the Chickahominy.
As he might yet intend to give battle to preserve his communi-
cations, the Ninth Cavalry, supported by E well's division, was
ordered to seize the York River Railroad, and General Stuart
with his main body to cooperate. When the cavalry reached
Dispatch Station, the enemy retreated to the south bank of the
Chickahominy, and burned the railroad-bridge. During the
forenoon, columns of dust south of the river showed that he
was in motion. The abandonment of the railroad and de-
struction of the bridge proved that no further attempt would
be made to hold that line. But, from the position the enemy
occupied, the roads which led toward the James River would also
enable him to reach the lower bridges over the Chickahominy,
and retreat down the Peninsula. In the latter event, it was ne-
cessary that our troops should continue on the north bank of the
river, and, until the intention of General McClellan was discov-
ered, it was deemed injudicious to change their disposition.
Ewell was therefore ordered to proceed to Bottom's Bridge, to
guard that point, and the cavalry to watch the bridges below.
No certain indications of a retreat to the James River were dis-
covered by our forces on the south side of the Chickahominy,
and late in the afternoon the enemy's works were reported to be
fully manned. The strength of these fortifications prevented
Generals Huger and Magruder from discovering what was pass-
ing in their front. Below the enemy's works the country was
densely wooded and intersected by swamps, concealing his move-
ments and precluding reconnaissances except by the regular
roads, all of which were strongly guarded. The bridges over the
Chickahominy in rear of the enemy were destroyed, and their
reconstruction by us was* impracticable in the presence of his
whole army and powerful batteries. We were therefore com-
pelled to wait until his purpose should be developed. Generals
Huger and Magruder were again directed to use the utmost vigi-
lance, and to pursue the foe vigorously should they discover that
he was retreating. During the afternoon of the 28th the signs

140 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

were suggestive of a general movement, and, no indications of
his approach to the lower bridges of the Chickahominy having
been discovered by the pickets in observation at those points,
it became inferable that General McClellan was about to retreat
to the James River.

CHAPTER XXIV.

Retreat of the Enemy. — Pursuit and Battle. — Night. — Further Retreat of the Enemy.
— Progress of General Jackson. — The Enemy at Frazier's Farm. — Position of
General Holmes. — Advance of General Longstreet. — Remarkable Features of the
Battle. — Malvern Hill. — Our Position. — The Attack. — Expedition of General
Stuart. — Destruction of the Enemy's Stores. — Assaults on the Enemy. — Retreat
to Westover on the James. — Siege of Richmond raised. — Number of Prisoners
taken. — Strength of our Forces. — Strength of our Forces at Seven Pines and
after. — Strength of the Enemy.

During- the night I visited the several commands along the
intrenchment on the south side of the Chickahominy. Gen-
eral Huger's was on the right, General McLaws's in the center,
and General Magruder's on the left. The night was quite dark,
especially so in the woods in front of our line, and, in expressing
my opinion to the officers that the enemy would commence a
retreat before morning, I gave special instructions as to the pre-
cautions necessary in order certainly to hear when the movement
commenced. In the confusion of such a movement, with nar-
row roads and heavy trains, a favorable opportunity was offered
for attack. It fell out, however, that the enemy did move be-
fore morning, and that the fact of the works having been evacu-
ated was first learned by an officer on the north side of the river,
who, the next morning, the 29th, about sunrise, was examining
their works by the aid of a field-glass.

Generals Longstreet and A. P. Hill were promptly ordered
to recross the Chickahominy at New' Bridge, and move by the
Darbytown and Long Bridge roads. General Lee, having sent
his engineer, Captain Meade, to examine the condition of the
abandoned wrorks, came to the south side of the Chickahominy
to unite his command and direct its movements.

Magruder and Huger found the whole line of works deserted,

1862] PURSUIT PREVENTED BY THE DARKNESS. 141

and large quantities of military stores of every description aban-
doned or destroyed. They were immediately ordered in pursuit,
the former by the Charles City road, so as to take the enemy's
army in flank ; and the latter by the Williamsburg road, to at-
tack his rear. Jackson was directed to cross the " Grapevine "
Bridge, and move down the south side of the Chickahominy.
Magruder reached the vicinity of Savage Station, where he came
upon the rear-guard of the retreating army. Being informed
that it was advancing, he halted and sent for reinforcements.
Two brigades of Huger's division were ordered to his support,
but were subsequently withdrawn, it having been ascertained
that the force in Magruder's front was merely covering the re-
treat of the main body.

Jackson's route led to the flank and rear of Savage Station,
but he was delayed by the necessity of reconstructing the
"Grapevine" Bridge.

Late in the afternoon Magruder attacked the enemy with
one of his divisions and two regiments of another. A severe
action ensued, and continued about two hours, when night put
an end to the conflict. The troops displayed great gallantry,
and inflicted heavy loss ; but, owing to the lateness of the hour
and the small force engaged, the result was not decisive, and
the enemy continued his retreat under cover of night, leaving
several hundred prisoners, with his dead and wounded, in our
hands. Our loss was small in numbers but great in value.
Among others who could ill be spared, here fell the gallant sol-
dier, the useful citizen, the true friend and Christian gentleman,
Brigadier-General Kichard Griffith. He had served with dis-
tinction in foreign war, and, when the South was invaded, was
among the first to take up arms in defense of our rights.

At Savage Station were found about twenty-five hundred
men in hospital, and a large amount of property. Stores of
much value had been destroyed, including the necessary medi-
cal supplies for the sick and wounded. The night was so dark
that, before the battle ended, it was only by challenging that on
several occasions it was determined whether the troops in front
were friends or foes. It was therefore deemed unadvisable to
attempt immediate pursuit.

142 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

Our troops slept upon their arms, and in the morning it was
found that the enemy had retreated during the night, and, by
the time thus gained, he was enabled to cross the White-Oak
Creek, and destroy the bridge.

Early on the 30th Jackson reached Savage Station. He was
directed to pursue the enemy on the road he had taken, and
Magruder to follow Longstreet by the Darbytown road. As
Jackson advanced, he captured so many prisoners and collected
so large a number of arms, that two regiments had to be de-
tached for their security. His progress at White-Oak Swamp
was checked by the enemy, who occupied the opposite side, and
obstinately resisted the rebuilding of the bridge.

Longstreet and A. P. Hill, continuing their advance, on the
30th came upon the foe strongly posted near the intersection
of the Long Bridge and Charles City roads, at the place known
in the military reports as Frazier's Farm.

Huger's route led to the right of this position, Jackson's to
the rear, and the arrival of their commands was awaited, to be-
gin the attack.

On the 29th General Holmes had crossed from the south
side of the James River, and, on the 30th, was reenforced by a
detachment of General Wise's brigade. He moved down the
River road, with a view to gain, near to Malvern Hill, a position
which would command the supposed route of the retreating
army.

It is an extraordinary fact that, though the capital had been
threatened by an attack from the seaboard on the right, though
our army had retreated from Yorktown up to the Chickahom-
iny, and, after encamping there for a time, had crossed the river
and moved up to Richmond, yet, when at the close of the bat-
tles around Richmond McClellan retreated and was pursued
toward the James River, we had no maps of the country in
which we were operating ; our generals were ignorant of the
roads, and their guides knew little more than the way from
their homes to Richmond. It was this fatal defect in prepara-
tion, and the erroneous answers of the guides, that caused Gen-
eral Lee first to post Holmes and Wise, when they came down
the River road, at j^ew Market, where, he was told, was the

1862] THE POSITION OF GENERAL HOLMES. 143

route that McClellan must pursue in his retreat to the James.
Subsequently learning that there was another road, by the Wil-
lis church, which would better serve the purpose of the retreat-
ing foe, Holmes's command was moved up to a position on
that road where, at the foot of a hill which concealed from view
the enemy's line, he remained under the fire of the enemy's
gunboats, the huge, shrieking shells from which dispersed a
portion of his "cavalry and artillery, though the faithful old sol-
dier remained with the rest of his command, waiting, accord-
ing to his orders, for the enemy with his trains to pass ; but,
taking neither of the roads pointed out to General Lee, he re-
treated by the shorter and better route, which led by Dr. Poin-
dexter's house to Harrison's Landing. It has been alleged that
General Holmes was tardy in getting into position, and failed
to use his artillery as he had been ordered. Both statements
are incorrect. He first took position when and where he was di-
rected, and, soon after, he moved to the last position to which
he was assigned. The dust of his advancing column caused a
heavy fire from the gunboats to be opened upon him, and, in men
who had never before seen the huge shells then fired, they
inspired a degree of terror not justified by their effectiveness.
The enemy, instead of being a straggling mass moving toward
the James Kiver, as had been reported, were found halted be-
tween West's house and Malvern Hill on ground commanding
Holmes's position, with an open field between them.

General Holmes ordered his chief of artillery to commence
firing upon the enemy's infantry, which immediately gave way,
but a heavy fire of twenty-five or thirty guns promptly replied
to our battery, and formed, with the gunboats, a cross-fire upon
General Holmes's command. The numerical superiority of the
opposing force, both in infantry and artillery, would have made
it worse than useless to attempt an assault unless previously re-
enforced, and, as no reinforcements arrived, Holmes, about an
hour after nightfall, withdrew to a point somewhat in advance
of the one he had held in the morning. Though the enemy
continued their cannonade until after dark, and most of the
troops were new levies, General Holmes reported that they be-
haved well under the trying circumstances to which they were

144: RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

exposed, except a portion of his artillery and cavalry, which gave
way in disorder, probably from the effect of the ten-inch shells,
which were to them a novel implement of war ; for when I met
them, say half a mile from the point they had left, and suc-
ceeded in stopping them, another shell fell and exploded near
us in the top of a wide-spreading tree, giving a shower of metal
and limbs, which soon after caused them to resume their flight
in a manner that plainly showed no moral power could stop
them within the range of those shells. It was after a personal
and hazardous reconnaissance that General Lee assigned Gen-
eral Holmes to his last position ; and when I remonstrated with
General Lee, whom I met returning from his reconnaissance,
on account of the exposure to which he had subjected himself,
he said he could not get the required information otherwise,
and therefore had gone himself.

After the close of the battle of Malvern Hill, General
Holmes found that a deep ravine led up to the rear of the left
flank of the enemy's line, and expressed his regret that it had
not been known, and that he had not been ordered, when the
attack was made in front, to move up that ravine and simulta-
neously assail in flank and reverse. It was not until after he
had explained with regret the lost, because unknown, oppor-
tunity, that he was criticised as having failed to do his whole
duty at the battle of Malvern Hill.

He has passed beyond the reach of censure or of praise, after
serving his country on many fields wisely and well. I, who
knew him from our schoolboy days, wTho served with him in
garrison and in the field, and with pride watched him as he gal-
lantly led a storming party up a rocky height at Monterey, and
was intimately acquainted with his whole career during our sec-
tional war, bear willing testimony to the purity, self-abnega-
tion, generosity, fidelity, and gallantry which characterized him
as a man and a soldier.

General Huger reported that his progress was delayed by trees
which his opponent had felled across the Williamsburg road. In
the afternoon, after passing the obstructions and driving off the
men who were still cutting down trees, they came upon an open
field (P. "Williams's), where they were assailed by a battery of

1862] THE BATTLE OF FRAZIER'S FARM. 145

rifled guns. The artillery was brought up, and replied to the
fire. In the mean time a column of infantry was moved to the
right, so as to turn the battery, and the combat was ended. The
report of this firing was heard at Frazier's Farm, and erro-
neously supposed to indicate the near approach of Huger's col-
umn, and, it has been frequently stated, induced General Long-
street to open fire with some of his batteries as notice to
General Huger where our troops were, and that thus the en-
gagement was brought on. General A. P. Hill, who was in
front and had made the dispositions of our troops while hope-
fully waiting for the arrival of Jackson and Huger, states that
the fight commenced by fire from the enemy's artillery, which
swept down the road, etc. This not only concurs with my rec-
ollection of the event, but is more in keeping with the design
to wait for the expected reinforcements.

The detention of Huger, as above stated, and the failure of
Jackson to force a passage of the White-Oak Swamp, left Long-
street and Hill, without the expected support, to maintain the
unequal conflict as best they might. The superiority of num-
bers and advantage of position were on the side of the enemy.
The battle raged furiously until 9 p. m. By that time the
enemy had been driven with great slaughter from every posi-
tion but one, which he maintained until he was enabled to with-
draw under cover of darkness. At the close of the struggle
nearly the entire field remained in our possession, covered with
the enemy's dead and wounded. Many prisoners, including a
general of division, were captured, and several batteries with
some thousands of small-arms were taken.

After this engagement, Magruder, who had been ordered to
go to the support of Holmes, was recalled, to relieve the troops
of Longstreet and Hill. He arrived during the night, with the
troops of his command much fatigued by the long, hot march.

In the battle of Frazier's Farm the troops of Longstreet and
Hill, though disappointed in the expectation of support, and
contending against superior numbers advantageously posted,
made their attack successful by the most heroic courage and
unfaltering determination.

'Nothing could surpass the bearing of General Hill on that
57

146 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

occasion, and I often recur with admiration to the manner in
which Longstreet, when Hill's command seemed about to be
overborne, steadily led his reserve to the rescue, as he might
have marched on a parade. The mutual confidence between
himself and his men was manifested by the calm manner in
which they went into the desperate struggle. The skill and
courage which made that corps illustrious on former as well
as future fields were never more needed or better exemplified
than on this.

The current of the battle which was then setting against us
was reversed, and the results which have been stated were gained.
That more important consequences would have followed had
Huger and Jackson, or either of them, arrived in time to take
part in the conflict, is unquestionable; and there is little hazard
in saying that the army of McClellan would have been riven in
twain, beaten in detail, and could never, as an organized body,
have reached the James River.

Our troops slept on the battle-field they had that day won,
and couriers were sent in the night with instructions to hasten
the march of the troops who had been expected during the day.

Yalor less true or devotion to their cause less sincere than
that which pervaded our army and sustained its commanders
would, in this hour of thinned ranks and physical exhaustion,
have thought of the expedient of retreat ; but, so far as I re.
member, no such resort was contemplated. To bring up rein-
forcements and attack again was alike the expectation and the
wish.

During the night, humanity, the crowning grace of the
knightly soldier, secured for the wounded such care as was pos-
sible, not only to those of our own army, but also to those of
the enemy who had been left upon the field.

This battle was in many respects one of the most remarkable
of the war. Here occurred on several occasions the capture of
batteries by the impetuous charge of our infantry, defying the
canister and grape which plowed through their ranks, and many
hand-to-hand conflicts, where bayonet-wounds were freely given
and received, and men fought with clubbed muskets in the life-
and-death encounter.

1862] THE POSITION AT MALVERN HILL. 1^7

The estimated strength of the enemy was double our own,
and he had the advantage of being in position. From both
causes it necessarily resulted that our loss was very heavy. To
the official reports and the minute accounts of others, the want
of space compels me to refer the reader for a detailed statement
of the deeds of those who in our day served their country so
bravely and so well.

During the night those who fought us at Frazier's Farm
fell back to the stronger position of Malvern Hill, and by a
night-march the force which had detained Jackson at White-
Oak Swamp effected a junction with the other portion of the
enemy. Early on the 1st of July Jackson reached the battle-
field of the previous day, having forced the passage of White-
Oak Swamp, where he captured some artillery and a number of
prisoners. He was directed to follow the route of the ene-
my's retreat, but soon found him in position on a high ridge
in front of Malvern Hill. Here, on a line of great natural
strength, he had posted his powerful artillery, supported by
his large force of infantry, covered by hastily constructed in-
trenchments. His left rested near Crew's house and his right
near Binford's. Immediately in his front the ground was open,
varying in width from a quarter to half a mile, and, sloping
gradually from the crest, was completely swept by the fire of his
infantry and artillery. To reach this open ground our troops
had to advance through a broken and thickly wooded country,
traversed nearly throughout its whole extent by a swamp pass-
able at only a few places and difficult at these. The whole was
within range of the batteries on the heights and the gunboats
in the river, under whose incessant fire "our movements had to
be executed.

Jackson formed his line with Whiting's division on his left
and D. H. Hill's on his right, one of Ewell's brigades occupying
the interval. The rest of Ewell's and Jackson's own division
were held in reserve. Magruder was directed to take position
on Jackson's right, but before his arrival two of Huger's bri-
gades came up and were placed next to Hill. Magruder subse-
quently formed on the right of these brigades, which, with a
third of Huger's, were placed under his command. Longstreet

14S RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

and A. P. Hill were held in reserve, and took no part in the
engagement. Owing to ignorance of the country, the dense
forests impeding necessary communications, and the extreme
difficulty of the ground, the whole line was not formed until a
late hour in the afternoon. The obstacles presented by the
woods and swamp made it impracticable to bring up a sufficient
amount of artillery to oppose successfully the extraordinary force
of that arm employed by the enemy, while the field itself afford-
ed us few positions favorable for its use, and none for its proper
concentration.

General "W. N. Pendleton, in whom were happily combined
the highest characteristics of the soldier, the patriot, and the
Christian, was in chief command of the artillery, and energeti-
cally strove to bring his long-range guns and reserve artillery
into a position where they might be effectively used against the
enemy, but the difficulties before mentioned were found insu-
perable.

Orders were issued for a general advance at a given signal,
but the causes referred to prevented a proper concert of action
among the troops. D. H. Hill pressed forward across the open
field, and engaged the enemy gallantly, breaking and driving
back his first line ; but, a simultaneous advance of the other
troops not taking plaee, he found himself unable to maintain
the ground he had gained against the overwhelming numbers
and numerous batteries opposed to him. Jackson sent to his
support his own division and that part of E well's which was in
reserve ; but, owing to the increasing darkness and intricacy of
the forest and swamp, they did not arrive in time to render
the desired assistance. Hill was therefore compelled to aban-
don part of the ground he had gained, after suffering severe loss
and inflicting heavy damage.

On the right the attack was gallantly made by Huger's and
Magruder's commands. Two brigades of the former com-
menced the action, the other two were subsequently sent to the
support of Magruder and Hill. Several determined efforts were
made to storm the hill at Crew's house. The brigade advanced
bravely across the open field, raked by the fire of a hundred
cannon and the musketry of large bodies of infantry. Some

1862] THE FOE HAD SILENTLY WITHDRAWN. 149

were broken and gave way; others approached close to the
guns, driving back the infantry, compelling the advance batter-
ies to retire to escape capture, and mingling their dead with
those of the enemy. For want of cooperation by the attacking
columns, their assaults were too weak to break the enemy's line ;
and, after struggling gallantly, sustaining and inflicting great
loss, they were compelled successively to retire. Night was ap-
proaching when the attack began, and it soon became difficult
to distinguish friend from foe. The firing continued until after
9 p. m., but no decided result was gained.

Part of our troops were withdrawn to their original posi-
tions ; others remained in the open field ; and some rested
within a hundred yards of the batteries that had been so bravely
but vainly assailed. The lateness of the hour at which the at-
tack necessarily began gave the foe the full advantage of his supe-
rior position, and augmented the natural difficulties of our own.

At the cessation of firing, several fragments of different
commands were lying down and holding their ground within a
short distance of the enemy's line, and, as soon as the fighting
ceased, an informal truce was established by common consent.
Numerous parties from both armies, with lanterns and litters,
wandered over the field seeking for the wounded, whose groans
and calls on all sides could not fail to move with pity the hearts
of friend and foe.

The morning dawned with heavy rain, and the enemy's po-
sition was seen to have been entirely deserted. The ground
was covered with his dead and wounded, and his route exhib-
ited evidence of a precipitate retreat. To the fatigue of hard
marches and successive battles, enough to have disqualified our
troops for rapid pursuit, was added the discomfort of being
thoroughly wet and chilled by rain. I sent out to the neigh-
boring houses to buy, if it could be had, at any price, enough
whisky to give to each of the men a single gill, but it could
not be found.

The foe had silently withdrawn in the night by a route
which had been unknown to us, but which was the most direct
road to Harrison's Landing, and he had so many hours the start,
that, among the general officers who expressed to me their opin-

150 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

ion, there was but one who thought it was possible to pursue
effectively. That was General T. J. Jackson, who quietly said,
" They have not all got away if we go immediately after them."
During the pursuit, which has just been described, the cav-
alry of our army had been absent, having been detached on a
service which was reported as follows : After seizing the York
River Railroad, on June 28th, and driving the enemy across
the Chickahominy, the force under General Stuart proceeded
down the railroad to ascertain if there was any movement of the
enemy in that direction. He encountered but little opposition,
and reached the vicinity of the White House on the 29th. On
his approach the enemy destroyed the greater part of the im-
mense stores accumulated at that depot, and retreated toward
Fortress Monroe. With one gun and some dismounted men
General Stuart drove off a gunboat, which lay near the White
House, and rescued a large amount of property, including more
than ten thousand stand of small-arms, partially burned. Gen-
eral Stuart describes his march down the enemy's line of com-
munication with the York Eiver as one in which he was but
feebly resisted. He says :

" We advanced until, coming in view of the White House (a
former plantation residence of General George Washington), at a
distance of a quarter of a mile, a large gunboat was discovered
lying at the landing. ... I was convinced that a few bold sharp-
shooters could compel the gunboat to leave. I accordingly ordered
down about seventy-five, partly of the First and Fourth Virginia
Cavalry, and partly of the Jeff Davis Legion, armed with the
rifled carbines. They advanced on this monster so terrible to our
fancy, and a body of sharpshooters was sent ashore from the boat
to meet them. ... To save time I ordered up the howitzer, a few
shells from which, fired with great accuracy, and bursting directly
over her decks, caused an instantaneous withdrawal of the sharp-
shooters, and a precipitous flight under headway of steam down the
river. . . . An opportunity was here offered for observing the de-
ceitfulness of the enemy's pretended reverence for everything as-
sociated with the name of Washington — for the dwelling-house
was burned to the ground, not a vestige left except what told of
desolation and vandalism.

" Nine large barges, laden with stores, were on fire as we ap-

1862] ENEMY'S ESCAPE TO THE JAMES RIVER. 151

proached ; immense numbers of tents, wagons, and cars in long
trains, loaded, and five locomotives ; a number of forges ; quanti-
ties of every species of quartermaster's stores and property, mak-
ing a total of many millions of dollars — all more or less destroyed.
... I replied (to a note from the commanding General) that there
was no evidence of a retreat of the main body down the Williams-
burg road, and I had no doubt that the enemy, since his defeat,
was endeavoring to reach the James as a new base, being com-
pelled to surrender his connection with the York. If the Federal
people can be convinced that this was a part of McClellan's plan,
that it was in his original design for Jackson to turn his right
flank, and our generals to force him from his strongholds, they
certainly never can forgive him for the millions of public treasure
that his superb strategy cost."

Leaving one squadron at the White House, he returned to
guard the lower bridges of the Chickahominy. On the 30th
he was directed to recross and cooperate with Jackson. After
a long march, he reached the rear of the enemy at Malvern Hill,
on the night of July 1st, at the close of the engagement.

On the 2d of July the pursuit was commenced, the cavalry
under General Stuart in advance. The knowledge acquired
since the event renders it more than probable that, could our
infantry, with a fair amount of artillery, during that day and the
following night, have been in position on the ridge which over-
looked the plain where the retreating enemy was encamped on
the bank of the James River, a large part of his army must have
dispersed, and the residue would have been captured. It appears,
from the testimony taken before the United States Congressional
Committee on the Conduct of the War, that it was not until
July 3d that the heights which overlooked the encampment of
the retreating army were occupied, and, from the manuscript
notes on the war by General J. E. B. Stuart, we learn that he
easily gained and took possession of the heights, and with his
light howitzer opened fire upon the enemy's camp, producing
great commotion. This was described by the veteran soldier,
General Casey, of the United States Army, thus :

" The enemy had come down with some artillery upon our
army massed together on the river, the heights commanding the

152 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

position not being in our possession. Had the enemy come down
and taken possession of those heights with a force of twenty or
thirty thousand men, they would, in my opinion, have taken the
whole of our army except that small portion of it that might have
got off on the transports."

General Lee was not a man of hesitation, and they have
mistaken his character who suppose caution was his vice. He
was prone to attack, and not slow to press an advantage when
he gained it. Longstreet and Jackson were ordered to advance,
but a violent storm which prevailed throughout the day greatly
retarded their progress. The enemy, harassed and closely fol-
lowed by the cavalry, succeeded in gaining Westover, on the
James River, and the protection of his gunboats. His position
was one of great natural and artificial strength, after the heights
were occupied and intrenched. It was flanked on each side by
a creek, and the approach in front was commanded by the heavy
guns of his shipping, as well as by those mounted in his in-
trenchments. Under these circumstances it was deemed inex-
pedient to attack him ; and, in view of the condition of our
troops, who had been marching and fighting almost incessantly
for seven days, under the most trying circumstances, it was de-
termined to withdraw, in order to afford to them the repose of
which they stood so much in need.

Several days were spent in collecting arms and other prop-
erty abandoned by the enemy, and, in the mean time, some
artillery and cavalry were sent below Westover to annoy his
transports. On July 8th our army returned to the vicinity of
Richmond.

Under ordinary circumstances the army of the enemy should
have been destroyed. Its escape wTas due to the causes already
stated. Prominent among these was the want -of correct and
timely information. This fact, together with the character of
the country, enabled General McClellan skillfully to conceal his
retreat, and to add much to the obstructions with which nature
had beset the way of our pursuing columns. We had, however,
effected our main purpose. The siege of Richmond was raised,
and the object of a campaign which had been prosecuted after

1862] THE NUMBER OF OUR TROOPS. 153

months of preparation, at an enormous expenditure of men
and money, was completely frustrated.*

More than ten thousand prisoners, including officers of rank,
fifty-two pieces of artillery, and upward of thirty-five thousand
stand of small-arms were captured. The stores and supplies of
every description which fell into our hands were great in amount
and value, but small in comparison with those destroyed by the
enemy. His losses in battle exceeded our own, as attested by
the thousands of dead and wounded left on every field, while
his subsequent inaction shows in what condition the survivors
reached the protection of the gunboats.

In the archive office of the War Department in "Washington
there are on file some of the field and monthly returns of the
strength of the Army of Northern Virginia. These are the
original papers which were taken from Richmond. They fur-
nish an accurate statement of the number of men in that army
at the periods named. They were not made public at the time,
as I did not think it to be judicious to inform the enemy of
the numerical weakness of our forces. The following state-
ments have been taken from those papers by Major Walter H.
Taylor, of the staff of General Lee, who supervised for several
years the preparation of the original returns.

A statement of the strength of the troops under General
Johnston shows that on May 21, 1862, he had present for duty
as follows :

Smith's division, consisting of the brigades of Whiting, Hood, Hampton, Hat-
ton, and Pettigrew 10,592

Longstreet's division, consisting of the brigades of A. P. Hill, Pickett, R. H.

Anderson, Wilson, Colston, and Pryor 13,816

Magruder's division, consisting of the brigades of McLaws, Kershaw, Griffith,

Cobb, Toombs, and D. R. Jones 15,680

D. H. Hill's division, consisting of the brigades of Early, Rodes, Raines,

Featherston, and the commands of Colonels Ward and Crump 11,151

Cavalry brigade 1,289

Reserve artillery 1,160

Total effective men 53,688

* Reports of Generals Robert E. Lee, Pendleton, A. P. Hill, Huger, Alexander,
and Major W. H. Taylor, in his " Four Years with Lee," have been drawn upon for
the foregoing.

154 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

STATEMENT OF THE STRENGTH OF THE ARMY COMMANDED BY GENERAL

R. E. LEE ON JULY 20, 1862.

DEPARTMENT OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA AND NORTH CAROLINA.

Department of North Carolina

Longstreet's division

D. H. Hill's division

McLaws's division

A. P. Hill's division

Anderson's division

D. R. Jones's division

Whiting's division

Stuart's cavalry

Pendleton's artillery

Rhett's artillery

Total, including Department of North Carolina

4,160

PEE6ENT

FOE DCTY.

Officers.

Enlisted men.

722

11,509

557
550

7,929
8,998

514
519

7,188
10,104

357
213

5,760
3,500

252
295
103

3,600
3,740
1,716
1,355

65,399

ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA, SEPTEMBER 22, 1862.

PBESENT

FOB DCTY.

Officers.

Enlisted men.

1,410

310

318
280
183

19,001

Jackson's command :

D. H. Hill's division

4 739

4,435

3,144

Jackson's division

2,367

2,501

33,686

ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA, SEPTEMBER 30, 1862.

Longstreet's commaDd
Jackson's command. .
Reserve artillery

Total*

PBESENT FOE DUTY.

48,933

Major Taylor, in his work,f states :

" In addition to the troops above enumerated as the strength
of General Johnston on May 21, 1862, there were two brigades
subject to his orders then stationed in the vicinity of Hanover
Junction, one under the command of General J. R. Anderson, and
the other under the command of General Branch ; they were sub-

* No report of cavalry f " Four Years with General Lee."

1862] AN EXPOSITION OF ALL THE FACTS. 155

sequently incorporated into the division of General A. P. Hill,
and participated in the battles around Richmond."

He has no official data by which to determine their numbers,
but, from careful estimates and conference with General Ander-
son, he estimates the strength of the two at 4,000 effective.

Subsequent to the date of the return of the army around
Richmond, heretofore given, but previous to the battle of Seven
Pines, General Johnston was reenforced by General Huger's
division of three brigades. The total strength of these three
brigades, according to the " Reports of the Operations of the
Army of Northern Virginia," was 5,008 effectives. Taylor says :

" If the strength of these five be added to the return of May
21st, we shall have sixty-two thousand six hundred and ninety-six
(62,696) as the effective strength of the army under General John-
ston on May 31, 1862.

" Deduct the losses sustained in the battle of Seven Pines as
shown by the official reports of casualties, say 6,084, and we have
56,612 as the effective strength of the army when General Lee
assumed command."

There have been various attempts made to point out the ad-
vantage which might have been obtained if General Lee, in
succeeding to the command, had renewed on the 1st of June
the unfinished battle of the 31st of May ; and the representation
that he commenced his campaign, known as the " Seven Days'
Battles," only after he had collected a great army, instead of
moving with a force not greatly superior to that which his pred-
ecessor had, has led to the full exposition of all the facts bear-
ing upon the case. In the " Southern Historical Society Papers,"
June, 1876, is published an extract from an address of Colonel
Charles Marshall, secretary and aide-de-camp to General R. E.
Lee, before the Virginia Division of the Army of Northern
Virginia. In it Colonel Marshall quotes General J. E. John-
ston as saying :

" General Lee did not attack the enemy until the 26th of June,
because he was employed from the 1st until then in forming a
great army by bringing to that which I had commanded 15,000
men from North Carolina under Major-General Holmes, 22,000

156 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

men from South Carolina and Georgia, and above 16,000 men
from the * Valley,' in the divisions of Jackson and Ewell," etc.

These numbers added together make 53,000. Colonel Mar-
shall then proceeds, from official reports, to show that all these
numbers were exaggerated, and that one brigade, spoken of as
seven thousand strong — that of General Drayton — was not
known to be in the Army of Yirginia until after the " seven
days," and that another brigade, of which General Johnston ad-
mitted he did not know the strength, Colonel Marshall thought
it safer to refer to as the " unknown brigade," which, he sug-
gests, may have been " a small command unHer General Evans,
of South Carolina, who did not join the army until after it
moved from Richmond."

General Holmes's report, made July 15, 1862, states that
on the 29th of June he brought his command to the north side
of the James River, and was joined by General Wise's brigade.
With this addition, his force amounted to 6,000 infantry and
six batteries of artillery. General Ransom's brigade had been
transferred from the division of General Holmes to that of Gen-
eral Huger a short time before General Holmes was ordered to
join General Lee. The brigade of General Branch had been
detached at an earlier period ; it was on duty near to Hanover
Junction, and under the command of General J. E. Johnston
before the battle4 of Seven Pines. These facts are mentioned to
account for the small size of General Holmes's division, which
had been reduced to two brigades. Ripley's brigade on the
26th of June was reported to have an aggregate force of 2,366,
including pioneers and the ambulance corps. General Law-
ton's brigade, when moving up from Georgia to Richmond,
was ordered to change direction, and join General Jackson in
the Yalley. He subsequently came down with General Jack-
son, and reports the force which he led into the battle of Cold
Harbor, on the 27th of June, 1862, as 3,500 men.

General Lee, after the battle of Seven Pines, had sent two
large brigades under General Whiting to cooperate with Gen-
eral Jackson in the Yalley, and to return with him, according
to instructions furnished. These brigades were in the battle of
Seven Pines, and were counted in the force of the army when

1862] REINFORCEMENTS TO GENERAL LEE. 157

General Lee took command of it. Lawton's Georgia brigade,
as has been stated, was diverted from its destination for a like
temporary service, and is accounted for as reinforcements
brought from the south. These three brigades, though coming
with Jackson and Ewell, were not a part of their divisions, and,
if their numbers are made to swell the force which Jackson
brought, they should be elsewhere- subtracted.

General J. A. Early, in the same number of the " Historical
Society Papers," in a letter addressed to General J. E. John-
ston, February 4, 1875, makes an exhaustive examination from
official reports, and applies various methods of computation to
the question at issue. Among other facts, he states :

" Drayton's brigade did not come to Virginia until after the
battles around Richmond. It was composed of the Fifteenth
South Carolina and the Fiftieth and Fifty-first Georgia Regi-
ments and Third South Carolina Battalion. A part, if not all, of
it was engaged in the fight at Secessionville, South Carolina, on
the 16th of June, 1862. Its first engagement in Virginia was on
the Rappahannock, 25th of August, 1862. After Sharpsburg, it
was so small that it was distributed among some other brigades in
Longstreet's corps."

After minute inquiry, General Early concludes that "the
whole command that came from the Valley, including the artil-
lery, the regiment of cavalry, and the Marylan'd regiment and a
battery, then known as ' The Maryland Line,' could not have
exceeded 8,000 men." In this, General Early does not include
either Lawton's brigade or the two brigades with Whiting, and
reaches the conclusion that " the whole force received by General
Lee was about 23,000 — about 30,000 less than your estimate."

Taking the number given by General Early as the entire re-
enforcement received by General Lee after the battle of Seven
Pines and before the commencement of the seven days' battles
— which those who know his extreme accuracy and minuteness
of inquiry will be quite ready to do — and deducting from the
23,000 the casualties in the battle of Seven Pines (6,084), we
have 16,916 ; if to this be added whatever number of absentees
may have joined the army in anticipation of active operations,
a number which I have no means of ascertaining, the result

158 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

will be the whole increment to the army with which General
Lee took the offensive against McClellan.

It appears from the official returns of the Army of the Poto-
mac that on June 20th General McClellan had present for duty
115,102 men. It is stated that McClellan reached the James
River with " between 85,000 and 90,000 men," and that his
loss in the seven days' battles was 15,249 ; this would make
the army 105,000 strong at the commencement of the battles.*
Probably General Dix's corps of 9,277 men, stationed at For-
tress Monroe, is not included in this last statement.

CHAPTER XXY.

Forced Emancipation. — Purposes of the United States Government at the Com-
mencement of 1862. — Subjugation or Extermination. — The Willing Aid of
United States Congress. — Attempt to legislate the Subversion of our Social
Institutions. — Could adopt any Measure Self-Defense would justify. — Slavery
the Cause of all Troubles, therefore must be removed. — Statements of Presi-
dent Lincoln's Inaugural. — Declaration of Sumner. — Abolition Legislation. —
The Power based on Necessity. — Its Formula. — The System of Legislation
devised. — Confiscation. — How permitted by the Law of Nations. — Views of
Wheaton ; of J. Q. Adams ; of Secretary Marcy ; of Chief -Justice Marshall. —
Nature of Confiscation and Proceedings. — Compared with the Acts of the United
States Congress. — Provisions of the Acts. — Five Thousand Millions of Property
involved. — Another Feature of the Act. — Confiscates Property within Reach. —
Procedure against Persons. — Held us as Enemies and Traitors. — Attacked us
with the Instruments of War and Penalties of Municipal Law. — Emancipation
to be secured. — Remarks of President Lincoln on signing the Bill. — Remarks
of Mr. Adams compared. — Another Alarming Usurpation of Congress. — Argu-
ment for it. — No Limit to the War-Power of Congress ; how maintained. —
The Act to emancipate Slaves in the District of Columbia. — Compensation
promised. — Remarks of President Lincoln. — The Right of Property violated. —
Words of the Constitution. — The Act to prohibit Slavery in the Territories. —
The Act making an Additional Article of War. — All Officers forbidden to
return Fugitives. — Words of the Constitution. — The Powers of the Constitution
unchanged in Peace or War. — The Discharge of Fugitives commanded in the
Confiscation Act. — Words of the Constitution.

At the commencement of the year 1862 it was the purpose
of the United States Government to assail us in every manner
and at every point and with every engine of destruction which

* Swinton's " History of the Army of the Potomac."

1862] THE CAUSE OF ALL THE TROUBLES. 159

could be devised. The usual methods of civilized warfare con-
sist in the destruction of an enemy's military power and the
capture of his capital. These, however, formed only a small
portion of the purposes of our enemy. If peace with frater-
nity and equality in the Union, under the Constitution as inter-
preted by its framers, had been his aim, this was attainable
without war ; but, seeking supremacy at the cost of a revolution
in the entire political structure, involving a subversion of the
Constitution, the subjection of the States, the submission of the
people, and the establishment of a union under the sword, his
efforts were all directed to subjugation or extermination. Thus,
while the Executive was preparing immense armies, iron-clad
fleets, and huge instruments of war, with which to invade our
territory and destroy our citizens, the willing aid of an impa-
tient, enraged Congress was invoked to usurp new powers, to
legislate the subversion of our social institutions, and to give
the form of legality to the plunder of a frenzied soldiery.

That body had no sooner assembled than it brought forward
the doctrine that the Government of the United States was en-
gaged in a struggle for its existence, and could therefore resort
to any measure which a case of self-defense would justify. It
pretended not to know that the only self-defense authorized in
the Constitution for the Government created by it, was by the
peaceful method of the ballot-box; and that, so long as the
Government fulfilled the objects of its creation (see preamble
of the Constitution), and exercised its delegated powers within
their prescribed limits, its surest and strongest defense was to
be found in that ballot-box.

The Congress next declared that our institution of slavery
was the cause of all the troubles of the country, and therefore
the whole power of the Government must be so directed as to
remove it. If this had really been the cause of the troubles,
how easily wise and patriotic statesmen might have furnished
a relief. Nearly all the slaveholding States had withdrawn
from the Union, therefore those who had been suffering vica-
riously might have welcomed their departure, as the removal
of the cause which disturbed the Union, and have tried the
experiment of separation. Should the trial have brought more

160 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

wisdom and a spirit of conciliation to either or both, there
might have arisen, as a result of the experiment, a reconstructed
fraternal Union such as our fathers designed.

The people of the seceded States had loved the Union.
Shoulder to shoulder with the people of the other States, they
had bled for its liberties and its honor. Their sacrifices in
peace had not been less than those in war, and their attachment
had not diminished by what they had given, nor were they less
ready to give in the future. The concessions they had made
for many years and the propositions which followed secession
proved their desire to preserve the peace.

The authors of the aggressions which had disturbed the
harmony of the Union had lately, acquired power on a sectional
basis, and were eager for the spoil of their sectional victory. To
conceal their real motive, and artfully to appeal to the prejudice
of foreigners, they declared that slavery was the cause of the
troubles of the country, and of the " rebellion " which they were
engaged in suppressing. In his inaugural address in March,
1861, President Lincoln said : "I have no purpose, directly
or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the
States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do
so, and I have no inclination to do so." The leader (Sum-
ner) of the Abolition party in Congress, on February 25, 1861,
said in the Senate, " I take this occasion to declare most expli-
citly that I do not think that Congress has any right to interfere
with slavery in a State." The principle thus announced had
regulated all the legislation of Congress from the beginning of
its first session in 1789 down to the first session of the Thirty-
seventh Congress, commencing July 4, 1861.

A few months after the inaugural address above cited and
the announcement of the fact above quoted were made, Con-
gress commenced to legislate for the abolition- of slavery. If
it had the power now to do what it before had not, .whence
was it derived ? There had been no addition in the interval to
the grants in the Constitution ; not a word or letter of that in-
strument had been changed since the possession of the power
was disclaimed ; yet after July 4, 1861, it was asserted by the
majority in Congress that the Government had power to in

1362] A "WARD" OF THE GOVERNMENT. 161

terfere with slavery in the States. "Whence came the change ?
The answer is, It was wrought by the same process and on the
same plea that tyranny has ever employed against liberty and
justice — the time-worn excuse of usurpers — necessity ; an excuse
which is ever assumed as valid, because the usurper claims to
be the sole judge of his necessity.

The formula under which it was asserted was as follows :

" Whereas the laws of the United States have been for some
time past and now are opposed, and the execution thereof ob-
structed, etc., by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by
the ordinary course of judicial proceedings," etc.

Therefore, says the plea of necessity, a new power is this
day found under the Constitution of the United States. This
means that certain circumstances had transpired in a distant
portion of the Union, and the powers of the Constitution had
thereby become enlarged. The inference follows with equal
reason that, when the circumstances cease to exist, the powers
of the Constitution will be contracted again to their 'normal
state ; that is, the powers of the Constitution of the United
States are enlarged or contracted according to circumstances.
Mankind can not be surprised at seeing a Government, admin-
istered on such an interpretation of powers, blunder into a
civil war, and approach the throes of dissolution.

Nevertheless, these views were adopted by the Thirty-sev-
enth Congress of the United States, and a system of legislation
was devised which embraced the following usurpations : univer-
sal emancipation in the Confederate States through confiscation
of private property of all kinds ; prohibition of the extension
of slavery to the Territories; emancipation of slavery in all
places under the exclusive control of the Government of the
United States ; emancipation with compensation in the border
States and in the District of Columbia ; practical emancipation
to follow the progress of the armies; all restraints to be re-
moved from the slaves, so that they could go free wherever
they pleased, and be fed and clothed, when destitute, at the ex-
pense of the United States, literally to become a " ward of the
Government."
58

162 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

The emancipation of slaves through confiscation in States
where the United States Government had, under the Constitu-
tion, no authority to interfere with slavery, was a problem which
the usurpers found it difficult legally or logically to solve, but
these obstacles were less regarded than the practical difficulty
in States where the Government had no physical power to en-
force its edicts. The limited powers granted in the Constitu-
tion to the Government of the United States were not at all
applicable to such designs, or commensurate with their execu-
tion. Now, let us see the little possibility there was for con-
stitutional liberties and rights to survive, when intrusted to such
unscrupulous hands.

In Article I, section 8, the Constitution says :

" The Congress shall have power to declare war, grant letters
of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on
land and water ; to raise and support armies ; to provide and
maintain a navy ; to make rules for the government and regula-
tion of the land and naval forces," etc.

This is the grant of power under which the Government of the
United States makes war upon a foreign nation. If it had not
been given in the Constitution, there would not have been any
power under which to conduct a foreign war, such as that of
1812 against Great Britain or that of 1846 against Mexico. In
such conflicts the nations engaged recognize each other as sepa-
rate sovereignties and as public enemies, and use against each
other all the powers granted by the law of nations. One of
these powers is the confiscation of the property of the enemy.
Under the law of nations of modern days this confiscation is
limited in extent, made under a certain form, and for a defined
object.

For the modern laws of war one must look to the usages of
civilized states and to the publicists who have explained and
enforced them. These usages constitute themselves the laws of
war.

In relation to the capture and confiscation of private prop-
erty on land, in addition to what has been said in previous
pages, it may be added that the whole matter has never been

1862] NATIONAL LAW RELATIVE TO PRIVATE PROPERTY. 163

better stated than by our great American publicist, Mr. Whea-
ton, in these words :

" By the modern usages of nations, which have now acquired
the force of law, temples of religion, public edifices devoted to
civil purposes only, monuments of art, and repositories of science,
are exempted from the general operations of war. Private prop-
erty on land is also exempt from confiscation, with the exception
of such as may become booty in special cases, when taken from
enemies in the field or in besieged towns, and of military contri-
butions levied upon the inhabitants of the hostile territory. This
exemption extends even to the case of an absolute and unqualified
conquest of the enemy's country." — ("Elements of International
Law," p. 421.)

Mr. John Quincy Adams, in a letter to the Secretary of
State, dated August 22, 1815, says :

" Our object is the restoration of all the property, including
slaves, which, by the usages of war among civilized nations, ought
not to have been taken. All private property on shore was of
that description. It was entitled by the laws of war to exemp-
tion from capture." — (4 "American State Papers," 116, etc.)

Again, Mr. William L. Marcy, Secretary of State, in a let-
ter to the Count de Sartiges, dated July 28, 1856, says :

"The prevalence of Christianity and the progress of civiliza-
tion have greatly mitigated the severity of the ancient mode of
prosecuting hostilities. ... It is a generally received rule of mod-
ern warfare, so far at least as operations upon land are concerned,
that the persons and effects of non-combatants are to be respected.
The wanton pillage or uncompensated appropriation of individual
property by an army even in possession of an enemy's country is
against the usage of modern times. Such a proceeding at this day
would be condemned by the enlightened judgment of the world,
unless warranted by particular circumstances."

The words of the late Chief-Justice Marshall on the capture
and confiscation of private property should not be omitted :

" It may not be unworthy of remark that it is very unusual,
even in cases of conquest, for the conqueror to do more than dis-

16± RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

place the sovereign, and assume dominion over the country. The
modern usage of nations, which has become law, would be vio-
lated ; that sense of justice and of right which is acknowledged
and felt by the whole civilized world would be outraged, if pri-
vate property should be generally confiscated and private rights
annulled. The people change their allegiance ; their relation to
their ancient sovereign is dissolved ; but their relations to each
other and their rights of property remain undisturbed." — (" United
States vs. Percheman," 7 Peters, 51.)

The Government of the United States recognized us as
under the law of nations by attempting to use against us one of
the powers of that law. Yet, if we were subject to this power,
we were most certainly entitled to its protection. This was re-
fused. That Government exercised against us all the severities
of the law, and outraged that sense of justice and of right which
is acknowledged and felt by the whole civilized world by re-
jecting the observance of its ameliorations. The act of confis-
cation is a power exercised under the laws of war for the pur-
pose of indemnifying the captor for his expense and losses ;
and it is upon this basis that it is recognized. At the same
time there is a mode of procedure attached to its exercise by
which it is reserved from the domain of plunder and devasta-
tion. As has been already shown, there are, under the law, ex-
emptions of certain classes of property. It is further required
that the property subject to confiscation shall be actually cap-
tured and taken possession of. It shall then be adjudicated as
prize by a proper authority, then sold, and the money received
must be deposited in the public Treasury. Such are the condi-
tions attached by the law of nations to legal confiscation.

Kow, compare these conditions with the act of Congress,
that in its true light the usurpations of that body may be seen.
The act of Congress allowed no exemptions of private prop-
erty, but confiscated all the property of every kind belonging
to persons residing in the Confederate States who were engaged
in hostilities against the United States or who were aiding or
abetting those engaged in hostilities. This includes slaves as
well as other property. The act provided that the slaves should
go free ; that is, they were exempted from capture, from being

1862] THE LAW OF CONFISCATION. 165

adjudicated and sold, and no proceeds of sale were to be pnt
into the public Treasury. The following sections are from the
act of the United States Congress, passed on August 6, 1861 :

" Section 1. That if, during the present or any future insurrec-
tion against the Government of the United States after the Presi-
dent of the United States shall have declared by proclamation that
the laws of the United States are opposed and the execution there-
of obstructed by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by
the ordinary course of judicial proceedings or by the power vested
in the marshals by law, any person, or persons, his, her, or their
agent, attorney, or employee shall purchase or acquire, sell or give,
any property, of whatsoever kind or description, with intent to
use or employ the same, or suffer the same to be used or employed
in aiding, abetting, or promoting such insurrection or resistance
to the laws, or any person or persons engaged therein, or if any
person or persons, being the owner or owners of any such proper-
ty, shall knowingly use or employ or consent to the use or employ-
ment of the same as aforesaid, all such property is hereby declared
to be lawful subject of prize and capture wherever found ; and it
shall be the duty of the President of the United States to cause
the same to be seized, confiscated, and condemned.

" Section 3. The proceedings in court shall be for the benefit
of the United States and the informer equally.

" Section 4. That whenever hereafter, during the present in-
surrection against the Government of the United States, any per-
son claimed to be held to labor or service under the law of any
State shall be required or permitted by the person to whom such
labor or service is claimed to be due, or by the lawful agent of
such person, to take up arms against the United States, or shall be
required or permitted by the person to whom such labor or service
is claimed to be due, or his lawful agent, to work or to be em-
ployed in or upon any fort, navy-yard, dock, armory, ship, intrench-
ment, or in any military or naval service whatsoever against the
Government and lawful authority of the United States, then, and
in every such case, the person to whom such labor or service is
claimed to be due shall forfeit his claim to such labor, any law of
the State or of the United States to the contrary notwithstanding.
And, whenever thereafter the person claiming such labor or service
shall seek to enforce his claim, it shall be a full and sufficient an-

166 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

swer to such claim that the person whose service or labor is claimed
had been employed in hostile service against the Government of
the United States contrary to the provisions of this act."

The following sections are from the act of Congress passed
on July 17, 1862 :

"Section 6. That if any person, within any State or Territory
of the United States other than those named aforesaid" (Confed-
erate officers, etc.), " after the passage of this act, being engaged
in armed rebellion against the Government of the United States,
or aiding or abetting such rebellion, shall not within sixty days
after public warning and proclamation duly given and made by
the President of the United States, cease to aid, countenance, and
abet such rebellion and return to his allegiance to the United
States, all the estate and property, moneys, stocks, and credits of
such person shall be liable to seizure as aforesaid, and it shall be
the duty of the President to seize and use them as aforesaid, or
the proceeds thereof. And all sales, transfers, or conveyances of
any such property, after the expiration of the said sixty days from
the date of such warning and proclamation, shall be null and void ;
and it shall be a sufficient bar to any suit brought by such person
for the possession or use of such property, or any of it, to allege
and prove that he is one of the persons described in this section.

" Section 7. That to secure the condemnation and sale of any
such property, after the same shall have been seized, so that it
may be made available for the purpose aforesaid, proceedings in
rem shall be instituted in the name of the United States in any
district court thereof, or in any territorial court, or in the United
States District Court for the District of Columbia, within which
the property above described, or any part thereof, may be found,
or into which the same, if movable, may first be brought, which
proceedings shall conform as nearly as may be to proceedings in
admiralty or revenue cases ; and if said property, whether real or
personal, shall be found to have belonged to a person engaged in
rebellion, or who has given aid or comfort thereto, the same shall
be condemned as enemy's property and become the property of
the United States, and may be disposed of as the court shall de-
cree, and the proceeds thereof paid into the Treasury of the United
States for the purposes aforesaid.

" Section 9. That all slaves of persons who shall hereafter be

1862] EMANCIPATION BY CONFISCATION. 167

engaged in rebellion against the Government of the United States,
or who shall in any way give aid or comfort thereto, escaping from
such persons and taking refuge within the lines of the army ; and
all slaves captured from such persons or deserted by them and
coming under the control of the Government of the United States ;
and all slaves of such persons found or being within any place
occupied by rebel forces and afterward occupied by the forces of
the United States, shall be deemed captives of war, and shall be
for ever free of their servitude, and not again held as slaves.

" Section 10. That no slave escaping into any State, Terri-
tory, or the District of Columbia from any other State, shall be
delivered up, or in any way impeded or hindered of his liberty,
except for crime or some offense against the laws, unless the per-
son claiming said fugitive shall first make oath that the person, to
whom the labor or service of such fugitive is alleged to be due, is
his lawful owner, and has not borne arms against the United
States in the present rebellion, nor in any way given aid and com-
fort thereto ; and no person engaged in the military and naval
service of the United States shall, under any pretense whatever,
assume to decide on the validity of the claim of any person to the
service or labor of any other person, or surrender up any such per-
son to the claimant, on pain of being dismissed from the service."

These above-mentioned proceedings violated all the princi-
ples of the law of nations, without a shadow of authority for it
under the Constitution of the United States. The armies of
the United States, were literally authorized to invade the Con-
federate States, to seize all property as plunder, and to let the
negroes go free. Our posterity, reading that history, will blush
that such facts are on record. It was estimated on the floor of
the House of Representatives that the aggregate amount of prop-
erty within our limits subject to be acted upon by the provi-
sions of this act would affect upward of six million people, and
would deprive them of property of the value of nearly five
thousand million dollars.

Said Mr. Garrett Davis, of Kentucky :

" Was there ever, in any country that God's sun ever beamed
upon, a legislative measure involving such an amount of property
and such numbers of property-holders ? "

168 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

But this is only one feature of the confiscation act which
was applied to persons who were within the Confederate States,
in such a position that the ordinary process of the United States
courts could not be served upon them. They could be reached
only by the armies. There was another feature equally flagrant
and criminal. It was extended to all that class of persons giv-
ing aid and comfort, who could be found within the United
States, or in such position that the ordinary process of law could
be served on them. It was derived from Article III, section 3,
of the Constitution, which says :

" The Congress shall have the power to declare the punish-
ment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption
of blood, or forfeiture, except during the life of the person at-
tainted."

The mode of procedure against, persons under this power
was determined by other clauses of the Constitution. Article
III, section 2, declared that —

" The trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall
be by jury ; and such trial shall be held in the State where the
said crimes shall have been committed."

In section 3, of the same article, it was provided that —

" No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testi-
mony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in
open court."

This feature of the confiscation act, passed by the Congress
of the United States, provided for the punishment of the owner
of property, on the proof of the crime, but excluded the trial by
jury, and made the forfeiture of the property absolute instead
of a forfeiture for life. Heavy fines were imposed, and prop-
erty was sold in fee. The property to which the act applied was
not a prize under the law of nations, nor booty, nor contraband
of war, nor enforced military contributions, nor used or em-
ployed in the war or in resistance to the laws. It was private
property, outside of the conflict of arms, and forfeited, not be-
cause it was the instrument of offense, but as a penalty for the

1862] EMANCIPATION THE FIRST OBJECT. 169

assertion of his rights by the owner, which was imputed to him
as a crime. Such proceeding was, in effect, punishment by the
forfeiture of a man's entire estate, real and personal, without
trial by jury, and in utter disregard of the provisions of the
Constitution. It was an attempt to get a man's property, real
and personal, " silver spoons " included, into a prize court, to
be tried by the laws of war.

It will be seen that we were treated by the Congress of the
United States as holding the twofold relation of enemies and
traitors, and that they used against us all the instruments of
war, and all the penalties of municipal law which made the pun-
ishment of treason to be death. The practical operation, there-
fore, of these laws was that, under a Constitution which defined
treason to consist in levying war against the United States,
which would not suffer the traitor to be condemned except by
the judgment of his peers, and, when condemned, would not
forfeit his estate except during his life, the Government of
the United States did proceed against six million people, with-
out indictment, without trial by jury, without the proof of two
witnesses, did adjudge our six millions of people guilty of trea-
son in levying war, and decree to deprive us of all our estate,
real and personal, for life, and in fee, being nearly -Q.vq thou-
sand million dollars. And, after we had been thus punished,
without trial by jury, and by the loss in fee of our whole estate,
the Government of the United States assumed the power, on
the'same charge of levying war, to try us and to hang us.

The first object to be secured by this act of confiscation was
the emancipation of all our slaves. Upon his approval of the
bill, President Lincoln sent a message to Congress, in which
he said :

" It is startling to say that Congress can free a slave within a
State, and yet, if it were said the ownership of the slave had first
been transferred to the nation, and Congress had then liberated
him, the difficulty would at once vanish. And this is the real case.
The traitor against the General Government forfeits his slave at
least as justly as he does any other property ; and he forfeits both
to the Government against which he offends. The Government,
so far as there can be ownership, thus owns the forfeited slaves,

170 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

and the question for Congress in regard to them is, ' Shall they
be made free or sold to new masters ? ' "

It is amazing to see the utter forgetful ness of all constitu-
tional obligations and the entire disregard of the conditions of
the laws of nations manifested in these words of the President
of the United States. Was he ignorant of their existence, or
did he seek to cover up his violation of them by a deceptive
use of language. It may not be unseasonable to repeat here
the words of John Quincy Adams, in his letter of August 22,
1 815, as above stated :

" Our object is the restoration of all the property, including
slaves, which, by the usages of war among civilized nations, ought
not to have been taken."

Let posterity answer the questions : Who were the revolu-
tionists ? Who were really destroying the Constitution of the
United States \

The agitation of this subject brought out another still more
alarming usurpation in Congress, and showed that the majority
were ready to throw aside the last fragments of the Constitution
in order to secure our subjugation. The argument for this
usurpation was thus framed : Assuming that the state of the
" nation " was one of general hostility, and that, being so in-
volved, it possessed the power of self-defense, it was asserted
that the supreme power of making and conducting war was ex-
pressly placed in Congress by the Constitution. u The whole
powers of war are vested in Congress." — (" United States Su-
preme Court, Brown vs. United States," 1 Cranch.) There is no
such power in the judiciary, and the Executive is simply " com-
mander-in-chief of the army and navy " ; all other powers not
necessarily implied in the command of the military and naval
forces are expressly given to Congress.

The theory was that the contingency of actual hostilities
suspended the Constitution and gave to Congress the sovereign
power of a nation creating new relations and conferring new
rights, imposing extraordinary obligations on the citizens, and
subjecting them to extraordinary penalties. There is, under
that view, therefore, no limit on the power of Congress ; it is

1862] THE WAR POWER VERSUS THE CONSTITUTION. 171

invested with the absolute powers of war — the civil functions
of the Government are, for the time being, in abeyance when
in conflict, and all State and " national " authority subordinated
to the extreme authority of Congress, as the supreme power, in
the peril of external or internal hostilities. The ordinary pro-
visions of the Constitution peculiar to a state of peace, and all
laws and municipal regulations, were to yield to the force of
martial law, as resolved by Congress. This was designated as
the " war power " of the United States Government.

I should deem an apology to be due to my readers, in offer-
ing for their perusal such insane extravagances, under a consti-
tutional Government of limited powers, had not this doctrine
been adopted by the United States Government, and subse-
quently made the basis of some most revolutionary measures for
the emancipation of the African slaves and the enslavement of
the free citizens of the South. One must allow that the Cham-
ber of Deputies of the French National Assembly of 1798 had
some claims to a respectable degree of political virtue when
compared with the Thirty-seventh Congress and the Executive
of the United States.

The specious argument for this tremendous and sweeping
usurpation, designated as the " war power," as presented by its
adherents, may be stated in a few words, thus : The Constitu-
tion confers on Congress all the specific powers incident to war,
and then further authorizes it " to make all laws which shall be
necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing
powers." The words are these :

" Congress shall have power to declare war ; to grant letters of
marque and reprisal ; to make rules concerning captures on land
and water ; to raise and support armies ; to provide and maintain
a navy ; to make rules for the government and regulation of the
land and naval forces ; to provide for calling forth the militia to
execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel
invasion ; and to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper
for carrying into execution the foregoing powers and all other
powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the
United States, or in any department or officer thereof." *

* Constitution of the United States, Article I, section 8.

172 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

It will be seen that this unlimited, despotic power was
claimed for Congress in the conduct of the war under the last
clause above, viz., " to make all laws which," etc. ; whereas no
one familiar with the rules of legal interpretation will seriously
contend that the powers of Congress are one atom greater by
the insertion of this provision than they would have been if it
had not appeared in the Constitution. The delegation of a
power gives the incidental means necessary for its execution.

Another step in the usurpations begun for the destruction
of slavery was the passage by Congress of an act for the eman-
cipation of slaves in the District of Columbia. The act eman-
cipated all persons of African descent held to service within the
District, immediately upon its passage. Those owners of slaves
who had not sympathized with us were allowed ninety days to
prepare and present to commissioners, appointed for that pur-
pose, the names, ages, and personal description of their slaves,
who were to be valued by commissioners. No single slave
could be estimated to be worth more than three hundred dol-
lars. One million dollars was appropriated to carry the act into
effect. All claims were to be presented within ninety days after
the passage of the act, and not thereafter ; but there was no
saving clause for minors, femmes covert, insane or absent per-
sons. On his approval of the act, the Executive of the United
States sent a message to Congress, in which he said :

" I have never doubted the constitutional authority of Congress
to abolish slavery in the District, and I have ever desired to see
the national capital freed from the institution in some satisfactory
way. Hence there never has been in my mind any questions upon
the subject, except those of expediency, arising in view of all the
circumstances."

For the previous twenty-five or thirty years the subject had
again and again been presented in Congress, and was always
rejected. One of the incidents that led to our withdrawal from
the Union was the apprehension that it was the intention of the
United States Government to violate the constitutional right of
each State to adopt and maintain, to reject or abolish slavery, as
it pleased. This step showed the justness of our apprehensions.

1862] INVIOLABILITY OF PRIVATE PROPERTY. 173

Among the rights guaranteed to every citizen of the United
States, including the District of Columbia, was the right of
property. No one could be deprived of his property by the
Government, except in the manner prescribed and authorized
by the Constitution. Its words are these :

" No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property with-
out due process of law ; nor shall private property be taken for
public use without just compensation." *

"Whenever it was necessary in the administration of affairs
that the Government should take private property for public
use, it had the right to take that private property on the condi-
tion of making compensation for it, and on no other condition.
Also, it could not be taken except for public use, even by mak-
ing just compensation for it ; nor could it be taken to be de-
stroyed. The simple and sole condition on which the inviola-
bility of private property could be broken by the Government
itself was, that it was necessary for public use. Otherwise, there
was no constitutional right on the part of the Government to
take the property at all.

Again, this property, thus necessary, must be taken by due
process of law. The Government had not the right to declare
the mode, and arbitrarily fix the limit of price which should be
paid. The negro could be taken only as other property, even
admitting that he could be taken for emancipation. The due
process of law required that the citizen's property should be
appraised judicially. A court must proceed judicially in every
case, summon a jury, appoint commissioners, and, under the
supervision and sanction of the court, the valuation of the slave
by them must proceed as it does in relation to any other prop-
erty of the citizen that might be taken by the lawful exercise of
the power of Congress or of the United States Government.
Thus it will be seen that by this usurpation of power the Con-
stitution was violated, not only by taking private property for
other purposes than for public use, but in the neglect to observe
the due process of law which the Constitution required.

The next step in the usurpation of power for the destruc-

* Constitution of the United States, Article V.

174 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

tion of the right of citizens to hold property in slaves was the
passage by Congress of an act which declared that, after its
passage —

" There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in
any of the Territories of the United States now existing, or which
may at any time hereafter be formed or acquired by the United
States, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes," etc.

The subject had been brought forward at every session of
Congress for a number of years, and was uniformly resisted by
the advocates of equality among the States. We claimed an
equal right with the other States to the occupation and settle-
ment of the Territories which were the common property of
the Union ; and that any infringement of this right was not
only a violation of the spirit of the Constitution, but destruc-
tive of that equality of the States so necessary for the main-
tenance of their Union. "We further claimed our right under
this express provision of the Constitution :

" The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all
needful rules and regulations respecting the Territory or other
property belonging to the United States ; and nothing in this
Constitution shall be so construed as to prejudice any claims of
the United States or of any particular States." *

The obstinate resistance of the consolidation school to our
views was an evidence of their aggressive purposes, and jus-
tified still further our apprehensions of their intention to vio-
late our constitutional rights.

Another step taken to accomplish the emancipation of our
slaves was the passage by Congress of an act making an addi-
tional article of war for the government of the army of the

United States. It was in these words :
i

" All officers or persons in the military or naval service of the
United States are prohibited from employing any of the forces
under their respective commands for the purpose of returning
fugitives from service or labor, who may have escaped from any
persons to whom such service or labor is claimed to be due ; and
* Constitution of the United States, Article IV, section 3, clause 2.

1862] THE SUPREME LAW OF- THE LAND. 175

any officer who shall be found guilty by a court-martial of violat-
ing this article shall be dismissed from the service."

The Constitution of the United States expressly declares
that all such persons

" Shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such
service or labor may be due." *

In this instance Congress passed an act declaring that they
shall not be delivered up on such claim ; and, as a penalty for
disobedience, any officer of the army or navy should be dis-
missed from the service. Thus an act of Congress directly for-
bade that which the Constitution commanded. A more fla-
grant outrage upon the constitutional obligation could not be
committed.

But, it may be said, a state of war existed. That does not
diminish the crime of the Congress. The commands of the
Constitution are positive, direct, unchanged, and unrelaxed by
circumstances. They are equally in force in a state of war and
in a state of peace. The powers are delegated, and can not be
amended or changed by war or peace. Its words are these :

" This Constitution, and the laws of the United States, which
shall be made in pursuance thereof, shall be the supreme law, and
the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the
Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the mem-
bers of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial
officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall
be bound by oath or affirmation to support this Constitution." f

It declares itself to be, within its province, the supreme law
of the United States, not merely during the condition of peace,
but continuing through all times and events supreme through-
out the Union, until it should be altered or amended in the
manner prescribed.

Another instance of the like flagrant violation of the Con-
stitution is to be found in the ninth and tenth sections of the

* Constitution of the United States, Article IV, section 2. f Ibid., Article VI.

176 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

confiscation act previously referred to. The Constitution of
the United States in Article IV, section 3, says :

" No person held to service or labor in one State, under the
laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law
or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor."

It will be seen, by reference to the Constitution, that the
first part of the clause here referred to forbids the discharge of
the fugitive, and the second part commands his delivery to the
claimant. It has just been stated in what manner Congress
commanded the claim for delivery to be repudiated. The " dis-
charge from such service and labor," in consequence of any
State law or regulation, is forbidden. This is a part of the Con-
stitution, and it is thereby made the duty of the executive,
legislative, and judicial departments of the United States Gov-
ernment to enforce the prohibition, to make sure that the fugi-
tive is not discharged by any action of a State.

"Will the friends of constitutional liberty believe our asser-
tion that these acts, the execution of which it was so expressly
made the duty of the United States Government to prevent,
that Government itself did do in the most explicit and effective
manner ? The Constitution forbids the discharge ; Congress and
the Executive, each, not only commanded the discharge, but, to
make it sure and thorough, forbade the incipiency of an appre-
hension— not even permitting the shadow of an occasion for a
discharge. Could human ingenuity devise a method for a more
perfect subversion of a constitutional duty % The provisions of
the act are in these words :

" All slaves of persons who shall hereafter be engaged in re-
bellion against the Government of the United States, or who shall
in any way give aid or comfort thereto, escaping from such per-
sons and taking refuge within the lines of the army ; and all slaves
captured from such persons or deserted by them and coming
under the control of the Government of the United States ; and
all slaves of such persons found or being within any place occu-
pied by rebel forces and afterward occupied by the forces of the
United States, shall be deemed captives of war, and shall be for
ever free of their servitude, ana1 not again held as slaves."

1862] THE PROVISION OF THE CONSTITUTION. 177

Again, the next section of the same act says :

"No slave escaping into any State, Territory, or the District
of Columbia from any other State, shall be delivered up, or in any
way impeded or hindered of his liberty, except for crime or some
offense against the laws, unless the person claiming said fugitive
shall first make oath that the person, to whom the labor or service
of such fugitive is alleged to be due, is his lawful owner, and has
not borne arms against the United States in the present rebellion,
nor in any way given aid and comfort thereto." *

In this connection it is worth while to read again the words
of the Constitution :

"No person held to service or labor in one State, under the
laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any
law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor,
but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such ser-
vice or labor may be due."

Let it be observed that there is no limitation, no qualifica-
tion, no condition whatever attached to this clause of the Con-
stitution. The words " no person held to service " included
every slave in the United States. In Article I, section 9, and
in Article V, are exceptions suspending the operation of the
general provision. But in this provision there are none, be-
cause it was intended there should be none. The provision was
designed to include every slave, and to be in force under all cir-
cumstances.

Perhaps it may be urged as an objection to this assertion,
that the Confederate States were out of the Union and beyond
the protection of the provisions of the Constitution. This ob-
jection can not be admitted in extenuation of this crime of Con-
gress and the Executive ; for there was, thus far, no act of Con-
gress, nor proclamation of the President in existence, showing
that either of them regarded the Confederate States in any
other position than as States within the Union, whose citizens
were subject to all the penalties contained in the Constitution,
and therefore entitled to the benefit of all its provisions for

* Laws of the United States, 1862.
59

178 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

tlieir protection. Unhesitatingly it may be said, and as will be
still more apparent farther on in these pages, that all the conduct
of the Confederate States, pertaining to the war, consisted in
just efforts to preserve to themselves and their posterity rights
and protections guaranteed to them in the Constitution of the
United States ; and that the actions of the Federal Government
consisted in efforts to subvert those rights, destroy those protec-
tions, and subjugate us to compliance with its arbitrary will ;
and that this conduct on their part involved the subversion of
the Constitution and the destruction of the fundamental prin-
ciples of liberty. Who is the criminal ? Let posterity answer.

CHAPTER XXYI.

Forced Emancipation concluded.— Emancipation Acts of President Lincoln. — Eman-
cipation with Compensation proposed to Border States. — Reasons urged for it.
— Its Unconstitutionality. — Order of General Hunter. — Revoked by President
Lincoln. — Reasons. — " The Pressure " on him. — One Cause of our Secession. —
The Time to throw off the Mask at Hand. — The Necessity that justified the
President and Congress also justified Secession. — Men united in Defense of
Liberty called Traitors. — Conference of President Lincoln with Senators and
Representatives of Border States. — Remarks of Mr. Lincoln. — Reply of Sena-
tors and Representatives. — Failure of the Proposition. — Three Hundred Thou-
sand more Men called for. — Declarations of the Antislavery Press. — Truth of
our Apprehensions. — Reply of President Lincoln. — Another Call for Men. —
Further Declarations of the Antislavery Press. — The Watchword adopted. —
Memorial of So-called Christians to the President.— Reply of President Lincoln.
— Issue of the Preliminary Proclamation of Emancipation. — Issue of the Final
Proclamation. — The Military Necessity asserted. — The Consummation verbally
reached. — Words of the Declaration of Independence. — Declarations by the
United States Government of what it intended to do.— True Nature of the Party
unveiled. — Declarations of President Lincoln. — Vindication of the Sagacity of
the Southern People. — His Declarations to European Cabinets. — Object of these
Declarations.— Trick of the Fugitive Thief.— The Boast of Mr. Lincoln calmly
considered.

The attention of the reader is now invited to a series of
usurpations in which the President of the United States was
the principal actor. On March 6, 1862, he began a direct and
unconstitutional interference with slavery by sending a message

1862] EXECUTIVE INTERFERING WITH SLAVERY. 179

to Congress recommending the adoption of a resolution which
should declare that the United States ought to cooperate with
any State which might adopt the gradual abolition of slavery,
giving to such State pecuniary aid, to be used by such State in
its discretion, to compensate for the inconvenience, public and
private, produced by such change of system. The reason given
for the recommendation of the adoption of the resolution was
that the United States Government would find its highest inter-
est in such a measure as one of the most important means of
self-preservation. He said, in explanation, that " the leaders of
the existing rebellion entertain the hope that this Government
will ultimately be forced to acknowledge the independence of
some part of the disaffected region, and that all the slave States
north of such part will then say, ' The Union for which we have
struggled being already gone, we now choose to go with the
Southern section.' To deprive them of this hope substantially
ends the rebellion, and the initiation of emancipation deprives
them of it and of all the States initiating it."

When it was asked where the power was found in the Con-
stitution to appropriate the money of the people to carry out
the purposes of the resolution, it was replied that the legisla-
tive department of the Government was competent, under these
words in the preamble of the Constitution, " to provide for the
general welfare," to do anything and everything which could ,
be considered as promoting the general welfare. It was further
said that this measure was to be consummated under the war
power ; that whatever was necessary to carry on the war to a
successful conclusion might be done without restraint under the
authority, not of the Constitution, but as a military necessity.
It was further said that the President of the United States had
thus far failed to meet the just expectations of the party which
elected him to the office he held; and that his friends were
to be comforted by the resolution and the message, while the
people of the border slave States could not fail to observe that
with the comfort to the North there was mingled an awful
warning to them. It was denied by the President that it was
an interference with slavery in the States. It was an artful
scheme to awaken a controversy in the slave States, and to com-

180 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

mence the work of emancipation by holding out pecuniary aid
as an inducement. In every previous declaration the President
had said that he did not contemplate any interference with do-
mestic slavery within the States. The resolution was passed by
large majorities in each House.

This proposition of President Lincoln was wholly unconsti-
tutional, because it attempted to do what was expressly forbid-
den by the Constitution. It proposed a contract between the
State of Missouri and the Government of the United States
which, in the language of the act, shall be " irrepealable with-
out the consent of the United States." The words of the Con-
stitution are as follows :

" No State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation,
grant letters of marque and reprisal, coin money, etc." *

This is a prohibition not only upon the power of one State
to enter into a compact, alliance, confederation, or agreement
with another State, but also with the Government of the United
States.

Again, if the State of Missouri could enter into an irrepeal-
able agreement or compact with the United States, that sla-
very should not therein exist after the acceptance on the part of
Missouri of the act, then it would be an agreement on the part
of that State to surrender its sovereignty and make the State
unequal in its rights of sovereignty with the other States of the
Union. The other States would have the complete right of sov-
ereignty over their domestic institutions while the State of Mis-
souri would cease to have such right. The whole system of the
United States Government would be abrogated by such legisla-
tion. Again, it is a cardinal principle of the system that the
people in their sovereign capacity may, from time to time, change
and alter their organic law ; and a provision incorporated in
the Constitution of Missouri that slavery should never there-
after exist in that State could not prevent a future sovereign
convention of its people from reestablishing slavery within its
limits.

It will be observed, from what has been said in the preced-

* Article I, section 10.

1862] INTERFERENCE OF MILITARY COMMANDERS. 181

ino- pages, that the usurpations by the Government of the
United States, both by the legislative and executive depart
ments, had not only been tolerated but approved. Feeling
itself, therefore, fortified in its unlimited power from " neces-
sity," the wheels of the revolution were now to move with
accelerated velocity in their destructive work. Accordingly,
a manifesto soon comes from the Executive on universal eman-
cipation. On April 25, 1862, the United States Major-General
Hunter, occupying a position at Hilton Head, South Carolina,
issued an order declaring the States of Georgia, Florida, and
South Carolina under martial law. On May 9th the same offi-
cer issued another order, declaring " the persons held as slaves
in those States to be for ever free." The Executive of the
United States, on May 19th, issued a proclamation declaring the
order to be void, and said :

"I further make known that, whether it be competent for me
as commander-in-chief of the army and navy to declare the slaves
of any State or States free, and whether at any time or in any
case it shall have become a necessity indispensable to the mainte-
nance of the Government to examine such supposed power, are
questions which, under my responsibility, I reserve to myself, and
which I can not feel justified in leaving to the decision of com-
manders in the field."

Speaking of this order of Major-General Hunter soon after-
ward, President Lincoln, in remarks on July 12, 1862, to the
border States Representatives, said :

"In repudiating it, I gave dissatisfaction, if not offense, to
many whose support the country can not afford to lose. And this
is not the end of it. The pressure in this direction is still upon
me, and is increasing."

This pressure consisted in the demand of his extreme par-
tisans that the whole authority of the Government should be
exerted for the immediate and universal emancipation of the
slaves.

By a reference to the statement of the causes of our with-
drawal from the Union of the United States, it will be seen that

1S2 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

one of them consisted in the conviction that the newly elected
officers of the Government would wield its powers for the de-
struction of the institutions of the Southern States. The facts
already related in these pages furnish ample proofs of the jus-
tice and accuracy of this conviction.

The time was now close at hand when the mask was to be
thrown off, and, at a single dash of the pen, four hundred mill-
ions of our property was to be annihilated, the whole social
fabric of the Southern States disrupted, all branches of indus-
try to be disarranged, good order to be destroyed, and a flood
of evils many times greater than the loss of property to be in-
flicted upon the people of the South, thus consummating the
series of aggressions which had been inflicted for more than
thirty years. All constitutional protections were to be with-
drawn, and the powers of a common government, created for
common and equal protection to the interests of all, were to be
arrayed for the destruction of our institutions. The President
of the United States says : " This is not the end. ' The pressure
in this direction is still upon me, and is increasing." How easy
it would have been for the Northern people, by a simple, hon-
est obedience to the provisions of the Constitution, to have
avoided the commission of all these crimes and horrors ! For
the law which demands obedience to itself guarantees in return
life and safety. It is not necessary to ask again where the
President of the United States or the Congress found authority
for their usurpations. But it should be remembered that, if the
necessity which they pleaded was an argument to justify their
violations of all the provisions of the Constitution, the existence
of such a necessity on their part was a sufficient argument to
justify our withdrawal from union with them. If necessity on
their part justified a violation of the Constitution, necessity on
our part justified secession from them. If the preservation of
the existence of the Union by coercion of the States was an
argument to justify these violent usurpations by the United
States Government, it was still more forcibly an argument to
justify our separation and resistance to invasion ; for we were
struggling for our natural rights, but the Government of the
United States has no natural rights.

1862] A PROPOSITION TO "SELL OUT AND BUY OUT." 183

How can a people who glory in a Declaration of Indepen-
dence which broke the slumbers of a world declare that men
united in defense of liberty, property, and the pursuit of happi-
ness are " traitors " ? Is it henceforth to be a dictum of human-
ity that man may no more take up arms in defense of rights,
liberty, and property ? Shall it never again in the course of
human events become lawful " for one people to dissolve the
political bands which have connected them with another, and to
assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal
station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle
them " ? Is the highwayman, henceforth, to be the lord of the
highway, and the poor, plundered traveler to have no property
which he may defend at the risk of the life of the highwayman '?

On July 12, 1862, the President of the United States, per-
sistent in his determination to destroy the institution of slavery,
invited the Senators and Representatives of the border slave-
holding States to the Executive Mansion, and addressed them
on emancipation in their respective States. He said :

" I intend no reproach or complaint when I assure you that, in
my opinion, if you all had voted for the resolution in the gradual
emancipation message of last March, the war would now be sub-
stantially ended. And the plan therein proposed is yet one of the
most potent and swift means of ending it. Let the States which
are in rebellion see definitely and certainly that in no event will
the States you represent ever join their proposed confederacy, and
they can not much longer maintain the contest. But you can not
divest them of their hope to ultimately have you with them so
long as you show a determination to perpetuate the institution
within your own States. Beat them at elections as you have over-
whelmingly done, and, nothing daunted, they still claim you as
their own. You and I know what the lever of their power is.
Break that lever before their faces, and they can shake you no
more for ever."

He further said that the incidents of the war might extin-
guish the institution in their States, and added :

"How much better for you as seller and the nation as buyer
to sell out and buy out that without which the war could never

184 RI£E AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

have been, than to sink both the thing to be sold and the price of
it in cutting one another's throats ! "

The reply of the majority, consisting of twenty of the twenty-
nine Senators and Representatives, subsequently made to the
President, is worthy of notice. They said that they were not
of the belief that funds would be provided for the object, or
that their constituents would reap the fruits of the promise held
out, and added :

"The right to hold slaves is a right appertaining to all the
States of the Union. They have the right to cherish or abolish the
institution, as their tastes or their interests may prompt, and no
one is authorized to question the right, or limit its enjoyment.
And no one has more clearly affirmed that right than you have.
Your inaugural address does you great honor in this respect, and
inspired the country with confidence in your fairness and respect
for law."

After asserting that a large portion of our people were fight-
ing because they believed the Administration was hostile to
their rights, and was making war on their domestic institutions,
they further said :

" Remove their apprehensions ; satisfy them that no harm is
intended to them and their institutions ; that this Government is
not making war on their rights of property, but is simply defend-
ing its legitimate authority, and they will gladly return to their
allegiance."

This measure of emancipation with compensation soon proved
a failure. A proposition to appropriate five hundred thousand
dollars to the object was voted down in the United States Sen-
ate with great unanimity. The Government was, step by step,
" educating the people " up to a proclamation of emancipation,
so as to make entire abolition one of the positive and declared
issues of the contest.

The so-called pressure upon the President was now organized
for a final onset. The Governors of fifteen States united in a
request that three hundred thousand more men should be called
out to fill up the reduced ranks, and it was done. The anti-

1862] HOW WELL FOUNDED OUR APPREHENSIONS. 185

slavery press then entered the arena. Charges were made
against the President, in the name of

" Twenty millions of people, that a great proportion of those
who triumphed in his election were sorely disappointed and deeply
pained by the policy he seemed to be pursuing with regard to the
slaves of the rebels."

This is a simple statement of the progress of events, and it
shows to the world how well founded were our apprehensions,
at the hour of its election, that the Administration intended
the destruction of our property and community independence.
They further said :

" You are strangely and disastrously remiss in the discharge of
your official and imperative duty with regard to the emancipation
provisions of the new confiscation act."

They further boldly added :

" We complain that the Union cause has suffered, and is now
suffering, immensely from mistaken deference to rebel slavery.
Had you, sir, in your inaugural address, unmistakably given notice
that, in case the rebellion already commenced was persisted in,
and your efforts to preserve the Union and enforce the laws should
be resisted by armed force, you would recognize no loyal person as
rightfully held in slavery by a traitor, we believe the rebellion
would therein have received a staggering if not fatal blow."

The President replied at length, saying :

"I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts
the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more
will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to
be errors ; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear
to be true views. I have here stated my purpose according to my
view of official duty ; and I intend no modification of my oft-
expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free."

The education of the conservative portion of the Northern
people up to emancipation was becoming more complete every
day, notwithstanding the professed reluctance of the President.

18G RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

Another call for three hundred thousand men was made, but
enlistments were slow, so that threats of a draft and most liberal
bounties were required. The champions of emancipation sought
to derive an advantage from this circumstance. They asserted
that the reluctance of the people to enter the army was caused
by the policy of the Government in not adopting bold emanci-
pation measures. If such were adopted, the streets and by-ways
would be crowded with volunteers to fight for the freedom of
the " loyal blacks," and thrice three hundred thousand could be
easily obtained. They said that slavery in the seceded States
should be treated as a military question ; it contributed nearly
all the subsistence which supported the Southern men in arms,
dug their trenches, and built their fortifications. The watch-
word which they now adopted was, " The abolition of slavery by
the force of arms for the sake of the Union."

Meantime, on September 13th, a delegation from the so-
called " Christians " in Chicago, Illinois, presented to President
Lincoln a memorial, requesting him to issue a proclamation of
emancipation, and urged in its favor such reasons as occurred to
their minds. President Lincoln replied :

" What good would a proclamation of emancipation from me
do, especially as we are now situated ? I do not want to issue a
document that the whole world would see must necessarily be in-
operative, like the Pope's bull against the comet. Would my
word free the slaves, when I can not even enforce the Constitution
in the rebel States ? Is there a single court, or magistrate, or in-
dividual that would be influenced by it there ? And what reason
is there to think it would have any greater effect upon the slaves
than the late law of Congress which I approved, and which offers
protection and freedom to the slaves of rebel masters who come
within our lines ? Yet I can not learn that that law has caused a
single slave to come over to us. And suppose they could be in-
duced by a proclamation of freedom from me to throw themselves
upon us, what should we do with them ? How can we feed and
care for such a multitude ? . . .

" If, now, the pressure of the war should call off our forces from
New Orleans to defend some other point, what is to prevent the
masters from reducing the blacks to slavery again ? . . . Now,

1S62] THE MILITARY NECESSITY TESTED. 187

then, tell me, if you please, what possible result of good would
follow the issuing of such a proclamation as you desire ? I have
not decided against a proclamation of liberty to the slaves, but
hold the matter under advisement."

Nine days after these remarks were made — on September
22, 1862 — the preliminary proclamation of emancipation was
issued by the President of the United States. It declared that
at the next session of Congress the proposition for emancipation
in the border slaveholding States would be again recommend-
ed, and that on January 1, 1863 —

" All persons held as slaves within any State or designated part
of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against
the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and for ever free ;
and the Executive Government of the United States, including
the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and main-
tain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to
repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may
make for their actual freedom."

Also, all persons engaged in the military and naval service
were ordered to obey and enforce the article of war and the sec-
tions of the confiscation act before mentioned. On January 1,
1863, another proclamation was issued by the President of the
United States declaring the emancipation to be absolute within
the Confederate States, with the exception of a few districts.
The closing words of the proclamation were these :

" And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice,
warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke
the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of
Almighty God."

Let us test the existence of the military necessity liere
spoken of by a few facts. The white male population of the
Northern States was then 13,690,364. The white male popu-
lation of the Confederate States was 5,449,463. The number
of troops which the United States had called into the field ex-
ceeded one million men. The number of troops which the
Confederate Government had then in the field was less than

1SS RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

four hundred thousand men. The United States Government
had a navy which was only third in rank in the world. The
Confederate Government had a navy which at that time con-
sisted of a single small ship on the ocean. The people of the
United States had a commerce afloat all over the world. The
people of the Confederate States had not a single port open
to commerce. The people of the United States were the rivals
of the greatest nations in all kinds of manufactures. The people
of the Confederate States had few manufactures, and those were
of articles of inferior importance. The Government of the
United States possessed the Treasury of a Union of eighty years
with its vast resources. The Confederate States had to create a
Treasury by the development of financial resources. The am-
bassadors and representatives of the former were welcomed at
every court in the world. The representatives of the latter
were not recognized anywhere.

Thus the consummation of the original antislavery purposes
was verbally reached ; but even that achievement was attended
with disunion, bloodshed, and war. In the words of the Dec-
laration of Independence :

" "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that, whenever any
form of government becomes destructive of these ends" (life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness), "it is the right of the people
to alter or to abolish it, 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. . . . "When a long train of abuses and usurpations,
pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce
them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to
throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their
future security."

It is thus seen what the United States Government did, and
our view of this subject would not be complete if we should
omit to present their solemn declarations of that which they
intended to do. In his proclamation of April 15, 1861, calling
for seventy-five thousand men, the President of the United
States Government said :

1862] TRUE NATURE OF THEIR DESIGNS. 189

" In any event, the utmost care will be observed, consistently
with the objects aforesaid, to avoid any devastation, any destruc-
tion of or interference with property, or any disturbance of peace-
ful citizens in any part of the country."

On the 22d of July, 1861, Congress passed a resolution rela-
tive to the war, from which the following is an extract :

"That this war is not waged on our part in any spirit of
oppression, or for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, or pur-
pose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established
institutions of those [Confederate] States ; but to defend and
maintain the supremacy of the Constitution, and to preserve the
Union with all the dignity, equality, and rights of the several
States unimpaired ; and that, as soon as these objects are accom-
plished, the war ought to cease."

The vote in favor of the resolution was : in the Senate,
yeas 30, nays 4; in the House of Representatives, yeas 117,
nays 2.

It may further be observed that these proclamations cited
above afforded to our whole people the complete and crowning
proof of the true nature of the designs of the party which
elevated to power the person then occupying the Presidential
chair at Washington, and which sought to conceal its purposes
by every variety of artful device and by the perfidious use of
the most solemn and repeated pledges on every possible occa-
sion. A single example may be cited from the declaration
made by President Lincoln, under the solemnity of his oath as
Chief Magistrate of the United States, on March 4, 1861 :

" Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the South-
ern States that, by the accession of a Republican Administration,
their property and their peace and personal security are to be
endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such
apprehensions. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary
has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is
found in nearly all the public speeches of him who now addresses
you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare
that I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with
the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe

190 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE' GOVERNMENT.

I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do
so. Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowl-
edge that I had made this and many similar declarations, and had
never recanted them. And more than this, they placed in the
platform for my acceptance, and as a law to themselves and to
me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read :

" Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the
States, and especially the right of each State to order and control
its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclu-
sively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfec-
tion and endurance of our political fabric depend, and we denounce
the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or
Territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest
crimes."

Nor was this declaration of the want of power or disposition
to interfere with our social system confined to a state of peace.
Both before and after the actual commencement of hostilities,
the Executive of the United States repeated in formal official
communications to the Cabinets of Great Britain and France,
that it was utterly without constitutional power to do the act
which it subsequently committed, and that in no possible event,
whether the secession of these States resulted in the establishment
of a separate Confederacy or in the restoration of the Union,
was there any authority by virtue of which it could either
restore a disaffected State, to the Union by force of arms, or
make any change in any of its institutions. I refer especially
for the verification of this assertion to the dispatches addressed
by the Secretary of State of the United States, under direc-
tion of the President, to the Ministers of the United States
at London and Paris, under date of the 10th and 22d of
April, 1861.

This proclamation was therefore received by the people of
the Confederate States as the fullest vindication of their own
sagacity in foreseeing the uses to which the dominant party in
the United States intended from the beginning to apply their
power.

For what honest purpose were these declarations made?
They could deceive no one who was familiar with the powers

1862] BY SLOW AND BARELY VISIBLE APPROACHES. 191

and duties of the Federal Government ; they were uttered in
the season of invasion of the Southern States, to coerce them to
obedience to the agent established by the compact between the
States, for the purpose of securing domestic tranquillity and the
blessings of liberty. The power to coerce States was not given,
and the proposition to make that grant received no favor in the
Convention which formed the Constitution ; and it is seen by the
proceedings in the States, when the Constitution was submitted
to each of them for their ratification or rejection as they might
choose, that a proposition which would have enabled the Gen-
eral Government, by force of arms, to control the will of a
State, would have been fatal to any effort to make a more per-
fect Union. Such declarations as those cited from the diplo-
matic correspondence, though devoid of credibility at home,
might avail in foreign countries to conceal from their govern-
ments the real purpose of the action of the majority. Mean-
while, the people of the Confederacy plainly saw that the ideas
and interests of the Administration were to gain by war the
empire that would enable it to trample on the Constitution
which it professed to defend and maintain.

It was by the slow and barely visible approaches of the ser-
pent seeking its prey that the aggressions and usurpations of
the United States Government moved on to the crimes against
the law of the Union, the usages of war among civilized na-
tions, the dictates of humanity and the requirements of justice,
which have been recited. The performance of this task has
been painful, but persistent and widespread misrepresentation
of the cause and conduct of the South required the exposure of
her slanderer. To unmask the hypocrisy of claiming devotion
to the Constitution, while violating its letter and spirit for a
purpose palpably hostile to it, was needful for the defense of
the South. In the future progress of this work it will be seen
how often we have been charged with the very offenses com-
mitted by our enemy — offenses of which the South was entirely
innocent, and of which a chivalrous people would be incapable.
There was in this the old trick of the fugitive thief who cries
" Stop thief ! " as he runs.

In his message to Congress one year later, on December 8,

192 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

1863, the President of the United States thus boasts of his proc-
lamation :

" The preliminary emancipation proclamation, issued in Sep-
tember, was running its assigned period to the beginning of the
new year. A month later the final proclamation came, including
the announcement that colored men of suitable condition would
be received into the war service. The policy of emancipation and
of employing black soldiers gave to the future a new aspect, about
which hope and fear and doubt contended in uncertain conflict.
According to our political system, as a matter of civil administra-
tion, the General Government had no lawful power to effect eman-
cipation in any State, and for a long time it had been hoped that
the rebellion could be suppressed without resorting to it as a mili-
tary measure. ... Of those who were slaves at the beginning of
the rebellion, full one hundred thousand are now in the United
States military service, about one half of which number actually
bear arms in the ranks, thus giving the double advantage of tak-
ing so much labor from the insurgent cause, and supplying the
places which otherwise must be filled with so many white men.
So far as tested, it is difficult to say they are not as good soldiers
as any."

Let the reader pause for a moment and look calmly at the
facts presented in this statement. The forefathers of these
negro soldiers were gathered from the torrid plains and malarial
swamps of inhospitable Africa. Generally they were born the
slaves of barbarian masters, untaught in all the useful arts and
occupations, reared in heathen darkness, and, sold by heathen
masters, they were transferred to shores enlightened by the rays
of Christianity. There, put to servitude, they were trained in
the gentle arts of peace and order and civilization; they in-
creased from a few unprofitable savages to millions of efficient
Christian laborers. Their servile instincts rendered them con-
tented with their lot, and their patient toil blessed the land of
their abode with unmeasured riches. Their strong local and
personal attachment secured faithful service to those to whom
their service or labor was due. A strong mutual affection was
the natural result of this life-long relation, a feeling best if not
only understood by those who have grown from childhood

1862] THE TEMPTER CAME LIKE THE SERPENT. 193

under its influence. Jsever was there happier dependence of
labor and capital on each other. The tempter came, like the
serpent in Eden, and decoyed them with the magic word of
" freedom." Too many were allured by the uncomprehended
and unfulfilled promises, until the highways of these wander-
ers were marked by corpses of infants and the aged. He put
arms in their hands, and trained their humble but emotional
natures to deeds of violence and bloodshed, and sent them out
to devastate their benefactors. What does he boastingly an-
nounce ? — " It is difficult to say they are not as good soldiers
as any." Ask the bereaved mother, the desolate widow, the
sonless aged sire, to whom the bitter cup was presented by
those once of their own household. With double anguish they
speak of its bitterness. What does the President of the United
States further say ? — " According to our political system, as a
matter of civil administration, the General Government had
no lawful power to effect emancipation in any State." And
further on, as if with a triumphant gladness, he adds, " Thus
giving the double advantage of taking so much labor from the
insurgent cause, and supplying the places which otherwise must
be filled with so many white men." A rare mixture of mal-
feasance with ^traffic in human life ! It is submitted to the
judgment of a Christian people how well such a boast befits
the President of the United States, a federation of sovereigns
under a voluntary compact for specific purposes.

194 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

CHAPTEE XXYII.

Naval Affairs. — Organization of the Navy Department. — Two Classes of Vessels. —
Experiments for Floating Batteries and Rams. — The Norfolk Navy-Yard. —
Abandonment by the Enemy. — The Merrimac Frigate made an Ironclad. — Officers.
— Trial-Trip. — Fleet of the Enemy. — Captain Buchanan. — Resolves to attack
the Enemy. — Sinks the Cumberland. — Burns the Congress. — "Wounded. — Execu-
tive Officer Jones takes Command. — Retires for the Night. — Appearance of the
Monitor. — The Virginia attacks her. — She retires to Shoal Water. — Refuses
to come out. — Cheers of English Man-of-war. — Importance of the Navy-Yard.
— Order of General Johnston to evacuate. — Stores saved. — The Virginia burned.
— Harbor Defenses at Wilmington. — Harbor Defenses at Charleston. — Fights
in the Harbor. — Defenses of Savannah. — Mobile Harbor and Capture of its
Defenses. — The System of Torpedoes adopted. — Statement of the Enemy. —
Sub-terra Shells placed in James River. — How made. — Used in Charleston
Harbor ; in Roanoke River ; in Mobile Harbor. — The Tecumseh, how de-
stroyed.

The organization of the Navy Department comprised nnder
its general supervision a bureau of orders and details, one of
ordnance and hydrography, one of provisions and clothing, and
one of medicine and surgery. The grades of officers consisted
of admirals, captains, commanders, surgeons, lfeutenants, and
midshipmen. Of the officers at the close of the first year there
were one admiral, twelve captains, thirty commanders, and one
hundred and twelve first and second lieutenants. All of the
principal officers had belonged to the United States Navy.
Owing to the limited number of vessels afloat, many of these
officers were employed on shore-duties.

The vessels of the navy may be reduced to two classes : those
intended for river and harbor defense, as ironclads, rams, float-
ing batteries, or river-steamboats transformed into gunboats ;
and sea-going steamers of moderate size,, some of them of great
speed, but, not having been designed for war purposes, wTere all
unsuited for a powerful armament, and could not be expected
to contend successfully with ships of war.

Early in 1861 discussions and experiments were instituted
by the Navy Department to determine how floating batteries
and naval rams could be best constructed and protected by iron

1861] ABOUT MIDNIGHT A FIRE WAS STARTED. 195

plates. Many persons had submitted plans, according to which
cotton-bales might be effectively used as a shield against shot.
Our deficiency in iron, and also in rolling-mills to prepare it
into plates, caused cotton to be sometimes so employed ; though
the experiments had satisfied the Navy Department that, instead
of cotton being rendered impenetrable by compression, it was
really less so than in looser condition, and that iron must needs
be of great thickness to resist the direct impact of heavy shot at
short ranges. An officer of the navy, as skillful in ordnance as
he was in seamanship, and endowed with high capacity for the
investigation of new problems — Lieutenant Catesby Ap R.
Jones — had conducted many of these experiments, and, as will
be seen hereafter, made efficient use of his knowledge both in
construction and in battle.

After Yirginia had seceded from the United States, but be-
fore she had acceded to the Confederate States — viz., on the
19th of April, 1861 — General Taliaferro, in command of Yir-
ginia forces, arrived at Norfolk. Commodore McCauley, United
States Navy, and commandant of the navy-yard, held a confer-
ence with General Taliaferro, the result of which was " that
none of the vessels should be removed, nor a shot fired except
in self-defense." The excitement which had existed in the
town was quieted by the announcement of this arrangement ;
but it was soon ascertained that the Germantown and Merrimac,
frigates in the port, had been scuttled, and the former otherwise
injured. About midnight, as elsewhere stated, a fire was started
in the navy -yard, which continued to increase, involving the
destruction of the ship-houses, a ship of the line, and the un-
finished frame of another ; several frigates, in addition to those
mentioned, had been scuttled and sunk ; and other property de-
stroyed, to an amount estimated at several million dollars. The
Pawnee, which arrived on the 19th, had been kept under steam,
and, taking the Cumberland in tow, retired down the harbor,
freighted with a great portion of valuable munitions and the
commodore and other officers of the yard.* In the haste and
secrecy of the conflagration, a large amount of material remained
uninjured. The Merrimac, a beautiful frigate, in the yard for

* See "Annual Cyclopaedia," 1861, p. 536.

196 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

repairs, was raised by the Virginians, and the work immediately
commenced, on a plan devised by Lieutenant Brooke, Confeder-
ate States Navy, to convert her hull, with such means as were
available, into an iron-clad vessel. Two-inch plates were pre-
pared, and she was covered with a double-inclined roof of four
inches thickness. This armor, though not sufficiently thick to
resist direct shot, sufficed to protect against a glancing ball, and
was as heavy as was consistent with the handling of the ship.
The shield was defective in not covering the sides sufficiently
below the water-line, and the prow was unfortunately made of
cast-iron ; but, when all the difficulties by which we were sur-
rounded are remembered, and the service rendered by this float-
ing battery considered, the only wonder must be that so much
was so well done under the circumstances.

Her armament consisted of ten guns, four single-banded
Brooke rifles, and six nine-inch Dahlgren shell-guns. Two of
the rifles, bow and stern pivots, were seven inch ; the other two
were six and four tenths inch, one on each broadside. The nine-
inch gun on each side, nearest the furnaces, was fitted for firing
hot shot. The work of construction was prosecuted with all
haste, the armament and crew were put on board, and the ves-
sel started on her trial-trip as soon as the workmen were dis-
charged. She was our first ironclad ; her model was an experi-
ment, and many doubted its success. Her commander, Captain
(afterward Admiral) Franklin Buchanan, with the wisdom of
age and the experience of sea-service from his boyhood, com-
bined the daring and enterprise of youth, and with him was
Lieutenant Catesby Ap R. Jones, who had been specially in
charge of the battery, and otherwise thoroughly acquainted
with the ship. His high qualifications as an ordnance officer
were well known in the " old navy," and he was soon to ex-
hibit a like ability as a seaman in battle.

Now the first Confederate ironclad was afloat, the Stars and
Bars were given to the breeze, and she was new-christened " The
Virginia." She was joined by the Patrick Henry, six guns,
Commander John R. Tucker ; the Jamestown, two guns, Lieu-
tenant-commanding John 1ST. Barney; the Beaufort, one gun,
Lieutenant-commanding W. H. Parker ; the Raleigh, one gun,

18621 A DULL, HEAVY THUD WAS HEARD. 197

Lieutenant-commanding J. W. Alexander; the Teaser, one
gun, Lieutenant-commanding W. A. Webb.

The enemy's fleet in Hampton Roads consisted of the Cum-
berland, twenty-four guns ; Congress, fifty guns ; St. Lawrence,
fifty guns ; steam-frigates Minnesota and Roanoke, forty guns
each. The relative force was as twenty-one guns to two hun-
dred and four, not counting the small steamers of the enemy,
though they had heavier armament than the small vessels of
our fleet, which have been enumerated. The Cumberland and
the Congress lay off Newport News ; the other vessels were an-
chored about nine miles eastward, near to Fortress Monroe.
Strong shore-batteries and several small steamers, armed with
heavy rifled guns, protected the frigates Cumberland and Con-
gress.

Buchanan no doubt felt the inspiration of a sailor when his
vessel bears him from the land, and the excitement of a hero at
the prospect of battle, and thus we may understand why the
trial-trip was at once converted into a determined attack upon
the enemy. After the plan of the Yirginia had been decided
upon, the work of her construction was pushed with all possible
haste. Her armament was on board, and she was taken out of
the dock while the workmen were still employed upon her — in-
deed, the last of them were put ashore after she was started on
her first experimental trip. Few men, conscious as Flag-officer
Buchanan was of the defects of his vessel, would have dared
such unequal conflict. Slowly — about five knots an hour — he
steamed down to the roads. The Cumberland and Congress,
seeing the Yirginia approach, prepared for action, and, from
the flag-ship Roanoke, signals were given to the Minnesota and
St. Lawrence to advance. The Cumberland had swung so as to
give her full broadside to the Yirginia, which silently and with-
out any exhibition of her crew, moved steadily forward. The
shot from the Cumberland fell thick upon her plated roof, but
rebounded harmless as hailstones. At last the prow of the Yir-
ginia struck the Cumberland just forward of her starboard fore-
chains. A dull, heavy thud was heard, but so little force was
given to the Yirginia that the engineer hesitated about backing
her. It was soon seen, however, that a gaping breach had been

198 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

made in the Cumberland, and that the sea was rushing madly
in. She reeled, and, while the waves ingulfed her, her crew
gallantly stood to their guns and vainly continued their fire.
She went down in nine fathoms of water, and with at least one
hundred of her gallant crew, her pennant still flying from her
mast-head.

The Virginia then ran up stream a short distance, in order
to turn and have sufficient space to get headway, and come
down on the Congress. The enemy, supposing that she had
retired at the sight of the vessels approaching to attack her,
cheered loudly, both ashore and afloat. But, when she turned
to descend upon the Congress, as she had on the Cumber-
land, the Congress slipped her cables and ran ashore, bows on.
The Yirginia took position as near as the depth of water would
permit, and opened upon her a raking fire. The Minnesota was
fast aground about one mile and a half below. The Roanoke
and St. Lawrence retired toward the fort. The shore-batteries
kept up their fire on the Yirginia, as did also the Minnesota
at long range, and quite ineffectually. The Congress, being
aground, could but feebly reply. Several of our small vessels
came up and joined the Yirginia, and the combined fire was
fearfully destructive to the Congress. Her commander was
killed, and soon her colors were struck, and the white flag ap-
peared both at the main and spanker gaff. The Beaufort, Lieu-
tenant-commanding W. H. Parker, and the Raleigh, Lieutenant-
commanding J. W. Alexander, tugs which had accompanied
the Yirginia, were ordered to the Congress to receive the sur-
render. The flag of the ship and the sword of its then com-
mander were delivered to Lieutenant Parker, by whom they
were subsequently sent to the Navy Department at Richmond.
Other officers delivered their swords in token of surrender, and
entreated that they might return to assist in getting their wound-
ed out of the ship. The permission was granted to the officers,
and they then took advantage of the clemency shown them
to make their escape. In the mean time the shore-batteries fired
upon the tugs, and compelled them to retire. By this fire five
of their own men, our prisoners, were wounded. Flag-officer
Buchanan had stopped the firing upon the Congress when she

1862] THE VIRGINIA AND THE MONITOR. 199

struck her flag, and ran up the white flag, as heretofore de-
scribed. Lieutenant Jones in his official report, referring to
the Congress, writes : " But she fired upon us with the white
flag flying, wounding Lieutenant Minor and several of our men.
We again opened fire upon her, and she is now in flames."
The crew of the Congress escaped, as did that of the Cumber-
land, by boats, or by swimming, and generously our men ab-
stained from firing on them while so exposed. Flag-officer
Buchanan was wounded by a rifle-ball, and had to be carried
below. His intrepid conduct won the admiration of all. The
executive and ordnance officer, Lieutenant Catesby Ap E.
Jones, succeeded to the command. It was now so near night
and the change of the tide that nothing further could be at-
tempted on that day. The Virginia, with the smaller vessels
attending her, withdrew and anchored off Sewell's Point. She
had sunk the Cumberland, left the Congress on fire, had blown
up a transport-steamer, sunk one schooner, and had captured
another. Casualties, reported by Lieutenant Jones, were two
killed and eight wounded. The prow of the Virginia was some-
what damaged, her anchor and all her flag-staffs were shot away,
and her smoke-stack and steam-pipe were riddled ; otherwise,
the vessel was uninjured, and, as will be seen, was ready for
action on the next morning. The prisoners and wounded were
immediately sent up to the hospital at Norfolk.

During the night the Monitor, an iron-clad turret-steamer,
of an entirely new model, came in, and anchored near the Min-
nesota. Like our Virginia she was an invention, and her merits
and demerits were to be tested in the crucible of war. She was
of light draught, and very little save the revolving turret was
visible above the water, was readily handled, and had good
speed ; but, also, like the Virginia, was not supposed by nautical
men to be capable of braving rough weather at sea.

The Virginia was the hull of a frigate, modified into an iron-
clad vessel. She was only suited to smooth water, and it had
. not been practicable to obtain for her such engines as would have
given her the requisite speed. Her draught, twenty-two feet,
was too great for the shoal water in the roads, and the appre-
hension which was excited lest she should go up to Washington

200 MSE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

might have been allayed by a knowledge of the deep water
necessary to float her. Her great length, depth, and want of
power, caused difficulty in handling to be anticipated. In many
respects she was an experiment, and, had we possessed the means
to build a new vessel, no doubt a better model could have been
devised. Commander Brooke, who united much science to
great ingenuity, was not entirely free in the exercise, of either.
Our means restricted us to making the best of that which chance
had given us.

In the morning the Virginia, with the Patrick Henry,
the Jamestown, and the three little tugs, jestingly called the
"mosquito fleet," returned to the scene of the previous day's
combat, and to the completion of the work, the destruction of
the Minnesota, which had, the evening before, been interrupted
by the change of tide and the coming of night. The Monitor,
which had come in during the previous night, and had been
seen by the light of the burning Congress, opened fire on the
Virginia when about the third of a mile distant. The Virginia
sought to close with her, but the greater speed of the Monitor
and the celerity with which she was handled made this imprac-
ticable. The ships passed and repassed very near each other,
and frequently the Virginia delivered her broadside at close
quarters, but with no perceptible effect. The Monitor fired
rapidly from her revolving turret, but not with such aim as to
strike successively in the same place, and the armor of the Vir-
ginia, therefore, remained unbroken. Lieutenant-commanding
Catesby Jones, to whom Buchanan had intrusted the ship when
he was removed to the hospital, soon discovered that the Monitor
was invulnerable to his shells. He had a few solid shot, which
were intended only to be fired from the nine-inch guns as hot
shot, and therefore had necessarily so much windage that they
would be ineffective against the shield of the~ Monitor. He,
therefore, determined to run her down, and got all the headway
he could obtain for that purpose, but the speed was so small
that it merely pushed her out of her way. It was then decided
to board her, and all hands were piped for that object. Then
the Monitor slipped away on to shoal water where the Virginia
could not approach her, and Commander Jones, after waiting a

1862] ADMIRATION OF GENUINE GAME. 201

due time, and giving the usual signals of invitation to com-
bat, without receiving any manifestation on the part of the
Monitor of an intention to return to deep water, withdrew to
the navy-yard.

In the two days of conflict our only casualties were from the
Cumberland as she went down valiantly fighting to the last,
from the men on shore when the tugs went to the Congress to
receive her surrender, or from the perfidious fire from the Con-
gress while her white flags were flying. ISone were killed or
wounded in the fight with the Monitor.

As this was the first combat between two iron-clad vessels, it
attracted great attention and provoked much speculation. Some
assumed that wooden ships were henceforth to be of no use, and
much has been done by the addition of armor to protect sea-
going vessels ; but certainly neither of the two which provoked
the speculation could be regarded as seaworthy, or suited to
other than harbor defense.

A new prow was put on the Virginia, she was furnished
with bolts and solid shot, and the slight repairs needed were
promptly made. The distinguished veteran, Commodore Jo-
siah Tatnall, was assigned to the command of the Virginia,
vice Admiral Buchanan, temporarily disabled. The Virginia,
as far as possible, was prepared for battle and cruise in the
Roads, and, on the 11th of April, Commodore Tatnall moved
down to invite the Monitor to combat. But her officers kept
the Monitor close to the shore, with her steam up, and under the
guns of Fortress Monroe. To provoke her to come out, the
little Jamestown was sent in and pluckily captured many prizes,
but the Monitor lay safe in the shoal water under the guns of the
formidable fortress. An English man-of-war, which was lying
in the channel, witnessed this effort to draw the Monitor out
into deep water in defense of her weaker countrymen, and, as
Barney on the Jamestown passed with his prizes, cut out in full
view of the enemy's fleet, the Englishmen, with their national
admiration of genuine " game," as a spectator described it, " un-
able to restrain their generous impulses, from the captain to the
side-boy, cheered our gunboat to the very echo." I quote fur-
ther from the same witness: "Early in May, a magnificent

202 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

Federal fleet, the Virginia being concealed behind the land, had
ventured across the channel, and some of them, expressly fitted
to destroy our ship, were furiously bombarding our batteries at
Sewell's Point. Dashing down comes old Tatnall on the in-
stant, as light stepping and blithe as a boy. . . . But the Vir-
ginia no sooner draws into range than the whole fleet, like a
flushed covey of birds, flutters off into shoal water and under
the guns of the forts " — where they remained. After some
delay, and there being no prospect of active service, the Com-
modore ordered the executive officer to fire a gun to windward
and take the ship back to her buoy. Here, ready for service,
waiting for an enemy to engage her, but never having the op-
portunity, she remained until the 10th of the ensuing month.

The Norfolk Navy-Yard, notwithstanding the injury done
to it by conflagration, was yet the most available and equipped
yard in the Confederacy. A land-force under General Huger
had been placed there for its protection, and defensive works
had also been constructed with a view to hold it as well for
naval construction and repair as for its strategic importance in
connection with the defense of the capital, Richmond. On
the opposite side of the lower James, on the Peninsula between
the James and York Rivers, we occupied an intrenched posi-
tion of much natural strength. The two positions, Norfolk and
the Peninsula, were necessary to each other, and the command
of the channel between them essential to both. As long as the
Virginia closed the entrance to the James River, and the in-
trenchment on the Peninsula was held, it was deemed possible
to keep possession of Norfolk.

On the 1st of May General Johnston, commanding on the
Peninsula, having decided to retreat, sent an order to General
Huger to evacuate Norfolk. The Secretary of War, General
Randolph, having arrived just at that time in Norfolk, assumed
the authority of postponing the execution of the order " until
he [General Huger] could remove such stores, munitions, and
arms as could be carried off." The Secretary of the Navy, Mr.
Mallory, was there also, and gave like instructions to the com-
mandant of the yard. To the system and energy with which
General Huger conducted the removal of heavy guns, machin-

1862] WE GAVE HER TO THE FLAMES. 203

ery, stores, and munitions, we were greatly indebted in our
future operations, both of construction and defense. A week
was thus employed in the removal of machinery, etc., and the
enemy, occupied with the retreating army on the Peninsula,
did not cross the James River above, either to interrupt the
transportation or to obstruct the retreat of the garrisons of the
forts at Norfolk and its surroundings. When our army had
been withdrawn from the Peninsula, and Norfolk had been
evacuated, and the James River did not f urnish depth of chan-
nel which would suffice for the Virginia to ascend it more
than a few miles, her mission was ended. It is not surprising
that her brilliant career created a great desire to preserve her,
and that it was contemplated to lighten her and thus try to take
her up the river, but the pilots declared this to be impracticable,
and the court which subsequently investigated the matter sus-
tained their opinion that " the only alternative was then and there
to abandon and burn the ship." The statement of Commodore
Tatnall shows that the Virginia could not have beeu taken sea-
ward, and that such was the opinion of her first commander.
He said : " I consulted Commodore Buchanan on the character
and power of the ship. He expressed the distinct opinion that
she was unseaworthy, that she was not sufficiently buoyant, and
that in a common sea she would founder." She could not, it
therefore appears, ascend the river, was unseaworthy, and was
uncovered by the retreat of the troops with whom she had co-
operated. So, on the 10th of May, the Virginia was taken to
Craney Island, one mile above, and there her crew were landed ;
they fell in and formed on the beach, and, in the language of
the eye-witness heretofore quoted, " then and there, on the
very field of her fame, within sight of the Cumberland's top-
gallant-masts, all awash, within sight of that magnificent fleet
still cowering on the shoal, with her laurels all fresh and green,
we hauled down her drooping colors, and, with mingled pride
and grief, we gave her to the flames." *

At Wilmington, North Carolina, the Southwest bar was de-
fended by Fort Caswell, and New Inlet bar by Fort Fisher.

* " The Story of the Confederate Ship Virginia," by William Norris, Colonel
Signal Corps, Confederate Army.

204 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

The naval defenses consisted of two ironclads, the North Caro-
lina and the Raleigh. The former could not cross any of the
bars in consequence of her draught of water. Her steam-power
hardly gave propulsion. She sank during the war off Smith-
ville. The Raleigh's services were almost valueless in conse-
quence of her deep draught and her feeble steam-power. She
made one futile trip out of New Inlet, and after a few hours
attempted to return, but was wrecked upon the bar.

The brave and invincible defense of Fort Sumter gave to
the city of Charleston, South Carolina, additional luster. For
four years that fort, located in its harbor, defied the army and
navy of the United States. When the city was about to be
abandoned to the army of General Sherman, the forts defend-
ing the harbor were embraced in General Hardee's plan of
evacuation. The gallant commander of Fort Sumter, Colonel
Stephen Elliott, Jr., with unyielding fortitude, refused to be
relieved, after being under incessant bombardment day and
night for weeks. It was supposed he must be exhausted, and
he was invited to withdraw for rest, but, on receiving the gen-
eral order of retreat, he assembled his brave force on the rugged
and shell-crushed parade-ground, read his instructions, and, in a
voice that trembled with emotion, addressed his men in the
glowing language of patriotism and unswerving devotion to the
Confederate cause. The cheers, which responded to the utter-
ances of their colonel, came from manly and chivalric throats.
Yielding to the inevitable, they claimed for the Stars and Bars
a salute of one hundred guns. As it was fired from Sumter, it
was reechoed by all the Confederate batteries, and startled the
outside blockaders with the idea that a great victory had been
won by the Confederacy.

The naval force of the Confederacy in Charleston Harbor
consisted of three ironclads. Their steam-power was totally
inadequate for the effective use of the vessels. In fact, when
the wind and tide were moving in the same direction, it was
impossible for the vessels to advance against them, light though
the wind might be. Under such circumstances it was necessary
to come to an anchor. On one occasion the ironclads Palmetto
State and Chicora ran out of Charleston Harbor under favor-

1862] HE BROKE HIS PLIGHTED WORD. 205

able circumstances. The Palmetto State assaulted the Merci-
deta, commanded by Captain Stellwagen, who unconditionally
surrendered. But the ironclad being under orders to follow
her consort in chase of the enemy, and having no boats to which
to transfer her prisoners, the parole of the officers and men was
accepted, with their promise to observe the same until its return.
The surrender was accepted, and an honest parole was the con-
sideration for not being sunk on the spot. Captain Stellwagen
abided but a short time, when, getting up steam, he broke his
plighted word, and ran off with the captured vessel. The defi-
ciency of speed on the part of the Confederate ironclads frus-
trated their efforts to relieve the city of Charleston from con-
tinued blockade.

The harbor defenses of Savannah were intrusted to Commo-
dore Tatnall, who defended the approach to the city with a
small steamer of one gun, an inefficient floating battery and
ironclad, which had been constructed from a blockade-runner.
Several attempts were made to attack the enemy's vessels with
the ironclad, but these were frustrated by the delay in opening
a passage through the obstructions in the river when tide and
opportunity were offered. Her draught was too great for the
depth of water, except at high tides, and these were at long inter-
vals. The ironclad was armed with a battery of four guns, two
seven-inch and two six-inch. Her force consisted of some twenty-
one officers and twenty-four men, when she was fully furnished.
Another vessel was under construction and nearly' completed,
and Commodore Tatnall, notwithstanding his well-known com-
bative instincts, was understood to be unwilling to send the
Atlanta alone against the enemy's blockading vessels. Lieuten-
ant Webb, who had been lately placed in command of the At-
lanta, took her to Warsaw Sound to deliver battle singly to the
two ironclads Weehawken and Nahant, which awaited her ap-
proach. The Atlanta got twice aground — the second time, inex-
tricably so. In this situation she was attacked, and, though
hopelessly, was bravely defended, but was finally forced to sur-
render.

Mobile Harbor was thought to be adequately provided for,
as torpedoes obstructed the approach, and Forts Morgan and

206 RKE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

Gaines commanded the entrance, aided by the improvised fleet
of Admiral Buchanan, which consisted of the wooden gunboats
Morgan and Gaines, each carrying six guns, and Selma four
guns, with the ram Tennessee of six guns — in all, twenty-two
guns and four hundred and seventy men. On August 4, 1864,
Fort Gaines was assaulted by the United States force from the
sea-side of the beach. The resistance made was feeble, and the
fort soon surrendered. On the next day Admiral Farragut
stood into the bay with a force consisting of four monitors, or
ironclads, and fourteen steamers, carrying one hundred and
ninety-nine guns and twenty-seven hundred men. One iron-
clad was sunk by a torpedo. Admiral Buchanan advanced to
meet this force, and sought to run into the larger vessels with
the Tennessee, but they avoided him by their superior speed.
Meanwhile the gunboats became closely engaged with the ene-
my, but were soon dispersed by his overwhelming force. The
Tennessee again stood for the enemv and renewed the attack
with the hope of sinking some of them with her prow, but she
was again foiled by their superior speed in avoiding her. The
engagement with the whole fleet soon became general, and lasted
an hour. Frequently the Tennessee was surrounded by the ene-
my, and all her guns were in action almost at the same moment.
Four of their heaviest vessels ran into her under full steam with
the view of sinking her. While surrounded by six of these
heavy vessels which were suffering fearfully from her heavy
battery, the' steering-gear of the Tennessee was shot away, and
her ability to manoeuvre was completely destroyed, leaving the
formidable Confederate entirely at the disposal of the enemy.
This misfortune, it was believed, saved the greater part of Far-
ragut's fleet. Further resistance becoming unavailable, the
wounded Admiral was under the painful necessity of ordering
a surrender. His little fleet became a prey to the enemy, except
the Morgan, which made good her escape to Mobile.

This unequal contest was decidedly creditable to the Confed-
eracy. The entire loss of the enemy, most of which is ascribed
to the Tennessee, amounted to quite three hundred in killed and
wounded, exclusive of one hundred lost on the sunken ironclad,
making a number almost as large as the entire Confederate force.

1862] THE SYSTEM OF TORPEDOES ADOPTED. 207

On August 22d, Fort Morgan was bombarded from the land,
also by ironclads at sea, and by the fleet inside. Thus Forts
Powel, Morgan, and Gaines shared the fate of the Confederate
fleet, and the enemy became masters of the bay. On this as on
other occasions, the want of engines of sufficient power consti-
tuted a main obstacle to the success which the gallantry and
skill of the seamen so richly deserved.

The system of torpedoes adopted by us was probably more
effective than any other means of naval defense. The destruc-
tiveness of these little weapons had long been known, but no
successful modes for their application to the destruction of the
most powerful vessels of war and ironclads had been devised.
It remained for the skill and ingenuity of our officers to bring
the use of this terrible instrument to perfection. The success
of their efforts is very frankly stated by one of the most dis-
tinguished of the enemy's commanders — Admiral Porter.* He
says :

"Most of the Southern seaports fell into our possession with
comparative facility ; and the difficulty of capturing Charleston,
Savannah, Wilmington, and Mobile was in a measure owing to the
fact that the approaches to these places were filled with various
kinds of torpedoes, laid in groups, and fired by electricity. The
introduction of this means of defense on the side of the Confeder-
ates Vas for a time a severe check to our naval forces, for the com-
manders of squadrons felt it their duty to be careful when dealing
with an element of warfare of which they knew so little, and the
character and disposition of which it was so difficult to discover.
In this system of defense, therefore, the enemy found their great-
est security ; and, notwithstanding all the efforts of Du Pont and
Dahlgren, Charleston, Wilmington, and Savannah remained closed
to our forces until near the close of the war."

In 1862, while General McClellan was in command of the
enemy's forces below Richmond, it was observed that they had
more than a hundred vessels in the James River, as if they were
about to make an advance by that way upon the city. This led
to an order placing General G. J. Rains in charge of the sub-

* See "Torpedo "Warfare," "North American Keview," September-October,
1878.

208 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

marine defenses ; and, on the James River opposite Drewry's
Bluff, the iirst submarine torpedo was made. The secret of all
his future success consisted in the sensitive primer, which is
unrivaled by any other means to explode torpedoes or sub-terra
shells.

The torpedoes were made of the most ordinary material gen-
erally, as, beer-barrels fixed with conical heads, coated within
and without with rosin dissolved in coal-tar ; some were made
of cast-iron, copper, or tin; and glass demijohns were used.
There were three essentials to success, viz., the .sensitive fuse-
primer, a charge of sixty pounds of gunpowder, and actual con-
tact between the torpedo and the bottom of the vessel.

There were one hundred and twenty-three of these torpe-
does placed in Charleston Harbor and Stono River. It was
blockaded by thirteen large ships and ironclads, with six or
seven storeships, and some twenty other vessels. The position
of each one was known, and they could be approached within
a half-mile, which made it easy to attack, destroy, or disperse
them at night by floating torpedoes, connected together by twos
by a rope one hundred and thirty yards long, buoyed up and
stretched across the current by two boats, which were to be
dropped in ebbing tide, to float down among the vessels. This
plan, says General Rains, was opposed by General Gilmer, of
the engineer corps, on the ground that " they might float back
and destroy our own boat." One was sent down to go in the
midst of the fleet, and made its mark. An act of devoted dar-
ing was here performed by Commander W. T. Glassell, Con-
federate States Navy, which claims more than a passing notice.
While the enemy was slowly contracting his lines around
Charleston, his numerous ships of war kept watch-and-ward
outside of the harbor. Our few vessels, almost helpless by
their defective engines, could effect little against their powerful
opponents. The New Ironsides, the pride of their fleet, lay
off Morris's Island. This Glassell resolved to attack with a
steam-launch carrying a torpedo spar at the bow. With an
engineer, pilot, and fireman, he steered for the Ironsides under
cover of a hazy night. As he approached, he was hailed by
the lookout, and the next moment struck the Ironsides, explod-

1862] STRUCK TORPEDOES AND WENT TO THE BOTTOM. 209

ing the torpedo about fifteen feet from the keel. An immense
volume of water was thrown up, covering the little boat, and,
pieces of timber falling in the engine, it was rendered entirely
unmanageable, so as to deprive Commander Glassell of the
means of escape on which he had relied. A rapid fire was
concentrated upon him from the deck of the ship, and there re-
mained no chance except to attempt an escape by swimming
ashore. To secure liberty to his country, he risked and lost
his own, and found, for the indignity to which he was subject-
ed, compensation, inasmuch as the famous New Ironsides was
long rendered useless to the enemy.

One hundred and one torpedoes were planted in Roanoke
River, North Carolina, after a flotilla of twelve vessels had
started up to capture Fort Branch. The torpedoes destroyed
six of the, vessels and frustrated the attack.

Every avenue to the outworks or to the city of Mobile was
guarded by submarine torpedoes, so that it was impossible for
any vessel drawing three feet of water to get within effective
cannon-range of the defenses. Two ironclads attempted to get
near enough to Spanish Fort to take part in the bombardment.
They both struck torpedoes, and went to the bottom on Apa-
lachie bar ; thenceforward the fleet made no further attempt to
encounter the almost certain destruction which they saw awaited
any vessel which might attempt to enter the torpedo-guarded
waters. But many were sunk when least expecting it. Some
went down long after the Confederate forces had evacuated Mo-
bile. The Tecumseh was probably sunk, says Major-General
D. H. Maury,* on her own torpedo. While steaming in lead of
Farragut's fleet she carried a torpedo affixed to a spar, which
projected some twenty feet from her bows ; she proposed to
use this torpedo against the Tennessee, our only formidable
ship ; but, while passing Fort Morgan, a shot from that fort cut
away the stays by which the torpedo was secured ; it then
doubled under her, and, exploding fairly under the bottom of
the ill-fated ship, she careened and sank instantly in ten fathoms
of water. Only six or eight of her crew of a hundred or more
were saved. The total number of vessels sunk by torpedoes in

* Southern Historical Society Papers, January, 1877.
61

210 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

Mobile Bay was twelve, viz., three ironclads, two tinclads, and
seven transports. Fifty-eight vessels were destroyed in South-
ern waters by torpedoes during the war ; these included iron-
clads and others of no mean celebrity.

CHAPTER XXYIII.

Naval Affairs (continued). — Importance of New Orleans. — Attack feared from up
the River. — Preparations for Defense. — Strength of the Forts. — Other De-
fenses.— The General Plan. — Ironclads. — Raft-Fleet of the Enemy. — Bombard-
ment of the Forts commenced. — Advance of the Fleet. — Its Passage of the
Forts. — Batteries below the City. — Darkness of the Night. — Evacuation of the
City by General Lovell on Appearance of the Enemy. — Address of General Dun-
can to Soldiers in the Forts. — Refusal to surrender. — Meeting of the Garrison
of Fort Jackson. — The Forts surrendered. — Ironclad Louisiana destroyed. — The
Tugs and Steamers. — The Governor Moore. — The Enemy's Ship Varuna sunk.-
The McRae. — The State of the City and its Defenses considered. — Public In-
dignation.— Its Victims. — Efforts made for its Defense by the Navy Depart-
ment.— The Construction of the Mississippi.

New Orleans was the most important commercial port in the
Confederacy, being the natural outlet of the Mississippi Yalley,
as well to the ports of Europe as to those of Central and Southern
America. It was the depot which, at an early period, had led
to controversies with Spain, and its importance to the interior
had been a main inducement to the purchase of Louisiana. It
had become before 1861 the chief cotton-mart of the United
States, and its defense attracted the early attention of the Con-
federate Government. The approaches for an attacking party
were numerous. They could through several channels enter
Lake Pontchartrain, to approach the city in rear for land-attack,
could ascend the Mississippi from the Gulf, or descend it from
the Northwest, where it was known that the enemy was prepar-
ing a formidable fleet of iron-clad gunboats. In the early part
of 1862, so general an opinion prevailed that the greatest danger
to New Orleans was by an attack from above, that General
Lovell sent to General Beauregard a large part of the troops
then in the city.

1862] BUT NEITHER OF THEM WAS FINISHED. 2H

At the mouth of the Mississippi there is a bar, the greatest
depth of water on which seldom exceeded eighteen feet, and it
was supposed that heavy vessels of war, with their armament and
supplies, would not be able to cross it. Such proved to be the
fact, and the vessels of that class had to be lightened to enable
them to enter the river. In that condition of affairs, an inferior
fleet might have engaged them with a prospect of success.
Captain Hollins, who was in command of the squadron at New
Orleans, and who had on a former occasion shown his fitness for
such service, had been sent with the greater part of his fleet up
the liver to join the defense there being made. Two powerful
vessels were under construction, the Louisiana and the Mississip-
pi, but neither of them was finished. A volunteer fleet of trans-
port-vessels had been fitted up by some river-men, but it was in
the unfortunate condition of not being placed under the orders
of the naval commander. A number of fire-rafts had been also
provided, which were to serve the double purpose of lighting
up the river in the event of the hostile fleet attempting to pass
the forts under cover of the night, and of setting fire to any
vessel with which they might become entangled.

After passing the bar, there was nothing to prevent the as-
cent of the river until Forts Jackson and St. Philip were reached.
These works, constructed many years before, were on opposite
banks of the river. Their armament, as reported by General
Lovell, December 5, 1861, consisted of — Fort Jackson : six
forty-two-pounders, twenty-six twenty-four-pounders, two thirty-
two-pounder rifles, sixteen thirty-two-pounders, three eight-
inch columbiads, one ten-inch columbiad, two eight-inch mor-
tars, one ten-inch mortar, two forty-pounder howitzers, and ten
twenty-four-pounder howitzers. Fort St. Philip : six forty-two-
pounders, nine thirty-two-pounders, twenty-two twenty-four-
pounders, four eight-inch columbiads, one eight-inch mortar, one
ten-inch mortar, and three field-guns.

General Duncan reported that, on the 27th of March, he
was informed by Lieutenant-Colonel Higgins, commanding
Forts Jackson and St. Philip, of the coast-defenses, which were
under his (General Duncan's) command, that the enemy's fleet
was crossing the bars, and entering the Mississippi River in

212 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

force ; whereupon he repaired to Fort Jackson. After describ-
ing the condition of the forts from the excess of water and
sinking of the entire site, as well as the deficiency of guns of
heavy caliber in the forts, he proceeds :

"It became necessary in their present condition to bring in
and mount, and to build the platforms for, the three ten-inch and
three eight-inch columbiads, the rifled forty-two-pounder, and the
five ten-inch seacoast mortars recently obtained from Pensacola
on the evacuation of that place, together with the two rifled seven-
inch guns temporarily borrowed from the naval authorities in New
Orleans. It was also found necessary to repair the old water-
battery to the rear of and below Fort Jackson, which had never
been completed, for the reception of a portion of these guns, as
well as to construct mortar-proof magazines, and shell-rooms with-
in the same."

One of the seven-inch rifled gnns borrowed from the navy
was subsequently returned, so that, when the forts were attacked,
the armament was one hundred and twenty-eight guns and
mortars.

The garrisons of Forts Jackson and St. Philip were about
one thousand men on December 5, 1861 ; afterward, so far as I
know, the number was not materially changed.

The prevailing belief that vessels of war, in a straight, smooth
channel, could pass batteries, led to the construction of a raft
between the two forts which, it was supposed, would detain the
ships under fire of the forts long enough for the guns to sink
them, or at least to compel them to retire. The power of the
river when in flood, and the drift-wood it bore upon it, broke
the raft ; another was constructed, which, when the drift-wood
accumulated upon it, met a like fate. Whether obstructions
differently arranged — such as booms secured to the shores, with
apparatus by which they could be swung across the channel
when needful, or logs such as were used, except that, bein^
unconnected together, but each separately secured by chain an<
anchor, they might severally yield to the pressure of the drift
wood, sinking, so as to allow it to pass over them, and, whei
relieved of the weight, rising again — or whether other expe-

1862] A VERY STRONG LINE OF DEFENSE. 213

dient could have been made permanent and efficient, is a prob-
lem which need not be discussed, as the time for its applica-
tion has passed from us.

The general plan for the defense of New Orleans consisted
of two lines of works: an exterior one, passing through the
forts near the mouth of the river, and the positions taken to de-
fend the various water approaches ; nearer to the city was the
interior line, embracing New Orleans and Algiers, which was
intended principally to repel an attack by land, but also, by its
batteries on the river-bank, to resist approach by water. The
total length of the intrenchments on this interior line was more
than eight miles. When completed, it formed, in connection
with impassable swamps, a very strong line of defense. At the
then high stage of the river, all the land between it and the
swamps was so saturated with water, that regular approaches
could not have been made. The city, therefore, was at the time
supposed to be doubly secure from a land-attack.

In the winter of 1861-'62 I sent one of my aides-de-camp to
New Orleans to make a general inspection, and hold free con-
ference with the commanding General. Upon his return, he
reported to me that General Lovell was quite satisfied with the
condition of the land-defenses — so much so as to say that his
only fear was that the enemy would not make a land-attack.

Considered since the event, it may seem strange that, after
the fall of Donelson and Henry, and the employment of the
enemy's gunboats in the Tennessee and Cumberland, it was still
generally argued that the danger to New Orleans was that the
gunboats would descend the Mississippi, and applications were
made to have the ship Louisiana sent up the river as soon as she
was completed.

The interior lines of defense mounted more than sixty guns
of various caliber, and were surrounded by wide and deep ditches.
On the various water approaches, including bays and bayous on
the west and east sides of the river, there were sixteen different
forts, and these, together with those on the river and the bat-
teries of the interior line, had in position about three hundred
guns.

One ironclad, the Louisiana, mounting sixteen guns of heavy

214: KISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

caliber, though she was not quite completed, was sent down to
cooperate with the forts. Her defective steam-power and im-
perfect steering apparatus prevented her from rendering active
cooperation. The steamship Mississippi, then under construc-
tion at JS'ew Orleans, was in such an unfinished condition as to
be wholly unavailable when the enemy arrived. In the opinion
of naval officers she would have been, if completed, the most
powerful ironclad then in the world, and could have driven the
enemy's fleet out of the river and raised the blockade at Mobile.
There were also several small river-steamers which were lightly
armed, and their bows were protected so that they could act as
rams and otherwise aid in the defense of the river; but, from
the reports received, they seem, with a few honorable excep-
tions, to have rendered little valuable service.

The means of defense, therefore, mainly relied on were the
two heavy-armed forts, Jackson and St. Philip, with the ob-
struction placed between them : this was a raft consisting of
cypress-trees, forty feet long, and averaging four or five feet at
the larger end. They were placed longitudinally in the river,
about three feet apart, and held together by gunwales on top,
and strung upon two two-and-a-half-inch chain cables fastened
to their lower sides. This raft was anchored in the river, abreast
of the forts.

The fleet of the enemy below the forts consisted of seven
steam sloops of war, twelve gunboats, and several armed steam-
ers, under Commodore Farragut ; also, a mortar-fleet consisting
of twenty sloops and some steam- vessels. The whole force was
forty-odd vessels of different kinds, with an armament of three
hundred guns of heavy caliber, of improved models.

The bombardment of the forts by the mortar-fleet com-
menced on April 18th, and, after six days of vigorous and con-
stant shelling, the resisting power of the forts was not diminished
in any perceptible degree. On the 23d there were manifest
preparations by the enemy to attempt the passage of the forts.
This, as subsequently developed, was to be done in the following
manner. The sloops of war and the gunboats were each formed
in two divisions, and, selecting the darkest hour of the night,
between 3 and 4 a. m. of the 24th, moved up the river in two

1862] THE COVER OF DARKNESS. 215

columns. The commanders of the forts had vainly endeavored to
have the river lighted up in anticipation of an attack by the fleet.

In the mean time*, while the fleet moved up the river, there
was kept up from the mortars a steady bombardment on the
forts, and these opened a fire on the columns of ships and gun-
boats, which, from the failure to send down the fire-rafts to light
up the river, was less effective than it otherwise would have
been. The straight, deep channel enabled the vessels to move
at their greatest speed, and thus the forts were passed.

Brigadier-General J. K. Duncan, commanding the coast de-
fenses, says, in his report of the passing of Forts Jackson and
St. Philip by the enemy's fleet :

" The enemy evidently anticipated a strong demonstration to
be made against him with fire-barges. Finding, upon his approach,
however, that no such demonstration was made, and that the only
resistance offered to his passage was the anticipated fire of the
forts — the broken and scattered raft being no obstacle — I am satis-
fied that he was suddenly inspired, for the first time, to run the
gantlet at all hazards, although not a part of his original design.
Be that as it may, a rapid rush was made by him in columns of
twos in echelon, so as not to interfere with each other's broad-
sides. The mortar-fire was furiously increased upon Fort Jackson,
and, in dashing by, each of the vessels delivered broadside after
broadside, of shot, shell, grape, canister, and spherical case, to
drive the men from our guns.

" Both the officers and men stood up manfully under this gall-
ing and fearful hail, and the batteries of both forts were promptly
opened at their longest range, with shot, shell, hot shot, and a
little grape, and most gallantly and rapidly fought, until the
enemy succeeded in getting above and beyond our range. The
absence of light on the river, together with the smoke of the guns,
made the obscurity so dense that scarcely a vessel was visible, and,
in consequence, the gunners were obliged to govern their firing
entirely by the flashes of the enemy's guns. I am fully satisfied
that the enemy's dash was successful mainly owing to the cover
of darkness, as a frigate and several gunboats were forced to retire
as day was breaking. Similar results had attended every previous
attempt made by the enemy to pass or to reconnoiter when we had
sufficient light to fire with accuracy and effect."

216 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

The vessels which passed the fort anchored at the quaran-
tine station about six miles above, and in the forenoon pro-
ceeded up the river. Batteries had been constructed where the
interior line of defense touched both the right and the left bank
of the river. The high stage of the river gave to its surface an
elevation above that of the natural bank ; but a continuous levee
to protect the land from inundation existed on both sides of the
river. When the ascending fleet approached these batteries, a
cross-fire, which drove two of the vessels back, was opened upon
it, and continued until all the ammunition was exhausted. The
garrison was then withdrawn — casualties, one killed and one
wounded. The regret which would naturally arise from the
fact of these batteries not having a sufficient supply of ammuni-
tion is modified, if not removed, by the statement of the highly
accomplished and gallant officer, Major-General M. L. Smith,
who was then in command of them. He reported :

" Had the fall of New Orleans depended upon the enemy's first
taking Forts Jackson and Philip, I think the city would have been
safe from an attack from the Gulf. The forts, in my judgment,
were impregnable as long as they were in free and open commu-
nication with the city. This communication was not endangered
while the obstruction existed. The conclusion, then, is briefly this :
While the obstruction existed, the city was safe ; when it was
swept away, as the defenses then existed, it was within the ene-
my's power."

On the other hand, General Duncan, whose protracted, skill-
ful, and gallant defense of the forts is above all praise, closes his
official report with the following sentence : " Except for the
cover afforded by the obscurity of the darkness, I shall always
remain satisfied that the enemy would never have succeeded in
passing Forts Jackson and St. Philip." The darkness to which
he referred was not only that of night, but also the absence of
the use of the means prepared to light up the river. As further
proof of the intensity of the darkness, and the absence of that
intelligent design and execution which had been claimed, I will
quote a sentence from the report of Commodore Farragut : " At
length the fire slackened, the smoke cleared off, and we saw to
our surprise that we were above the forts."

1862J DEMANDED ITS SURRENDER. 217

On the 25th of April the enemy's gunboats and ships of war
anchored in front of the city and demanded its surrender. Ma-
jor-General M. Lovell, then in command, refused to comply
with the summons, but, believing himself unable to make a
successful defense, and in order to avoid a bombardment, agreed
to withdraw his forces, and turn it over to the civil authorities.
Accordingly, the city was evacuated on the same day. The
forts still continued defiantly to hold their position. By assidu-
ous exertion the damage done to the works was repaired, and
the garrisons valiantly responded to the resolute determination
of General Duncan and Colonel Higgins to defend the forts
against the fleet still below, as well as against that which had
passed and was now above. On the 26th Commodore Porter,
commanding the mortar-fleet below, sent a flag-of -truce boat to
demand the surrender of the forts, saying that the city of New
Orleans had surrendered. To this Colonel Higgins replied,
April 27th, that he had no official information that New Or-
leans had been evacuated, and until such notice was received he
would not entertain for a moment a proposition to surrender
the forts. On the same day General Duncan, commanding the
coast-defenses, issued the following address :

" Soldiers of Forts Jackson and St. Philip : You have
nobly, gallantly, and heroically sustained with courage and forti-
tude the terrible ordeals of fire, water, and a hail of shot and
shell wholly unsurpassed during the present war. But more re-
mains to be done. The safety of New Orleans and the cause of
the Southern Confederacy — our homes, families, and everything
dear to man— yet depend upon our exertions. We are just as
capable of repelling the enemy to-day as we were before the bom-
bardment. Twice has the enemy demanded your surrender, and
twice has he been refused.

"Your officers have every confidence in your courage and
patriotism, and feel every assurance that you will cheerfully and
with alacrity obey all orders, and do your whole duty as men and
as becomes the well-tried garrisons of Forts Jackson and St. Philip.
Be vigilant, therefore, stand by your guns, and all will yet be well.

" J. K. Duncan,
" Brigadier- General, commanding coast-defenses." .

218 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

Not less lofty and devoted was the spirit evinced by Colo-
nel Higgins. His naval experience had been energetically ap-
plied in the attempts to preserve and repair the raft. As im-
mediate commander of Fort St. Philip, he had done all which
skill and gallantry could achieve, and, though for forty -eight
hours during the bombardment he never left the rampart, yet,
with commendable care for his men, he kept them so under
cover that, notwithstanding the long and furious assault to
which the fort was subjected, the total of casualties in it was
two killed and four wounded. Their conduct was such as was
to be anticipated, for, had these officers been actuated by a
lower motive than patriotism, had they been seeking the re-
wards which power confers, they would not have taken service
with the weaker party. Their meed was the consciousness of
duty well done in a righteous cause, and the enduring admira-
tion and esteem of a people who had only these to confer.

During the 25th, 26th, and 27th, there had been an abate-
ment of fire on the forts, and with it had subsided the excite-
ment which imminent danger creates in the brave. A rumor
became current that the city had surrendered, and no reply had
been received to inquiries sent on the 24th and 25th. About
midnight on the 27th the garrison of Fort Jackson revolted en
masse, seized upon the guard, and commenced to spike the guns.
Captain S. O. Comay's company, the Louisiana Cannoneers of
St. Mary's Parish, and a few others remained true to their cause
and country. The mutiny was so general that the officers were
powerless to control it, and therefore decided to let those go
who wished to leave, and after daybreak to communicate with
the fleet below and negotiate for the terms which had been
previously offered and declined.

Under the incessant fire to which the forts had been ex-
posed, and the rise of the water in the casemates and lower part
of the works, the men had been not only deprived of sleep, but
of the opportunity to prepare their food. Heroically they had
braved alike dangers and discomfort ; had labored constantly to
repair damages ; to extinguish fires caused by exploding shells ; to
preserve their ammunition by bailing out the water which threat-
ened to submerge the magazine : yet, in a period of compara-

1862] FLAGS WERE LEFT FLYING. 219

tive repose, these men, who had been cheerful and obedient, as
suddenly as unexpectedly, broke out into open mutiny. Under
the circumstances which surrounded him, General Duncan had
no alternative. It only remained for him to accept the propo-
sition which had been made for a surrender of the forts. As
this mutiny became known about midnight of the 27th, soon
after daylight of the 28th a small boat was procured, and notice
of the event was sent to Captain Mitchell, on the Louisiana,
and also to Fort St. Philip. The officers of that fort concurred
in the propriety of the surrender, though none of their men had
openly revolted.

A flag of truce was sent to Commodore Porter to notify
him of a willingness to negotiate for the surrender of the forts.
The gallantry with which the defense had been conducted was
recognized by the enemy, and the terms were as liberal as had
been offered on former occasions.

The garrisons were paroled, the officers were to retain their
side-arms, and the Confederate flags were left flying over the
forts until after our forces had withdrawn. If this was done as
a generous recognition of the gallantry with which the forts had
been defended, it claims acknowledgment as an instance of
martial courtesy — the flower that blooms fairest amid the deso-
lations of war.

Captain Mitchell, commanding the Confederate States naval
forces, had been notified by General Duncan of the mutiny in
the forts and of the fact that the enemy had passed through a
channel in rear of Fort St. Philip and had landed a force at the
quarantine, some six miles above, and that, under the circum-
stances, it was deemed necessary to surrender the forts. As
the naval forces were not under the orders of the general com-
manding the coast-defenses, it was optional with the naval com-'
mander to do likewise or not as to his fleet. After consultation
with his officers, Captain Mitchell decided to destroy his flag-
ship, the Louisiana, the only formidable vessel he had, rather
than allow her to fall into the hands of the enemy. The crew
was accordingly withdrawn, and the vessel set on fire.

Commodore Porter, commanding the fleet below, came up
under a flag of truce to Fort Jackson, and, while negotiations

220 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

were progressing for the surrender, the Louisiana, in flames,
drifted down the river, and, when close under Fort St. Philip,
exploded and sank.

The defenses afloat, except the Louisiana, consisted of tugs
and river-steamers, which had been converted to war purposes
by protecting their bows with iron so as to make them rams,
and putting on them such armament as boats of that class would
bear; and these were again divided into such as were subject to
control as naval vessels, and others which, in compliance with
the wish of the Governor of Louisiana and many influential
citizens, were fitted out to a great extent by State and private
sources, with the condition that they should be commanded by
river-steamboat captains, and should not be under the control
of the naval commander. This, of course, impaired the unity
requisite in battle. For many other purposes they might have
been used without experiencing the inconvenience felt when
they were brought together to act as one force against the
enemy. The courts of inquiry and the investigation by a com-
mittee of Congress have brought out all the facts of the case,
but with such conflicting opinions as render it very difficult, in
reviewing the matter, to reach a definite and satisfactory con-
clusion. This much it may be proper to say, that expectations,
founded upon the supposition that these improvised means could
do all which might fairly be expected from war-vessels, were
unreasonable, and a judgment based upon them is unjust to the
parties involved. The machinery of the Louisiana was so incom-
plete as to deprive her of locomotion, but she had been so well
constructed as to possess very satisfactory resisting powers, as
was shown by the fact that the broadsides of the enemy's ves-
sels, fired at very close quarters, had little or no effect upon her
shield. Without power of locomotion, her usefulness was lim-
ited to employment as a floating battery. Tire question as to
whether she was in the right position, or whether, in her un-
finished condition, she should have been sent from the city, is
one, for an answer to which I must refer the inquirer to the
testimony of naval men, who were certainly most competent to
decide the issue.

One of the little river-boats, the Governor Mooi*e, com-

1862] STOUTLY FOUGHT THE LARGE SHIPS. 221

manded by Lieutenant Beverly Kennon, like the others, imper-
fectly protected at the bow, struck and sunk the Varuna, in
close proximity to other vessels of the enemy's fleet. Such
daring resulted in his losing, in killed and wounded, seventy-
four out of a crew of ninety-three. Then finding that he must
destroy his ship to prevent her from falling into the hands of
the enemy, he set her on fire, and testified as follows :

" I ordered the wounded to be placed in a boat, and all the
men who could to save themselves by swimming to the shore and
hiding themselves in the marshes. I remained to set the ship on
fire. After doing so, I went on deck with the intention of leaving
her, but found the wounded had been left with no One to take
care of them. I remained and lowered them into a boat, and got
through just in time to be made a prisoner. The wounded were
afterward attended by the surgeons of the Oneida and Eureka."

This, he says, was the only foundation for the accusation of
having burned his wounded with his ship. Another, the Ma-
nassas, Lieutenant-commanding Warley, though merely an al-
tered " tug-boat," stoutly fought the large ships ; but, being
wholly unprotected, except at her bow, was perforated in many
places, as soon as the guns were brought to bear upon her sides,
and floated down the river a burning wreck. Another of the
same class is thus referred to by Colonel Higgins :

"At daylight, I observed the McRae, gallantly fighting at
terrible odds, contending at close quarters with two of the ene-
my's powerful ships. Her gallant commander, Lieutenant Thomas
B. Huger, fell during the conflict, severely, but I trust not mor-
tally, wounded."

This little vessel, after her unequal conflict, was still afloat,
and, with permission of the enemy, went up to New Orleans to
convey the wounded as well from our forts as from the fleet.

On the 23d of April, 1862, General Lovell, commanding the
military department, had gone down to Fort Jackson, where
General Duncan, commanding the coast-defenses, then made his
headquarters. The presence of the department commander did
not avail to secure the full cooperation between the defenses

222 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

afloat and the land-defenses, which was then of most pressing
and immediate necessity.

When the enemy's fleet passed the forts, he hastened back to
New Orleans, his headquarters. The confusion which prevailed
in the city, when the news arrived that the forts had been passed
by the enemy's fleet, shows how little it was expected. There
was nothing to obstruct the ascent of the river between Forts
Jackson and St. Philip and the batteries on the river where
the interior line of defense rested on its right and left banks,
jabout four miles below the city. The guns were not sufficiently
numerous in these batteries to inspire much confidence; they
were nevertheless well served until the ammunition was ex-
hausted, after which the garrisons withdrew, and made their
way by different routes to join the forces withdrawn from New
Orleans.

Under the supposition entertained by the generals nearest
to the operations, the greatest danger to New Orleans was from
above, not from below, the city ; therefore, most of the troops
had been sent from the city to Tennessee, and Captain Hollins,
with the greater part of the river-fleet, had gone up to check the
descent of the enemy's gunboats.

Batteries like those immediately below the city had been
constructed where the interior line touched the river above,
and armed to resist an attack from that direction. Doubtful as
to the direction from which, and the manner in which, an at-
tempt might be made to capture the city, such preparations as
circumstances suggested were made against many supposable
dangers by the many possible routes of approach. To defend
the city from the land, against a bombardment by a powerful
fleet in the river before it, had not been contemplated. All the
defensive preparations were properly, I think, directed to the
prevention of a near approach by the enemy. To have sub-
jected the city to bombardment by a direct or plunging fire,
as the surface of the river was then higher than the land,
would have been exceptionally destructive. Had the city been
filled with soldiers whose families had been sent to a place of
safety, instead of being filled with women and children whose
natural protectors were generally in the army and far away, the

1862J FAILED TO GET VOLUNTEERS. 223

attempt might have been justified to line the levee with all the
effective guns and open fire on the fleet, at the expense of what-
ever property might be destroyed before the enemy should be
driven away. The case was the reverse of the hypothesis, and
nothing could have been more unjust than to censure the com-
manding General for withdrawing a force large enough to in-
duce a bombardment, but insufficient to repel it. His answer
to the demand for the surrender showed clearly enough the
motives by which he was influenced. His refusal enabled him
to withdraw the troops and most of the public property, and to
use them, with the ordnance and ordnance stores thus saved, in
providing for the defense of Yicksburg, but especially it de-
prived the enemy of any pretext for bombarding the town and
sacrificing the lives of the women and children. It appears that
General Lovell called for ten thousand volunteers from the citi-
zens, but failed to get them. There were many river-steam-
boats at the landing, and, if the volunteers called for were in-
tended to man these boats and board the enemy's fleet before
their land-forces could arrive, it can not be regarded as utterly
impracticable. The report of General Butler shows that he
worked his way through one of the bayous in rear of Fort St.
Philip to the Mississippi River above the forts so as to put
himself in communication with the fleet at the city, and to fur-
nish Commodore Farragut with ammunition. From this it is
to be inferred that the fleet was deficient in ammunition, and
the fact would have rendered boarding from river-boats the
more likely to succeed. In this connection it may be remem-
bered that, during the war, John Taylor Wood, Colonel and
A. D. C. to the President, who had been an officer of high
repute in the " old Navy," did in open boats attack armed ves-
sels, board and capture them, though found with nettings up,
having been warned of the probability of such an attack*

* Captain Wood had a number of light row-boats built, holding each about
twenty men. They were fitted with cradles to wagons, and could be quickly
moved to any point by road or rail. He writes: "In August, 1863, I left Rich-
mond with four boats and sixty men for the Rappahannock, to look after one or
two gunboats that had been operating in that river. Finding always two cruising
together, I determined to attempt the capture of both at once. About midnight,
with muffled oars, we pulled for them at anchor near the mouth of the river. They

224 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

Many causes have been assigned for the fall of New Orleans.
Two of them are of undeniable force : First, the failure to light
up the channel ; second, the want of an obstruction which would
detain the fleet under fire of the forts. General Duncan's re-
port and testimony justify the conclusion that to the thick veil
of darkness the enemy was indebted for his ability to run past
the forts.

The argument that the guns were not of sufficiently large
caliber to stop the fleet is not convincing. If all the guns had
been of the largest size, that would not have increased the accu-
racy but would have diminished the rapidity of the fire, and
therefore in the same degree would have lessened the chances
of hitting objects in the dark. Further, it appears that the
forts always crippled or repulsed any vessels which came up in
daylight.

The forts would have been better able to resist bombard-
ment if they had been heavily plated with iron ; but that would
not have prevented the fleet from passing them as they did.
Torpedoes might have been placed on the bar at the mouth of
the river before the enemy got possession of it, and subsequent-
ly, if attached to buoys, they might have been used in the deep
channel above. Many other things which were omitted might
and probably would have been done had attention been earlier
concentrated on the danger which at last proved fatal. If the
volunteer river-defense fleet was ineffective, as alleged, because
it was not subject to the orders of the naval commander, that
was an evil without a remedy. The Governor of Louisiana had
arranged with the projectors that they should not be subject to
the naval commander, and the alternative of not accepting them
with that condition was that they would not agree to convert
their steamers into war-vessels. Unless, therefore, it can be
shown that they were worse than none, their presence can not
be properly enumerated among the causes of the failure.

discovered us two hundred yards off. We dashed alongside, cut our way through
and over the boarder nettings with the old navy cutlass, gained the deck, and,
after a sharp, short fight, drove the enemy below. The prizes proved to be the
gunboats Satellite and Reliance, two guns each. Landing the prisoners, we cruised
for two days in the Chesapeake Bay. A number of vessels were captured and de-
stroyed."

1862] A GREAT DISASTER. 225

The fall of New Orleans was a great disaster, over which
there was general lamentation, mingled with no little indigna-
tion. The excited feeling demanded a victim, and conflicting
testimony of many witnesses most nearly concerned made it
convenient to select for censure those most removed and least
active in their own justification. Thus the naval constructors
of the Mississippi and the Secretary of the Navy became the
special objects of attack. The selection of these had little of
justice in it, and could not serve to relieve others of their re-
sponsibility, as did the old-time doom of the scapegoat. New
Orleans had never been a ship-building port, and when the
Messrs. Tift, the agents to build the iron-clad steamer Missis-
sippi, arrived there, they had to prepare a ship-yard, procure
lumber from a distance, have the foundries and rolling-mills
adapted to such iron-work as could be done in the city, and
contract elsewhere for the balance. They were ingenious, well
informed in matters of ship-building, and were held in high
esteem in Georgia and Florida, where they had long resided.
They submitted a proposition to the Secretary of the Navy
to build a vessel on a new model. The proposition was ac-
cepted after full examination of the plan proposed, the novelty
of which made it necessary that they should have full control
of the work of construction. To the embarrassments above
mentioned were added interruptions by calling off the workmen
occasionally for exercise and instruction as militiamen, the city
being threatened by the enemy. From these causes, unexpected
delay in the completion of the ship resulted, regret for which
increased as her most formidable character was realized.

These constructors — the brothers Tift — hoped to gain much
reputation by the ship which they designed, and, from this mo-
tive, agreed to give their full service and unremitted attention
in its construction without compensation or other allowance
than their current expenses. It would, therefore, on the face
of it, seem to have been a most absurd suspicion that they will-
ingly delayed the completion of the vessel, and at last wantonly
destroyed it.

Mr. E. C. Murray, who was the contractor for building the
Louisiana, in his testimony before a committee of the Confeder-
62

226 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

ate Congress, testified that he had been a practical ship-builder
for twenty years and a contractor for the preceding eighteen
years, having built about a hundred and twenty boats, steamers,
and sailing-vessels. There was only a fence between his ship-
yard and that where the Mississippi was constructed. Of this
latter vessel he said :

" I think the vessel was built in less time than any vessel of
her tonnage, character, and requiring the same amount of work
and materials, on this continent. That vessel required no less
than two million feet of lumber, and, I suppose, about one thou-
sand tons of iron, including the false works, blockways, etc. I do
not think that amount of materials was ever put together on this
continent within the time occupied in her construction. I know
many of our naval vessels, requiring much less materials than were
employed in the Mississippi, that took about six or twelve months
in their construction. She was built with rapidity, and had at all
times as many men at work upon her as could work to advantage
— she had, in fact, many times more men at work upon her than
could conveniently work. They worked on nights and Sundays
upon her, as I did upon the Louisiana, at least for a large portion
of the time."

The Secretary of the Navy knew both of the Tifts, but had
no near personal relations or family connection with either, as
was recklessly alleged.

He, in accepting their proposition, connected with it the
detail of officers of the navy to supervise expenditures and
aid in procuring materials. Assisted by the chief engineer
and constructor of the navy, minute instructions were given
as to the manner in which the work was to be conducted. As
early as the 19th of September he sent twenty ship-carpen-
ters from Richmond to New Orleans to aid in the construc-
tion of the Mississippi. On the 7th of October authority
was given to have guns of heaviest caliber made in New Or-
leans for the ship. Frequent telegrams were sent in Novem-
ber, December, and January, showing great earnestness about
the work on the ship. In February and March notice was
given of the forwarding from Richmond of capstan and main-
shaft, which could not be made in New Orleans. On March

1862] SPARE NEITHER MEN NOR MONEY. 227

22d the Secretary, by telegraph, directed the constructors to
" strain every nerve to finish the ship," and added, " work day
and night." April 5th he again wrote : " Spare neither men
nor money to complete her at the earliest moment. Can not
you hire night-gangs for triple wages ? " April 10th the Secre-
tary again says : " Enemy's boats have passed Island 10. Work
day and night with all the force you can command to get the
Mississippi ready. Spare neither men nor money." April 11th
he asks, " When will you launch, and when will she be ready
for action ? " These inquiries indicate the prevalent opinion, at
that time, that the danger to New Orleans was from the iron-
clad fleet above, and not the vessels at the mouth of the river ;
but the anxiety of the Secretary of the Navy and the efforts
made by him were of a character applicable to either or both the
sources of danger. Thus we find as early as the 24th of Febru-
ary, 1862, that he instructed Commander Mitchell to make all
proper exertions to have guns and carriages ready for both the
iron-clad vessels the Mississippi and the Louisiana. Reports
having reached him that the work on the latter vessel was not
pushed with sufficient energy, on the 15th of March he author-
ized Commander Mitchell to consult with General Lovell, and,
if the contractors were not doing everything practicable to com-
plete her at the earliest moment, that he should take her out of
their hands, and, with the aid of General Lovell, go on to com-
plete her himself. On the 5th of April, 1862, Secretary Mallory
instructed Commander Sinclair, who had been assigned to the
command of the Mississippi, to urge on by night and day the
completion of the ship. In March, 1861, the Navy Department
sent from Montgomery officers to New Orleans, with instruc-
tions to purchase steamers and fit them for war purposes. Offi-
cers were also sent to the North to purchase vessels suited to
such uses, and in the ensuing May an agent was dispatched to
Canada and another to Europe for like objects ; and in April,
1861, contracts were made with foundries at Richmond and New
Orleans to make guns for the defense of New Orleans. On the
8th of May, 1861, the Secretary of the Navy communicated at
some length to the Committee on Naval Affairs of the Confed-
erate Congress his views in favor of iron-clad vessels, arguing as

228 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

well for their efficiency as the economy in building them, believ-
ing that one such vessel could successfully engage a fleet of the
wooden vessels which constituted the enemy's navy. His fur-
ther view was that we could not hope to build wooden fleets
equal to those with which the enemy were supplied. The com-
mittee, if it should be deemed expedient to construct an iron-
clad ship, was urged to prompt action by the forcible declara-
tion, " Not a moment should be lost."

Commander George Minor, Confederate States Navy, Chief
of the Bureau of Ordnance, reported the number of guns sent
by the Navy Department to New Orleans, between July 1, 1861,
and the fall of the city, to have been one hundred and ninety-
seven, and that before July twenty-three guns had been sent
there from Norfolk, being a total of two hundred and twenty
guns, of which forty-five were of large caliber, supplied by the
Navy Department for the defense of New Orleans.

Very soon after the Government was removed to Richmond,
the Secretary of the Navy, with the aid of Commander Brooke,
designed a plan for converting the sunken frigate Merrimac
into an iron-clad vessel. She became the famous Virginia, the
brilliant career of which silenced all the criticisms which had
been made upon the plan adopted. On May 20, 1861, the Sec-
retary of the Navy instructed Captain Ingraham, Confederate
States Navy, to ascertain the practicability of obtaining wrought-
iron plates suited for ships' armor. After some disappoint-
ment and delay, the owners of the mills at Atlanta were in-
duced to make the necessary changes in the machinery, and
undertake the work. Efforts at other places in the West had
been unsuccessful, and this was one of the difficulties which
an inefficient department would not have overcome. The
iron-clad gunboats Arkansas and Tennessee were commenced
at Memphis, but the difficulty in obtaining mechanics so inter-
fered with their construction, that the Secretary of the Navy
was compelled, December 24, 1861, to write to General Polk,
who was commanding at Columbus, Kentucky, asking that me-
chanics might be detached from his forces, so as to insure the
early completion of the vessels. So promptly had the iron-
clad boats been put under contract, that the arrangements had

1862] PREPAKATIONS FOR DEFENSE. 229

all been made in anticipation of the appropriation, and the con-
tract was signed " on the very day the law was passed."

On December 25, 1861, Lieutenant Isaac N. Brown, Con-
federate States Navy, a gallant and competent officer, well and
favorably known in his subsequent service as commander of the
ram Arkansas, was sent to Nashville. Information had been
received that four river-boats were there, and for sale, which
were suited for river defense. Lieutenant Brown was instructed
to purchase such as should be adaptable to the required service,
" and to proceed forthwith with the necessary alteration and
armament."

In the latter part of 1861, it having been found impossible
with the means in Richmond and Norfolk to answer the requisi-
tions for ordnance and ordnance stores required for the naval
defenses of the Mississippi, a laboratory was established in New
Orleans, and authority given for the casting of heavy cannon,
construction of gun-carriages, and the manufacture of projectiles
and ordnance equipments of all kinds. On December 12, 1861,
the Secretary of the Navy submitted an estimate for an appro-
priation to meet the expenses incurred " for ordnance and ord-
nance stores for the defense of the Mississippi Hiver."

Secretary Mallory, in answer to inquiries of a joint commit-
tee of Congress, in 1863, replied that he had sent a telegram to
Captain Whittle, April 17, 1862, as follows :

" Is the boom, or raft, below the forts in order to resist the
enemy, or has any part of it given way ? State condition."

On the next day the following answer was sent :

" I hear the raft below the forts is not in best condition ; they
are strengthening it by additional lines. I have furnished an-
chors."

To further inquiry about the raft by the Committee,' the
Secretary answered :

" The commanding General at New Orleans had exclusive
charge of the construction of the raft, or obstruction, in question,
and his correspondence with the War Department induced confi-
dence in the security of New Orleans from the enemy. I was

230 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

aware that this raft had been injured, but did not doubt that the
commanding General would renew it, and place an effectual barrier
across the river, and I was anxious that the navy should afford all
possible aid. ... A large number of anchors were sent to New
Orleans from Norfolk for the raft."

Though much more might be added, it is hoped that what
has been given above will sufficiently attest the zeal and capacity
of the Secretary of the Navy, and his anxiety, in particular, to
protect the city of New Orleans, whether assailed by fleets de-
scending or ascending the river.

Having thus reviewed at length the events, immediate and
remote, which were connected with the great catastrophe, the
fall of our chief commercial city, and the destruction of the
naval vessels on which our hopes most rested for the protection
of the lower Mississippi and the harbors of the Gulf, the narra-
tive is resumed of affairs at the city of New Orleans.

CHAPTEE XXIX.

Naval Affairs, continued. — Farragut demands the Surrender of New Orleans. — Reply
of the Mayor. — United States Flag hoisted. — Advent of General Butler. — Bar-
barities.— Antecedents of the People. — Galveston. — Its Surrender demanded. —
The Reply. — Another Visit of the Enemy's Fleet. — The Port occupied. — Ap-
pointment of General Magruder. — Recapture of the Port. — Capture of the Har-
riet Lane. — Report of General Magruder. — Position and Importance of Sabine
Pass. — Fleet of the Enemy. — Repulse by Forty-four Irishmen. — Vessels cap-
tured.— Naval Destitution of the Confederacy at first. — Terror of Gunboats on
the Western Rivers. — Their Capture. — The most Illustrious Example. — The In-
dianola. — Her Capture. — The Ram Arkansas. — Descent of the Yazoo River. —
Report of her Commander. — Runs through the Enemy's Fleet. — Description of
the Vessel. — Attack on Baton Rouge. — Address of General Breckinridge. —
Burning of the Arkansas.

Sad though the memory of the fall of New Orleans must be,
the heroism, the fortitude, and the patriotic self-sacrifice exhib-
ited in the eventful struggle at the forts must ever remain the
source of pride and of such consolation as misfortune gathers
from the remembrance of duties well performed.

1862] WHO IS THE SOVEREIGN ? 231

• After the troops had been withdrawn and the city restored
to the administration of the civil authorities, Commodore Farra-
o-ut, on April 26, 1862, addressed the Mayor, repeating his de-
mand for the surrender of the city. In his letter he said : " It
is not within the province of a naval officer to assume the duties
of a military commandant," and added, " The rights of persons
and property shall be secured." He proceeded then to demand
" that the emblem of sovereignty of the United States be hoist-
ed over the City Hall, Mint, and Custom-House by meridian
this day. All flags and other emblems of sovereignty other
than those of the United States must be removed from all the
public buildings by that hour." To this the Mayor replied, and
the following extracts convey the general purport of his letter :

" The city is without the means of defense, and is utterly des-
titute of the force and material that might enable it to resist an
overpowering armament displayed in sight of it. . . . To surrender
such a place were an idle and unmeaning ceremony. . . . As to
hoisting any flag other than the flag of our own adoption and alle-
giance, let me say to you that the man lives not in our midst
whose hand and heart would not be paralyzed at the mere thought
of such an act ; nor could I find in my entire constituency so
wretched and desperate a renegade as would dare to profane with
his hand the sacred emblem of our aspirations. . . . Peace and
order may be preserved without resort to measures which I could
not at this moment prevent. Your occupying the city does not
transfer allegiance from the government of their choice to one
which they have deliberately repudiated, and they yield the obedi-
ence which the conqueror is entitled to extort from the conquered.

" Respectfully,

"John T. Moxroe, Mayor"

On the 29th of April Admiral Farragut adopted the alterna-
tive presented by the answer of the Mayor, and sent a detach-
ment of marines to hoist the United States flag over the Custom-
House, and to pull down the Confederate flag from the staff on
the City Hall. An officer and some marines remained at the
Custom-House to guard the United States flag hoisted over it
until the land-forces under General Butler arrived. On the
1st of May General Butler took possession of the defenseless

232 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

city ; then followed the reign of terror, pillage, and a long train
of infamies, too disgraceful to be remembered without a sense
of shame by any one who is proud of the name American.

Had the population of New Orleans been vagrant and riot-
ous, the harsh measures adopted might have been excused,
though nothing could have justified the barbarities which were
practiced ; but, notable as the city had always been for freedom
from tumult, and occupied as it then was mainly by women
and children, nothing can extenuate the wanton insults and
outrages heaped upon them. That those not informed of the
character of the citizens may the better comprehend it, a brief
reference is made to its history.

When Canada, then a French colony, was conquered by
Great Britain, many of the inhabitants of greatest influence and
highest cultivation, in a spirit of loyalty to their flag, migrated
to the wilds of Louisiana. Some of them established them-
selves in and about New Orleans, and their numerous descend-
ants formed, down to a late period, the controlling element in
the body-politic. Even after they had ceased, because of large
immigration, to control in the commercial and political affairs
of the city, their social standard was still the rule. No people
were more characterized by refinement, courtesy, and chivalry.
Of their keen susceptibility the Mayor informed Commodore
Farragut in his correspondence with that officer.

When the needy barbarians of the upper plains of Asia
descended upon the classic fields of Italy, their atrocities were
such as shocked the common-sense of humanity ; but, if any one
shall inquire minutely into the conduct of Butler and his fol-
lowers at New Orleans, he will find there a history yet more
revolting.

Soon thereafter, on May 17, 1862, Captain Eagle, United
States Navy, commanding the naval forces before Galveston,
summoned it to surrender, " to prevent the effusion of blood
and the destruction of property which would result from the
bombardment of the town," adding that the land and naval
forces would appear in a few days. The reply was that, " when
the land and naval forces made their appearance, the demand
would be answered." The harbor and town of Galveston were

1862] THE CITIZENS REMAINED QUIET. 233

not prepared to resist a bombardment, and, under the advice of
General Herbert, the citizens remained quiet, resolved, when
the enemy should attempt to penetrate the interior, to resist
his march at every point. This condition remained without
any material change until the 8th of the following October,
when Commander Renshaw with a fleet of gunboats, consisting
of the Westfield, Harriet Lane, Owasco, Clifton, and some
transports, approached so near the city as to command it with
his guns. Upon a signal, the Mayor pro tern, came off to the
flag-ship and informed Commander Renshaw that the military
and civil authorities had withdrawn from the town, and that
he had been appointed by a meeting of citizens to act as mayor,
and had come for the' purpose of learning the intentions of the
naval commander. In reply he was informed that there was
no purpose to interfere with the municipal affairs of the city ;
that he did not intend to occupy it before the arrival of a mili-
tary commander, but that he intended to hoist the United
States flag upon the public buildings, and claim that it should
be respected. The acting Mayor informed him that persons
over whom he had no control might take down the flag, and he
could not guarantee that it should be respected. Commander
Renshaw replied that, to avoid any difficulty like that which
occurred in New Orleans, he would send with the flag a suffi-
cient force to protect it, and would not keep the flag flying for
more than a quarter or half an hour.

The vessels of the fleet were assigned to positions command-
ing the town and the bridge which connected the island with
the mainland, and a battalion of Massachusetts volunteers was
posted on one of the wharves.

Late in 1862 General John B. Magruder, a skillful and
knightly soldier, who had at an earlier period of the year ren-
dered distinguished service by his defense of the peninsula be-
tween the James and York Rivers, Yirginia, was assigned to the
command of the Department of Texas. On his arrival, he found
the enemy in possession of the principal port, Galveston, and
other points upon the coast. He promptly collected the scat-
tered arms and field artillery, had a couple of ordinary high-
pressure steamboats used in the transportation of cotton on

234: RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

Buffalo Bayou protected with cotton-bales piled from the main
deck to and above the hurricane-roof, and these, under the
command of Captain Leon Smith, of the Texas Navy, in co-
operation with the volunteers, were relied npon to recapture
the harbor and island of Galveston. Between night and
morning on the 1st of January, 1863, the land-forces entered
the town, and the steamboats came into the bay, manned by
Texas cavalry and volunteer artillery. The field artillery was
run down to the shore, and opened fire npon the boats. The
battalion of the enemy having torn* up the plank of the wharf,
our infantry could only approach thern by wading through the
water, and climbing upon the wharf. The two steamboats at-
tacked the Harriet Lane, the gunboat lying farthest up the bay.
They were both so frail in their construction that their only
chance was to close and board. One of them was soon disabled
by collision with the strong vessel, and in a sinking condition
ran into shoal water. The other closed with the Harriet Lane,
boarded and captured the vessel. The flag-ship Westfield got
aground and could not be got off, though assisted by one of the
fleet for that purpose. General Magruder then sent a demand
that the enemy's vessels should surrender, except one, on which
the crews of all should leave the harbor, giving until ten o'clock
for compliance with his demand, to enforce which he put a crew
on the Harriet Lane, then the most efficient vessel afloat of the
enemy's fleet, and, while waiting for an answer, ceased firing.
This demand was communicated by a boat from the Harriet
Lane to the commander on the Clifton, who said that he was
not the commander of the fleet, and would communicate the
proposal to the flag-officer on the "Westfield. Flags of truce
were then flying on the enemy's vessels, as well as on shore.
Commander Renshaw refused to accede to the proposition, di-
recting the commander of the Clifton to get; all the vessels,
including the Corypheus and Sachem, which had recently joined,
out of port as soon as possible, and that he would blow up the
Westfield, and leave on the transports lying near him with his
officers and crew. In attempting to execute this purpose, Com-
mander Renshaw and ten or fifteen others perished soon after
leaving the ship, in consequence of the explosion being prema-

1862] CAVALRY CHARGE ON A FLEET. 235

ture. The General commanding made the following prelimi-
nary report :

" Headquarters, Galveston, Texas.
" This morning, the 1st January, at three o'clock, I attacked
the enemy's fleet and garrison at this place, captured the latter
and the steamer Harriet Lane, two barges, and a schooner. The
rest, some four or five, escaped ignominiously under cover of a
flag of truce. I have about six hundred prisoners and a large
quantity of valuable stores, arms, etc. The Harriet Lane is very
little injured. She was carried by boarders from two high-press-
ure cotton-steamers, manned by Texas cavalry and artillery. The
line troops were gallantly commanded by Colonel Green, of Sib-
ley's brigade, and the ships and artillery by Major Leon Smith, to
whose indomitable energy and heroic daring the country is indebted
for the successful execution of a plan which I had considered for
the destruction of the enemy's fleet. Colonel Bagby, of Sibley's
brigade, also commanded the volunteers from his regiment for the
naval expedition, in which every officer and every man won for

himself imperishable renown.

"J. Bankhead Magrudee,

"Major- General."

The conduct of Commander Renshaw toward the inhabitants
of Galveston had been marked by moderation and propriety,
and the closing act of his life was one of manly courage and
fidelity to the flag he bore.

Commander Wainright and Lieutenant -commanding Lea,
who fell valiantly defending their ship, were buried in the cem-
etery with the honors of war : thus was evinced that instinctive
respect which true warriors always feel for their peers. The
surviving officers were paroled.

It would be a pleasing task, if space allowed, to notice the
many instances of gallantry in this affair, as daring as they were
novel, but want of space compels me to refer the reader to the
full accounts which have been published of the " cavalry charge
upon a naval fleet."

The capture of the enemy's fleet in Galveston Harbor, by
means so novel as to excite surprise as well as grateful admira-
tion, was followed by another victory on the coast of Texas,

236 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

under circumstances so remarkable as properly to be considered
marvelous. To those familiar with the events of that time and
section, it is hardly necessary to say that I refer to the battle of
Sabine Pass.

The strategic importance to the enemy of the possession of
Sabine River caused the organization of a large expedition of
land and naval forces to enter and ascend the river. If success-
ful, it gave the enemy short lines for operation against the
interior of Texas, and relieved them of the discomfiture resulting
from their expulsion from Galveston Harbor.

The fleet of the enemy numbered twenty-three vessels. The
forces were estimated to be ten thousand men. No adequate
provision had been made to resist such a force, and, under the
circumstances, none might have been promptly made on which
reliance could have been reasonably placed. A few miles above
the entrance into the Sabine River, a small earthwork had been
constructed, garrisoned at the time of the action by forty-two
men and two lieutenants, with an armament of six guns. The
officers and men were all Irishmen, and the company was called
the " Davis Guards." The captain, F. H. Odium, was tempora-
rily absent, so that the command devolved upon Lieutenant R.
W. Dowling. "Wishing to perpetuate the history of an affair,
in which I believe the brave garrison did more than an equal
force had ever elsewhere performed, I asked General Magruder,
when I met him after the war, to write out a full account of the
event ; he agreed to do so, but died not long after I saw him,
and before complying with my request. From the publications
of the day I have obtained the main facts, as they were then
printed in the Texas newspapers, and, being unwilling to sum-
marize the reports, give them at length.

Captain F. II. Odium's Official Report.

" Headquarters, Sabine Pass,

11 September 9, 1863.

" Captain A. N. Mills, Assistant Adjutant- General.

" Sir : I have the honor to report that we had an engagement
with the enemy yesterday and gained a handsome victory. We
captured two of their gunboats, crippled a third, and drove the

1862] COOLLY HELD THEIR FIRE. 237

rest out of the Pass. We took eighteen fine guns, a quantity of
smaller arms, ammunition and stores, killed about fifty, wounded
several, and took one hundred and fifty prisoners, without the loss
or injury of any one on our side or serious damage to the fort.
" Your most obedient servant,

"F. H. Odlum, Captain, commanding Sabine Pass"

Commodore Leon Smith's Official Report.

"Captain E. P. Turner, Assistant Adjutant- General.

" Sir : After telegraphing the Major-General before leaving
Beaumont, I took a horse and proceeded with all haste to Sabine
Pass, from which direction I could distinctly hear a heavy firing.
Arriving at the Pass at 3 p. m. , I found the enemy off and inside
the bar, with nineteen gunboats and steamships and other ships
of war, carrying, as well as I could judge, fifteen thousand men.
I proceeded with Captain Odium to the fort, and found Lieuten-
ant Dowling and Lieutenant N. H. Smith, of the engineer corps,
with forty-two men, defending the fort. Until 3 p. m. our men
did not open on the enemy, as the range was too distant. The
officers of the fort coolly held their fire until the enemy had
approached near enough to reach them. But, when the enemy ar-
rived within good range, our batteries were opened, and gallantly
replied to a galling and most terrific fire from the enemy. As I
entered the fort, the gunboats Clifton, Arizona, Sachem, and Gran-
ite State, with several others, came boldly up to within one thou-
sand yards, and opened their batteries, which were gallantly and
effectively replied to by the Davis Guards. For one hour and
thirty minutes a most terrific bombardment of grape, canister, and
shell was directed against our heroic and devoted little band with-
in the fort. The shot struck in every direction, but, thanks be to
God ! not one of the noble Davis Guards was hurt. Too much
credit can not be awarded Lieutenant Dowling, who displayed the
utmost heroism in the discharge of the duty assigned him and the
defenders of the fort. God bless the Davis Guards, one and all !
The honor of the country was in their hands, and nobly they sus-
tained it. Every man stood at his post, regardless of the murder-
ous fire that was poured upon them from every direction. The
result of the battle, which lasted from 3.30 to 5 p. m., was the cap-
turing of the Clifton and Sachem, eighteen heavy guns, one hun-
dred and fifty prisoners, and the killing and wounding of fifty

238 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

men, and driving outside the bar the enemy's fleet, comprising
twenty-three vessels in all. I have the honor to be your obedient
servant, Leon Smith,

" Commanding Marine Department of Texas."

"Headquarters District of Texas, New Mexico, and

Arizona, Houston, Tex\a.s, September 9, 1863.
" (Special Order.)

"Another glorious victory has been won by the heroism of
Texans. The enemy, confident of overpowering the little garri-
son at Sabine Pass, boldly advanced to the work of capture. After
a sharp contest he was entirely defeated, one gunboat hurrying
off in a crippled condition, while two others, the Clifton and Sa-
chem, with their armaments and crews, including the commander
of the fleet, surrendered to the gallant defenders of the fort. The
loss of the enemy has been heavy, while not a man on our side has
been killed or wounded. Though the enemy has been repulsed in
his naval attacks, his land-forces, reported as ten thousand strong,
are still off the coast waiting an opportunity to land.

" The Major-General calls on every man able to bear arms to
bring his guns or arms, no matter of what kind, and be prepared
to make a sturdy resistance to the foe.

"Major-General J. B. Magruder.
" Edmcnd P. Turner, Assistant Adjutant- General."

The "Daily Post," Houston, Texas, of August 22, 1880, has
the following :

" A few days after the battle each man that participated in the
fight was presented with a silver medal inscribed as follows : On
one side ' D. G.,' for the Davis Guards, and on the reverse side,
< Sabine Pass, September 8, 1863.'

" Captain Odium and Lieutenant R. W. Dowling have gone to
that tourn whence no traveler returns, and but few members of
the heroic band are in the land of the living, and those few reside
in the city of Houston, and often meet together, and talk about
the battle in which they participated on the memorable 8th of Sep-
tember, 1863.

" The following are the names of the company who manned the
guns in Fort Grigsby, and to whom the credit is due for the glo-
rious victory :

" Lieutenants R. W. Dowling and 1ST. H. Smith ; Privates Tim-

1862] • IT WAS MARVELOUS. 239

othy McDonough, Thomas Dougherty, David Fitzgerald, Michael
Monahan, John Hassett, John McKeefer, Jack TV. White, Patrick
McDonnell, William Gleason, Michael Carr, Thomas Hagerty,
Timothy Huggins, Alexander McCabe, James Flemming, Patrick
Fitzgerald, Thomas McKernon, Edward Pritchard, Charles Rheins,
Timothy Hurley, John McGrath, Matthew Walshe, Patrick Sulli-
van, Michael Sullivan, Thomas Sullivan, Patrick Clare, John Hen-
nessey, Hugh Deagan, Maurice Powers, Abner Carter, Daniel Mc-
Murray, Patrick Malone, James Corcoran, Patrick Abbott, John
McXealis, Michael Egan, Daniel Donovan, John Wesley, John
Anderson, John Flood, Peter O'Hare, Michael Delaney, Terence
Mulhern."

The inquiry may naturally arise how this small number of
men could take charge of so large a body of prisoners. This
required that to their valor they should add stratagem. A few
men wrere placed on the parapet as sentinels, the rest were
marched out as a guard to receive the prisoners and their arms.
Thus was concealed the fact that the fort was empty. The
report of the guns bombarding the fort had been heard, and
soon after the close of the battle reinforcements arrived, which,
relieved the little garrison from its embarrassment.

Official reports of officers in the assaulting column, as pub-
lished in the " Rebellion Record," vol. vii, page 425, et seq.,
refer to another fort, and steamers in the river, cooperating in
the defense of Fort Grigsby. The success of the single com-
pany which garrisoned the earthwork is without parallel in
ancient or modern war. It was marvelous ; but it is incredible
—more than marvelous — that another garrison in another fort,
with cruising steamers, aided in checking the advance of the
enemy, yet silently permitted the forty-two men and two officers
of Fort Grigsby to receive all the credit for the victory which
was won. If this be supposable, how is it possible that Captain
Odium, Commander Smith, General Magruder, and Lieutenant
Dowling, who had been advised to abandon the work, and had
consulted their men as to their willingness to defend it, should
nowhere have mentioned the putative fort and cooperating
steamers ?

The names of the forty-four must go down to posterity,

240 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

unshorn of the honor which their contemporaries admiringly
accorded.

At the commencement of the war the Confederacy was not
only without a navy, all the naval vessels possessed by the States
having been, as explained elsewhere, left in the hands of our
enemies ; but worse than this was the fact that ship-building
had been almost exclusively done in the Northern States, so
that we had no means of acquiring equality in naval power.
The numerous deep and wide rivers traversing the Southern
States gave a favorable field for the operation of gunboats suited
to such circumstances. The enemy rapidly increased their sup-
ply of these by building on the Western waters, as well as else-
where, and converting existing vessels into iron-clad gunboats.
The intrepidity and devotion of our people met the necessity
by new expedients and extraordinary daring. This was espe-
cially seen in the operations of western Louisiana, where numer-
ous bayous and rivers, with difficult land-routes, gave an advan-
tage to the enemy which might well have paralyzed anything
less than the most resolute will.

In the earlier period of the war, the gunboats had inspired a
terror which their performances never justified. There was a
prevailing opinion that they could not be stopped by land-bat-
teries, or resisted on water by anything else than vessels of their
own class. Against the first opinion General Richard Taylor,
commanding in Louisiana, south of Eed Eiver, stoutly con-
tended, and maintained his opinion by the repulse and capture of
some of the enemy's vessels by land-batteries having guns of
rather light caliber.

One by one successful conflicts between river-boats and gun-
boats impaired the estimate which had been put upon the lat-
ter. The most illustrious example of this was the attack and
capture of the Indianola, a heavy ironclad, with two eleven-inch
guns forward, and two nine-inch aft, all in iron casemates. She
had passed the batteries at Vicksburg, and was in the section of
the river between Yicksburg and Port Hudson, which, in Feb-
ruary, 1863, was the only gate of communication which the
Confederacy had between the east and west sides of the Missis-
sippi. The importance of keeping open this communication,

1862] SHE WAS SINKING. 241

always great, became vital from the necessity of drawing com-
missary's stores from the trans-Mississippi.

Major Brent, of General Taylor's staff, proposed, with the
tow-boat Webb, which had been furnished as a ram, and the
Queen of the West, which had been four or five days before
captured by the land-battery at Fort De Russy, to go to the
Mississippi and attack the Indianola. On the 19th of Febru-
ary the expedition started, though mechanics were still working
upon the needed repairs of the Queen 'of the West. The service
was so hazardous that volunteers only formed the crews, but of
these more offered than were wanted. On the 24th, while
ascending the Mississippi, Major Brent learned, when about
sixty miles below Yicksburg, that the Indianola was a short
distance ahead, with a coal-barge lashed on either side. He
determined to attack in the night, being assured that, if struck by
a shell from one of the eleven- or nine-inch guns, either of his
boats would be destroyed. At 10 p. m. the Queen, followed by
the Webb, was driven at full speed directly upon the Indianola.
The momentum of the Queen was so great as to cut through the
coal-barge, and indent the iron plates of the Indianola. As the
Queen backed out, the Webb dashed in at full speed, and tore
away the remaining coal-barge. Both the forward guns fired
at the Webb, but missed her. Again the Queen struck the
Indianola, abaft the paddle-box, crushing her frame and loosen-
ing some plates of armor, but received the fire of the guns from
the rear casemates. One shot carried away a dozen bales of
cotton on the right side ; the other, a shell, entered the forward
port-hole and exploded, killing six men and disabling two field-
pieces. Again the Webb followed the Queen, struck near the
same spot, pushing aside the iron plates and crushing timbers.
Voices from the Indianola announced the surrender, and that
she was sinking. The river here sweeps the western shore, and
there was deep water up to the bank. General Grant's army
was on the west side of the river, and, for either or both of
these reasons, Major Brent towed the Indianola to the opposite
side, where she sank on a bar, her gun-deck above water. Both
boats were much shattered in the conflict, and Major Brent
returned to the Red River to repair them. A tender accompa-
63

242 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

nied the Queen and the Webb, and a frail river-boat without
protection for her boilers, which was met on the river, turned
back and followed them, but, like the tender, could be of no
service in the battle. For these particulars I am indebted to
General Richard Taylor's book, " Destruction and Reconstruc-
tion," pages 123-125.

The ram Arkansas, which has been previously noticed as
being under construction at Memphis, was removed before she
was finished to the Yazoo River, events on the river above hav-
ing rendered this necessary for her security. After she was
supposed to be ready for service, Commander Brown, then as
previously in charge of her, went down the Yazoo to enter the
Mississippi and proceed to Yicksburg. The enemy's fleet of
some twelve or thirteen rams, gunboats, and sloops of war, were
in the river above Yicksburg, and below the point where the
Yazoo enters the Mississippi. Anticipating the descent of the
Arkansas, a detachment had been made from this fleet to pre-
vent her exit. The annexed letter of Commander Brown de-
scribes what occurred in the Yazoo River :

" Steamer Arkansas, July 15, 1862.

" General : The Benton, or whatever ironclad we disabled,
was left with colors down, evidently aground to prevent sinking,
about one mile and a half above the mouth of the Yazoo (in Old
River), on the right-hand bank, or bank across from Yicksburg.

" I wish it to be remembered that we whipped this vessel, mad<
it run out of the fight and haul down colors, with two less guns
than they had ; and at the same time fought two rams, which
were firing at us with great guns and small-arms ; this, too, with
our miscellaneous crew, who had never, for the most part, been on
board a ship, or at big guns.

" I am, General, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

" J. N. Brown,
" Lieutenant commanding.

" To Brigadier-General M. L. Smith, commanding defenses at Vicksburg."

When entering the Mississippi the fleet of the enemy was
found disposed as a phalanx, but the heroic commander of the
Arkansas moved directly against it; and, though in passing
through this formidable array he was exposed to the broadsides

1862] PROVED UNDER FIRE. 243

of the whole fleet, the vessel received no other injury than from
one eleven-inch shot which entered the gun-room, and the per-
foration in many places of her smoke-stack. The casualties to
the crew were five killed, four wounded — among the latter was
the gallant commander. General Van Dorn, commanding the
department, in a dispatch from Yicksburg, July 15th, states the
number of the enemy's vessels above Yicksburg, pays a high
compliment to the officers and men, and adds :

" All the enemy's transports and all the vessels of war of the
lower fleet (i. e., the fleet just below Vicksburg), except a sloop
of war, have got up steam, and are off to escape from the Arkan-

sas."

A vessel inspiring such dread is entitled to a special descrip-
tion. She was an iron-clad steamer, one hundred feet in her
length, her armament ten Parrott guns, and her crew one hun-
dred men, who had volunteered from the land-forces for the
desperate service proposed. Her commander had been from his
youth in the navy of the United States, and his capacity was
such as could well supplement whatever was wanted of naval
knowledge in his crew. The care and skill with which the
vessel had been constructed were tested and proved under fire.
Had her engines been equal to the hull and armor of the vessel,
it is difficult to estimate the value of the service she might have
performed. At this period the enemy occupied Baton Rouge,
with gunboats lying in front of it to cooperate with the troops
in the town. The importance of holding a section of the Mis-
sissippi, so as to keep free communication between the eastern
and western portions of the Confederacy, has been heretofore
noticed. To this end it was deemed needful to recover the
possession of Baton Rouge, and it was decided to make a land-
attack in cooperation with the Arkansas, to be sent down against
the enemy's fleet.

Major-General J. C. Breckinridge was assigned to the com-
mand of the land-forces. This distinguished citizen and alike
distinguished soldier, surmounting difficulties which would have
discouraged a less resolute spirit, approached Baton Rouge, and
moved to the attack at the time indicated for the arrival of

244 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

the Arkansas. In his address to the officers and soldiers of his
command, after the battle, viz., on August 6, 1862, he compli-
ments the troops on the fortitude with which they had borne a
severe march, on the manner in which they attacked the enemy,
superior in numbers and admirably posted, drove him from his
positions, taking his camps, and forcing him to seek protection
under cover of the guns of his fleet. Major-General Breckin-
ridge attributes his failure to achieve entire success to the ina-
bility of the Arkansas to cooperate with his forces, and adds :

" You have given the enemy a severe and salutary lesson, and
now those who so lately were ravaging and plundering this re-
gion do not care to extend their pickets beyond the sight of their
fleet."

The Arkansas in descending the river moved leisurely, hav-
ing ample time to meet her appointment ; but, when about fif-
teen miles above Baton Rouge, her starboard engine broke down.
Repairs were immediately commenced, and, by 8 a. m. on the
5th of August, were partially completed. General Breckinridge
had commenced the attack at four o'clock, and the Arkansas,
though not in condition to engage the enemy, moved on, and,
when in sight of Baton Rouge, her starboard engine again broke
down, and the vessel was run ashore. The work of repair was re-
sumed, and next morning the Federal fleet was seen coming up.
The Arkansas was moored head down-stream and cleared for ac-
tion. The Essex approached and opened fire ; at that moment
the engineers reported the engines able to work half a day. The
lines were cut, and the Arkansas started for the Essex, when the
other — the larboard — engine suddenly stopped, and the vessel
was again secured to the shore stern-down. The Essex now
valiantly approached, pouring a hot fire into her disabled an-
tagonist. Lieutenant Stevens, then commanding the Arkansas,
ordered the crew ashore, fired the vessel, and, with her flag
flying, turned her adrift — a sacrificial offering to the cause she
had served so valiantly in her brief but brilliant career. Lieu-
tenant Reed, of the ram Arkansas, in his published account of
the affair, states, " After all hands were ashore, the Essex fired
upon the disabled vessel most furiously."

1862] NECESSARY TO HAVE A NAVY. 245

CHAPTER XXX.

Naval Affairs, continued. — Necessity of a Navy. — Raphael Semmes. — The Sumter.
— Difficulties in creating a Navy. — The Sumter at Sea. — Alarm. — Her Captures.
— James D. Bullock. — Laird's Speech in the House of Commons. — The Alaba-
ma.— Semmes takes Command. — The Vessel and Crew. — Goes to Sea. — Banks's
Expedition. — Magruder at Galveston. — The Steamer Hatteras sunk. — The Ala-
bama not a Pirate. — An Aspinwall Steamer ransomed. — Other Captures. — Prizes
burned. — At Cherbourg. — Fight with the Kearsarge. — Rescue of the Men. — De-
mand of the United States Government for the Surrender of the Drowning Men.
— Reply of the British Government. — Sailing of the Oreto. — Detained at Nas-
sau.— Captain Maffit. — The Ship half equipped. — Arrives at Mobile. — Runs the
Blockade. — Her Cruise. — Capture and Cruise of the Clarence. — The Captures of
the Florida. — Captain C. M. Morris. — The Florida at Bahia. — Seized by the
Wachusett. — Brought to Virginia and sunk. — Correspondence. — The Georgia.
— Cruises and Captures. — The Shenandoah. — Cruises and Captures. — The At-
lanta.—The Tallahassee.— The Edith.

To maintain the position assumed by the Confederate States
as a separate power among the nations, it was obviously neces-
sary to have a navy, not only for the defense of their coast, but
also for the protection of their commerce. These States, after
their secession from the Union, were in that regard in a desti-
tute condition, similar to that of the United States after their
Declaration of Independence.

It has been shown that among the first acts of the Confed-
erate Administration was the effort to buy ships which could be
used for naval purposes. The policy of the United States Gov-
ernment being to shut up our commerce rather than protect
their own, induced the wholesale purchase of the vessels found
in the Northern ports — not only such as could be made fit for
cruisers, but also any which would serve even for blockading
purposes. There was little shipping of any kind in the South-
ern ports, and to that scanty supply we were, for the time,
restricted.

A previous reference has been made to the Sumter, Com-
mander Raphael Semmes, but a more extended notice is con-
sidered due. Educated in the naval service of the United
States, Raphael Semmes had attained the rank of commander,

246 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

and was distinguished for his studious habits and varied acquire-
ments. When Alabama passed her ordinance of secession, he
was on duty at Washington as a member of the Lighthouse
Board ; he promptly tendered his resignation, and, at the organi-
zation of the Confederate Government, repaired to Montgomery
and tendered his services to it. The efforts which had been
made to obtain steamers suited to cruising against the enemy's
commerce had been quite unsuccessful, none being found which
the naval officers charged with their selection regarded fit for the
service. One of the reports described a small propeller-steamer
of 1iYe hundred tons burden, sea-going, low-pressure engine,
sound, and capable of being so strengthened as to carry an ordi-
nary battery of four or five guns ; speed between nine and ten
knots, but the board condemned her because she could carry but
Rye days' fuel, and had no accommodations for the crew.

The Secretary of the Kavy showed this to Commander
Semmes, who said : " Give me that ship ; I think I can make her
answer the purpose." She was to be christened the Sumter, in
commemoration of our first victory, and had the honor of being
the first ship of war commissioned by the Confederate States,
and the first to display the Stars and Bars of the Confederacy on
the high-seas. The Sumter was at Xew Orleans, to which place
Commander Semmes repaired ; and, as forcibly presenting the
difficulties under which we labored in all attempts to create a
navy, I will quote from his memoirs the account of his effort to
get the Sumter ready for sea :

" I dow took my ship actively in hand and set gangs of mechan-
ics at work to remove her upper cabins and other top hamper, pre-
paratory to making the necessary alterations. These latter were
considerable, and I soon found that I had a tedious job on my
hands. It was no longer the case, as it had been in former years,
when I had had occasion to fit out a ship, that I could go into a
navy-yard, with well-provided workshops and skilled workmen,
ready with all the requisite materials at hand to execute my
orders. Everything had to be improvised, from the manufacture
of a water- tank to the kids and cans of the berth-deck messes,
and from a gun-carriage to a friction-primer. . . . Two long, te-
dious months were consumed in making alterations and additions.

1862] HAD GONE OFF IN CHASE. 247

My battery was to consist of an eight-inch-shell gun, to be piv-
oted amidships, and of four light thirty-two-pounders of thirteen
hundred weight each, in broadside."

On the 3d of June, 1861, the Sumter was formally put in
commission, and a muster-roll of the officers and men trans-
mitted to the Navy Department. On the 18th of June she
left New Orleans and steamed down and anchored near the
mouth of the river. While lying at the head of the passes,
the commander reported a blockading squadron outside, of
three ships at Passe a 1' Outre, and one at the Southwest Pass.
The Brooklyn, at Passe a 1' Outre, was not only a powerful
vessel, but she had greater speed than the Sumter. The Pow-
hatan's heavy armament made it very hazardous to pass her in
daylight, and the absence of buoys and lights made it next to
impossible to keep the channel in darkness. The Sumter, there-
fore, had been compelled to lie at the head of the passes and
watch for some opportunity in the absence of either the Brook-
lyn or the Powhatan to get to sea. Fortunately, neither of these
vessels came up to the head of the passes, where, there being
but a single channel, it would have been easy to prevent the
exit of the Sumter.

On the 30th of June, one bright morning, a boatman re-
ported that the Brooklyn had gone off in chase of a sail. Im-
mediately the Sumter was got under way, when it was soon
discovered that the Brooklyn was returning, and that the two
vessels were about equally distant from the bar. By steady
courage and rare seamanship the Sumter escaped from her more
swift pursuer, and entered on her career of cutting the enemy's
sinews of war by destroying his commerce.

Numerous armed vessels of the enemy were hovering on
our coast, yet this one little cruiser created a general alarm, and,
though a regularly commissioned vessel of the Confederacy, was
habitually denounced as a " pirate," and the many threats to
destroy her served only to verify the adage that the threatened
live long.

During her cruise up to January 17, 1862, she captured
three ships, five brigs, six barks, and three schooners, but the

248 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

property destroyed formed a very small part of the damage done
to the enemy's commerce. Her appearance on the seas created
such alarm that Northern ships were, to a large extent, put
under foreign flags, and the carrying-trade, in which the United
States stood second only to Great Britain, passed rapidly into
other hands. The Sumter, while doing all this mischief, was
nearly self-sustaining, her running expenses to the Confederate
Government being but twenty-eight thousand dollars when, at
the close of 1861, she arrived at Gibraltar. Not being able to
obtain coal, she remained there until sold.

Captain James D. Bullock, an officer of the old navy, of
high ability as a seaman, and of an integrity which stood the
test under which a less stern character might have given way,
was our naval agent at Liverpool. In his office he disbursed
millions, and, when there was no one to whom he could be re-
quired to render an account, paid out the last shilling in his
hands, and confronted poverty without prospect of other reward
than that which he might find in a clear conscience. He con-
tracted with the Messrs. Laird, of Birkenhead, to build a strong
steam merchant-ship — the same which was afterward christened
" The Alabama" when, in a foreign port, she had received her
armament and crew. So much of puerile denunciation has been
directed against the builder and the ship, which, in the virulent
language of the day, our enemies denominated a " pirate," that
the case claims at my hands a somewhat extended notice.

The senior Mr. Laird was a member of the British Parlia-
ment, and, because of the complaints made by the United States
Government, and the abuse heaped upon him by the Northern
newspapers, he made a speech in the House of Commons, in
which he stated that, in 1861, he was applied to to build vessels
for the Northern Government, first, by personal application,
and subsequently by a letter from Washington, asking him, on
the part of the United States Navy Department, to give the
terms on which he would build an iron-plated ship, "to be
finished complete, with guns and everything appertaining."
Mr. Laird continued : " On the 14th of August I received
another letter from the same gentleman, from which the fol-
lowing is an extract : ' I have this morning a note from the

1862] RIGHT TO STATE THESE FACTS. 249

Assistant-Secretary of the Navy, in which he says, " I hope
your friends will tender for the two iron-plated steamers.' ' ' "
Mr. Laird then said that, while he would not give the name of
his correspondent, who was a gentleman of the highest respecta-
bility, he was willing, in confidence, to submit the original let-
ters to the Speaker of the House or the first Minister of the
Crown ; that, as " the American Government is making so much
work about other parties whom they charge with violating or
evading the law, when in reality they have not done so, I think
it only right to state these facts."

Those who have listened with credulity to the abuse of the
Confederate Government, as well as that of Great Britain, the
one for contracting for the building of the Alabama and the
other for permitting her to leave a British port, will thus see
how little of sincerity there was in the complaints of the United
States Government. For more than a generation the British
people have been the great ship-builders of the world, and it is
a matter of surprise that they should have given respectful con-
sideration to charges of a breach of neutrality because they al-
lowed a merchantman to be built in one of their ports and to
leave it without any armament or crew, which could have ena-
bled it, in that condition, to make war upon a country with
which Great Britain was at peace.

Referring to the Alabama, as she was when she left the
Mersey, Mr. Laird said :

" If a ship without guns and without arms is a dangerous
article, surely rifled guns and ammunition of all sorts are equally
and even more dangerous. I have referred to the bills of entry in
the custom-houses of London and Liverpool, and I find that there
have been vast shipments of implements of war to the Northern
States through the celebrated houses of Baring & Co. ; Brown,
Shipley & Co. ; and a variety of other names. ... I have obtained
from the official custom-house returns some details of the sundries
exported from the United Kingdom to the Northern States of
America from the 1st of May, 1861, to the 31st of December, 1862.
There were— muskets, 41,500 ; rifles, 341,000 ; gun-flints, 26,500 ;
percussion-caps, 49,982,000 ; and swords, 2,250. The best infor-
mation I could obtain leads me to believe that one third to a half

250 EISE AXD FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

may be added to these numbers for items which have been shipped
to the Northern States as hardware ... so that, if the Southern
States have got two ships unarmed, unfit for any purpose of
warfare — for they procured their armament somewhere else — the
Northern States have been well supplied from this country,
through the agency of some most influential persons."

The speech of Mr. Laird, exposing the hypocrisy of the rep-
resentations which had been made, as well by commercial bod-
ies as by the highest officers of the United States, called forth
repeated cheers from the Parliament.

There had been no secrecy about the building of the Ala-
bama. The same authority above quoted states that she was
frequently visited while under construction, and it is known
that the British Government was applied to to prevent her from
leaving port. It was feared that she might be delayed ; but it
was not considered possible that British authorities would pre-
vent an unarmed merchant-ship from leaving her coast, lest she
might elsewhere procure an armament, and, in the service of a
recognized belligerent, revive the terror in the other belligerent
which the little Sumter had recently inspired.

When the Alabama was launched and ready for sea, Captain
Bullock summoned Captain Semmes, lately commander of the
Sumter, to Liverpool, where he spent a few days in financial ar-
rangements, and in collecting the old officers of the Sumter. The
Alabama, then known as the 290, had proceeded a few days
before to her rendezvous, the Portuguese Island of Terceira, one
of the group of the Azores. The story that the name 290 be-
longed to the fact that she had been built by two hundred and
ninety Englishmen, sympathizers in our struggle, was a mere
fiction. She was built under a contract wTith the Confederate
States, and paid for with Confederate money. She happened
to be the two hundred and ninetieth ship built by the Lairds,
and, not having been christened, was called 290. Captain
Semmes followed her, accompanied by Captain Bullock on the
steamer Bahama, and found her at the place of rendezvous, also
a sailing-ship which had been dispatched before the Alabama
with her battery and stores. Captain Semmes, with a sailor's

1862] ONLY A MERCHANT SHIP. 251

enthusiasm, describes his first impression on seeing the ship
which was to be his future home. The defects of the Sumter
had been avoided, so that he found his new ship " a perfect
steamer and a perfect sailing-ship, at the same time neither of
her two modes of locomotion being at all dependent upon the
other. . . . She was about nine hundred tons burden, two hun-
dred and thirty feet in length, thirty-two feet in breadth, twen-
ty feet in depth, and drew, when provisioned and coaled for a
cruise, fifteen feet of water. Her model was of the most per-
fect symmetry, and she sat upon the water with the lightness
and grace of a swan." She was yet only a merchant-ship, and
the men on board of her, as well as those who came out with
the Captain on the Bahama, were only under articles for the
voyage. She therefore had no crew for future service. When
her armament and stores had been put on board, she steamed
from the harbor out to the open sea, where she was to be christ-
ened and put in commission. Captain Bullock went out on her
and stood sponsor at the ceremony. He had just cause to be
proud of the ship, and we to be thankful to him for the skill
and care with which he had designed her and supervised her
construction. The scantling of the vessel was comparatively
light, having been intended for a scourge to the enemy's com-
merce rather than for battle, and merely to defend herself if it
became necessary. Her masts were proportioned so as to carry
large canvas, and her engine was of three hundred horse-pow-
er, with an apparatus for condensing vapor to supply the crew
with all the fresh water requisite. The coal, stores, and arma-
ment having been received from the supply-ships, she steamed
out to sea on Sunday morning, August 24, 1862. There, more
than a marine league from the shore, on the blue water over
which man holds no empire, Captain Semmes read the commis-
sion of the President of the Confederacy appointing him a cap-
tain, and the order of the Secretary of the Navy assigning him
to the command of the Alabama. There, where no government
held jurisdiction, where the commission of the Confederacy was as
valid as that of any power, the Alabama was christened, and was
henceforth a ship of war in the navy of the Confederate States.
The men who had come thus far under articles no longer bind-

252 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

ing were left to their option whether to be paid off with a free
passage to Liverpool, or to enlist in the crew of the Alabama.
Eighty of the men who had come out in the several vessels en-
rolled themselves in the usual manner. Captain Semmes had
a full complement of officers, and with this, though less than the
authorized crew, he commenced his long and brilliant cruise.
The ship's armament consisted of six thirty-two-pounders in
broadsides and two pivot-guns amidships, one of them a smooth-
bore eight-inch, the other a hundred-pounder rifled Blakely.

Captain Semmes, from his varied knowledge of affairs both
on sea and land, did not sail by chance in quest of adventure,
but directed his course to places where the greatest number of
the enemy's merchantmen were likely to be found, and to this
the large number of captures he made is in no small degree at-
tributable. On board one of the ships captured they got New
York papers, from which he learned that General Banks, with
a large fleet of transports, was to sail on a certain day for Gal-
veston. On this he decided to go to the rendezvous appointee
for his coal-ship, and make all due preparation for a dash into
the fleet when they should arrive at the harbor of Galveston,
and therefore directed his course into the Gulf of Mexico.

In the mean time General Magruder had recaptured Galves-
ton, so that on his arrival the lookout informed him that, in-
stead of a fleet, there were five ships of war blockading the
harbor and throwing shells into the town, from which his keei
perception drew the proper conclusion that we had possessioi
of the town, and that he was confronted by ships of war, not
transports laden with troops. As each of the five ships ob-
served by the lookout were supposed to be larger than his own,
he had of course no disposition to run into that fleet. It there-
fore only remained to tempt one of the ships to follow him
beyond supporting distance. The hope was soon realized, as
vessel was seen to come out from the fleet. The Alabama was
under sail, and Captain Semmes says : " To carry out my design
of decoying the enemy, I now wore ship as though I were flee-
ing from his pursuit, and lowered the propeller into the water.
When about twenty miles from the fleet, the Alabama was pre-
pared for action, and wheeled to meet her pursuer. To the first

1862] NONE WERE DROWNED. 253

hail made, the answer from the Alabama was, 'This is her
Britannic Majesty's steamer Petrel,' and the answer was, ' This

is the United States ship ,' name not heard." Captain

Semmes then directed the first lieutenant to call out through
his trumpet, " This is the Confederate States steamer Alabama."
A broadside was instantly returned by the enemy. Captain
Semmes describes the state of the atmosphere as highly favor-
able to the conduct of sound, and the wind blowing in the direc-
tion of the enemy's fleet. The Federal Admiral, as afterward
learned, immediately got under way with the Brooklyn and two
others of his steamers to go to the rescue. The crews of both
ships must have been standing at their guns, as the broadsides
so instantly followed each other. In thirteen minutes after
firing the first gun the enemy hoisted a light and fired an off-
gun as a signal that he had been beaten. Captain Semmes
steamed quite close to* the Hatteras and asked if he had sur-
rendered ; then, if he was in want of assistance. An affirmative
answer was given to both questions. The boats of the Alabama
were lowered with such promptitude and handled with such
care that, though the Hatteras was sunk at night, none of her
crew were drowned. When her captain came on board, Cap-
tain Semmes learned that he had been engaged with the United
States steamer Hatteras, "a larger ship than the Alabama by
one hundred tons," with an equal number of guns, and a crew
numbering two less than that of the Alabama. There was a
" considerable disparity between the two ships in the weight of
their pivot-guns, and the Alabama ought to have won the fight,
which she did in thirteen minutes." The Alabama had re-
ceived no appreciable injury, and, continuing her cruise to the
Island of Jamaica, entered the harbor of Port Poyal, where, by
the permission of the authorities, Captain Semmes landed his
prisoners, putting them on parole.

As an answer to the stereotyped charges against Captain
Semmes as a "pirate" and robber, I will select from the many
unarmed ships captured by him one case. He had gone to the
track of the California steamers between Aspinwall and New
York, in the hope of capturing a vessel homeward bound with
Government treasure. On the morning before such a vessel

254 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

was expected, a large steamer, the Ariel, was seen, but unfor-
tunately not going in the right direction. An exciting chase
occurred, when she was finally brought to, but, instead of the
million of dollars in her safe, she was outward bound, with a
large number of women and children on board. A boarding
officer was sent on her, and returned, giving an account of great
alarm, especially among the ladies. Captain Semmes sent a
lieutenant on board to assure them that they had " fallen into
the hands of Southern gentlemen, under whose protection they
were entirely safe." Among the passengers were a battalion
of marines and some army and navy officers. These were all
paroled, rank and file numbering one hundred and forty, and
the vessel was released on ransom-bond. Captain Semmes states
that there were five hundred passengers on board. It is fair to
presume that each passenger had with him a purse of from
three to five hundred dollars. Under the laws of war all this
money would have been good prize, but not one dollar of it was
touched, or indeed so much as a passenger's baggage examined.

The Alabama now proceeded to run down the Spanish Main,
thence bore eastward into the Indian Ocean, and, after a cruise
into every sea where a blow at American commerce could be
struck, came around the Cape of Good Hope, and, sailing north,
ran up to the thirtieth parallel, where so many captures had
been made at a former time. Of the ship at this date Captain
Semmes wrote : " The poor old Alabama was not now what she
had been then. She was like the wearied fox-hound, limping
back after a long chase, foot-sore, and longing for quiet repose."

She had, in her mission to cripple the enemy's commerce
and cut his sinews of war, captured sixty-three vessels, among
them one of the enemy's gunboats, the Hatteras, sunk in battle,
had released nine under ransom-bond, and had paroled all pris-
oners taken.

All neutral ports being closed against her prizes, the rest oi
the vessels were, of necessity, burned at sea. Much complaint
was made on account of the burning of these merchantmen,
though very little reflection would have taught the complain-
ants that the interests of the captor would have induced him to
save the vessels, and send them into the nearest port for con-

1862] REGARDED AS A CHALLENGE. 255

demnation as prizes ; and, therefore, whatever grievance existed
was the result of the blockade and of the rule which prevented
the captures from being sent into a neutral port to await the
decision of a prize court.

On the morning of the 11th of June, 1864, the Alabama
entered the harbor of Cherbourg. " An officer was sent to call
on the port admiral, and ask leave to land the prisoners from
the last two ships captured; this was readily granted." The
next day Captain Semmes went on shore to consult the port
admiral " in relation to docking and repairing " the Alabama.
As there were only government docks at Cherbourg, the appli-
cation had to be referred to the Emperor. Before an answer
was received, the Kearsarge steamed into the harbor, sent a boat
ashore, and then ran out and took her station off the break-
water. Captain Semmes learned that the boat from, the Kear-
sarge sent on shore had borne a request that the prisoners dis-
charged from the Alabama might be delivered to the Kearsarge.
It will be remembered that the Government of the United
States, in many harsh and unjust phrases, had refused to recog-
nize the Alabama as a ship of war, and held that the paroles
given to her were void. This request was therefore regarded
by Captain Semmes as an attempt to recruit for the Kearsarge
from the prisoners lately landed by the Alabama, and he so pre-
sented the facts to the port admiral, who rejected the appli-
cation from the Kearsarge.

Captain Semmes sent notice to Captain Winslow, of the
Kearsarge, whose presence in the offing was regarded as a chal-
lenge, that, if he would wait until the Alabama could receive
some coal on board, she would come out and give him battle.

As has been shown by extracts previously made, Captain
Semmes knew that, after his long cruise, the Alabama needed
Jbo go into dock for repairs. It had not been possible for him,
on account of the rigid enforcement of " neutrality," to replen-
ish his ammunition. Unless the niter is more thoroughly puri-
fied than is usually, if ever, done by those who manufacture for
an open market, it is sure to retain nitrate of soda, and the
powder, of which it is the important ingredient, to deteriorate
by long exposure to a moist atmosphere. The Kearsarge was

256 KISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

superior to the Alabama in size, and, having been bnilt for war
in stanchness of construction, her armament was also greater, the
latter being measured, not by the number of guns, but by the
amount of metal she could throw at a broadside. The crew of the
Kearsarge, all told, was one hundred and sixty-two ; that of the
Alabama, one hundred and forty-nine. Captain Semmes says :
" Still the disparity was not so great but that I might hope to
beat my enemy in a fair light. But he did not show me a fair
fight, for, as it afterward turned out, his ship was iron-clad."
This expression " iron-clad " refers to the fact that the Kearsarge
had chains on her sides, which Captain Semmes describes as
concealed by planking, the forward and after ends of which so
accorded with the lines of the ship as not to be detected by
telescopic observation. Many of that class of critics whose
wisdom is only revealed after the event have blamed Captain
Semmes for going out under the circumstances. Like most other
questions, there are two sides to this. If he had gone into
dock for repairs, the time required would have resulted in the
dispersion of his crew, and, from the known improvidence oJ
sailors, it would have been more than doubtful whether they
could have been reassembled. It was, moreover, probable that
other vessels would have been sent to aid the Kearsarge in effect-
ually blockading the port, so that, if his crew had returned, th
only chance would have been to escape through the guarding
fleet. Proud of his ship, and justly confiding in his crew, surety
something will be conceded to the Confederate spirit so often
exhibited and so often triumphant over disparity of force.

On the 19th of June, 1864, the Alabama left the harbo
of Cherbourg to engage the Kearsarge, which had been lying off
and on the port for several days previously. Captain Semmes
in his report of the engagement writes :

" After the lapse of about one hour and ten minutes, our ship
was ascertained to be in a sinking condition ... to reach the
French coast, I gave the ship all steam, and set such of the fore
and aft sails as were available. The ship filled so rapidly, how-
ever, that, before we had made much progress, the fires were ex-
tinguished. I now hauled down my colors, and dispatched a boat
to inform the enemy of our condition. Although we were now

1864] THE DEFECT OF THE CAP. 257

but four hundred yards from each other, the enemy fired upon me
five times after my colors had been struck. It is charitable to
suppose that a ship of war, of a Christian nation, could not have
done this intentionally."

Captain Semmes states that, his waist-boats having been torn
to pieces, he sent the wounded, and such of the boys of the ship
as could not swim, in his quarter-boats, off to the enemy's ship,
and, as there was no appearance of any boat coming from the
enemy, the crew, as previously instructed, jumped overboard,
each to save himself if he could. All the wounded — twenty-one
— were saved. Ten of the crew were ascertained to have been
drowned. Captain Semmes stood on the quarter-deck until his
ship was settling to go down, then threw his sword into the sea,
there to lie buried with the ship he loved so well, and leaped
from the deck just in time to avoid being drawn down into the
vortex created by her sinking. He and many of his crew were
picked up by a humane English gentleman in the boats of his
yacht, the Deerhound. Others were saved by two French pilot-
boats which were near the scene. The remainder, it is hoped,
were picked up by the enemy. Captain Semmes states in his
official report, two days after the battle, that about the time of
his rescue by the Deerhound the " Kearsarge sent one and then
tardily another boat." The reader is invited to compare this
with the conduct of Captain Semmes when he sank the Hat-
teras, and when, though it was in the night, by ranging up close
to her, and promptly using all his boats, he saved her entire crew.

Mention has been made of the defective ammunition of the
Alabama, and in that connection I quote the following passage
from Captain Semmes's book, on which I have so frequently
and largely drawn for facts in regard to the Sumter and the
Alabama (pages 761, 762) :

" I lodged a rifle percussion shell near to her [the Kearsarge's]
sternpost — ichere there were no chains — which failed to explode
because of the defect of the cap. If the cap had performed its
duty, and exploded the shell, I should have been called upon to
save Captain Winslow's crew from drowning, instead of his being
called upon to save mine."
64

258 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

As it appears by the same authority that the Kearsarge had
greater speed than the Alabama, it followed that, though the
Captain of the Kearsarge might have closed with and boarded
the Alabama, the Captain of the Alabama could not board the
Kearsarge, unless by consent.

The Alabama, built like a merchant-ship, sailed in peaceful
garb from British waters, on a far-distant sea received her crew
and armament, fitted for operations against the enemy's com-
merce. On "blue-water" she was christened, and in the same
she was buried. She lived the pride of her friends and the ter-
ror of her enemies. She went out to fight a wooden vessel and
was sunk by one clad in secret armor. Those rescued by the
Deerhound from the water were landed at Southampton, Eng-
land.

The United States Government then, through its minister,
Mr. Charles Francis Adams, made the absurd demand of the
English Government that they should be delivered up to her as
escaped prisoners. To this demand Lord John Russell replied
as follows :

" With regard to the demand made by you, by instructions
from your Government, that those officers and men should now
be delivered up to the Government of the United States, as being
escaped prisoners of war, her Majesty's Government would beg
to observe that there is no obligation by international law which
can bind the government of a neutral state to deliver up to a bel-
ligerent prisoners of war who may have escaped from the power
of such belligerent, and may have taken refuge within the terri-
tory of such neutral. Therefore, even if her Majesty's Govern-
ment had any power, by law, to comply with the above-mentioned
demand, her Majesty's Government could not do so without being
guilty of a violation of the duties of hospitality. In point ot, fact,
however, her Majesty's Government have no lawful power to ar-
rest and deliver up the persons in question. They have been
guilty of no offense against the laws of England, and they have
committed no act which would bring them within the provisions
of a treaty between Great Britain and the United States for the
surrender of the offenders ; and her Majesty's Government are,
therefore, entirely without any legal means by which, even if

1862] SHE WAS RELEASED. 259

they wished to do so, they could comply with your above-men-
tioned demand."

It will be observed that her Majesty's Minister mercifully
forbore to expose the pretensions that " the persons in question "
had been prisoners, and confined his answer to the case as it
would have been had that allegation been true. There are other
points in this transaction which will be elsewhere presented.

The Oreto, which sailed from Liverpool about the 23d of
March, 1862, was, while under construction at Liverpool, the
subject of diplomatic correspondence and close scrutiny by the
customs officers. After her arrival off Nassau, upon representa-
tions by the United States consul at that port, she was detained
and again examined, and, it being found that she had none of
the character of a vessel of war, she was released. Captain Maf-
fitt, who had gone out with a cargo of cotton, here received a
letter which authorized him to take charge of the Oreto and
get her promptly to sea. She was a steamer of two hundred
and fifty horse-power, tonnage Hve hundred and sixty, bark-
rigged ; speed, under steam, eight to nine knots ; with sail, in a
fresh breeze, fourteen knots ; crew twenty-two, all told. The
United States Minister, Mr. Adams, had made a report to the
British Government, which, it was apprehended, would cause
her seizure at once. This was soon done, and with great diffi-
culty the vessel was saved to the Confederacy by her com-
mander. She arrived at Nassau on the 28th of April, and was
detained until the session of the Admiralty Court in August.
As soon as discharged by the proceedings therein, she sailed for
the uninhabited island " Green Kay," ninety miles to the south-
ward of Providence Island, with a tender in tow having equip-
ments provided by a Confederate merchant, where she anchored
the next day, and proceeded to take on board her military arma-
ment sent out on the tender. She now became a ship of the
Confederate Navy, and was christened Florida. Her long de-
tention in Nassau had caused the ship to be infected with yel-
low fever, and, as she had no surgeon on board, the vessel was
directed to the Island of Cuba, and ran into the harbor of Car-
denas for aid. The crew was reduced to one fireman and two

260 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

seamen, and eventually the Captain was prostrated by the fever.
The Governor of Cardenas, under his view of the neutrality pro-
claimed by his Government, refused to send a physician aboard,
and warned the steamer that she must leave in twenty-four
hours. Lieutenant Stribling, executive officer of the ship, had
been sent to Havana to report her condition to the Captain-
General, Marshal Serrano. That chivalrous gentleman, soldier,
and statesman, at once invited the ship to the hospitalities of
the harbor of Havana, whither she repaired and received the
kindness which her forlorn situation required.

On the 1st of September, 1862, the vessel left Havana to
obtain a crew ; and, to complete her equipment, which was so
imperfect that her guns could not all be used, the vessel was di-
rected to the harbor of Mobile. On approaching that harbor she
found several blockading vessels on the station, and boldly ran
through them, escaping, with considerable injury to her masts
and rigging, to the friendly shelter of Fort Morgan, where,
while in quarantine, Lieutenant Stribling was attacked with
fever and died. He was an officer of great merit, and his loss
was much regretted, not only by his many personal friends,
but by all who foresaw the useful service he could render to
his country if his life were prolonged. Under the disadvan-
tages of being an infected ship and remote from the work-
shops, repairs were commenced, and the equipment of the ship
completed.

In the mean time the blockading squadron had been in-
creased, with the boastful announcement that the cruiser should
be " hermetically sealed " in the harbor of Mobile. Some im-
patience was manifested after the vessel was ready for sea that
she did not immediately go out, but Captain Maffitt, with sound
judgment and nautical skill, decided to wait for a winter storm
and a dark night before attempting to pass through the close in-
vestment. When the opportunity offered, he steamed out into a
rough sea and a fierce north wind. As he passed the blockading
squadron he was for the first time discovered, when a number
of vessels gave chase, and continued the pursuit throughout the
night and the next day. In the next evening all except the two
fastest had hauled off, and, as night again closed in, the smoke

1863] WE BADE THE ENEMY GOOD NIGHT. 261

and canvas of the Florida furnished their only guide. Captain
Maffitt thus describes the ruse by which he finally escaped :
" The canvas was secured in long, neat bunts to the yards, and
the engines were stopped. Between high, toppling seas, clear
daylight was necessary to enable them to distinguish our low
hull. In eager pursuit the Federals swiftly passed ns, and we
jubilantly bade the enemy good night, and steered to the north-
ward." She was now fairly on the high-seas, and after long
and vexatious delays entered on her mission to cruise against
the enemy's commerce. She commenced her captures in the
Gulf of Mexico, then progressed through the Gulf of Florida
to the latitude of ~New York, and thence to the equator, contin-
uing to 12° south, and returned again within thirty miles of
New York. AVhen near Cape St. Roque, Captain Maffitt cap-
tured a Baltimore brig, the Clarence, and fitted her out as a
tender. He placed on her Lieutenant C. W. Read, commander,
fourteen men, armed with muskets, pistols, and a twelve-pound
howitzer. The instructions were to proceed to the coast of
America, to cruise against the enemy's commerce. Under these
orders he destroyed many Federal vessels. Of him Captain
Maffitt wrote : " Daring, even beyond the point of martial pru-
dence, he entered the harbor of Portland at midnight, and
captured the revenue cutter Caleb Cushing; but, instead of
instantly burning her, ran her out of the harbor ; being thus
delayed, he was soon captured by a Federal expedition sent out
against him." While under the command of Captain Maffitt,
the Florida, with her tenders, captured some fifty-five vessels,
many of which were of great value. The Florida being built
of light timbers, her very active cruising had so deranged her
machinery, that it was necessary to go into some friendly har-
bor for repairs. Captain Maffitt says : " I selected Brest, and,
the Government courteously consenting to the Florida having
the facilities of the navy-yard, she was promptly docked." The
effects of the yellow fever from which he had suffered and the
fatigue attending his subsequent service had so exhausted his
strength that he asked to be relieved from command of the
ship. In compliance with this request, Captain C. M. Morris
was ordered to relieve him.

262 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

After completing all needful repairs, Captain Morris pro-
ceeded to sea and sighted the coast of Virginia, where he made
a number of important captures. Turning from that locality
he crossed the equator, destroying the commerce of the North-
ern States on his route to Bahia. Here he obtained coal, and
also had some repairs done to the engines, when the United
States steamship Wachusett entered the harbor. Not know-
ing what act of treachery might be attempted by her com-
mander on the first night after his arrival, the Florida was kept
in a watchful condition for battle.

This belligerent demonstration in the peaceful harbor of a
neutral power alarmed both the governor and the admiral, who
demanded assurances that the sovereignty of Brazil and its
neutrality should be strictly observed by both parties. The
pledge was given. In the evening, with a chivalric belief in
the honor of the United States commander, Captain Morris un-
fortunately permitted a majority of his officers to accompany
him to the opera, and also allowed two thirds of the crew to
visit the shore on leave. About one o'clock in the morning the
Wachusett was surreptitiously got under way, and her com-
mander, with utter abnegation of his word of honor, ran into
the Florida, discharging his battery and boarding her. The
few officers on board and small number of men were unable to
resist this unexpected attack, and the Florida fell an easy prey
to this covert and dishonorable assault. She was towed to sea
amid the execrations of the Brazilian forces, army and navy,
who, completely taken by surprise, fired a few ineffectual shots
at the infringer upon the neutrality of the hospitable port of
Bahia. The Confederate was taken to Hampton Boads.

Brazil instantly demanded her restoration intact to her late
anchorage in Bahia. Mr. Lincoln was confronted by a protest
from the different representatives of the courts of Europe, de-
nouncing this extraordinary breach of national neutrality, which
placed the Government of the United States in a most unenvi-
able position. Mr. Seward, with his usual diplomatic insincer-
ity and Machiavellianism, characteristically prevaricated, while
he plotted with a distinguished admiral as to the most adroit
method of disposing of the " elephant." The result of these

1363] THE FLORIDA MUST BE AT THE BOTTOM. 263

plottings was that an engineer was placed in charge of the
stolen steamer, with positive orders to " open her sea-cock at
midnight, and not to leave the engine-room until the water was
up tahis chin, as at sunrise the Florida must he at the bottom"
The following note was sent to the Brazilian charge d'affaires
by Mr. Seward :

" While awaiting the representations of the Brazilian Govern-
ment, on the 28th of November she [the Florida] sank, owing to
a leak, which could not be seasonably stopped. The leak was at
first represented to have been caused, or at least increased, by col-
lision with a war-transport. Orders were immediately given to
ascertain the manner and circumstances of the occurrence. It
seemed to affect the army and navy. A naval court of inquiry
and also a military court of inquiry were charged wTith the inves-
tigation. The naval court has submitted its report, and a copy
thereof is herewith communicated. The military court is yet en-
gaged. So soon as its labors shall have ended, the result will be
made known to your Government. In the mean time it is assumed
that the loss of the Florida was in consequence of some unfore-
seen accident, which casts no responsibility on the Government of
the United States."

The restitution of the ship having thus become impossible,
the President expressed his regret that "the sovereignty of
Brazil had been violated ; dismissed the consul at Bahia, who
had advised the offense ; and sent the commander of the Wa-
chusett before a court-martial." *

The commander of the Wachusett experienced no annoy-
ance, and was soon made an admiral.

The Georgia was the next Confederate cruiser that Captain
Bullock succeeded in sending forth. She was of five hundred
and sixty tons, and fitted out on the coast of France. Her com-
mander, "W. L. Maury, Confederate States Navy, cruised in the
North and South Atlantic with partial success. The capacity
of the vessel in speed and other essentials was entirely inade-
quate to the service for which she was designed. She proceed-
ed as far as the Cape of Good Hope, and returned, after having

* M. Bernard's " Neutrality of Great Britain during the American Civil War."

264: RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

captured seven ships and two barks. Then she was laid up and
sold.

. The Shenandoah, once the Sea King, was purchased by Cap-
tain Bullock, and placed under the command of Lieutenant-
commanding J. J. "Waddell, who fitted her for sendee under
many difficulties at the barren island of Porto Santo, near Ma-
deira. After experiencing great annoyances, through the activ-
ity of the American consul at Melbourne, Australia, Captain
Waddell finally departed, and commenced an active and effec-
tive cruise against American shipping in the Okhotsk Sea and
Arctic Ocean. In August, 1865, hearing of the close of the
war, he ceased his pursuit of United States commerce, sailed
for Liverpool, England, and surrendered his ship to the English
Government, which transferred it to the Government of the
United States. The Shenandoah was a full -rigged ship of eight
hundred tons, very fast under canvass. Her steam-power was
merely auxiliary.

This was the last but not the first appearance of the Confed-
erate flag in Great Britain ; the first vessel of the Confederate
Government which unfurled it there was the swift, light steamer
Nashville, R. B. Pegram, commander. Having been construct-
ed as a passenger-vessel, and mainly with reference to speed
and the light draught suited to the navigation of the Southern
harbors, she was quite too frail for war purposes and too slightly
armed for combat.

On her passage to Europe and back, she, nevertheless, de-
stroyed two merchantmen, bearing the harbor on her return
voyage, she found it blockaded, and a heavy vessel lying close
on her track. Her daring commander headed directly for the
vessel, and ran so close under her guns that she was not sus-
pected in her approach, and had passed so far before the guns
could be depressed to bear upon her that none of the shots took
effect. Being little more than a shell, a single shot would have
sunk her ; and she was indebted to the address of her commander
and the speed of his vessel for her escape. Wholly unsuited
for naval warfare, this voyage terminated her career.

A different class of vessels than those adapted to the open
sea was employed for coastwise cruising. In the month of

1864] NEITHER HAILED NOR HALTED HER. 265

July, 1864, a swift twin-screw propeller called the Atlanta, of
six hundred tons burden, was purchased by the Secretary of the
Navy, and fitted out in the harbor of Wilmington, North Caro-
lina for a cruise against the commerce of the Northern States.
Commander J. Taylor Wood, an officer of extraordinary ability
and enterprise, was ordered to command her, and her name was
changed to " The Tallahassee." This extemporaneous man-of-
war ran safely through the blockade, and soon lit up the New
England coast with her captures, which consisted of two ships,
four brigs, four barks, and twenty schooners. Great was the
consternation among Northern merchants. The construction
of the Tallahassee exclusively for steam made her dependent
on coal ; her cruise was of course brief, but brilliant while it
lasted.

About the same time another fast double-screw propeller of
five hundred and eighty-five tons, called the Edith, ran into
Wilmington, North Carolina, and the Navy Department re-
quiring her services, bought her and gave to her the name of
u Chickamauga." A suitable battery was placed on board, with
officers and crew, and Commander John Wilkinson, a gentle-
man of consummate naval ability, was ordered to command her.
When ready for sea, he ran the blockade under the bright rays
of a full moon. Strange to say, the usually alert sentinels neither
hailed nor halted her. Like the Tallahassee, though partially
rigged for sailing, she was exclusively dependent upon steam in
the chase, escape, and in all important evolutions. She captured
seven vessels, despite the above-noticed defects.

266 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

CHAPTEE XXXI.

Naval Affairs, concluded. — Excitement in the Northern States on the Appearance of
our Cruisers. — Failure of the Enemy to protect their Commerce. — Appeal to
Europe not to help the So-called "Pirates." — Seeks Iron-plated Vessels in
England. — Statement of Lord Russell. — What is the Duty of Neutrals? — Posi-
tion taken by President Washington. — Letter of Mr. Jefferson. — Contracts,
sought by United States Government. — Our Cruisers went to Sea unarmed. —
Mr. Adams asserts that British Neutrality was violated. — Reply of Lord Rus-
sell.— Rejoinder of Mr. Seward. — Duty of Neutrals relative to Warlike Stores. —
Views of Wheaton ; of Kent. — Charge of the Lord Chief Baron in the Alexan-
dra Case. — Action of the Confederate Government sustained. — Antecedents of
the United States Government. — The Colonial Commissions. — Build and equip
Ships in Europe. — Captain Conyngham's Captures.— Made Prisoner. — Retalia-
tion.— Numbers of Captures. — Recognition of Greece. — Recognition of South
American Cruisers. — Chief Act of Hostility charged on Great Britain by the
United States Government. — The Queen's Proclamation : its Effect. — Cause of
the United States Charges. — Never called us Belligerents. — Why not ? — Adopts
a Fiction. — The Reason. — Why denounce our Cruisers as " Pirates." — Opinion
of Justice Greer. — Burning of Prizes. — Laws of Maritime War. — Cause of the
Geneva Conference. — Statement of American Claims. — Allowance. — Indirect
Damages of our Cruisers. — Ships transferred to British Registers. — Decline of
American Tonnage. — Decline of Coasting Tonnage. — Decline of Export of
Breadstuffs. — Advance of Insurance.

The excitement produced in the Northern States by the
effective operations of our cruisers upon their commerce was
such as to receive the attention of the United States Govern-
ment. Keasonably, it might have been expected that they
would send their ships of war out on the high-seas to protect
their commerce by capturing or driving off our light cruisers,
but, instead of this, their fleets were employed in blockading the
Confederate ports, or watching those in the West Indies, from
which blockade-runners were expected to sail,, and, by captur-
ing which, either on the high-seas or at the entrance of a Con-
federate port, a harvest of prizes might be secured. For this
dereliction of duty, in the failure to protect commerce, no bet-
ter reason offers itself than greed and malignity. There was,
however, in this connection, a more humiliating feature in the
conduct of the United States Government.

While, from its State Department, the Confederacy was de-

1864] THE SO-CALLED PIRATES. 267

nounced as an insurrection soon to be suppressed, and the cruis-
ers, regularly commissioned by the Confederate States, were
called " pirates," diplomatic demands were made upon Great
Britain to prevent the so-called "pirates" from violatiog in-
ternational law, as if it applied to pirates. Appeals to that
Government were also made to prevent the sale of the materials
of war to the Confederacy, and thus indirectly to aid the United
States in performing what, according to the representation, was
a police duty, to suppress a combination of some evil-disposed
persons — gallantly claiming that they, armed cap-a-pie, should
meet their adversary in the list, he to be without helmet, shield,
or lance.

To one who from youth to age had seen, with exultant pride,
the flag of his country as it unfolded, disclosing to view the
stripes recordant of the original size of the family of States, and
the Constellation, which told of that family's growth, it could
but be deeply mortifying to witness such paltry exhibition of
deception and unmanliness in the representatives of a Govern-
ment around which fond memories still lingered, despite the
perversion of which it was the subject.

If this attempt, on the part of the United States, to deny
the existence of war after having, by proclamation of blockade,
compelled all nations to take notice that war did exist, and to
claim that munitions should not be sold to a country because
there were some disorderly people in it, had been all, the at-
tempt would have been ludicrously absurd, and the contradic-
tion too bald to require refutation ; but this would have been
but half of the story. Subsequently the United States Govern-
ment claimed reclamation from Great Britain for damage in-
flicted by vessels which had been built in her ports, and which
had elsewhere been armed and equipped for purposes of war.
International law recognizes the right of a neutral to sell an un-
armed vessel, without reference to the use to which the pur-
chaser might subsequently apply it. The United States Gov-
ernment had certainly not practiced under a different rule, but
had gone even further than this — so much further as to trans-
gress the prohibition against armed vessels.

It has already been stated that the Government of the

26S RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

United States, at the commencement of the war, sought to
contract for the construction of iron-plated vessels in the ports
of England, which were to be delivered fully armed and
equipped to her. To this it may be added that her armies
were recruited from almost all the countries of Europe, down
almost to the last month of the war ; a portion of their arms
were of foreign manufacture, as well as the munitions of war ;
a large number of the sailors of her fleets came from the sea-
ports of Great Britain and Germany ; in a word, whatever could
be of service to her in the conflict was unhesitatingly sought
among neutrals, regardless of the law of nations. At the same
time an effort was made on her part to make Great Britain
responsible for the damage done by our cruisers, and for the
warlike stores sold to our Government.

Some statements of Lord Russell on this point, in a letter
to Minister Adams, dated December 19, 1862, deserve notice.
He says :

"It is right, however, to observe that the party which has
profited by far the most by these unjustifiable practices, has been
the Government of the United States, because that Government,
having a superiority of force by sea, and having blockaded most
of the Confederate ports, has been able, on the one hand, safely to
receive all the warlike supplies which it has induced British manu-
facturers and merchants to send to the United States ports in vio-
lation of the Queen's proclamation ; and, on the other hand, to
intercept and capture a great part of the supplies of the same
kind which were destined from this country to the Confederate
States.

" If it be sought to make her Majesty's Government respon-
sible to that of the United States because arms and munitions of
war have left this country on account of the Confederate Govern-
ment, the Confederate Government, as the other belligerent, may
very well maintain that it has a just cause of complaint against
the British Government because the United States arsenals have
been replenished from British sources. Nor would it be possible
to deny that, in defiance of the Queen's proclamation, many sub-
jects of her Majesty, owing allegiance to her crown, have enlisted
in the armies of the United States. Of this fact you can not be
ignorant. Her Majesty's Government, therefore, has just ground

1793] THE DUTY OF NEUTRAL NATIONS. 269

for complaint against both of the belligerent parties, but most
especially against the Government of the United States, for having
systematically, and in disregard of the comity of nations which it
was their duty to observe, induced subjects of her Majesty to vio-
late those orders which, in conformity with her neutral position,
she has enjoined all her subjects to obey."

Perhaps it may be well to inquire what is, under interna-
tional law, the duty of neutral nations with regard to the con-
struction and equipment of cruisers for either belligerent, and
the supply of warlike stores. Thus the groundlessness of the
claims put forth by the Government of the United States for
damages to be paid by Great Britain will be more manifest, and
the lawfulness of the acts of the Confederate Government de-
monstrated.

After the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, the
Government of France, owing to the temporary inferiority of
her naval force, openly and deliberately equipped privateers in
our ports. These privateers captured British vessels in United
States waters, and brought them as prizes into United States
ports. These facts formed the basis of demands made upon
the United States by the British plenipotentiary. The demands
had reference, not to the accidental evasion of a municipal law
of the United States by a particular ship, but to a systematic
disregard of international law upon some of the most important
points of neutral obligation.

To these demands Mr. Jefferson, then Secretary of State
under President Washington, thus replied on September 3,
1793 :

" We are bound by our treaties with three of the belligerent
nations, by all the means in our power, to protect and defend their
vessels and effects in our ports or waters, or on the seas near our
shores, and to recover and restore the same to the right owners
when taken from them. If all the means in our power are used,
and fail in this effort, we are not bound by our treaties with those
nations to make compensation. Though we have no similar treaty
with Great Britain, it was the opinion of the President that we
should use toward that nation the same rule which, under this

270 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

article, was to govern us with other nations, and even to extend it
to the captures made on the high-seas and brought into our ports,
if done by vessels which had been armed within them."

It will be observed that the justice of restitution, or compen-
sation, for captures made on the high-seas and brought into our
ports, is only admitted by President Washington upon one con-
dition, which is expressed in these words : " If done by vessels
which had been armed within them." The terms of the con-
tract, which the Government of the United States endeavored
to make at the ship-yards of England, were for the delivery of
the ship or ships of war " to be finished complete, with guns and
everything appertaining." The contract was not taken, as too
little time was allowed for its execution. But, if entered into
and executed, it would have been. a direct violation of interna-
tional law.

In the instance of our cruisers built in the ports of England,
it will be observed that they went to sea without arms or warlike
stores, and, at other ports than those of Great Britain, they were
converted into ships of war and put into commission by the
authority of the Confederate Government. The Government
of the United States asserted that they were built in the ports
of Great Britain, and thereby her duty of neutrality was violated,
and the Government made responsible for the damages sustained
by private citizens of the United States in consequence of her
captures on the seas. To this declaration of Mr. Adams, Earl
Russell (he had been made an earl) replied on September 14,
1863, thus :

" When the United States Government assumes to hold the
Government of Great Britain responsible for the captures made
by vessels which may be fitted out as vessels of war in a foreign
port, because such vessels were originally built in a British port, I
have to observe that such pretensions are entirely at variance with
the principles of international law, and with the decisions of
American courts of the highest authority ; and I have only, in
conclusion, to express my hope that you may not be instructed
again to put forward claims which her Majesty's Government can
not admit to be founded on any grounds of law or justice."

1863] THE SUPPLY OF WARLIKE STORES. 271

On October 6, 1863, Mr. Seward, the Secretary of State of
the United States Government, replied to this declaration of
Earl Kussell, saying :

" The United States do insist, and must continue to insist, that
the British Government is justly responsible for the damages which
the peaceful, law-abiding citizens of the United States [!] sustain
by the depredations of the Alabama."

Earl Russell answered on October 26, 1863, thus :

" I must request you to believe that the principle contended for
by her Majesty's Government is not that of commissioning, equip-
ping, and manning vessels in our ports to cruise against either of
the belligerent parties — a principle which was so justly and une-
quivocally condemned by the President of the United States in
1793. . . . But the British Government must decline to be respon-
sible for the acts of parties who fit out a seeming merchant-ship,
send her to a port or to waters far from the jurisdiction of British
courts, and there commission, equip, and man her as a vessel of
war."

The duty of neutral nations relative to the supply of warlike
stores is expressed in these words :

" It is not the practice of nations to undertake to prohibit their
own subjects by previous laws from trafficking in articles contra-
band of war. Such trade is carried on at the risk of those engaged
in it, under the liabilities and penalties prescribed by the law of
nations or particular treaties." *

We now quote from the great American commentator on
the Constitution of the United States and on the law of na-
tions :

" It is a general understanding that the powers at war may seize
and confiscate all contraband goods, without any complaint on the
part of the neutral merchant, and without any imputation of a
breach of neutrality in the neutral sovereign himself. It was con-
tended on the part of the French nation, in 1796, that neutral
governments were bound to restrain their subjects from selling or
exporting articles contraband of war to the belligerent powers.

* Wheaton's " International Law," sixth edition, p. 571, 1855.

272 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

But it was successfully shown, on the part of the United States,
that neutrals may lawfully sell at home to a belligerent power, or
carry themselves to the belligerent powers, contraband articles,
subject to the right of seizure in transitu. This right has been ex-
plicitly declared by the judicial authorities of this country [United
States]. The right of the neutral to transport, and of the hostile
power to seize, are conflicting rights, and neither party can charge
the other with a criminal act." *

In accordance with these principles, President Pierce's mes-
sage of December 31, 1855, contains the following passage :

" In pursuance of this policy, the laws of the United States do
not forbid their citizens to sell to either of the belligerent powers
articles contraband of war, to take munitions of war or soldiers on
board their private ships for transportation ; and, although in so
doing the individual citizen exposes his property or person to some
of the hazards of war, his acts do not involve any breach of inter-
national neutrality, nor of themselves implicate the Government."

Perhaps it may not be out of place here to notice the charge
of the Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer to the jury in th<
case of the Alexandra, a vessel of one hundred and twenty tons,
under construction at Liverpool for our Government. The cast
came on for trial on June 22, 1863, in the Court of Exchequer,
sitting at nisi prius, before the Lord Chief Baron and a special
jury. After it had been summed up, the Lord Chief Baroi
said:

" This is an information on the part of the Crown for the seiz-
ure and confiscation of a vessel that was in the course of prepara-
tion but had not been completed. It is admitted that it was not
armed, and the question is, whether the preparation of the vessel
in its then condition was a violation of the Foreign Enlistment
Act. The main question you will have to decide is this : "Whether,
under the seventh section of the act of Parliament, the vessel, as
then prepared at the time of seizure, was liable to seizure ? The
statute was passed in 1819, and upon it no question has ever arisen
in our courts of justice ; but there have been expositions of a simi-
lar statute which exists in the United States. I will now read to

* Kent's " Commentaries," vol. i, p. 145, 1854.

1863] WHY SHOULD SHIPS BE AN EXCEPTION? 273

you the opinions of some American lawyers who have contributed
so greatly to make law a science. [His lordship then read a pas-
sage from Story and others.] These gentlemen are authorities
which show that, when two belligerents are carrying on a war, a
neutral power may supply, without any breach of international
law and without a breach of the Foreign Enlistment Act, muni-
tions of war — gunpowder, every description of arms, in fact, that
can be used for the destruction of human beings.

" Why should ships be an exception ? I am of opinion, in
point of law, they are not. The Foreign Enlistment Act was an
act to prevent the enlistment or engagement of his Majesty's sub-
jects to serve in foreign armies, and to prevent the fitting out and
equipping in his Majesty's dominions vessels for warlike purposes
without his Majesty's license. The title of an act is not at all
times an exact indication or explanation of the act, because it is
generally attached after the act is passed. But, in adverting to
the preamble of the act, I find that provision is made against the
equipping, fitting out, furnishing, and arming of vessels, because
it may be prejudicial to the peace of his Majesty's dominions.

" The question I shall put to you is, "Whether you think that
vessel was merely in a course of building to be delivered in pursu-
ance of a contract that was perfectly lawful, or whether there was
any intention in the port of Liverpool, or any other English port,
that the vessel should be fitted out, equipped, furnished, and armed
for purposes of aggression. Now, surely, if Birmingham, or any
other town, may supply any quantity of munitions of war of vari-
ous kinds for the destruction of life, why object to ships? Why
should ships alone be in themselves contraband ? I asked the At-
torney-General if a man could not make a vessel intending to
sell it to either of the belligerent powers that required it, and
which would give the largest price for it, would not that be law-
ful? To my surprise, the learned Attorney- General declined to
give an answer to the question, which I think a grave and perti-
nent one. But you, gentlemen, I think, are lawyers enough to
know that a man may make a vessel and offer it for sale. If a
man may build a vessel for the purpose of offering it for sale
to either belligerent party, may he not execute an order for it ?
That appears to be a matter of course. The statute is not made
to provide means of protection for belligerent powers, otherwise
it would have said, * You shall not sell powder or guns, and you
65 '

274 RISE AND FALL 0F THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

shall not sell arms '; and, if it had done so, all Birmingham would
have been in arms against it. The object of the statute was this :
that we should not have our ports in this country made the ground
of hostile movements between the vessels of two belligerent pow-
ers, which might be fitted out, furnished, and armed in these ports.
The Alexandra was clearly nothing more than in the course of
building.

" It appears to me that, if true that the Alabama sailed from
Liverpool without any arms at all, as a mere ship in ballast, and
that her armament was put on board at Terceira, which is not in
her Majesty's dominions, then the Foreign Enlistment Act was
not violated at all."

After reading some of the evidence, his lordship said :

" If you think that the object was to furnish, fit out, equip, and
arm that vessel at Liverpool, that is a different matter ; but if you
think the object really was to build a ship in obedience to an or-
der, in compliance with a contract, leaving those who bought it to
make what use they thought fit of it, then it appears to me that
the Foreign Enlistment Act has not been broken. "

The jury immediately returned a verdict for the defendants.
An appeal was made, but the full bench decided that there was
no jurisdiction. Against this decision an appeal was taken to
the House of Lords, and there dismissed on some technical
ground.

Sufficient has been said to show that . the action of the Con-
federate Government relative to these cruisers is sustained and
justified by international law. The complaints made by the
Government of the United States against the Government of
Great Britain for acts involving a breach of neutrality find no
support in the letter of the law or in its principles, and were
conclusively answered by the interpretations of American ju-
rists. At the same time they are condemned by the antecedent
acts of the United States Government. Some of these will be
presented.

In the War of the American Revolution, Dr. Franklin and
Silas Deane were sent to France as commissioners to look after
the interests of the colonies. In the years 1776 and 1777 they

1777] SWEEPING THE SEA. 275

became extensively connected with naval movements. They
built, and purchased, and equipped, and commissioned ships, all
in neutral territory ; even filling up blank commissions sent out
to them by the Congress for the purpose. Among expeditions
fitted out by them was one under Captain "Wickes to intercept
a convoy of linen-ships from Ireland. He went first into the
Bay of Biscay, and afterward entirely around Ireland, sweep-
ing the sea before him of everything that was not of force to
render the attack hopeless. Mr. Deane observes to Robert Mor-
ris that it " effectually alarmed England, prevented the great
fair at Chester, occasioned insurance to rise, and even deterred
the English merchants from shipping in English bottoms at any
rate, so that, in a few weeks, forty sail of French ships were
loading in the Thames, on freight, an instance never before
known."

In the spring of 1777 the Commissioners sent an agent to
Dover, who purchased a fine, fast-sailing English-built cutter,
which was taken across to Dunkirk. There she was privately
equipped as a cruiser, and put in command of Captain Gustavus
Conyngham, who was appointed by filling up a blank commis-
sion from John Hancock, the President of Congress. This
commission bore date March 1, 1777, and fully entitled Mr.
Conyngham to the rank of captain in the navy. His vessel,
although built in England, like many of our cruisers, was not
armed or equipped there, nor was his crew enlisted there, but
in the port of a neutral. This vessel was finally seized under
some treaty obligations between France and England. The
Commissioners immediately fitted out another cruiser, and still
another. It was also affirmed that the money advanced to Mr.
John Adams for traveling expenses, when he arrived in Spain
a year or two later, was derived from the prizes of these vessels,
which had been sent into the ports of Spain.

Captain Conyngham was a very successful commander, but
he was made a prisoner in 1779. The matter was brought
before Congress in July of the same year, and a committee re-
ported that this "late commander of an armed vessel in the
service of the States, and taken on board of a private armed
cutter, had been treated in a manner contrary to the dictates

276 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

of humanity, and the practice of Christian civilized nations."
Whereupon it was resolved to demand of the British Admiral in
New York that good and sufficient reason be given for this con-
duct, or that he be immediately released from his rigorous and
ignominious confinement. If a satisfactory answer was not re-
ceived by August 1st, so many persons as were deemed proper
were ordered to be confined in safe and close custody, to abide
the fate of the said Gustavus Conyngham. No answer having
been received, one Christopher Hale was thus confined. In
December he petitioned Congress for an exchange, and that he
might procure a person in his room. Congress replied that his
petition could not be granted until Captain Conyngham was re-
leased, " as it had been determined that he must abide the fate
of that officer." Conyngham was subsequently released.

The whole number of captures made by the United States
in this contest is not known, but six hundred and fifty prizes
are said to have been brought into port. Many others were
ransomed, and some were burned at sea.

Prescribed limits will not permit me to follow out in detail
the past history of the United States as a neutral power. It
must suffice to recall the memory of readers to a few significant
facts in our more recent history :

The recognition of the independence of Greece in her strug-
gle with Turkey, and the voluntary contributions of money
and men sent to her ; the recognition of the independence of
the Spanish provinces of South America, and the war-vessels
equipped and sent from the ports of the United States to Bra-
zil during the struggle with Spain for independence ; the ships
sold to Russia during her war with England, France, and Tur-
key ; the arms and munitions of war manufactured at New Ha-
ven, Connecticut, and Providence, Rhode Island, sold and shipped
to Turkey to aid her in her late struggle with Russia.

The reader will observe the promptitude with which the
Government of the United States not only accorded belligerent
rights, but, even more, recognized the independence of nations
struggling for deliverance from oppressive rulers. The in-
stances of Greece and the South American republics are well
known, and that of Texas must be familiar to every one. One

1867] HOW MUCH MORE RATIONAL. 277

could scarcely believe, therefore, that the chief act of hostil-
ity, or, rather, the great crime of the Government of Great
Britain in the eyes of the Government of the United States,
was the recognition by the latter of the Confederate States as a
belligerent power, and that a state of war existed between them
and the United States. This was the constantly repeated charge
against the British Government in the dispatches of the United
States Government from the commencement of the war down
nearly to the session of the Geneva Conference in 1872. In
the correspondence of the Secretary, in 1867, he says:

" What is alleged on the part of the United States is, that the
Queen's proclamation, which, by conceding belligerent rights to
the insurgents, lifted them up for the purpose of insurrection to
an equality with the nation which they were attempting to over-
throw, was premature because it was unnecessary, and that it was,
in its operation, unfriendly because it was premature."

Again he says, and, if sincerely, shows himself to be mfterly
ignorant- of the real condition of our affairs :

" Before the Queen's proclamation of neutrality, the disturb-
ance in the United States was merely a local insurrection. It
wanted the name of war to enable it to be a civil war and to live,
endowed as such, with maritime and other belligerent rights.
Without the authorized name, it might die, and was expected not
to live and be a flagrant civil war, but to perish a mere insur-
rection."

The first extract in itself contains a fiction. If the Queen's
proclamation possessed such force as to raise the Confederate
States to an equality with the United States as a belligerent,
perhaps another proclamation of the QuBen might have pos-
sessed such force, if it had been issued, as to have lifted the
Confederate States from the state of equality to one of inde-
pendence. This is a novel virtue to be ascribed to a Queen's
proclamation. This idea must have been borrowed from our
neighbors of Mexico, where a pronunciamiento dissolves one
and establishes a rival administration. How much more rational
it would have been to say that the resources and the military

278 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

power of the Confederate States placed them, at the outset, on
the footing of a belligerent, and the Queen's proclamation only
declared a fact which the announcement of a blockade of the
Southern ports by the Government of the United States had
made manifest! — blockade being a means only applicable as
against a foreign foe.

Nevertheless, the Government of the United States, although
refusing to concede belligerent rights to the Confederate States,
was very ready to take advantage of such concession by other
nations, whenever an opportunity offered. The voluminous
correspondence of the Secretary of State of the United States
Government, relative to the Confederate cruisers and their so-
called " depredations," was filled with charges of violations of
international law, which could be committed only by a belliger-
ent, and which, it was alleged, had been allowed to be done in
the ports of Great Britain. On this foundation was based the
subsequent claim for damages, advanced by the Government of
the United States against that of Great Britain ; and, for the
pretended lack of " due diligence " in watching the actions of
this Confederate belligerent in her ports, she was mulcted in a
heavy sum by the Geneva Conference, and paid it to the Gov-
ernment of the United States.

It is a remarkable fact that the Government of the United
States, in no one instance, from the opening to the close of the
war, formally spoke of the Confederate Government or States
as belligerents. Although on many occasions it acted with the
latter as a belligerent, yet no official designations were ever
given to them or their citizens but those of " insurgents," or
"insurrectionists." Perhaps there may be something in the
signification of the words which, combined with existing cir-
cumstances, would express a state of affairs that the authorities
of the Government of the United States were in no degree will-
ing to admit, and vainly sought to prevent from becoming mani-
fest to the world.

The party or individuality against which the Government of
the United States was conducting hostilities consisted of the
people within the limits of the Confederate States. Was it
against them as individuals in an unorganized condition, or as

1864] NEVER FORGIVE NOR EVER FORGET. 279

organized political communities ? In the former condition they
might be a mob ; in the latter condition they formed a State.
By the actions of unorganized masses may arise insurrections,
and by the actions of organized people or states, arise wars.

The Government of the United States adopted a fiction
when it declared that the execution of the laws in certain States
was impeded by " insurrection." The persons whom it desig-
nated as insurrectionists were the organized people of the States.
The ballot-boxes used at the elections were State boxes. The
judges who presided at the elections were State functionaries.
The returns of the elections were made to the State officers.
The oaths of office of those elected were administered by State
authority. They assembled in the legislative chambers of the
States. The results of their deliberations were directory to the
State, judicial, and executive officers, and by them put in opera-
tion. Is it not evident that, only by a fiction of speech, such
proceedings can be called an insurrection ?

Why, then, did an intelligent and powerful Government,
like that of the United States, so outrage the understanding of
mankind as to adopt a fiction on which to base the authority and
justification of its hostile action 1 The United States Govern-
ment is the result of a compact between the States — a written
Constitution. It owes its existence simply to a delegation of
certain powers by the respective States, which it is authorized
to exercise for their common welfare. One of these powers is
to " suppress insurrections " ; but there is no power delegated
to subjugate States, the authors of its existence, or to make war
on any of the States. If, then, without any delegated power or
lawful authority for its proceedings, the Government of the
United States commenced a war upon some of the States of the
Union, how could it expect to be justified before the world ?
It became the aggressor — the Attila of the American Continent.
Its action inflicted a wound on the principles of constitutional
liberty, a crushing blow to the hopes that men had begun to
repose in this latest effort for self-government, which its friends
should never forgive nor ever forget. To palliate the enormity
of such an offense, its authors resorted to a vehement denial
that their hostile action was a war upon the States, and persist-

2S0 KISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

ently asserted the fiction that their immense armies and fleets
were merely a police authority to put down insurrection. They
hoped to conceal from the observation of the American people
that the contest, on the part of the central Government, was
for empire, for its absolute supremacy over the State govern-
ments ; that the Constitution was rolled up and laid away among
the old archives ; and that the conditions of their liberty, in
the future, were to be decided by the sword or by " national "
control of the ballot-box.

With like disregard for truth, our cruisers were denounced
as "pirates " by the Government of the United States. A pirate,
or armed piratical vessel, is by the law of nations the enemy
of mankind, and can be destroyed by the ships of any nation.
The distinction between a lawful cruiser and a pirate is that
the former has behind it a government which is recognized by
civilized nations as entitled to the rights of war, and from which
the commander of the cruiser receives his commission or author-
ity, but the pirate recognizes no government, and is not recog-
nized by any one. As the Attorney-General of Great Britain
said in the Alexandra case :

"Although a recognition of the Confederates as an indepen-
dent power was out of the question, yet it was right they should
be admitted by other nations within the circle of lawful belliger-
ents— that is to say, that their forces should not be treated as
pirates, nor their flag as a piratical flag. Therefore, as far as the
two belligerents were concerned, on the part of this and other
governments, they were so far put on a level that each was to be
considered as entitled to the right of belligerents — the Southern
States as much as the other."

The Government of the United States well knew that, after
the issue of the Queen's proclamation recognizing our Govern-
ment, the application of the word pirate to our cruisers was
simply an exhibition of vindictive passion on its part. A de
facto Government by its commission legalizes among nations a
cruiser. That there was such a Government even its own courts
also decided. In a prize case (2 Black, 635), Justice Greer de-
livered the opinion of the Supreme Court, saying :

181 G] THE SOVEREIGN RIGHTS OF WAR. 281

"It [the war] is not less a civil' war, with belligerent parties
in hostile array, because it may be called an ' insurrection ' by one
side, and the insurgents be considered as rebels and traitors. It
is not necessary that the independence of the revolted province
or State be acknowledged in order to constitute it a party bel-
ligerent in a war, according to the laws of nations. Foreign na-
tions acknowledge it a war by a declaration of neutrality. The
condition of neutrality can not exist unless there be two belli-
gerent parties."

In the case of the Santissima Trinidad (7 Wheaton, 337),
the United States Supreme Court says :

"The Government of the United States has recognized the
existence of a civil war between Spain and her colonies, and has
avowed her determination to remain neutral between the parties.
Each party is therefore deemed by us a belligerent, having, so far
as concerns us, the sovereign rights of war."

The belligerent character of the Confederate States was thus
fully acknowledged by the highest judicial tribunal of the United
States. This involved an acknowledgment of the Confederate
Government as a Government de facto having " the sovereign
rights of war," yet the Executive Department of the United
States Government, with reckless malignity, denounced our
cruisers as " pirates," our citizens as " insurgents " and " trai-
tors," and the action of our Government as an "insurrection."

It has been stated that during the war of the colonies with
Great Britain many of the prizes of the colonial cruisers were
destroyed. This was done by Paul Jones and other command-
ers, although during the entire period of the war some of the
colonial ports were open, into which prizes could be taken. In
that war Great Britain did not attempt to blockade all the ports
of the colonies. Sailing-vessels only were then known, and with
these a stringent blockade at all seasons could not have been
maintained. But, at the later day of our war, the powerful
steamship had appeared, and revolutionized the commerce and
the navies of the world. During the first months of the war
all the principal ports of the Confederacy were blockaded, and
finally every inlet was either in possession of the enemy or

282 FJSE ^V FALL 0F THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

bad one or more vessels watching it. The steamers were inde-
pendent of wind and weather, and could hold their positions
before a port day and night. At the same time the ports of
neutrals had been closed against the prizes of our cruisers by
proclamations and orders in council. Says Admiral Semmes :

" During my whole career upon the sea, I had not so much as
a single port open to me, into which I could send a prize."

Our prizes had been sent into ports of Cuba and Venezuela
under the hope that they might gain admittance, but they were
either handed over to the enemy under some fraudulent pretext,
or expelled. Thus, by the action of the different nations and
by the blockade with steamers, no course was ]eft to us but to
destroy the prizes, as was done in many instances under the
Government of the United States Confederation.

The laws of maritime war are well known. The enemy's
vessel when captured becomes the property of the captor, which
he may immediately destroy ; or he may take the vessel into
port, have it adjudicated by an admiralty court as a lawful
prize, and sold. That adjudication is the basis of title to the
purchaser against all former owners. In these cases the captor
sends his prizes to a port of his own country or to a friendly
port for adjudication. But, if the ports of his own country are
under blockade by his enemy, and the recapture of the prizes,
if sent there, most probable, and if, at the same time, all friendly
ports are closed against the entrance of his prizes, then there
remains no alternative but to destroy the prizes by sinking or
burning. Courts of admiralty are established for neutrals ; not
for the enemy, who has no right of appearance before them.
If, therefore, any neutrals suffered during our war for want of
adjudication, the fault is with their own Government, and not
with our cruisers.

Many other objections were advanced by the United States
Government as evidence that we committed a breach of inter-
national law with our cruisers, but their principles are embraced
in the preceding remarks, or they were too frivolous to deserve
notice. Suffice it to say that, if the Confederate Government
had been successful in taking to sea every vessel which it built,

1871] HAVE SWEPT FROM THE OCEANS. 283

it would have swept from the oceans the commerce of the United
States, would have raised the blockade of at least some of our
ports, and, if by such aid our independence had been secured,
there is little probability that such complaints as have been no-
ticed would have received attention, if, indeed, they would have
been uttered.

In January, 1871, the British Government proposed to the
Government of the United States that a joint commission should
be convened to adjust certain differences between the two na-
tions relative to the fisheries, the Canadian boundary, etc. To
this proposition the latter acceded, on condition that the so-called
Alabama claims should also be considered. To this condition
Great Britain assented. In the Convention the American Com-
missioners proposed an arbitration of these claims. The British
Commissioners replied that her Majesty's Government could
not admit that Great Britain had failed to discharge toward the
United States the duties imposed on her by the rules of inter-
national law, or that she was justly liable to make good to the
United States the losses occasioned by the acts of the cruisers to
which the American Commissioners referred.

Without following the details, it may be summarily stated
that the Geneva Conference ensued. That decided that " Eng-
land should have fulfilled her duties as a neutral by the exercise
of a diligence equal to the gravity of the danger," and that
"the circumstances were of a nature to call for the exercise, on
the part of her Britannic Majesty's Government, of all possible
solicitude for the observance of the rights and duties involved
in the proclamation of neutrality issued by her Majesty on May
13, 1861." The Conference also added : " It can not be denied
that there were moments when its watchfulness seemed to fail,
and when feebleness in certain branches of the public service
resulted in great detriment to the United States."

The claims presented to the Conference for damages done
by our several cruisers were as follows : The Alabama, $7,050,-
293.76 ; the Boston, $400 ; the Chickamauga, $183,070.73 ; the
Florida, $4,057,934.69 ; the Clarence, tender of the Florida,
$66,736.10 ; the Tacony, tender of the Florida, $169,198.81 ;
the Georgia, $431,160.72; the Jefferson Davis, $7,752; the

284: RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

Nashville, §108,433.95 ; the Ketribution, $29,018.53 ; the Sal-
lie, 85,54:0 ; the Shenandoah, $6,656,838.81 ; the Sumter, $179,-
697.67; the Tallahassee, $836,841.83. Total, $19,782,917.60.
Miscellaneous, $479,033 ; increased insurance, $6,146,219.71.
Aggregate, $26,408,170.31.

The Conference rejected the claims against the Boston, the
Jefferson Davis, and the Sallie, and awarded to the United States
Government $15,500,000 in gold.

But the indirect damages upon the commerce of the United
States produced by these cruisers were far beyond the amount
of the claims presented to the Geneva Conference. The num-
ber of ships owned in the United States at the commencement
of the war, which were subsequently transferred to foreign
owners by a British register, was 715, and the amount of their
tonnage was 480,882 tons. Such are the laws of the United
States that not one of them has been allowed to resume an
American register.

In the year 1860 nearly seventy per cent, of the foreign com-
merce of the country was carried on in American ships. But,
in consequence of the danger of capture by our cruisers to
which these ships were exposed, the amount of this commerce
carried by them had dwindled down in 1864 to forty-six per
cent. It continued to decline after the war, and in 1872 it had
fallen to twenty-eight and a half per cent.

Before the war the amount of American tonnage was second
only to that of Great Britain, and we were competing with her
for the first place. At that time the tonnage of the coasting
trade, which had grown from insignificance, was 1,735,863 tons.
Three years later, in 1864, it had declined to about 867,931
tons.

The damage to the articles of export is - illustrated by the
decline in breadstuflis exported from the Northern States. In
the last four months of each of the following years the value of
this export was as follows : 1861, $42,500,000 ; 1862, $27,842,090 ;
1863, $8,909,042 ; 1864, $1,850,819. Some of this decline re-
sulted from good crops in England ; but, in other respects, it
was a consequence of causes growing out of the war.

The increase in the rates of marine insurance, in consequence

1862] THE WILL AND PLEASURE OF THE GOVERNOR. 285

of the danger of capture by the cruisers, was variable. But the
gross amount so paid was presented as a claim to the Confer-
ence, as given above.

CHAPTER XXXII.

Attempts of the United States Government to overthrow States. — Military Governor
of Tennessee appointed. — Object. — Arrests and Imprisonments. — Measures at-
tempted.— Oath required of Voters. — A Convention to amend the State Consti-
tution.— Results. — Attempt in Louisiana. — Martial Law. — Barbarities inflicted. —
Invasion of Plantations. — Order of General Butler, No. 28. — Execution of Mum-
ford. — Judicial System set up. — Civil Affairs to be administered by Military
Authority. — Order of President Lincoln for a Provisional Court. — A Military
Court sustained by the Army. — Words of the Constitution. — "Necessity," the
reason given for the Power to create the Court. — This Doctrine fatal to the
Constitution ; involves its Subversion. — Cause of our Withdrawal from the
Union. — Fundamental Principles unchanged by Force. — The Contest is not
over ; the Strife not ended. — When the War closed, who were the Victors ? —
Let the Verdict of Mankind decide.

On the capture of Nashville, on February 25, 1862, Andrew
Johnson was made military Governor of Tennessee, with the
rank of brigadier-general, and immediately entered on the du-
ties of his office. This step was taken by the President of the
United States under the pretense of executing that provision of
the Constitution which is in these words :

"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this
Union a republican form of government."

The administration was conducted according to the will and
pleasure of the Governor, which was the supreme law. Public
officers were required to take an oath of allegiance to the United
States Government, and upon refusal were expelled from office.
Newspaper-offices were closed, and their publication suppressed.
Subsequently the offices were sold out under the provisions of
the confiscation act. All persons using " treasonable and sedi-
tious" language were arrested and required to take the oath
of allegiance to the Government of the United States, and give
bonds for the future, or to go into exile. Clergymen, upon

286 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

their refusal to take the oath, were confined in the prisons
until they could be sent away. School-teachers and editors
and finally large numbers of private citizens were arrested and
held until they took the oath. Conflicts became frequent in
the adjacent country. Murders and the violent destruction of
property ensued.

On October 21, 1862, an order for an election of members of
the United States Congress in the ninth and tenth State districts
was issued. Every voter was required to give satisfactory evi-
dence of " loyalty " to the Northern Government. Two persons
were chosen and admitted to seats in that body.

That portion of the State in the possession of the forces of
the United States continued without change, under the authority
of the military Governor, until the beginning of 1864. Meas-
ures were then commenced by the Governor for an organiza-
tion of a State government in sympathy with the Government
of the United States. These measures were subsequently
known as the "process for State reconstruction." The Gov-
ernor issued his proclamation for an election of county officers
on March 5th, to be held in the various counties of the State
whenever it was practicable. " It is not expected," says the
Governor, " that the enemies of the United States will propose
to vote, nor is it intended that they be permitted to vote or hold
office." In addition to the possession of the usual qualifica-
tions, the voter was required to take the following oath :

" I solemnly swear that I will henceforth support the Consti-
tution of the United States, and defend it against the assaults of
all its enemies ; that I will hereafter be, and conduct myself as, a
true and faithful citizen of the United States, freely and volun-
tarily claiming to be subject to all the duties and obligations, and
entitled to all the rights and privileges, of such citizenship ; that I
ardently desire the suppression of the present insurrection and re-
bellion against the Government of the United States, the success
of its armies, and the defeat of all those who oppose them ; and
that the Constitution of the United States, and all laws and proc-
lamations made in pursuance thereof, may be speedily and per- .
manently established and enforced over all the people, States,
and Territories thereof ; and, further, that I will hereafter aid

1862] MARTIAL LAW WAS DECLARED. 287

md assist all loyal people in the accomplishment of these re-
sults."

Thus to invoke the Constitution was like Satan quoting
Scripture. The election was a failure, and all further efforts at
reconstruction were for a time suspended. An attempt was
made at the end of 1864 to obtain a so-called convention to
imend the State Constitution, and a body was assembled which,
without any regular authority, adopted amendments. These
were submitted to the voters on February 22, 1865, and de-
3lared to be ratified by a vote of twenty-five thousand, in a
State where the vote, in 1860, was one hundred and forty-five
thousand. Slavery was abolished, other changes made, so-called
State officers elected, and this body of voters was proclaimed
is the reconstructed State of Tennessee, and one of the United
States. Such was the method adopted in Tennessee to execute
the provision of the Constitution which says :

"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this
Union a republican form of government."

The next attempt to guarantee " a republican form of gov-
ernment " to a State was commenced in Louisiana by the mili-
tary occupation of New Orleans, on May 1, 1862. The United
States forces were under the command of Major-General Ben-
jamin F. Butler. Martial law was declared, and Brigadier-
General George F. Shepley was appointed military Governor of
the State. It is unnecessary to relate in detail the hostile ac-
tions which were committed, as they had no resemblance to
such warfare as is alone permissible by the rules of international
law or the usages of civilization. Some examples, taken from
contemporaneous publications of temperate tone, will suffice.

Peaceful and aged citizens, unresisting captives, and non-
combatants, were confined at hard labor with chains attached to
their limbs, and held in dungeons and fortresses ; others were
subjected to a like degrading punishment for selling medicine
to the sick soldiers of the Confederacy. The soldiers of the in-
vading force were incited and encouraged by general orders to
insult and outrage the wives and mothers and sisters of the citi-

288 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

zens ; and helpless women were torn from their homes and sub-
jected to solitary confinement, some in fortresses and prisons —
and one, especially, on an island of barren sand, under a tropical
sun — and were fed with loathsome rations and exposed to vile
insults. Prisoners of war, who surrendered to the naval forces
of the United States on the agreement that they should be re-
leased on parole, were seized and kept in close confinement.
Repeated pretexts were sought or invented for plundering the
inhabitants of the captured city, by fines levied and collected
under threat of imprisonment at hard labor with ball and chain.
The entire population were forced to elect between starvation
by the confiscation of all their property and taking an oath
against their conscience to bear allegiance to the invader. Egress
from the city was refused to those whose fortitude stood the
test, and even to lone and aged women and to helpless children ;
and, after being ejected from their houses and robbed of their
property, they were left to starve in the streets or subsist on
charity. The slaves were driven from the plantations in the
neighborhood of New Orleans, until their owners consented to
share their crops with the commanding General, his brother, and
other officers. When such consent had been extorted, the slaves
were restored to the plantations and compelled to work under
the bayonets of a guard of United States soldiers. Where that
partnership was refused, armed expeditions were sent to the
plantations to rob them of everything that could be removed ;
and even slaves too aged and infirm for work were, in spite of
their entreaties, forced from the homes provided by their own-
ers, and driven to wander helpless on the highway. By an order
(No. 91), the entire property in that part of Louisiana west of the
Mississippi River was sequestrated for confiscation, and officers
were assigned to the duty, with orders to gather up and collect
the personal property, and turn over to the proper officers, upon
their receipts, such of it as might be required for the use of the
United States army ; and to bring the remainder to New Or-
leans, and cause it to be sold at public auction to the highest
bidders. This was an order which, if it had been executed,
would have condemned to punishment, by starvation, at least a
quarter of a million of persons, of all ages, sexes, and condi-

1862] AND AFTERWARD HANGED. 289

tions. The African slaves, also, were not only incited to insur-
rection by every license and encouragement, but numbers of
them were armed for a servile war, which in its nature, as ex-
emplified in other lands, far exceeds the horrors and merciless
atrocities of savages. In many instances the officers were active
and zealous agents in the commission of these crimes, and no in-
stance was known of the refusal of any one of them to partici-
pate in the outrages.

The order of Major-General Butler, to which reference is
made above, was as follows :

" Headquarters, Department of the Gulf, New Orleans.
" As officers and soldiers of the United States have been sub-
ject to repeated insults from women, calling themselves ladies, of
New Orleans, in return for the most scrupulous non-interference
and courtesy on our part, it is ordered hereafter, when any female
shall, by mere gesture or movement, insult, or show contempt for
any officers or soldiers of the United States, she shall be regarded
and held liable to be treated as a woman about town plying her
vocation.

" By command of Major-General Butler."

This order was issued on May 15, 1862, and known as Gen-
eral Order No. 28.

Another example was the cold-blooded execution of "William
B. Mumford on June 7th. He was an unresisting and non-
combatant captive, and there was no offense ever alleged to
have been committed by him subsequent to the date of the
capture of the city. He was charged with aiding and abetting
certain persons in hauling down a United States flag hoisted on
the mint, which was left there by a boat's crew on the morning
of April 26th, and five days before the military occupation of
the city. He was tried before a military commission, sentenced,
and afterward hanged.

On December 15, 1862, Major-General 1ST. P. Banks took
icommand of the military forces, and Major-General Butler re-
tired. The military Governor, early in August, had attempted
to set on foot a judicial system for the city and State. For
this purpose he appointed judges to two of the district courts,
66

290 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

of which the judges were absent, and authorized a third, who
held a commission dated anterior to 1861, to resume the ses-
sions. This was an establishment of three new courts, with
the jurisdiction and powers pertaining to the courts that pre-
viously bore their names, by a military officer representing the
Executive of the United States. These were the only courts
within the territory of the State held by the United States
forces which claimed to have civil jurisdiction. But this juris-
diction was limited to citizens of the parish of Orleans as
against defendants residing in the State. As to other residents
of the State, outside the parish of OrleanSj there was no court
in which they could be sued. In this condition several parishes
were held by the United States forces.

It was therefore necessary to take another step in order to
enable the military power to administer civil affairs. This
involved, as every reader must perceive, a complete subversion
of the fundamental principles of social organization. Accord-
ing to this advanced step, the military power, instituted by an
organization of its own, creates for itself a new nature, fixes
at will its rules and modes of action, and determines the limits
of its power. It absorbs by force the civil functions, with
absolute disregard of the fundamental principle that the mili-
tary shall be subject to the civil authority.

This attempt to administer civil affairs on the basis of mili-
tary authority involved, as has been said, the subversion of fun-
damental principles. The military power may remove obstacles
to the exercise of the civil authority ; but, when these are re-
moved, it can not enter the forum, put on the toga, and sit in
judgment upon civil affairs, any more than the hawk becomes
the dove by assuming her plumage.

However, the next step was taken. It consisted in the pub-
lication of the following order by the President of the United
States :

" Executive Mansion, Washington, October £0, 18G2.

" The insurrection which has for some time prevailed in sev-
eral of the States of this Union, including Louisiana, having tem-
porarily subverted and swept away the civil institutions of that
State, including the judiciary and the judicial authorities of the

1862] THIS SO-CALLED COURT. 291

Union, so that it has become necessary to hold the State in mili-
tary occupation ; and it being indispensably necessary that there
shall be some judicial tribunal existing there capable of adminis-
tering justice, I have therefore thought it proper to appoint, and
I do hereby constitute a provisional court, which shall be a court
of record for the State of Louisiana ; and I do hereby appoint
Charles A. Peabody, of New York, to be a provisional judge to
hold said court, with authority to hear, try, and determine all causes
civil and criminal, including causes in law, equity, revenue, and
admiralty, and particularly with all such powers and jurisdiction
as belong to the District and Circuit Courts of the United States,
conforming his proceedings, so far as possible, to the course of
proceedings and practice which has been customary in the courts
of the United States and Louisiana — his judgment to be final and
conclusive. And I do hereby authorize and empower the said
judge to make and establish such rules and regulations as may be
necessary for the exercise of his jurisdiction, and to appoint a
prosecuting attorney, marshal, and clerk of the said court, who
shall perform the functions of attorney, marshal, and clerk accord-
ing to such proceedings and practice as before mentioned, and
such rules and regulations as may be made and established by
said judge. These appointments are to continue during the pleas-
ure of the President, not extending beyond the military occupa-
tion of the city of New Orleans, or the restoration of the civil
authority in that city and in the State of Louisiana. These officers
shall be paid out of the contingent fund of the War Department,
and compensation shall be as follows.

" By the President : Abraham Lincoln.

" W. H. Seward, Secretary of State:''

This so-called court, as its judge said, " was always governed
by the rules and principles of law, adhering to all the rules and
forms of civil tribunals, and avoiding everything like a military
administration of justice. In criminal matters it summoned a
grand jury, and submitted to it all charges for examination.5'
Yet, when its judgments and mandates were to be executed,
that execution could come only from the same power by which
the court was constituted, and that was the military power of
the United States holding the country in military occupation.
Therefore, to this end the military and naval forces were

292 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

pledged. Hence it was the military power, as has been said,
administering civil affairs.

The Constitution of the United States says :

" The judicial power of the United States shall be vested in
one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress
may from time to time ordain and establish." *

This provisional court was neither ordained nor established
by Congress ; it had not, therefore, vested in it any of the judi-
cial power of the United States. Neither does the Constitution
give to Congress any power by which it can constitute an inde-
pendent State court within the limits of any State in the Union,
as Louisiana was said to be.

This provisional court, therefore, was a mere instrument
of martial law, constituted by the Commander-in-Chief of the
United States forces, not for the usual purposes which justify
the establishment of such courts, but to enter the domain of
civil affairs and administer justice between man and man in the
ordinary transactions of peaceful life. The ministers of martial
law are only the representatives of the conqueror, and they sit
in his seat of authority to relieve him from the burden of exces-
sive duties, and to administer justice to offenders against his
authority and the social welfare, during his presence. On such
grounds the existence of such courts is justified ; but, for the
establishment of a court like this provisional one, no legitimate
authority is to be found either in the Constitution of the United
States or outside of it. "Inter arma silent leges " is a maxim
nearly two thousand years old ; it means that, under the exercise
of military power, the civil administration ceases.

"When called upon to state any just grounds for such a meas-
ure, the invader has usually replied that he had, ex necessitate
rei, the right to establish such a tribunal. Thus said the Com-
mander-in-Chief of the United States, and Congress acquiesced
— indeed, leading the way, it had urged the same plea to jus-
tify the passage of its confiscation act. The judiciary has ob-
served the silence of acquiescence. Thus the doctrine of neces-
sity— the rule that, in the administration of affairs, both military

* Constitution of the United States, Article III, section 1.

1862] WHAT, THEN, IS THIS NECESSITY? 293

and civil, the necessity of the case may and does afford ample
authority and power to subvert or to suspend the provisions
of the Constitution, and to exercise powers and do acts unwar-
ranted by the grants of that instrument — has apparently become
incorporated as an unwritten clause of the Constitution of the
United States.

What, then, is this necessity ? Its definition would require
an explanation, from the persons who act under it, of the objects
for which, in every instance, they act. Suffice it to say that the
political wisdom of mankind has consecrated this truth as a fun-
damental maxim, that no man can be trusted with the exercise
of power and be, at the same time, the final judge of the limits
within which that power may be exercised. It has fortified this
with other maxims, such as, " Necessity is the plea of despot-
ism " ; " Necessity knows no law." The fathers of the Consti-
tution of the United States sought to limit every grant of power
so exactly that it should observe its bounds as invariably as a
planetary body does its orbit. Yet within the first hundred
years of its existence all these limits have been disregarded, and
the people have silently accepted the plea of necessity.

It must be manifest to every one that there has been a fatal
subversion of the Constitution of the United States. In esti-
mating the results of the war, this is one of the most deplor-
able ; because it is self-evident that, when a constitutional Gov-
ernment once oversteps the limits fixed for the exercise of its
powers, there is nothing beyond to check its further aggres-
sion, no place where it will voluntarily halt until it reaches
the subjugation of all who resist the usurpation. This was
the sole issue involved in the conflict of the United States
Government with the Confederate States ; and every other is-
sue, whether pretended or real, partook of its nature, and was
subordinate to this one. Let us repeat an illustration : In strict
observance of their inalienable rights, in abundant caution re-
served, when they formed the compact or Constitution — which-
ever the reader pleases to call it — of the United States, the
Confederate States sought to withdraw from the Union they
had assisted to create, and to form a new and independent one
among themselves. Then the Government of the United States

294 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

broke tlirougli all the limits fixed for the exercise of the powers
with which it had been endowed, and, to accomplish its own
will, assumed, under the plea of necessity, powers unwritten
and unknown in the Constitution, that it might thereby proceed
to the extremity of subjugation. Thus it will be perceived
that the question still lives. Although the Confederate armies
may have left the field, although the citizen soldiers may have
retired to the pursuits of peaceful life, although the Confeder-
ate States may have renounced their new Union, they have
proved their indestructibility by resuming their former places
in the old one, where, by the organic law, they could only be
admitted as republican, equal, and sovereign States of the
Union. And, although the Confederacy as an organization may
have ceased to exist as unquestionably as though it had never
been formed, the fundamental principles, the eternal truths,
uttered when our colonies in 1776 declared their independence,
on which the Confederation of 1781 and the Union of 1788
were formed, and which animated and guided in the organ-
ization of the Confederacy of 1861, yet live, and will survive,
however crushed they may be by despotic force, however deep
they may be buried under the debris of crumbling States, how-
ever they may be disavowed by the time-serving and the faint-
hearted ; yet I believe they have the eternity of truth, and that
in God's appointed time and place they will prevail.

The contest is not over, the strife is not ended. It has only
entered on a new and enlarged arena. The champions of con-
stitutional liberty must spring to the struggle, like the armed
men from the seminated dragon's teeth, until the Government
of the United States is brought back to its constitutional limits,
and the tyrant's plea of " necessity " is bound in chains strong

as adamant :

11 For Freedom's battle once begun,
Bequeathed by bleeding sire to son,
Though baffled oft, is ever won."

When the war closed, who were the victors ? Perhaps it is
too soon to answer that question. ISTevertheless, every day, as
time rolls on, we look with increasing pride upon the struggle
our people made for constitutional liberty. The war was one in

1862] ON WHICH SIDE WAS THE VICTORY? 295

which fundamental principles were involved ; and, as force de-
cides no truth, hence the issue is still undetermined, as has
been already shown. We have laid aside our swords ; we have
ceased our hostility ; we have conceded the physical strength
of the Northern States. But the question still lives, and all
nations and peoples that adopt a confederated agent of govern-
ment will become champions of our cause. While contemplat-
ing the Northern States — with their Federal Constitution gone,
ruthlessly destroyed under the tyrant's plea of " necessity,"
their State sovereignty made a byword, and their people ab-
sorbed in an aggregated mass, no longer, as their fathers left
them, protected by reserved rights against usurpation — the
question naturally arises : On which side was the victory ? Let
the verdict of mankind decide.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

Further Attempts of the United States Government to overthrow States. — Election
of Members of Congress under the Military Governor of Louisiana. — The Voters
required to take an Oath to support the United States Government. — The State
Law violated. — Proposition to hold a State Convention ; postponed. — The Presi-
dent's Plan for making Union States out of a Fragment of a Confederate State.
— His Proclamation. — The Oath required. — Message. — " The War-Power our
Main Reliance." — Not a Feature of a Republican Government in the Plan.
— What are the True Principles ? — The Declaration of Independence asserts
them. — Who had a Right to institute a Government for Louisiana ? — Its People
only. — Under what Principles could the Government of the United States do it ?
— As an Invader to subjugate. — Effrontery and Wickedness of the Administra-
tion.— It enforces a Fiction. — Attempt to make Falsehood as good as Truth. —
Proclamation for an Election of State Officers. — Proclamation for a State Con-
vention.— The Monster Crime against the Liberties of Mankind. — Proceedings in
Arkansas. — Novel Method adopted to amend the State Constitution. — Perversion
of Republican Principles in Virginia. — Proceedings to create the State of West
Virginia. — A Falsehood by Act of Congress. — Proceedings considered under
Fundamental Principles. — These Acts sustained by the United States Govern-
ment.— Assertion of Thaddeus Stevens. — East Virginia Government. — Removed
to Richmond and upheld by the United States Government. — Such Acts caused
Entire Subversion of States. — Mere Fictions thus constituted.

But to resume our narration. On December 3d, in compli-
ance with an order of the military Governor, Shepley, a so-called
election was held for members of the United States Congress in

296 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

the first and second State districts, each composed of about half
the city of New Orleans and portions of the surrounding parishes.
Those who had taken the oath of allegiance were allowed to
vote. In the first district, Benjamin F. Flanders received
2,370 votes, and all others 273. In the second district, Michael
Halm received 2,799 votes, and all others 2,318. These persons
presented themselves at Washington, and resolutions to admit
them to seats were reported by the Committee on Elections in
the House of Representatives. It was urged that the military
Governor had conformed in every particular to the Constitution
and laws of Louisiana, so that the election had every essential
of a regular election in a time of most profound peace, with the
exception of the fact that the proclamation for the election was
issued by the military instead of the civil Governor of the State.
The law required the proclamation to be issued by the civil
Governor ; so that, if these persons were admitted to seats after
an election called by a military Governor, Congress thereby rec-
ognized as valid a military order of a so-called Executive that
unceremoniously set aside a provision of the State civil law, and
was anti-republican and a positive usurpation. Again, all the
departments of the United States Government had acted on the
theory that the Confederate States were in a state of insurrec-
tion, and that the Union was unbroken ; under this theory, they
could come back to the Union only with all the laws unimpaired
which they themselves had made for their own government.
Congress was as much bound to uphold the laws of Louisiana, in
all their extent and in all their parts, as it was to uphold the
laws of New York, or any other State, whose civil policy had
not been disturbed. Both those persons, however, were ad-
mitted to seats — yeas, 92 ; nays, 44.

The work of constituting the State of- Louisiana out o1
the small portion of her population and of her territory held
by the forces of the United States still went on. The propo-
sition now was to hold a so-called State" Convention and frame
a new Constitution, but its advocates were so few that no-
thing was accomplished during the year 1863. The object
of the military power was to secure such civil authority as
to enforce the abolition of slavery ; and, until the way was

1863] OUT OF A FRAGMENT. 297

clear to that result, every method of organization was held in
abeyance.

Meanwhile, on December 8, 1863, the President of the
United States issued a proclamation which contained his plan
for making a Union State out of a fragment of a Confederate
State, and also granting an amnesty to the general mass of the
people on taking an oath of allegiance. His plan was in these
words :

" And I do further proclaim, declare, and make known that,
whenever, in any of the States of Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Mis-
sissippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and
North Carolina, a number of persons, not less than one tenth in
number of the votes cast in such State at the Presidential election
of 1860, each having taken the following oath and not having
since violated it, and being a qualified voter by the election laws
of the State existing immediately before the so-called act of
secession, and excluding all others, shall reestablish a State gov-
ernment which shall be republican, and in nowise contravening
said oath, such shall be recognized as the true government of the
State, and the State shall receive thereunder the benefits of the
constitutional provision which declares that ' the United States
shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of
government, and shall protect each of them against invasion ; and,
on application of the Legislature or the Executive (when the
Legislature can not be convened), against domestic violence.' "

The oath required to be taken was as follows :

" I, , do solemnly swear, in presence of Almighty God,

that 1 will henceforth support, protect, and defend the Constitu-
tion of the United States and the Union of the States thereunder ;
and that I will in like manner abide by and faithfully support all
acts of Congress, passed during the existing rebellion, with refer-
ence to slaves, so long and so far as not repealed, modified, or held
void by Congress, or by decision of the Supreme Court, and that
I will, in like manner, abide by and faithfully support all procla-
mations of the President, made during the existing rebellion, hav-
ing reference to slaves, so long and so far as not modified or
declared void by decision of the Supreme Court. So help me
God ! "

298 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

In a message to Congress, of the same date with the pre-
ceding proclamation, the President of the United States, after
explaining the objects of the proclamation, says :

" In the midst of other cares, however important, we must not
lose sight of the fact that the war-power is still our main reliance.
To that power alone can we look, for a time, to give confidence to
the people in the contested regions that the insurgent power will
not again overrun them."

The intelligent reader will observe that this plan of the
President of the United States to restore States to the Union,
to occupy the places of those which he had been attempting to
destroy, does not contain a single feature to secure a republican
form of government, nor a single provision authorized by the
Constitution of the United States. With his usurped war-
power to sustain him in the work of destruction, he found it
easy to destroy ; but he was powerless to create or to restore.
In the former case, he had gone imperiously forward, tramp-
ling under foot every American political principle, and break-
ing through every constitutional limitation. In the latter case,
he could not advance one step without recognizing sound po-
litical principles and complying with their dictates. On such
foundation he must construct, or his work would be like the
house founded on the sand.

It will now be shown what the true principles are, and
then that the President of the United States perverted them,
misstated them, and sought to reach his ends by groundless
fabrications — as if he would enforce a fiction or establish
a fallacy to be as good as truth. It might be still further
shown, if it had not already become self-evident, that this
method was pursued with such a perversity and wickedness as
to render it a characteristic feature of that war administration
on whose skirts is the blood of more than a million of human
beings.

The whole science of a republican government is to be found
in this sentence of the Declaration of Independence, made by the
representatives of the United States of America, in Congress
assembled, on July 4, 1776. It says :

1862] THE POWER OF THE INVADER. 299

" That, to secure these rights [certain unalienable rights], gov-
ernments are instituted among men — deriving their just powers
from the consent of the governed ; that, whenever any form of
government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of
the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new govern-
ment, 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. "

Thus it will be seen that civil and political sovereignty was
held to be implanted by our Creator in the individual, and no
human government has any original, inherent, just sovereignty
whatever, and no acquired sovereignty either, beyond that which
may be granted to it by the individuals as " most likely to effect
their safety and happiness." " Deriving their just powers from
the consent of the governed," says the Declaration of Indepen-
dence. All other powers than those thus derived are not " just
powers." Any government exercising powers " not just " has
no right to survive. " It is the right of the people to alter or
abolish it," says the Declaration of Independence, " and to insti-
tute a new government."

Who, then, had a right to " institute " a republican govern-
ment for Louisiana ? No human beings whatever but the peo-
ple of Louisiana ; not the strangers, not the slaves, but the man-
hood that knew its rights and dared to maintain them. Under
what principles, then, could a citizen of Massachusetts, whether
clothed in regimentals or a civilian's dress, come into Louisiana
and attempt to set up a State government? Under no prin-
ciples, but only by the power of the invader and the usurper.
If the true principles of a republican government had prevailed
and could have been enforced when Major-General Butler ap-
peared at New Orleans, he would have been hanged on the
first lamp-post, and his successor, Major-General Banks, would
have been hanged on the second.

Under what principles, then, could the Government of the
United States appear in Louisiana and attempt to institute a
State government ? As has been said above, it was the act of
an invader and a usurper. Yet it proposed to " institute " a
republican State government. The absurdity of such intention

300 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

is too manifest to need argument. How could an invader at-
tempt to "institute" a republican State government? an act
which can be done only by the free and unconstrained action
of the people themselves. It has been charged that this and
every similar act of the President of the United States was in
violation of his duty to maintain and observe the requirements
and restrictions of the Constitution, and to uphold in each State
a republican form of government. To specify, the following
is offered as an example. He did " proclaim, declare, and make
known —

that, whenever any number of persons, not less than one tenth
of the number of voters at the last Presidential election, shall
reestablish a State government, which shall be republican [!] and
in no wise contravening said oath, such shall be recognized as the
true government of the State."

One tenth of the voters can not establish a republican State
government, which requires the consent of the people of the
State to make its powers just, as has been shown above. There-
fore, such a government had not one element of republicanism
in it. But what is astonishingly remarkable is the stultification
of requiring the one tenth of the people to " reestablish a State
government, which shall be republican and in no wise contraven-
ing said oath." Either he did not know how a republican State
government was "instituted," or, if he knew, then he was a
participant in that perversity and wickedness, which was above
charged to be the characteristic of his war Administration.

It will now be shown how he sought " to enforce a fiction
or establish a fallacy to be as good as truth." Of the govern-
ment thus established by one tenth of the voters, he says :

" Such shall be recognized as the true government of the State,
and the State shall receive thereunder the benefits of the constitu-
tional provision which declares that ' the United States shall guar-
antee to every State in this Union a republican form of govern-
ment.' "

It is proper here to inquire who and what was the tenth to
whom this power to rule the State was to be given. It will be

1862] UNCONDITIONED CONSENT. 301

seen, by reference to the proclamation, that each voter of the
one tenth, in order to be qualified, is required to take an oath
with certain promises in it, which are prescribed by an outside
or foreign authority. This condition of itself is fatal to a repub-
lican State government, that " derives its just powers from the
consent of the governed." Free consent — not cheerful consent,
but unconstrained and unconditioned consent — is required that
" just powers " may be derived from it. In this instance, the
invader prescribes the requisite qualifications of the voter, and
makes it a condition that the government established shall " in
no wise contravene " certain stipulations expressed in the oath
taken to give the qualification. A State government thus formed
derives its powers from the consent of the invader, and not
" from the consent of the governed." It has no " just powers "
whatever. It is a groundless fabrication. Yet the President of
the United States declared, " The State shall receive thereunder
the benefits of the constitutional provision which declares that
' the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union
a republican form of government.' " Is not this an attempt,
while pretending to establish, to destroy true republicanism ?

Now, let the reader bear in mind that these remarks relate to
Louisiana alone, of which more remains to be told ; and that
there were eleven States that withdrew from the Union, whose
restoration was to be effected on this rotten system, in addition
to several constitutional amendments, the adoption of which
was to be effected and secured by the votes of these groundless
fabrications, in which a fiction was to be considered as good as
the truth. Having attained all these facts which are yet to be
stated, he may begin to form some estimate of the remnants of
the Constitution, and of the probable existence of any true
union of the States.

To proceed with the narration. Under the above-mentioned
proclamation of the President of the United States, Major- Gen-
eral Banks issued at New Orleans, on January 11, 1864, a proc-
lamation for an election of State officers, and for members of
a State Constitutional Convention. The State officers, when
elected, were to constitute, as the proclamation said, " the civil
government of the State under the Constitution and laws of

302 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

Louisiana, except so much of the said Constitution and laws
as recognize, regulate, or relate to slavery, which, being incon-
sistent with the present condition of public affairs, and plainly-
inapplicable to any class of persons now existing within its lim-
its, must be suspended." The number of votes given for State
officers was 10,270. The population of the State in 1860 was
708,902. The so-called Governor-elect was inaugurated on
March 4th, and on March 11th he was invested with the powers
hitherto exercised by the military Governor for the President of
the United States. On the same day Major-General Banks is-
sued an order relative to the election of delegates to a so-called
State Convention. The most important provisions of it defined
the qualifications of voters. The delegates were elected entirely
within the army lines of the forces of the United States. The
so-called Convention assembled and adopted a so-called Consti-
tution, declaring " instantaneous, universal, uncompensated, un-
conditional emancipation of slaves." The meager vote on the
Constitution was, for its adoption, 6,836 ; for its rejection, 1,566.
The vote of New Orleans was, yeas 4,664, nays 789. This state
of affairs continued after the close of the war. Violent dis-
putes arose as to the validity of the so-called Constitution. The
so-called Legislature elected under it adopted Article XIII as
an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, pro-
hibiting the existence of slavery in the United States.

It will be seen from these facts that the State of Louisiana
was not a republican State instituted by the consent of the gov-
erned ; that its Legislature was an unconstitutional body, with-
out any " just powers," and that the vote which it gave for the
amendment of the Constitution of the United States was no
vote at all ; for it was given by a body that had no authority to
give it, because it had no " just powers " whatever. Yet this
vote was counted among those necessary to secure the passage
of the constitutional amendment. TVas this an attempt to en-
force a fiction or to establish the truth ? Such are the deeds
which go to make up the record of crime against the liberties
of mankind.

The proceedings in Arkansas to "institute" a republican
State government were inaugurated by an order from the Presi-

1862] THE NOVEL METHOD. 303

dent of the United States to Major-General Steele, command-
ing the United States forces in Arkansas. At this time the
regular government of the State, established by the consent of
the people, was in full operation outside the lines of the United
States army. The military order of the President, dated Janu-
ary 20, 1864, said :

" Sundry citizens of the State of Arkansas petitioned me that
an election may be held in that State, in which to elect a Gov-
ernor ; that it be assumed at that election, and thenceforward, that
the Constitution and laws of the State, as before the rebellion, are
in full force, except that the Constitution is so modified as to
declare that there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servi-
tude," etc.

The order then directs the election to be held for State offi-
cers, prescribes the qualifications of voters and the oath to be
taken, and directs the General to administer to the officers thus
chosen an oath to support the Constitution of the United States,
and the "modified Constitution of the State of Arkansas,"
when tHey shall be declared qualified and empowered imme-
diately to enter upon the duties of their offices.

The reader can scarcely fail to notice the novel method here
adopted to modify or amend the State Constitution. It should
be called the process by " assumption " — that is, assume it to
be modified, and it is so modified. Then the President orders
the officers-elect to be required to swear, on their oath, to sup-
port "the modified Constitution of the State of Arkansas."
Now, unless the Constitution was thus modified by assuming
it to be modified, these State officers were required by oath to
support that which did not exist. But it was not so modified.
No Constitution or other instrument in the world containing a
grant of powers can be modified by assumption, unless it be the
Constitution of the United States, as shown by recent experi-
ence. Yet the chief object for which these officers were elected
and qualified was to carry out these so-called modifications of
the State Constitution. This adds another to the deeds of
darkness done in the name of republicanism.

Meantime some persons in the northern part of Arkansas,

304 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

acting under the proclamation of December 8, 1863, got to-
gether a so-called State Convention on January 8, 1864, and
adopted a revised Constitution, containing the slavery prohi-
bition, etc. This was ordered to be submitted to a popular vote,
and at the same time State officers were to be elected. Presi-
dent Lincoln acceded to these proceedings after they had been
placed under the direction of the military commander, General
Steele. The election was held, the Constitution received twelve
thousand votes, and the State officers were declared to be elected.
Then Arkansas came forth a so-called republican State, " insti-
tuted " by military authority, and, of course, received the benefit
of the constitutional provision, which declares that "the United
States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican
form of government." It should be added that Arkansas, thus
" instituted " a State, was regarded by the Government of the
United States as competent to give as valid a vote as New
York, Massachusetts, or any other Northern State, for the rati-
fication of Article XIII, as an amendment to the Constitution
of the United States, prohibiting the existence of slavery in the
United States. The vote was thus given ; it was counted, and
served to make up the exact number deemed by the managers
to be necessary. Thus was fraud and falsehood triumphant
over popular rights and fundamental law.

The perversion of true republican principles was greater in
Virginia than in any other State, through the cooperation of
the Government of the United States. In the winter of 1860-
'61 a special session of the Legislature of the State convened at
Richmond and passed an act directing the people to elect dele-
gates to a State Convention to be held on February 14, 1861.
The Convention assembled, and was occupied with the subject
of Federal relations and the adjustment of difficulties until the
call for troops by President Lincoln was made, when an ordi-
nance of secession was passed. The contiguity of the north-
western counties of the State to Ohio and Pennsylvania led to
the manifestation of much opposition to the withdrawal of the
State from the Union, and the determination to reorganize that
portion into a separate State. This resulted in the assembling
of a so-called convention of delegates at Wheeling on June

1862] THE PROCESS OF ASSUMPTION. 305

11th. One of its first acts was to provide for a reorganization
of the State government of Virginia by declaring its offices
vacant, and the appointment of new officers throughout. This
new organization assumed to be the true representative of the
State of Virginia, and, after various fortunes, was recognized
as such by President Lincoln, as will be presently seen. The
next act of the Convention was " to provide for the formation
of a new State out of a portion of the territory of this State."
Under this act delegates were elected to a so-called Constitu-
tional Convention which framed a so-called Constitution for
the new State of West Virginia, which was submitted to a vote
of the people in April, 1862, and carried by a large majority
of that section. Meantime the Governor of the reorganized
government of Virginia, above mentioned, issued his proclama-
tion calling for an election of members, and the assembling of
an extra session of the so-called Legislature. This body assem-
bled on May 6, 1862, and, adopting the new Federal process of
assumption, it assumed to be the Legislature of the State of
Virginia. This body, or Legislature, so called, immediately
passed an act giving its consent to the formation of a new State
out of the territory of Virginia. The formal act of consent
and the draft of the new Constitution of West Virginia above
mentioned were ordered by this so-called Legislature to be sent
to the Congress of the United States, then in session, with the
request that " the said new State be admitted into the Union."
On December 31, 1862, the President of the United States ap-
proved an act of Congress entitled " An act for the admission
of the State of West Virginia into the Union," etc. The act
recited as follows :

" Whereas, The Legislature of Virginia, by an act passed May
13, 1862, did give its consent to the formation of a new State
within the jurisdiction of the said State of Virginia, to be known
by the name of West Virginia," etc.

Again it recites :

" And whereas both the Convention and the Legislature afore-
said have requested that the new State should be admitted into
the Union, and the Constitution aforesaid being republican in
67

306 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

form. Congress doth hereby consent that the said forty-eight coun-
ties may be formed into a separate and independent State."

It were well to pause for a moment and consider these pro-
ceedings in the light of fundamental republican principles. The
State of Virginia was not a confederation, but a republic, or na-
tion. Its government was instituted with the consent of the gov-
erned, and its powers, therefore, were " just powers." When the
State Convention at Richmond passed an ordinance of secession,
which was subsequently ratified by sixty thousand majority, it was
as valid an act for the people of Virginia as was ever passed by a
representative body. The legally expressed decision of the ma-
jority was the true voice of the State. When, therefore, disor-
derly persons in the northwestern counties of the State assem-
bled and declared the ordinance of secession " to be null and
void," they rose up against the authority of the State. When
they proceeded to elect delegates to a convention to resist the
act of the State, and that Convention assembled and organized
and proceeded to action, an insurrection against the govern-
ment of Virginia was begun. When the Convention next de-
clared the State offices to be vacant, and proceeded to fill them
by the choice of Francis H. Pierpont for Governor, and other
State officers, assuming itself to be the true State Convention of
Virginia, it not only declared what notoriously did not exist,
but it committed an act of revolution. And, when the so-called
State officers elected by it entered upon their duties, they inau-
gurated a revolution. The subsequent organization of the State
of West Virginia and its separation from the State of Virginia
were acts of secession. Thus we have, in these movements,
insurrection, revolution, and secession.

The reader, in his simplicity, may naturally expect to find
the Government of the United States arrayed, with all its mili-
tary forces, against these illegitimate proceedings. Oh, no ! It
made all the difference in the world, with the ministers of that
Government, " whose ox it was that was gored by the bull."
She was the nursing-mother to the wThole thing, and to insure
its vitality fed it, not, like the fabled bird, with her own blood,
but by the butchery of the mother of States. The words of the

1862] TO PERPETUATE A MONSTROUS USURPATION. 307

Constitution of the United States applicable to this case are
these :

" No new State shall be formed or erected within the jurisdic-
tion of any other State ; nor any State be formed by the junc-
tion of two or more States, or parts of States, without the consent
of the Legislatures of the States concerned, as well as of the Con-
gress." *

Will any intelligent person assert that the consent of the
State of Yirginia was given to the formation of this new State,
or that the government of Francis H. Pierpont held the true
and lawful jurisdiction of the State of Virginia ? Yet the Con-
gress of the United States asserted in the act above quoted that
"the Legislature of Yirginia did give its consent to the for-
mation of a new State within the jurisdiction of the State of
Yirginia." This was not true, but was an attempt, by an act of
Congress, to aid a fraud and perpetuate a monstrous usurpation.
For there is no grant of power to Congress in the Constitution
nor in the American theory of government to justify it. If it
is said that the government of Francis H. Pierpont was the only
one recognized by Congress as the government of the State of
Yirginia, that does not alter the fact. The recognition of Con-
gress can not make a State of an organization which is not a
State. There is no grant of power to Congress in the Constitu-
tion for that purpose. If it is said that the government of Fran-
cis H. Pierpont was established by the only qualified voters in
the State of Yirginia, that is as equally unfounded as the other
assertions. Neither the Congress of the United States nor the
Government of the United States can determine the qualifica-
tions of voters at an election for delegates to a State Constitu-
tional Convention, or for the choice of State officers. There
was no grant of power either to the President or to Congress
for that purpose. All these efforts were usurpations, by which
it was sought, through groundless fabrications, to reach certain
ends, and they add to the multitude of deeds which constitute
the crime committed against States and the liberties of the
people.

* Constitution of the United States, Article IV, section 3.

308 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

When the question of the admission of West Virginia was
before the House of Representatives of the United States Con-
gress, Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania, declared, with
expiatory frankness, that he would not stultify himself by claim-
ing the act to be constitutional. He said, " We know that it is
not constitutional, but it is necessary."

It now became necessary for the government of Virginia,
represented by Francis H. Pierpont, to emigrate ; for the new
State of West Virginia embraced the territory in which he was
located. He therefore departed, with his carpet-bag, and located
at Alexandria, on the Potomac, which became the seat of gov-
ernment of so-called East Virginia. On February 13, 1S64,
a convention, consisting of a representative from each of the
ten counties in part or wholly under the control of the United
States forces, assembled at Alexandria to amend the Constitu-
tion of the State of Virginia. Some sections providing for the
abolition of slavery were declared to be added to the Constitu-
tion, and the so-called Convention adjourned. Nothing of im-
portance occurred until after the occupation of Richmond by
the United States forces. On May 9, 1865, President Johnson
issued an " Executive order to reestablish the authority of the
United States, and execute the laws within the geographical
limits known as the State of Virginia." The order closed in
these words :

" That, to carry into effect the guarantee of the Federal Con-
stitution of a republican form of State government, and afford the
advantage of the security of domestic laws, as well as to complete
the reestablishment of the authority of the laws of the United
States and the full and complete restoration of peace within the
limits aforesaid, Francis H. Pierpont, Governor of the State of
Virginia, will be aided by the Federal Government, so far as may
be necessary, in the lawful measures which he may take for the
extension and administration of the State government throughout
the geographical limits of said State."

This order recognized the factitious organization, which was
begun in West Virginia and then transplanted to Alexandria, as ;
the true government of the State of Virginia, and, by the aid of

1862] WAS NOT KEPUBLICAN. 309

the United States Government, was now removed to Richmond
and set up there. ~No person was allowed to take any part in
this government or to vote under it unless he had previously
taken the purgatorial oath above mentioned, and had not held
office under the Confederate or any State government. Thus,
the taking of this oath, which was prescribed by the President
of the United States, became the most important of the quali-
fications of a voter. Here was a condition prescribed by a for-
eign authority as necessary to be fulfilled before the first act
could be done by a citizen relative to his State government.
Such a government was not republican, for its powers were not
derived from the consent of the governed. Its powers were
derived from voters who had, under oath, said :

" I will abide by and faithfully support all acts of Congress,
passed during the existing rebellion with reference to slaves, so
long and so far as not repealed, modified, or held void by Con-
gress or by decision of the Supreme Court ; and that I will in like
manner abide by and faithfully support all proclamations of the
President, made during the existing rebellion having reference to
slaves, so long and so far as not modified or declared void by de-
cision of the Supreme Court."

Such a State government was not in the interest of the
people, but in the interest of the United States Government.
The true republican organization, which had been " instituted "
by the free " consent of the governed to effect their safety and
happiness," had been repudiated by the Government of the
United States as in rebellion to it ; and this fiction had been set
up, not by the free consent of the people, which alone could
give to it any " just powers," not " to effect their safety and
happiness," for which alone a republican State government can
be instituted, but solely to secure the safety and supremacy of
the Government of the United States. The qualification of the
voter was prescribed by the United States Government, and the
oath required him to recognize allegiance to the Union as su-
ipreme over that to the State of which he was a citizen. Thus
[the voters under the State government of Yirginia were re-
quired first to protect the Government of the United States,

310 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

and then they were at liberty to look after their own interests
through the State government.

Now, it is charged that such acts on the part of the United
States Government were not only entirely unconstitutional, but
they caused the complete subversion of the States. The Con-
stitution of the United States knows States in the Union only
as they are republican States. The Government of the United
States was conscious of this fact, and publicly recognized it when
it promised to guarantee a republican form of government to
each one that it sought to reconstruct. But it violated the Con-
stitution when it sought to place in the Union mere fictions
which had not the first element of a republic, which were
groundless fabrications of its own minions that could not have
existed a day without the military support which they received.
Further, it is to be remembered that it does not come within
the grants of the Constitution, consequently not within the pow-
ers of the Government of the United States, to institute a re-
publican form of government at any time or in any place.
Such an act is neither contemplated nor known in the Consti-
tution, as such a government can be instituted only by the free
consent of those who are to be governed by it. Any interfer-
ence on the part of the United States to limit, modify, or con-
trol this consent goes directly to the nature and objects of the
State government, and it ceases to be republican. To admit a
State under such a government is entirely unauthorized, revo-
lutionary, subversive of the Constitution, and destructive of the
Union of States.

1862] DONE ENOUGH FOR GLORY. 311

CHAPTER XXXIV.

Address to the Army of Eastern Virginia by the President. — Army of General Pope.
— Position of McClellan. — Advance of General Jackson. — Atrocious Orders of
General Pope. — Letter of McClellan on the Conduct of the War. — Letter of the
President to General Lee. — Battle of Cedar Run. — Results of the Engagement. —
Reinforcements to the Enemy. — Second Battle of Manassas. — Capture of Ma-
nassas Junction. — Captured Stores. — The Old Battle-Field. — Advance of Gen-
eral Longstreet. — Attack on him. — Attack on General Jackson. — Darkness of
the Night.— Battle at Ox Hill. — Losses of the Enemy.

ing address :

This defeat of McClellan's army led me to issue the follow-

" Richmond, July 5, 1862.
11 To the Army of Eastern Virginia.

" Soldiers : I congratulate you on the series of brilliant victo-
ries which, under the favor of Divine Providence, you have lately
won, and, as the President of the Confederate States, do heartily
tender to you the thanks of the country, whose just cause you
have so skillfully and heroically served. Ten days ago an invad-
ing army, vastly superior to you in numbers and the materials of
war, closely beleaguered your capital and vauntingly proclaimed
its speedy conquest ; you marched to attack the enemy in his
intrenchments ; with well-directed movements and death-defying
valor you charged upon him in his strong positions, drove him
from field to field over a distance of more than thirty-five miles,
and despite his reinforcements compelled him to seek safety under
the cover of his gunboats, where he now lies cowering before the
army so lately derided and threatened with entire subjugation.
The fortitude with which you have borne toil and privation, the
gallantry with which you have entered into each successive battle,
must have been witnessed to be fully appreciated ; but a grateful
people will not fail to recognize you, and to bear you in loved
remembrance. Well may it be said of you that you have ' done
enough for glory ' ; but duty to a suffering country and to the cause
of constitutional liberty claims from you yet further effort. Let it
be your pride to relax in nothing which can promote your future
efficiency ; your one great object being to drive the invader from
your soil, and, carrying your standards bevond the outer bounda-

312 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

ries of the Confederacy, to wring from, an unscrupulous foe the
recognition of your birthright, community independence.

"Jefferson Davis."

After the retreat of General McClellan to Westover, his
army remained inactive about a month. His front was closely
watched by a brigade of cavalry, and preparations made to
resist a renewal of his attempt upon Richmond from his new
base. The main body of our army awaited the development of
his intentions, and no important event took place.

Meantime, another army of the enemy, under Major-General
Pope, advanced southward from Washington, and crossed the
Rappahannock as if to seize Gordons ville, and move thence
upon Richmond. Contemporaneously the enemy appeared in
force at Fredericksburg, and threatened the railroad from Gor-
donsville to Richmond, apparently for the purpose of coop-
erating with the movements of General Pope. To meet the
advance of the latter, and restrain, as far as possible, the atroci-
ties which he threatened to perpetrate upon our defenseless
citizens, General Jackson, with his own and Ewell's division,
was ordered to proceed on July 13 th toward Gordons ville.

The nature of the atrocities here alluded to may be inferred
from the orders of Major-General Pope, which were as follows :

" Headquarters op the Army of Virginia, Washington, July 18, 1862.
" (General Orders, No. 5.)

" Hereafter, as far as practicable, the troops of this command
will subsist upon the country in which their operations are carried
on. In all cases supplies for this purpose will be taken by the
officers to whose department they properly belong, under the or-
ders of the commanding officer of the troops for whose use they
are intended. Vouchers will be given to the owners, stating on
their face that they will be payable at the close of the war upon
sufficient testimony being furnished that such owners have been
loyal citizens of the United States since the date of the vouch-
ers. . . .

"By command of Major-General Pope :

" George D. Ruggles,
" Colonel, A. A.- General^ and Chief of Staff"

1862] THE HOUSE SHALL BE RAZED. 313

" Headquarters of the Army of Virginia, July 18, 1862.
" (General Orders, No. 6.)

" Hereafter, in any operations of the cavalry forces in this
command, no supply or baggage trains of any description will be
used, unless so stated especially in the order for the movement.
Two days' cooked rations will be carried on the persons of the
men, and all villages and neighborhoods through which they pass
will be laid under contribution in the manner specified by General
Orders, No. 5, current series, from these headquarters, for the sub-
sistence of men and horses. . . .

" By command of Major-General Pope :

"George D. Ruggles,
" Colonel, A. A.- General, and Chief of Staff."

" Headquarters Army of Virginia, Washington, July 18, 1862.
" (General Orders, No. 1.)

" The people of the Valley of the Shenandoah and throughout
the region of operations of this army, living along the lines of
railroad and telegraph, and along routes of travel in the rear of
United States forces, are notified that they will be held responsi-
ble for any injury done the track, line, or road, or for any attacks
upon the trains or straggling soldiers, by bands of guerrillas in
their neighborhood. . . . Evil-disposed persons in the rear of our
armies, who do not themselves engage directly in these lawless
acts, encourage by refusing to interfere, or give any information
by which such acts can be prevented or the perpetrators punished.
Safety of the life and property of all persons living in the rear of
our advancing army depends upon the maintenance of peace and
quiet among themselves, and upon the unmolested movements
through their midst of all pertaining to the military service.
They are to understand distinctly that the security of travel is
their only warrant of personal safety. ... If a soldier or legiti-
mate follower of the army be fired upon from any house, the house
shall be razed to the ground and the inhabitants sent prisoners to
the headquarters of this army. If such an outrage occur at any
place distant from settlements, the people within five miles around
shall be held accountable, and made to pay an indemnity sufficient
for the case ; and any' person detected in such outrages, either

314 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

during the act or at any time afterward, shall be shot, without
waiting civil process. . . .

" By command of Major-General Pope :

" George D. Ruggles, Colonel"

" Headquarters Army of Virginia, Washington, July 23, 1862.
"(General Orders, No. 11.)

" Commanders of army corps, divisions, brigades, and detached
commands will proceed immediately to arrest all disloyal male
citizens within their lines, or within their reach in the rear of their
respective stations.

" Such as are willing to take the oath of allegiance to the
United States, and will furnish sufficient security for its observ-
ance, shall be permitted to remain at their homes, and pursue in
good faith their accustomed avocations. Those who refuse shall
be conducted south beyond the extreme pickets of the army, and
be notified that, if found again anywhere within our lines or at
any point in the rear, they will be considered spies, and subjected
to the extreme rigor of the military law. ...

" By command of Major- General Pope :

" George D. Ruggles,
"Colonel, A. A.- General, and Chief of Staff."

Thus was announced a policy of pillage, outrage upon un-
armed, peaceable people, arson, and ruthless insult to the de-
fenseless. Had the vigor of the campaign been equal to the
bombastic manifesto of this disgrace to the profession of arms,
the injuries inflicted would have been more permanent; the
conduct could scarcely have been more brutal.

In recurring to the letter of General George B. McClellan,
written at " Camp near Harrison's Landing, Virginia, July 7,
1862," to the President of the United States, one must be struck
with the strong contrast between the suggestions of General
McClellan and the orders of General Pope. The inquiry natu-
rally arises, Was it because of this difference that Pope had been
assigned to the command of the Army of Virginia? McClellan
wrote:

" This rebellion has assumed the character of a war ; as such
it should be regarded, and it should be conducted upon the high-

1862] THE MOST SHAMEFUL CHAPTERS. 315

est principles known to Christian civilization. It should not be a
war looking to the subjugation of the people of any State, in any
event. It should not be at all a war upon population, but against
armed forces and political organizations. Neither confiscation of
property, political executions of persons, territorial organizations
of States, or forcible abolition of slavery, should be contemplated
for a moment.

" In prosecuting the war, all private property and unarmed per-
sons should be strictly protected, subject only to the necessity of
military operations ; all private property taken for military use
should be paid or receipted for ; pillage and waste should be
treated as high crimes ; all unnecessary trespass sternly prohib-
ited, and offensive demeanor by the military toward citizens
promptly rebuked. Military arrests should not be tolerated, ex-
cept in places where active hostilities exist ; and oaths, not re-
quired by enactments constitutionally, should be neither demanded
nor received."

Had these views been accepted, and the conduct of the
Government of the United States been in accordance with
them, the most shameful chapters in American history could
not have been written, and some of the more respectable news-
papers of the North would not have had the apprehensions
they expressed of the evils which would befall the country
when an army habituated to thieving should be disbanded.

On the reception of copies of the orders issued by General
Pope, inserted above, I addressed to General Lee, commanding
our army in Virginia, the following letter :

" Richmond, Virginia, July SI, 1862.

" Sir : On the 22d of this month a cartel for a general ex-
change of prisoners of war was signed between Major-General D.
H. Hill, in behalf of the Confederate States, and Major-General
John A. Dix, in behalf of the United States.

"By the terms of that cartel, it is stipulated that all prisoners of
war hereafter taken shall be discharged on parole until exchanged.

" Scarcely had that cartel been signed, when the military au-
thorities of the United States commenced a practice changing the
character of the war, from such as becomes civilized nations, into
a campaign of indiscriminate robbery and murder.

316 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

"The general order issued by the Secretary of War of the
United States, in the city of Washington, on the very day that the
cartel was signed in Virginia, directs the military commanders of
the United States to take the private property of our people for
the convenience and use of their armies, without compensation.

"The general order issued by Major-General Pope, on the 23d
of July, the day after the signing of the cartel, directs the mur-
der of our peaceful inhabitants as spies, if found quietly tilling
their farms in his rear, even outside of his lines y and one of his
brigadier-generals, Steinwehr, has seized upon innocent and peace-
ful inhabitants, to be held as hostages, to the end that they may
be murdered in cold blood if any of his soldiers are killed by some
unknown persons, whom he designates as ' bushwhackers.'

" Under this state of facts, this Government has issued the in-
closed general order, recognizing General Pope and his commis-
sioned officers to be in the position which they have chosen for
themselves, that of robbers and murderers, and not that of pub-
lic enemies, entitled, if captured, to be considered as prisoners of
war.

" We find ourselves driven by our enemies in their steady prog-
ress toward a practice which we abhor, and which we are vainly
struggling to avoid. Some of the military authorities of the United
States seem to suppose that better success will attend a savage war
in which no quarter is to be given and no sex to be spared than
has hitherto been secured by such hostilities as are alone recog-
nized to be lawful by civilized men in modern times.

" For the present, we renounce our right of retaliation on the
innocent, and shall continue to treat the private enlisted soldiers
of General Pope's army as prisoners of war ; but if, after notice
to the Government at Washington of our confining repressive
measures to the punishment only of commissioned officers, who
are willing participants in these crimes, these savage practices
are continued, we shall reluctantly be forced to the last resort
of accepting the war on the terms chosen by our foes, until the
outraged voice of a common humanity forces a respect for the
recognized rules of war.

" While these facts would justify our refusal to execute the
generous cartel, by which we have consented to liberate an excess
of thousands of prisoners held by us beyond the number held by
the enemy, a sacred regard to plighted faith, shrinking from the

1862] SLAUGHTER MOUNTAIN CONFLICT. 317

mere semblance of breaking a promise, prevents our resort to this
extremity. Nor do we desire to extend to any other forces of the
enemy the punishment merited alone by General Pope and such
commissioned officers as choose to participate in the execution of
his infamous orders.

"You are therefore instructed to communicate to the com-
mander-in-chief of the armies of the United States the contents of
this letter and a copy of the inclosed general order, to the end
that he may be notified of our intention not to consider any offi-
cers hereafter captured from General Pope's army as prisoners of
war. Very respectfully, yours, etc.,

"Jefferson Davis."

When General Jackson arrived near Gordonsville on July 19,
1862, he was at his request reenforced by Major-General A. P.
Hill. Receiving information that only a part of General Pope's
army was at Culpeper Court-House, General Jackson, hoping
to defeat it before reinforcements should arrive, moved in that
direction the divisions of Ewell, Hill, and Jackson, on August
7th, from their encampments near Gordonsville. As the ene-
my's cavalry displayed unusual activity and the train of Jack-
son's division was seriously endangered, General Lawton with
his brigade was ordered to guard it. On August 9th Jackson
arrived within eight miles of Culpeper Court-House and found
the foe in his front near Cedar Run and a short distance west
and north of Slaughter Mountain. When first seen, the cav-
alry in large force occupied a ridge to the right of the road.
A battery opened upon it and soon forced it to retire. Our
fire was responded to by some guns beyond the ridge from
which the advance had just been driven. Soon after, the
cavalry returned. to the position where it was first seen, and
General Early was ordered forward, keeping near the Cul-
peper road, while General Ewell with his two remaining bri-
gades diverged from the road to the right, advancing along
the western slope of Slaughter Mountain. General Early, form-
ing his brigade in line of battle, moved into the open field, and,
passing a short distance to the right of the road but parallel to
it, pushed forward, driving the opposing cavalry before him to
the crest of a hill which overlooked the ground between his

318 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

troops and the opposite hill, along which the enemy's batteries
were posted, and opened upon him as soon as he reached the
eminence. Early retired his troops under the protection of
the hill, and a small battery of ours, in advance of his right,
opened. Meantime General Winder with Jackson's brigade
was placed on the left of the road, Campbell's brigade, Lieuten-
ant-Colonel Garnett commanding, being on the left, Taliaferro's
parallel to the road, supporting the batteries, and Winder's own
brigade under Colonel Roland in reserve. The battle opened
with a fierce fire of artillery, which continued about two hours,
during which Brigadier-General Charles S. Winder, while di-
recting the positions of his batteries, received a wound, from
the effects of which he expired in a few hours. General Jack-
son thus spoke of him in his report :

" It is difficult, within the proper reserve of an official report,
to do justice to the merits of this accomplished officer. Urged by
the medical director to take no part in the movements of the day,
because of the then enfeebled state of his health, his ardent patriot-
ism and military pride could bear no restraint. Richly endowed
with those qualities of mind and person which fit an officer for
command, and which attract the admiration and excite the enthu-
siasm of troops, he was rapidly rising to the front rank of his pro-
fession. His loss has been severely felt."

Charles Winder had attracted my special notice, when I was
Secretary of War of the United States, by an act of heroism
and devotion to duty which it gives me pleasure to record. A
regiment of artillery, in which he was a second-lieutenant, being
under orders for California, embarked on the steamer San Fran-
cisco, and in a storm became disabled ; drifting helplessly at sea,
she was approached by a bark which, to give succor, hove to.
Not being able to receive all the passengers, the commissioned
officers left, as the Colonel naively reported, in the order of
their rank. Winder alone remained with the troops ; in great
discomfort and by strenuous exertion the wreck was kept afloat
until a vessel bound for Liverpool came to the relief of the suf-
ferers.

Arriving at Liverpool, Winder left the soldiers there, went

1862] CAME GALLANTLY INTO ACTION. 319

to the American consul in London, got means to provide for
their needs, and returned with them. Soon afterward, four regi-
ments were added to the army, and, for his good conduct so full
of promise, he was nominated to be a captain of infantry, and,
notwithstanding his youth, was confirmed and commissioned
accordingly. He died manifesting the same spirit as on the
wreck — that which holds life light when weighed against honor.

The enemy's infantry advanced about 5 p. m., and attacked
General Early in front, while another body, concealed by the
inequality of the ground, moved upon his right. Thomas's bri-
gade, of A. P. Hill's division, which had now arrived, was sent
to his support, and the contest soon became animated. In the
mean time the main body of the opposing army, under cover -
of a wood and the undulations of the field, gained the left of
Jackson's division, now commanded by Brigadier-General Tal-
iaferro, and poured a destructive fire into its flank and rear.
Campbell's brigade fell back in confusion, exposing the flank of
Taliaferro's, which also gave way, as did the left of Early's.
The rest of his brigade, however, firmly held its ground.

"Winder's brigade, with Branch's, of A. P. Hill's division, on
its right, advanced promptly to the support of Jackson's divis-
ion, and after a sanguinary struggle the assailants were repulsed
with loss. Pender's and Archer's brigades, also of Hill's divis-
ion, came up on the left of Winder's, and by a general charge
the foe was driven back in confusion, leaving the ground cov-
ered with his dead and wounded. General Ewell, with the two
brigades on the extreme right, had been prevented from advanc-
ing by the fire of our own artillery, which swept his approach to
the enemy's left. The obstacle being now removed, he pressed
forward under a hot fire, and came gallantly into action. Re-
pulsed and vigorously followed on our left and center, and now
hotly pressed on our right, the whole line of the enemy gave
way, and was soon in full retreat. Night had now set in, but
General Jackson, desiring to enter Culpeper Court-House be-
fore morning, determined to pursue. Hill's division led the
advance ; but, owing to the darkness, it was compelled to move
slowly and with caution.

The enemy was found about a mile and a half in the rear of

320 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

the field of battle, and information was received that reinforce-
ments had arrived. General Jackson thereupon halted for the
night, and the next day, becoming satisfied that the enemy's force
had been so largely increased as to render a further advance on
his part imprudent, he sent his wounded to the rear, and pro-
ceeded to bury the dead and collect the arms from the battle-
field. On the 11th the enemy asked and received permission
to bury those of his dead not already interred. General Jack-
son remained in position during the day, and at night returned
to the vicinity of Gordons ville. In this engagement 400 pris-
oners, including a brigadier-general were captured, and 5,300
stand of small-arms, one piece of artillery, several caissons,
and three colors, fell into our hands. Our killed were 229,
wounded 1,0-17, total 1,276. The loss on the other side exceeded
1,500, of whom nearly 300 were taken prisoners.

The victory of Cedar Run effectually checked the invader
for the time ; but it soon became apparent that his army was
receiving a large increase. The corps of Major-Gen eral Burn-
side, from Korth Carolina, which had reached Fredericksburg,
was reported to have moved up the Rappahannock, a few days
after the battle, to unite with General Pope, and a part of
General McClellan's army had left AVestover for the same pur-
pose. It therefore seemed that active operations on the James
we*e no longer contemplated, and that the most effectual way
to relieve Richmond from any danger of an attack would be to
reenforce General Jackson and advance upon General Pope.

Accordingly, on August 13th, Longstreet, Anderson, and
Stuart were ordered to proceed to Gordons ville. On the 16th
the troops began to move from the vicinity of Gordonsville
toward the Rapidan, on the north side of which, extending
along the Orange and Alexandria Railroad in the direction
of Culpeper Court-House, the army of invasion lay in great
force. It was determined, with the cavalry, to destroy the
railroad-bridge over the Rappahannock in rear of the enemy,
while Jackson and Longstreet crossed the Rapidan and at-
tacked his left flank. But, the enemy becoming apprised of
our design, hastily retreated beyond the Rappahannock. On
the 21st our forces moved toward that river, and some sharp

1862] DRIVEN OVER THE RIVER. 321

skirmishing ensued with our cavalry that had crossed at Bev-
erly's Ford. As it had been determined in the mean time not
to attempt the passage of the river at that point with the army,
the cavalry withdrew to the south side. Soon afterward the
enemy appeared in great strength on the opposite bank, and
an active fire was kept up during the rest of the day between
his artillery and the batteries attached to Jackson's leading
division, under Brigadier-General Taliaferro.

But, as our positions on the south bank of the Rappahannock
were commanded by those on the north bank, and which served
to guard all the fords, General Lee determined to seek a more
favorable place to cross higher up the river, and thus gain his
adversary's right. Accordingly, General Longstreet was di-
rected to leave Kelly's Ford on the 21st, and take the position
in the vicinity of Beverly's Ford and the Orange and Alexan-
dria Railroad bridge, then held by Jackson, in order to mask the
movement of the latter, who was instructed to ascend the river.
On the 22d Jackson proceeded up the Rappahannock, leaving
Trimble's brigade near Freeman's Ford to protect his train. In
the afternoon Longstreet sent General Hood with his own and
Whiting's brigade to relieve Trimble. Hood had just reached
the position, when he and Trimble were attacked by a consider-
able force which had crossed at Freeman's Ford. After a short
but spirited engagement, the enemy was driven precipitately
over the river with heavy loss. General Jackson attempted to
cross at Warrenton Springs Ford, but was interrupted by a
heavy rain, which caused the river to rise so rapidly as to be
impassable for infantry and artillery, and he withdrew the
troops that had reached the opposite side. General Stuart, who
had been directed to cut the railroad in rear of General Pope's
army, crossed the Rappahannock on the morning of the 22d,
about six miles above the Springs, with parts of Lee's and Rob-
ertson's brigades. He reached Catlet's Station that night, but
was prevented destroying the railroad-bridge there by the same.
storm that arrested Jackson's movements. He captured more
than three hundred prisoners, including a number of officers.
Apprehensive of the effect of the rain upon the streams, he re-
crossed the Rappahannock at Warrenton Springs. The rise of
68

322 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

the river, rendering the lower fords impassable, enabled the
enemy to concentrate his main body opposite General Jackson,
and on the 24th Longstreet was ordered by General Lee to pro-
ceed to his support. Although retarded by the swollen condi-
tion of Hazel River and other tributaries of the Rappahannock,
he readied Jeffersonton in the afternoon. General Jackson's
command lay between that place and the Spring's Ford, and a
warm cannonade was progressing between the batteries of Gen-
eral A. P. Hill's division and those in his front. The enemy
was massed between Warrenton and the Springs, and guarded
the fords of the Rappahannock as far above as Waterloo.

The army of General McClellan had left Westover, and a
part had marched to join General Pope. It was reported that
the rest would soon follow. The greater part of the army of
General Cox had also been withdrawn from the Kanawha Val-
ley for the same purpose. Two brigades of D, H. Hill's di-
vision, under General Ripley, had already been ordered from
Richmond, and the remainder were to follow ; also, McLaws's
division, two brigades under General Walker, and Hampton's
cavalry brigade. In pursuance of the plan of operations now
determined upon, Jackson was directed, on the 25th, to cross
above Waterloo and move around the enemy's right, so as to
strike the Orange and Alexandria Railroad in his rear. Long-
street, in the mean time, was to divert his attention by threat-
ening him in front, and to follow Jackson as soon as the latter
should be sufficiently advanced.

General Jackson crossed the Rappahannock on the 25th,
about four miles above Waterloo, and, after sunset on the 26th,
reached the railroad at Bristoe Station. At Gainesville he was
joined by General Stuart, with the brigades of Robertson and
Fitzhugh Lee, who continued with him during his operations,
and effectually guarded both his flanks.

General Jackson was now between the large army of Gen-
eral Pope and Washington City, without having encountered
any considerable force. At Bristoe two trains of cars were cap-
tured and a few prisoners taken. Determining, notwithstand-
ing the darkness of the night and the long and arduous march
of the day, to capture the depot of the enemy at Manassas

1862] WERE BROKEN AND REPULSED. 323

Junction, about seven miles distant, General Trimble volun-
teered to proceed at once to that place with the Twenty-first
North Carolina and the Twenty-first Georgia Regiments. . The
offer was accepted, and, to render success more certain, General
Stuart was directed to accompany the expedition with part of
his cavalry. About midnight the place was taken with little
difficulty. Eight pieces of artillery, with their horses, ammu-
nition, and equipments were captured ; more than three hundred
prisoners, one hundred and seventy-five horses, besides those
belonging to the artillery, two hundred new tents, and immense
quantities of commissary and quartermaster's stores, fell into
our hands.

Ewell's division, with the Fifth Virginia Cavalry under Colo-
nel Rosser, were left at Bristoe Station, and the rest of the
command arrived at the Junction early on the 27th. Soon a
considerable force of the enemy, under Brigadier-General Tay-
lor, of New Jersey, approached from the direction of Alexan-
dria, and pushed forward boldly to recover the stores. After
a sharp engagement he was routed and driven back, leaving
his killed and wounded on the field. The troops remained
at Manassas Junction during the day, and supplied themselves
with everything they required. In the afternoon, two brigades
advanced against General Ewell, at Bristoe, from the direction
of Warrenton Junction, but were broken and repulsed. Their
place was soon supplied with fresh troops, but it was apparent
that the commander had now become aware of the situation of
affairs, and had turned upon General Jackson with his whole
force. General Ewell, perceiving the strength of the column,
withdrew and rejoined General Jackson, having first destroyed
the railroad-bridge over Broad Run. The enemy halted at
Bristoe. General Jackson, having a much inferior force to
General Pope, retired from Manassas Junction and took a posi-
tion west of the turnpike - road from Warrenton to Alexandria,
where he could more readily unite with the approaching column
of Longstreet. Having supplied the wants of his troops, he was
compelled, through lack of transportation, to destroy the rest of
the captured property. Many thousand pounds of bacon, a
thousand barrels of corned beef, two thousand barrels of salt

324 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

pork, and two thousand barrels of flour, besides other property
of great value, were burned.

During the night of the 27th of August Taliaferro's division
crossed the turnpike near Groveton and halted on the west side,
near the battle-field of July 21, 1861, where it was joined on
the 28th by the divisions of Hill and Ewell. During the after-
noon the enemy, approaching from the direction of Warrenton
down the turnpike toward Alexandria, exposed his left flank,
and General Jackson determined to attack him. A fierce and
sanguinary conflict ensued which continued until about 9 p. m.,
when he slowly fell back and left us in possession of the field.
The loss on both sides was heavy. On the next morning (the
29th) the enemy had taken a position to interpose his army be-
tween General Jackson and Alexandria, and about 10 a. m.
opened with artillery upon the right of Jackson's line. The
troops of the latter were disposed in rear of Groveton, along
the line of the unfinished branch of the Manassas Gap Rail-
road, and extending from a point a short distance west of the
turnpike toward Sudley Mill, Jackson's division under Brigadier-
General Starke being on the right, Ewell's under General Law-
ton in the center, and A. P. Hill on the left. The attacking col-
umns were evidently concentrating on Jackson with the design
of overwhelming him before the arrival of Longstreet. This
latter ofiicer left his position opposite Warrenton Springs on the
26th and marched to join Jackson. On the 28th, arriving at
Thoroughfare Gap, he found the enemy prepared to dispute his
progress. Holding the eastern extremity of the pass with a large
force, the enemy directed a heavy fire of artillery upon the road
leading to it and upon the sides of the mountain. An attempt
was made- to turn his right, but, before our troops reached their
destination, he advanced to the attack, and, being vigorously re-
pulsed, withdrew to his position at the eastern end of the Gap,
keeping up an active fire of artillery until dark. He then re-
treated. On the morning of the 29th Longstreet's command
resumed its march, the sound of cannon at Manassas announc-
ing that Jackson was already engaged. The head of the column
came upon the field in rear of the enemy's left, which had al-
ready opened with artillery upon Jackson's right, as above stated.

1862] NO SERIOUS ATTACK WAS MADE. 325

Longstreet immediately placed some of his batteries in posi-
tion, but, before he could complete his dispositions to attack the
force before him, it withdrew to another part of the field. He
then took position on the right of Jackson, Hood's two bri-
gades, supported by Evans, being deployed across the turnpike
and at right angles to it. These troops were supported on the
left by three brigades under General Wilcox, and by a like
force on the right under General Kemper. D. R. Jones's divis-
ion formed the extreme right of the line, resting on the Ma-
nassas Gap Railroad. The cavalry guarded our right and left
flanks, that on the right being under General Stuart in person.
After the arrival of Longstreet the enemy changed his position
and began to concentrate opposite Jackson's left, opening a
brisk artillery -fire, which was responded to by some of A. P.
Hill's batteries.

Soon afterward General Stuart reported the approach of a
large force from the direction of Bristoe Station, threatening
Longstreet's right. But no serious attack was made, and, after
firing a few shots, that force withdrew. Meanwhile a large col-
umn advanced to assail the left of Jackson's position, occupied
by the division of General A. P. Hill. The attack was received
by his troops with their accustomed steadiness, and the battle
raged with great fury. The enemy was repeatedly repulsed,
but again pressed on the attack with fresh troops. Once he
succeeded in penetrating an interval between General Gregg's
brigade on the extreme left and that of General Thomas, but
was quickly driven back with great slaughter by the Fourteenth
South Carolina Regiment, then in reserve, and the Forty-ninth
Georgia of Thomas's brigade. The contest was close and ob-
stinate ; the combatants sometimes delivered their fire at a few
paces. General Gregg, who was most exposed, was reenforced
by Hays's brigade under Colonel Forno. Gregg had successfully
and most gallantly resisted the attack until the ammunition of
his brigade was exhausted and all his field-officers but two killed
or wounded. The reenforcement was of like high-tempered
steel, and together in hand-to-hand fight they held their post
until they were relieved, after several hours of severe fight-
ing, by Early's brigade and the Eighth Louisiana Regiment.

326 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

General Early drove the enemy back with heavy loss, and
pursued about two hundred yards beyond the line of battle,
when he was recalled to the position on the railroad, where
Thomas, Pender, and Archer had firmly held their ground
against every attack. While the battle was raging on Jackson's
left, Hood and Evans were ordered by Longstreet to advance,
but, before the order could be obeyed, Hood was himself at-
tacked, and his command became at once warmly engaged. The
enemy was repulsed by Hood after a severe contest, and fell
back, closely followed by our troops.

The battle continued until 9 p. m., the foe retreating until
he reached a strong position, which he held with a large force.
Our troops remained in their advanced position until early next
morning, when they were withdrawn to their first line. One
piece of artillery, several stands of colors, and a number of pris-
oners were captured. Our loss was severe. On the morning
of the 30th the enemy again advanced, and skirmishing began
along the line. The troops of Jackson and Longstreet main-
tained their position of the previous day. At noon the firing
of the batteries ceased, and all was quiet for some hours.

About 3 p. m. the enemy, having massed his troops in front of
General Jackson, advanced against his position in strong force.
His front line pushed forward until it was engaged at close
quarters by Jackson's troops, when its progress was checked,
and a fierce and bloody struggle ensued. A second and third
line of great strength moved up to support, the first, but in doing
so came within easy range of a position a little in advance of
Longstreet's left. He immediately ordered up two batteries,
and, two others being thrown forward about the same time by
Colonel S. D. Lee, the supporting lines were broken, and fell
back in confusion under their well-directed and destructive fire.
Their repeated efforts to rally were unavailing, and Jackson's
troops, being thus relieved from the pressure of overwhelming
numbers, began to press steadily forward, driving everything
before them. The enemy retreated in confusion, suffering se-
verely from our artillery, which advanced as he retired. Gen-
eral Longstreet, anticipating the order for a general advance,
now threw his whole command against the center and left.

1862] THE LINE OF BATTLE. 327

The whole line swept steadily on, driving the opponents with
great carnage from each successive position, until 10 p. m., when
darkness put an end to the battle and the pursuit.

The obscurity of the night and the uncertainty of the fords
of Bull Run rendered it necessary to suspend operations until
morning, when the cavalry, being pushed forward, discovered
that the retreat had continued to the strong position of Centre-
ville, about four miles beyond Bull Run. The prevalence of a
heavy rain, which began during the night, threatened to render
Bull Run impassable, and to impede our movements. Long-
street remained on the battle-field to engage attention and to pro-
tect parties for the burial of the dead and the removal of the
wounded, while Jackson proceeded by Sudley's Ford to the Lit-
tle River turnpike to turn the enemy's right, and intercept his
retreat to "Washington. Jackson's progress was retarded by the
inclemency of the weather and the fatigue of his troops. He
reached the turnpike in the evening, and the next day (Sep-
tember 1st) advanced by that road toward Fairfax Court-House.
The enemy in the mean time was falling back rapidly toward
"Washington, and had thrown a strong force to Germantown,
on the Little River turnpike, to cover his line of retreat from
Centreville. The advance of Jackson encountered him at Ox
Hill, near Germantown, about 5 p. m. Line of battle was at
once formed, and two brigades were thrown forward to attack
and ascertain the strength of the position. A cold and drench-
ing rain-storm drove in the faces of our troops as they ad-
vanced and gallantly engaged. They were subsequently sup-
ported, and the conflict was obstinately maintained until dark,
when the enemy retreated, having lost two general officers, one
of whom — Major-General Kearney — was left dead on the field.
Longstreet's command arrived after the action was over, and
the next morning it was found that the retreat had been so rapid
that the attempt to intercept was abandoned. The proximity
of the fortifications around Alexandria and Washington was
enough to prevent further pursuit. Qur army rested during the
2d near Chantilly, the retreating foe being followed only by
our cavalry, who continued to harass him until he reached the
shelter of his iutrenchments.

328 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

In the series of engagements on the plains of Manassas more
than seven thousand prisoners were taken, in addition to about
two thousand wounded left in our hands. Thirty pieces of ar-
tillery, upward of twenty thousand stand of small-arms, numer-
ous colors, and a large amount of stores, besides those taken by
General Jackson at Manassas Junction, were captured.

Major-General Pope in his report says :

" The whole force that I had at Centreville, as reported to me
by the corps commanders, on the morning of the 1st of September,
was as follows : McDowell's corps, 10,000 men ; Sigel's corps, about
7,000 ; Heintzelman's corps, about 6,000 ; Reno's, 6,000 ; Banks's,
5,000; Sumner's, 11,000; Porter's, 10,000; Franklin's, 8,000— in
all, 63,000 men. . . . The small fraction of 20,500 men was all of
the 91,000 veteran troops from Harrison's Landing which ever
drew trigger under my command."

Our losses in the engagement at Manassas Plains were con-
siderable. The number killed was 1,090; wounded, 6,154 —
total, 7,241. The loss of the enemy in killed, wounded, and
missing was estimated between 15,000 and 20,000. The strength
of our army in July and September is stated on a preceding
page.

CHAPTER XXXV.

Return of the Enemy to Washington. — War transferred to the Frontier. — Condition
of Maryland. — Crossing the Potomac. — Evacuation of Martinsburg. — Advance
into Maryland. — Large Force of the Enemy. — Resistance at Boonesboro. — Sur-
render of Harper's Ferry. — Our Forces reach Sharpsburg. — Letter of the Presi-
dent to General Lee. — Address of General Lee to the People. — Position of our
Forces at Sharpsburg. — Battle of Sharpsburg. — Our Strength. — Forces with-
drawn.— Casualties.

The enemy having retired to the protection of the fortifica-
tions around Washington and Alexandria, Lee's army marched,
on September 3d, toward Leesburg. The armies of Generals
McClellan and Pope had now been brought back to the point
from which they set out on the campaign of the spring and sum-
mer. The objects of those campaigns had been frustrated, and

1862] THE ARMY WAS PUT IN MOTION. 329

the hostile designs against the coast of North Carolina and in
western Virginia, thwarted by the withdrawal of the main body
of the forces from those regions.

Northeastern Virginia was freed from the presence of the
invader. His forces had withdrawn to the intrenchments of
Washington. Soon after the arrival of onr army at Leesburg,
information was received that the hostile troops which had oc-
cupied Winchester had retired to Harper's Ferry. The war was
thus transferred from the interior to the frontier, and the sup-
plies of rich and productive districts were made accessible to our
army. To prolong a state of affairs, in every way desirable, and
not to permit the season for active operations to pass without en-
deavoring to impose further check on our assailant, the best
course appeared to be the transfer of our army into Maryland.
Although not properly equipped for invasion, lacking much of
the material of war, and deficient in transportation, the troops
poorly provided with clothing, and thousands of them without
shoes, it was yet believed to be strong enough to detain the op-
posing army upon the northern frontier until the approach of
winter should render its advance into Virginia difficult, if not
impracticable.

The condition of Maryland encouraged the belief that the
presence of our army, though numerically inferior to that of the
North, would induce the Washington Government to retain all
its available force to provide against contingencies which its
conduct toward the people of that State gave reason to appre-
hend. At the same time it was hoped that military success
might afford us an opportunity to aid the citizens of Maryland
in any efforts they should be disposed to make to recover their
liberty. The difficulties that surrounded them were fully ap-
preciated, and we expected to derive more assistance in the
attainment of our object from the just fears of the Washington
Government than from any active demonstration on the part
of the people of Maryland, unless success should enable us to
give them assurance of continued protection. Influenced by
these considerations, the army was put in motion.

It was decided to cross the Potomac east of the Blue Ridge,
in order, by threatening Washington and Baltimore, to cause the

330 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

enemy to withdraw from the south bank, where his presence
endangered our communications and the safety of those engaged
in the removal of our wounded and the captured property from
the late battle-field. Having accomplished this result, it was
proposed to move the army into western Maryland, establish
our communication with Richmond through the Valley of the
Shenandoah, and, by threatening Pennsylvania, induce the enemy
to withdraw from our territory for the protection of his own.

General D. H. Hill's division, being in advance, crossed the
Potomac, between September 4th and 7th, at the ford near
Leesburg, and encamped in the vicinity of Frederick. It had
been supposed that this advance would lead to the evacuation
of Martinsburg and Harper's Ferry, thus opening the line of
communication through the Shenandoah Valley. This not hav-
ing occurred, it became necessary to dislodge the garrisons
from those positions before concentrating the army west of the
mountains. For this purpose General Jackson marched very
rapidly, crossed the Potomac near Williamsport on the 11th,
sent Hill's division directly to Martinsburg, and disposed of the
rest of the command so as to cut off retreat to the westward.
The enemy evacuated Martinsburg and retired to Harper's Ferry
on the night of the 11th, and Jackson entered the former on
the 12th. Meanwhile General McLaws had been ordered to
seize Maryland Heights on the north side of the Potomac,
opposite Harper's Ferry, and General Walker took possession
of Loudon Heights, on the east side of the Shenandoah, where
it unites with the Potomac, and was in readiness to open fire
upon Harper's Ferry. But McLaws found the heights in pos-
session of the foe, with infantry and artillery, protected by in-
trenchments. On the 13th he assailed the works, and after a
spirited contest they were carried ; the troops made good their
retreat to Harper's Ferry, and on the next day its investment
was complete.

At the same time that the march of these troops upon Har-
per's Ferry began, the remainder of General Longstreet's com-
mand and the division of D. H. Hill crossed the South Moun-
tain and moved toward Boonsboro. General Stuart with the
cavalry remained east of the mountains to observe the enemy and

1862] TO PUSH FORWARD RAPIDLY. 331

retard his advance. Longstreet continued his march to Hagers-
town, and Hill halted near Boonsboro to support the cavalry
and to prevent the force invested at Harper's Ferry from escap-
ing through Pleasant Valley. The advance of the hostile army
was then so slow as to justify the belief that the reduction of
Harper's Ferry would be accomplished and our troops concen-
trated before they would be called upon to meet the foe. In
that event it had not been intended to oppose his passage
through South Mountain, as it was desired to engage him as
far as possible from his base. But a copy of Lee's order, direct-
ing the movement of the army from Frederick, happening to
fall. into the hands of McClellan, disclosed to him the dispo-
sition of our forces. He immediately began to push forward
rapidly, and on the afternoon of the 13th was reported as ap-
proaching the pass in South Mountain on the Boonsboro and
Frederick road. General Stuart's cavalry impeded his progress,
and time was thus gained for preparations to oppose his advance.
In Taylor's "Four Years with General Lee" some facts
relative to this lost order are stated. An order of battle was
issued, stating in detail the position and duty assigned to each
command of the army :

"It was the custom to send copies of such orders, marked
' confidential,' to the commanders of separate corps or divisions
only, and to place the address of such separate commander in the
bottom left-hand corner of the sheet containing the order. Gen-
eral D. H. Hill was in command of a division which had not been
attached to nor incorporated with either of the two wings of the
Army of Northern Virginia. A copy of the order was, therefore,
in the usual course, sent to him. After the evacuation of Fred-
erick City by our forces, a copy of General Lee's order was found
in a deserted camp by a soldier, and was soon in the hands of
General McClellan. The copy of the order, it was stated at the
time, was addressed to * General D. H. Hill, commanding division.'
General Hill has assured me that it could not have been his copy,
because he still has the original order received by him in his pos-
session." *

* To these remarks Colonel W. H. Taylor adds the following note : " Colonel
Venable, one of my associates on the staff of General Lee, says in regard to this

332 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

General D. H. Hill guarded the Boonsboro Gap, and Long-
street was ordered to support him, in order to prevent a force
from penetrating the mountains at this point, in the rear of
McLaws, so as to relieve the garrison at Harper's Ferry. Early
on the 14th a large body of the enemy attempted to force its
way to the rear of the position held by Hill, by a road south of
the Boonsboro and Frederick turnpike. The small command
of Hill, with Garland's brigade, repelled. the repeated assaults
of the army, and held it in check for five hours. Longstreet,
leaving a brigade at Hagerstown, hurried to the assistance of
Hill, and reached the scene of action between 3 and 4 p. m.
The battle continued with great animation until night. On
the south of the turnpike the assailant was driven back some
distance, and his attack on the center repulsed with loss. Dark-
ness put an end to the contest.

The effort to force the pass of the mountain had failed, but
it was manifest that without reinforcements Lee could not haz-
ard a renewal of the engagement ; for McClellan, by his great
superiority of numbers, could easily turn either flank. Infor-
mation was also received that another large body of his troops
had, during the afternoon, forced its way through Cram|)ton
Gap, only five miles in rear of McLaws. Under these circum-
stances it was determined to retire to Sharpsburg, where we
would be on the flank and rear of the enemy should he move
against McLaws, and where we could more readily unite with
the rest of our army. This movement, skillfully and efficiently
covered by the cavalry brigade of General Fitzhugh Lee, was
accomplished without interruption. The advance of McClel-
lan 's army did not appear on the west side of the pass at Boons-
boro until about 8 a. m. on the following morning.

The resistance that our troops had offered there secured suf-
ficient time to enable General Jackson to complete the reduc-

matter : ' This is very easily explained. One copy was sent directly to Hill from
headquarters. General Jackson sent him a copy, as he regarded Hill in his com-
mand. It is Jackson's copy, in his own handwriting, which General Hill has. The
other was undoubtedly left carelessly by some one at Hill's quarters.' " Says Gen-
eral McClellan, " Upon learning the contents of this order, I at once gave orders
for a vigorous pursuit." — (General McClellan's testimony, " Report on the Conduct
of the War," Part I, p. 440.)

1862] TO THE PEOPLE OF MARYLAND. 333

tion of Harper's Ferry. The attack on the garrison began at
dawn on the 15th. A rapid and vigorous fire was opened by
the batteries of General Jackson, in conjunction with those on
Maryland and Loudon Heights. In about two hours, the gar-
rison, consisting of more than eleven thousand men, surren-
dered. Seventy-three pieces of artillery, about thirteen thou-
sand small-arms, and a large quantity of military stores fell
into our hands. General A. P. Hill remained formally to re-
ceive the surrender of the troops and to secure the captured
property.

The commands of Longstreet and D. H. Hill reached Sharps-
burg on the morning of the 15th. General Jackson arrived early
on the 16th, and General J. G. "Walker came up in the after-
noon. The movements of General McLaws were embarrassed
by the presence of the enemy in Crampton Gap. He retained
his position until the 14th, when, finding that he was not to be
attacked, he gradually withdrew his command toward the Po-
tomac, then crossed at Harper's Ferry, and marched by way of
Shepardstown. His progress was slow, and he did not reach the
battle-field at Sharpsburg until some time after the engagement
of the 17th began.

At this time the letter, from which the following extract is
made, was addressed by me to General K. E. Lee, commanding
our forces in Maryland :

" Sir : It is deemed proper that you should, in accordance with
established usage, announce, by proclamation, to the people of
Maryland, the motives and purposes of your presence among them
at the head of an invading army ; and you are instructed in such
proclamation to make known," etc.

In obedience to instructions, General Lee issued the follow-
ing address :

" Headquarters, Army of Northern Virginia, near Frederick, )

September 8, 1862. )

" To the People op Maryland : It is right that you should
know the purpose that has brought the army under my command
within the limits of your State, so far as that purpose concerns
yourselves.

334: RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

" The people of the Confederate States have long watched, with
the deepest sympathy, the wrongs and outrages that have been
inflicted upon the citizens of a Commonwealth allied to the States
of the South by the strongest social, political, and commercial ties,
and reduced to the condition of a conquered province.

" Under the pretense of supporting the Constitution, but in
violation of its most valuable provisions, your citizens have been
arrested and imprisoned upon no charge, and contrary to the forms
of law.

" A faithful and manly protest against this outrage, made by a
venerable and illustrious Marylander, to whom in his better days
no citizen appealed for right in vain, was treated with scorn and
contempt.

" The government of your chief city has been usurped by armed
strangers ; your Legislature has been dissolved by the unlawful
arrest of its members ; freedom of the press and of speech has
been suppressed ; words have been declared offenses by an arbi-
trary decree of the Federal Executive ; and citizens ordered to
be tried by military commissions for what they may dare to
speak.

" Believing that the people of Maryland possess a spirit too
lofty to submit to such a Government, the people of the South have
long wished to aid you in throwing off this foreign yoke, to enable
you again to enjoy the inalienable rights of freemen, and restore
the independence and sovereignty of your State.

" In obedience to this wish, our army has come among you, and
is prepared to assist you with the power of its arms in regaining
the rights of which you have been so unjustly despoiled.

" This, citizens of Maryland, is our mission, so far as you are
concerned. No restraint upon your free-will is intended ; no in-
timidation will be allowed within the limits of this army at least.
Mary landers shall once more enjoy their ancient freedom of thought
and speech. We know no enemies among you, and will protect
all of you in every opinion.

" It is for you to decide your destiny freely and without con-
straint. This army will respect your choice, whatever it may be ;
and while the Southern people will rejoice to welcome you to your
natural position among them, they will only welcome you when
you come of your own free will.

"R. E. Lee, General commanding."

1862] ADVANCED WITH GREAT SPIRIT. 335

The commands of Longstreet and D. H. Hill, on their ar-
rival at Sharpsburg, were placed in position along the range of
hills between the town and the Antietam, nearly parallel to the
course of that stream, Longstreet on the right of the road to
Boonsboro and Hill on the left. The advance of the enemy
was delayed by the determined opposition he encountered from
Fitzhugh Lee's cavalry, and he did not appear on the opposite
side of the Antietam until about 2 p. m. During the afternoon
the batteries on each side were partially engaged. On the 16th
the artillery-fire became warm, and continued throughout the
day. A column crossed the Antietam beyond the reach of
our batteries and menaced our left. In anticipation of this
movement Hood's two brigades had been transferred from the
right and posted between D. H. Hill and the Hagerstown road.
General Jackson was now directed to take position on Hood's
left, and formed his line with his right resting on the Hagers-
town road and his left extending toward the Potomac, protected
by General Stuart with the cavalry and horse-artillery. General
Walker with his two brigades was stationed on Longstreet's
right. As evening approached, the enemy fired more vigorously
with his artillery and bore down heavily with his infantry upon
Hood, but the attack was gallantly repulsed. At 10 p. m. Hood's
troops were relieved by the brigades of Lawton and Trimble, of
Ewell's division, commanded by General Lawton. Jackson's
own division, under General J. K. Jones, was on Lawton' s left,
supported by the remaining brigades of Ewell.

At early dawn on the 17th his artillery opened vigorously
from both sides of the Antietam, the heaviest fire being directed
against our left. Under cover of this fire a large force of infan-
try attacked General Jackson's division. They were met by his
troops with the utmost resolution, and for several hours the con-
flict raged with intense fury and alternate success. Our troops
advanced with great spirit ; the enemy's lines were repeatedly
broken and forced to retire. Fresh troops, however, soon re-
placed those that were beaten, and Jackson's men were in turn
compelled to fall back. Nearly all the field officers, with a large
proportion of the men, were killed or wounded. Our troops
slowly yielded to overwhelming numbers, and fell back, obsti-

336 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

nately disputing every point. General Early, in command of
Swell's division, was ordered with his brigade to take the place
of Jackson's division, most of which was withdrawD, its am-
munition being nearly exhausted and its numbers much re-
duced. The battle now raged with great violence, the small
commands under Hood and Early holding their ground against
many times their own infantry force and under a tremendous
lire of artillery. Hood was reenforced ; then the enemy's lines
were broken and driven back, but fresh numbers advanced to
their support, and they began to gain ground. The desperate
resistance they encountered, however, delayed their progress
until the troops of McLaws arrived, and those of General J. G.
Walker could be brought from the right. Hood's brigade,
though it had suffered extraordinary loss, only withdrew to re-
plenish their ammunition, their supply being entirely exhausted.
They were relieved by Walker's command, who immediately
attacked vigorously, driving his combatant back with much
slaughter. Upon the arrival of the reinforcements under Mc-
Laws, General Early attacked resolutely the large force opposed
to him. McLaws advanced at the same time, and the forces
before them were driven back in confusion, closely followed by
our troops beyond the position occupied at the beginning of the
engagement.

The attack on our left was speedily followed by one in
heavy force on the center. This was met by part of Walker's
division and the brigades of G. B. Anderson and Eodes, of D.
H. Hill's command, assisted by a few pieces of artillery. Gen-
eral E. H. Anderson's division came to Hill's support, and
formed in rear of his line. At this time, by a mistake of orders,
Eodes's brigade was withdrawn from its position ; during the
absence of that command a column pressed through the gap
thus created, and G. B. Anderson's brigade was broken and re-
tired. The heavy masses moved forward, being opposed only
by four pieces of artillery, supported by a few hundred of our
men belonging to different brigades rallied by Hill and other
officers, and parts of Walker's and E. H. Anderson's com-
mands. Colonel Cooke, with the Twenty-seventh North Caro-
lina Eegiment, stood boldly in line without a cartridge. The

1862] HIS LINE BEGAN TO WAVER. 337

firm front presented by this small force and the well-directed
fire of the artillery checked the progress of the enemy, and in
about an hour and a half he retired. Another attack was made
soon afterward a little farther to the right, but was repulsed by
Miller's guns, of the Washington Artillery, which continued to
hold the ground until the close of the engagement, supported
by a part of R. H. Anderson's troops. The corps designated
the Washington Artillery was composed of Louisiana batteries,
organized at New Orleans in the beginning of the war, under
Colonel I. B. "Walton. It was distinguished by its services in
the first great battle of Manassas, and in nearly every important
conflict, as well of the army of Virginia as that of Tennessee,
to the close of the war. In the official reports and in the tradi-
tions of both armies the names of the batteries of the Washing-
ton Artillery have frequent and honorable mention.

While the attack on the center and left was in progress,
repeated efforts were made to force the passage of the bridge
over the Antietam, opposite the right wing of Longstreet, com-
manded by Brigadier-General D. R. Jones. The bridge was
defended by General Toombs with two regiments of his bri-
gade and the batteries of General Jones. This small com-
mand repulsed five different assaults, made by a greatly su-
perior force. In the afternoon the enemy, in large numbers,
having passed the stream, advanced against General Jones, who
held the ridge with less than two thousand men. After a de-
termined and brave resistance, he was forced to give way, and
the summit was gained. General A. P. Hill, having arrived
from Harper's Ferry, was now ordered to reenforce General
Jones. He moved to his support and attacked the force now
flushed with success. Hill's batteries were thrown forward
land united their fire with those of Jones, and one of D. H.
Hill's also opened with good effect from the left of the Boons-
boro road. The progress of the enemy was immediately arrest-
ed, and his line began to waver. At this moment General
Jones ordered Toombs to charge the flank, while Archer, sup-
ported by Branch and Gregg, moved on the front of the
[enemy's line. After a brief resistance, he broke and retreated
(in confusion toward the Antietam, pursued by the troops of Hill
69

338 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

and Jones, until he reached the protection of the batteries on
the opposite side of the river.

It was now nearly dark, and McClellan had massed a num-
ber of batteries to sweep the approach to the Antietam, on the
opposite side of which the corps of General Porter, which had
not been engaged, now appeared to dispute our advance. Our
troops were much exhausted, and greatly reduced in numbers
by fatigue and the casualties of battle. Under these circum-
stances it was deemed injudicious to push our advantage further
in the face of these fresh troops added to an army previously
much exceeding the number of our own. Ours were accord-
ingly recalled, and formed on the line originally held by Gen-
eral Jones. The repulse on the right ended the engagement,
a protracted and sanguinary conflict in which every effort to
dislodge us from our position had been defeated with severe
loss.

This great battle was fought by less than forty thousand
men on our side, all of whom had undergone the greatest labors
and hardships in the field and on the march. Nothing could
surpass the determined valor with which they met the large
army of the enemy, fully supplied and equipped, and the result
reflected the highest credit on the officers and men engaged.*

On the 18th our forces occupied the position of the preced-
ing day, except in the center, where our line was drawn in
about two hundred yards. Our ranks were increased by the
arrival of a number of troops, who had not been engaged the
day before, and, though still too weak to assume the offensive,
Lee waited without apprehension a renewal of the attack. The
day passed without any hostile demonstration. During the
night of the 18th our army was withdrawn to the south side
of the Potomac, crossing near Shepardstown, without loss or
molestation. The enemy advanced on the next morning, but
was held in check by General Fitzhugh Lee with his cavalry.
The condition of our troops now demanded repose, and the
army marched to the Opequan, near Martinsburg, where it
remained several days, and then moved to the vicinity of Bun
ker Hill and Winchester. General McClellan seemed to

* Report of General R. E. Lee.

1862] WAS THE MOST VIOLENT. 339

concentrating in and near Harper's Ferry, but made no forward
movement.

The contest on our left in this battle was the most violent.
This and the deprivation of our men are very forcibly shown
in the following account of Major-General Hood : *

" On the morning of the 15th my forces were again in motion.
My troops at this period were sorely in need of shoes, clothing,
and food. We had had issued to us no meat for several days, and
little or no bread ; the men had been forced to subsist principally
on green corn and green apples. ]STevertheless, they were in high
spirits and defiant as we contended with the advanced guard
of McClellan on the loth and forenoon of the 16th. During the
afternoon of this day I was ordered, after great fatigue and hun-
ger endured by my soldiers, to take position near the Hagerstown
turnpike, in open field in front of the Dunkard church. General
Hooker's corps crossed the Antietam, swung round with its front
on the pike, and about an hour before sunset encountered my
division. I had stationed one or two batteries on a hillock in a
meadow, near the edge of a corn-field, and just by the pike. The
Texas Brigade had been disposed on the left, and that of Law on
the right. We opened fire, and a spirited action ensued, which
lasted till a late hour in the night. When the firing had in a
great measure ceased, we were so close to the enemy that we could
distinctly hear him massing his heavy bodies in our immediate front.

" The extreme suffering of my troops for want of food induced
me to ride back to General Lee, and request him to send two or
more brigades to our relief, at least for the night, in order that
the soldiers might have a chance to cook their meager rations.
He said that he would cheerfully do so, but he knew of no com-
mand that could be spared for the purpose ; he, however, sug-
gested that I should see General Jackson, and endeavor to obtain
assistance from him. After riding a long time in search of the
latter, I finally discovered him alone, lying upon the ground asleep
by the root of a tree. I aroused him, and made known the half-
starved condition of my troops ; he immediately ordered Law-
ton's, Trimble's, and Hays's brigades to our relief. He exacted of
me, however, a promise that I would come to the support of these
forces the moment I was called upon. I quickly rode off in search

* "Advance and Retreat," by J. B. Hood, p. 41.

340 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

of my wagons that the men might prepare and cook their flour, as
we were still without meat ; unfortunately, the night was then far
advanced, and, although every effort was made in the darkness to
get the wagons forward, dawn of the morning of the 17th broke
upon us before many of the men had time to do more than pre-
pare the dough. Soon, thereafter, an officer of Lawton's staff
dashed up to me, saying, l General Lawton sends his compliments,
with the request that you come at once to his support.' * To
arms ! ' was instantly sounded, and quite a large number of my
brave soldiers were again obliged to march to the front, leaving
their uncooked rations in camp.

" Not far distant in our front were drawn up, in close array,
heavy columns of Federal infantry ; not less than two corps were
in sight to oppose my small command, numbering approximately
two thousand effectives. However, with the trusty Law on my
right, in the edge of the wood, and the gallant Colonel Wafford
in command of the Texas Brigade on the left, near the pike, we
moved forward to the assault. Notwithstanding the overwhelming
odds of over ten to one against us, we drove the enemy from the
wood and corn-field back upon his reserves, and forced him to
abandon his guns on our left. This most deadly combat raged
till our last round of ammunition was expended. The First Texas j
Regiment had lost in the corn-field fully two thirds of its number ; }-
and whole ranks of brave men, whose deeds were unrecorded save
in the hearts of loved ones at home, were mowed down in heaps
to the right and left. Never before was I so continually troubled
with fear that my horse would further injure some wounded
fellow-soldier lying helpless upon the ground. Our right flank,
during this short but seemingly long space of time, was toward
the main line of the Federals, and, after several ineffectual efforts
to procure reinforcements and our last shot had been fired, I or-
dered my troops back to Dunkard church for the same reason
which had previously compelled Lawton, Hays, and Trimble to
retire (a want of cartridges). Upon the arrival of McLaws's di-
vision we marched to the rear, renewed our supply of ammunition,
and returned to our position in the wood near the church, which
ground we held till a late hour in the afternoon, when we moved
somewhat farther to the right and bivouacked for the night.
With the close of this bloody day ceased the hardest-fought bat-
tle of the war."

]S62] WE HAD NO RESEKVE. 341

The following account of Colonel Taylor, in his "Four
Years with General Lee," is more comprehensive, embracing
the other forces besides Hood's brigade :

" On the afternoon of the 16th, General McClellan directed
an attack by Hooker's corps on the Confederate left — Hood's two
brigades — and during the whole of the 17th the battle was waged,
with varying intensity, along the entire line. When the issue
was first joined, on the afternoon of the 16th, General Lee had
with him less than eighteen thousand men, consisting of the com-
mands of Longstreet and D. H. Hill, the two divisions of Jack-
son, and two brigades under Walker. Couriers were sent to
the rear to hurry up the divisions of A. P. Hill, Anderson, and
McLaws, hastening from Harper's Ferry, and these several com-
mands, as they reached the front at intervals during the day, on
the 17th, were immediately deployed and put to work. Every
man was engaged. We had no reserve.

" The fighting was heaviest and most continuous on the Con-
federate left. It is established by Federal evidence that the three
corps of Hooker, Mansfield, and Sumner were completely shat-
tered in the repeated but fruitless efforts to turn this flank, and
two of these corps were rendered useless for further aggressive
movements. The aggregate strength of the attacking column at
this point reached forty thousand men, not counting the two
divisions of Franklin's corps, sent at a late hour in the day to
rescue the Federal right from the impending danger of being
itself destroyed ; while the Confederates, from first to last, had
less than fourteen thousand men on this flank, consisting of Jack-
son's two divisions, McLaws's division, and the two small divisions,
of two brigades each, under Hood and Walker, with which to
resist their fierce and oft-repeated assaults. The disproportion in
the center and on our right was as great as, or even more decided
than, on our left."

In the " Report of Committee on the Conduct of the War,"
Part I, p. 368, General Sumner testifies as follows :

" General Hooker's corps was dispersed ; there is no question
about that. I sent one of my staff-officers to find where they
were, and General Rickets, the only officer he could find, said that
he could not raise three hundred men of the corps. There were

342 MSE AND FALL 0F TnE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

troops lying down on the left, which I took to belong to Mans-
field's command. In the mean time General Mansfield had been
killed, and a portion of his corps bad also been thrown into con-
fusion."

The testimony of General McClellan, in the same report,
Part I, p. 441, is to the same effect :

" The next morning (the 18th) I found that our loss had been
so great, and there was so much disorganization in some of the
commands, that I did not consider it proper to renew the attack
that day, especially as I was sure of the arrival that day of two
fresh divisions, amounting to about fifteen thousand men. As an
instance of the condition of some of the troops that morning,
I happen to recollect the returns . of the First Corps, General
Hooker's, made on the morning of the 18th, by which there were
thirty-five hundred men reported present for duty. Four days
after that, the returns of the same corps showed thirteen thousand
five hundred."

On the night of the 19th our forces crossed the Potomac,
and some brigades of the enemy followed. In the morning
General A. P. Hill, who commanded the rear-guard, was or-
dered to drive them back. Having disposed his forces, an
attack was made, and, as the foe massed in front of General
Pender's brigade and endeavored to turn his flank, General
Hill says, in his report :

"A simultaneous daring charge was made, and the enemy
driven pell-mell into the river. Then commenced the most ter-
rible slaughter that this war has yet witnessed. The broad sur-
face of the Potomac was blue with the floating bodies of our foe.
But few escaped to tell the tale. By their own account, they lost
three thousand men killed and drowned from one brigade alone.
Some two hundred prisoners were taken. "

General McClellan states, in his official report, that he had
in this battle, in action, 87,164 men of all arms.

The official reports of the commanding officers of our forces,
made at the time, show our total effective infantry to have been
27,255. The estimate made for the cavalry and artillery, which

1862] OUR CROP OF COTTON. 343

is rather excessive, is 8,000. This would make General Lee's
entire strength 35,255.

The official return of the Army of Northern Virginia, on
September 22, 1862, after its return to Virginia, and when the
stragglers had rejoined their commands, shows present for duty,
36,187 infantry and artillery ; the cavalry, of which there is no re-
port, would perhaps increase these figures to 40,000 of all arms.*

The return of the United States Army of the Potomac on
September 20, 1862, shows present for duty, at that date, of
the commands that participated in the battle of Sharpsburg,
85,930 of all arms.f

The loss of the enemy at Boonsboro and Sharpsburg was
14,7944

CHAPTEE XXXVI.

Efforts of the Enemy to obtain our Cotton. — Demands of European Manufacturers
— Thousands of Operatives resorting to the Poor-Rates. — Complaint of her
Majesty's Secretary of State. — Letter of Mr. Seward. — Promise to open all the
Channels of Commerce. — Series of Measures adopted by the United States. —
Act of Congress. — Its Provisions. — Its Operation. — Unconstitutional Measures.
— President Lincoln an Accomplice. — Not authorized by a State of War. — Case
before Chief-Justice Taney. — His Decision. — Expeditions sent by the United
States Government to seize Localities. — An Act providing for the Appointment
of Special Agents to seize Abandoned or Captured Property. — The Views of
General Grant. — Weakening his Strength One Third. — Our Country divided into
Districts, and Federal Agents appointed. — Continued to the Close of the War.

A class of measures was adopted by the Government of the
United States, the object of which was practically and effectually
to plunder us of a large portion of our crop of cotton, and secure
its transportation to the manufacturers of Europe. The foreign
necessity for our cotton is represented in these words of her
Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, on May 6,
1862, when speaking of the blockade of our ports :

* Taylor's " Four Years with General Lee."

f Official return from Adjutant-General's office, United States Army. " Report
of Committee on Conduct of the War," Part I, p. 492.
% Ibid., p. 42.

34tt RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

"Thousands are now obliged to resort to the poor-rates for
subsistence, owing to this blockade, yet her Majesty's Govern-
ment have not sought to take advantage of the obvious imperfec-
tions of this blockade, in order to declare it ineffective. They
have, to the loss and detriment of the British nation, scrupulously
observed the duties of Great Britain to a friendly state."

The severity of the distress thus alluded to was such, both
in Great Britain and France, as to produce an intervention of
the Governments of those countries to alleviate it. Instead,
however, of adopting those measures required in the exercise of
justice to the Confederacy, and which would have been sus-
tained by the law of nations, by declaring the blockade " inef-
fective," as it really was, they sought, through informal appli-
cations to Mr. Seward, the Secretary of State for the United
States, to obtain opportunities for an increased exportation of
cotton from the Confederacy. This is explained by Mr. Seward
in a letter to Mr. Adams, the Minister at London, dated July
28, 1862, in which he writes as follows :

" The President has given respectful consideration to the
desire informally expressed to me by the Governments of Great
Britain and France for some further relaxation of the blockade in
favor of that trade. They are not rejected, but are yet held under
consideration, with a view to ascertain more satisfactorily whether
they are really necessary, and whether they can be adopted with-
out such serious detriment to our military operations as would
render them injurious rather than beneficial to the interests of all
concerned."

In the same letter Mr. Seward had previously said :

" We shall speedily open all the channels of commerce, and
free them from military embarrassments ; and cotton, so much
desired by all nations, will flow forth as freely as heretofore. We
have ascertained that there are three and a half millions of bales
yet remaining in the region where it was produced, though large
quantities of it are yet unginned and otherwise unprepared for
market. We have instructed the military authorities to favor,
so far as they can consistently with the public safety, its prepara-
tion for and dispatch to the markets where it is so much wanted."

1862] IT IS SCARCELY CREDIBLE. 345

It has been stated elsewhere in these pages that " it became
apparent that by some understanding, express or tacit, Europe
had decided to leave the initiative in all actions touching the
contest on this continent to the two powers just named (Great
Britain and France), who were recognized to have the largest
interest involved." By the preceding extracts the demands
of the Governments of Great Britain and France for increased
facilities, by which to obtain a greater supply of cotton, are
evident ; at the same time the determination of the Govern-
ment of the United States to fulfill those demands is apparent,
although it placed itself under the necessity of fitting out some
military expeditions against those portions of our territory
where it was supposed the foraging for cotton would be likely
to meet with the greatest success.

By reference to the series of measures adopted by the Gov-
ernment of the United States to secure possession of our cotton,
it will be seen that it was inaugurated as early as July 13, 1861.
This was within ten days after the commencement of the first
and extra session of Congress, under the Administration of
President Lincoln. It is scarcely credible that that Govern-
ment, at so early a day, foresaw the pressing demand from
Europe for cotton which would ensue a year later. Yet it
would seem that we must suppose such to have been its fore-
sight, or else conclude that the first of these measures was the
inauguration of a grand scheme for the plunder of our cotton-
crop, to enrich whomsoever it might concern.

The act of the United States Congress of July 13, 1861,
above mentioned, was entitled " An act to provide for the col-
lection of duties on imports, and for other purposes." Under
the " other purposes " the important features of the act are con-
tained. Section 5 provides that —

"when said insurgents claim to act under the authority of any
State or States, and such claim is not disclaimed or repudiated by
the persons exercising the functions of government in such State
or States, or in the part or parts thereof in which said combi-
nation exists, or such insurrection suppressed by said State or
States, then and in such case it may and shall be lawful for the
President, by proclamation, to declare that the inhabitants of such

316 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

State, or any section or part thereof, where such insurrection ex-
ists, are in a state of insurrection against the United States, and
thereupon all commercial intercourse by and between the same
and the citizens thereof and the citizens of the rest of the United
States shall cease, and be unlawful, so long as such condition of
hostility shall continue ; and all goods and chattels, wares and
merchandise, coming from said State or section into the other
parts of the United States, and all proceeding to such State or
section, by land or water, shall, together with the vessel or vehicle
conveying the same, or conveying persons to or from such State
or section, be forfeited to the United States : Provided, however,
That the President may, in his discretion, license and permit com-
mercial intercourse with any such part of said State or section,
the inhabitants of which are so declared in a state of insurrection,
in such articles, and for such time, and by such persons, as he, in
his discretion, may think most conducive to the public interest ;
and such intercourse, so far as by him licensed, shall be conducted
and carried on only in pursuance of rules and regulations pre-
scribed by the Secretary of the Treasury. And the Secretary of
the Treasury may appoint such officers at places where officers of
the customs are not now authorized by law, as may be needed to
carry into effect such licenses, rules, and regulations."

It was provided in section 9 as follows :

" Proceedings on seizures for forfeitures, under this act, may
be pursued in the courts of the United States in any district into
which the property so seized may be taken, and proceedings insti-
tuted."

It will be seen, by reference to the provisions of this section,
that the President of the United States was authorized to issue
his proclamation, declaring the inhabitants of any of our States,
or of a portion of any one of them, to be in insurrection, and
thereupon all commercial intercourse became unlawful, and was
required to cease, and all goods and chattels, wares and mer-
chandise, on the way to, or from, the State or part of a State,
were forfeited to the United States, together with the vessel, or
vehicle, in which they were conveyed. Two effects follow this
proclamation : first, the cessation of all commercial intercourse

1862] TO FIND ANY GRANT OF POWER. 34.7

with the citizens of the United States ; second, the forfeit-
ure of all goods in transitu. When this condition has been
reached, the act then authorizes the President, in his discretion,
by license, to reopen the trade in such articles, and for such
time, and by such persons, as he may think most conducive to
the public interest. The articles of trade were to be chiefly cot-
ton and tobacco ; the time during which it might be continued
was evidently so long as it could be used for the purpose in
view ; the persons were those ' who would most skillfully ad-
vance the end to be accomplished ; and the public interest was
the collection and transportation of the cotton to the European
manufacturers.

One may search the Constitution of the United States in
vain to find any grant of power to Congress, by which it could
be authorized to pass this act ; much less to find any authority
conferred upon the President to approve the act, or to justify
him in a violation of the oath he had taken to support and main-
tain the provisions of the Constitution. Congress was guilty of
a most flagrant usurpation by the passage of the act, and the
President, instead of being a check upon their unconstitutional
measures, for which object the veto power was granted to him,
became, by his approval, an accomplice in their usurpation. For
nothing is more evident than that it is one of the powers re-
served to the States to regulate the commercial intercourse be-
tween their citizens, to the extent even of the establishment of
inspection and quarantine regulations. The former of these is
a benefit to commerce, and the latter, in some special cases, only
retards it temporarily, to secure the health of a community.

Neither did a state of war authorize the Government of the
United States to interfere with the commercial intercourse be-
tween the citizens of the States, although under the law of na-
tions it might be so justified with regard to foreign enemies.
But this relation it persistently refused to concede to the Con-
federate States or to their citizens. It constantly asserted that
they were its subjects, in a state of insurrection ; and, if so, they
were equally entitled to the provisions of the Constitution for
their protection as well as to its penalties. Still less could the
Government make an absolute forfeiture of the goods seized,

348 RISE AXD FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

as has already been shown when treating of the Confiscation
Act.

But that a state of war did not enlarge the powers of the
Government, as was assumed by this act, was expressly decided
by Chief- Justice Taney, in a case that arose nnder this act. The
Secretary of the Treasury issued the regulations for trade, as the
act assumed the power to authorize him to do, in the section
presented on a previous page. One Carpenter neglected or re-
fused to obtain the permit required, and his goods were seized.
He contested the right of seizure, and the Chief-Justice gave a
decision at Baltimore, in May, 1863. He said :

" If these regulations had been made directly by Congress, they
could not be sustained by a court of justice, whose duty it is to
administer the law according to the Constitution of the United
States. For from the commencement of the Government to this
day it has been admitted on all hands, and repeatedly decided by
the Supreme Court, that the United States have no right to inter-
fere with the internal and domestic trade of a State. They have
no right to compel it to pass through their custom-houses, nor to
tax it. This is so plainly set forth in the Constitution, that it has
never been supposed to be open to controversy or question. Un-
doubtedly, the United States authorities may take proper meas-
ures to prevent trade or intercourse with the enemy. But it does
not by any means follow that they disregard the limits of all their
own powers as prescribed by the Constitution, or the rights and
powers reserved to the States and the people.

" A civil war, or any other, does not enlarge the powers of the
Federal Government over the States or the people beyond what
the compact has given to it in time of war. A state of war does
not annul the tenth article of the amendment to the Constitution,
which declares that ' the powers not delegated to the United States
by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are re-
served to the States respectively, or to the people.' Nor does a
civil war, or any other war, absolve the judicial department from
the duty of maintaining with an even and firm hand the rights
and powers of the Federal Government, and of the States, and of
the citizens, as they are written in the Constitution, which every
judge is sworn to support. Upon the whole the Court is of opinion
that the regulations in question are illegal and void, and that the

1862] LICENSES WERE GRANTED. 349

seizure of the goods of Carpenter, because lie refused to comply
with them, can not be sustained. The judgment of the District
Court must, therefore, be reversed, and the goods delivered to the
claimant, his agent, or proctor."

The proclamation of the President required by the act was
issued on August 16, 1861, declaring certain States and parts of
States to be in insurrection, etc. Under it some licenses were
issued to places in Kentucky and Missouri where the United
States forces were located, without any fruitful results. Some
strong military and naval expeditions were fitted out to invade
us and occupy the ports where cotton and other valuable prod-
ucts were usually shipped. An advance was made up the Cum-
berland and Tennessee Rivers and down the Mississippi, as has
been stated elsewhere. The ports of Beaufort, North Carolina,
Port Royal, South Carolina, and New Orleans, Louisiana, were
declared by proclamation of the President of the United States to
be open for trade under the new system. Licenses were granted
to foreign vessels by United States consuls and to coasting ves-
sels by the Treasury Department, and the blockade was relaxed
so far as related to those ports, except as " to persons, property,
and information contraband of war." Collectors were appointed
at the above-mentioned ports, and a circular was addressed to
the foreign Ministers at Washington announcing the reopening
of communication with conquered Southern localities.

Again, on March 3, 1863, an act was passed which author-
ized the Secretary of the Treasury to appoint special agents to
receive and collect all abandoned or captured property in any
State or portion of a State designated as in insurrection. Un-
der this act a paper division of the whole of our territory was
made into five special districts, and to each a special agent was
appointed with numerous assistants. Abandoned property was
defined to be that which had been deserted by the owners, or
that which had been voluntarily abandoned by them to the civil
or military authorities of the United States. Property which
had been seized or taken from hostile possession by the military
or naval forces was also to be turned over to the special agents
to be sold. All property not transported in accordance with

350 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

the Treasury regulations was forfeitable. All expenses incurred
in relation to the property were charged upon it.

The views of General Grant on the operation of this system
of measures, as tending to retard the success of subjugation,
which was the object of the war, were presented to the Secre-
tary of the United States Treasury in a letter dated at Vicks-
burg on July 21, 1863. He writes :

"My experience in -West Tennessee has convinced me that any
trade whatever with the rebellious States is weakening to us at
least thirty-three per cent, of our force. No matter what restric-
tions are thrown around trade, if any whatever is allowed, it will
be made the means of supplying to the enemy what they want.
Restrictions, if lived up to, make trade unprofitable, and hence
none but dishonest men go into it. I will venture to say that no
honest man has made money in West Tennessee in the last year,
while many fortunes have been made there during the time. The
people in the Mississippi Valley are now nearly subjugated. Keep
trade out for a few months, and I doubt not but that the work of
subjugation will be so complete that trade can be opened freely
with the States of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi."

On September 11, 1863, revised regulations were issued by
the Secretary which divided the country into thirteen districts,
from Wheeling, West Yirginia, to Natchez, on the Mississippi,
and a complete system of trade and transportation was organ-
ized. In December, 1864, new regulations were issued, which
authorized the purchase of our products at certain points from
any person with bonds furnished by the Treasury. The prod-
ucts were sold, transportation was allowed, and the proceeds
were made to constitute a fund for further purchases. A vig-
orous traffic sprang up under these regulations, which were sus-
pended by an order of General Grant, issued on March 10,
1865, and revoked on April 11th by himself. On April 29,
1865, all restrictions upon internal, domestic, and coastwise
commercial intercourse with all the country east of the Missis-
sippi River were discontinued.

1862 J SEIZING THE PASSES. 351

CHAPTER XXXVII.

The Enemy crosses the Potomac and concentrates at Warrenton. — Advances upon
Fredericksburg. — Its Position. — Our Forces. — The Enemy crosses the Rappa-
hannock.— Attack on General Jackson. — The Main Attack. — Repulse of the
Enemy on the Right. — Assaults on the Left. — The Enemy's Columns broke
and fled. — Recross the River. — Casualties. — Position during the Winter. —
The Enemy again crosses the Rappahannock. — Also crosses at Kelly's Ford. —
Converging toward Chancellorsville, to the Rear of our Position. — Inactivity
on our Front. — Our Forces Concentrate near Chancellorsville and encounter
Enemy. — Position of the Enemy. — Attempt to turn his Right. — The Enemy
surprised and driven in the Darkness. — Jackson fired upon and wounded. —
Stuart in command. — Battle renewed. — Fredericksburg reoccupied. — Attack on
the Heights. — Repulse of the Enemy. — The Enemy withdraws in the Night. —
Our Strength. — Losses. — Death of General Jackson. — Another Account.

About the middle of October, 1862, General McClellan
crossed the Potomac east of the Blue Ridge and advanced
southward, seizing the passes of the mountains as he progressed.
In the latter part of the month he began to incline eastwardly
from the mountains, moving in the direction of Warrenton,
about which he finally concentrated, his cavalry being thrown
forward beyond the Rappahannock in the direction of Culpeper
Court-House.

On November 15th the enemy was in motion. The indi-
cations were that Fredericksburg was again to be occupied.
Sumner's corps had marched in the direction of Falmouth, and
gunboats and transports had entered Acquia Creek.

McLaws's and Ransom's divisions were ordered to proceed
to that city ; and on the 21st it became apparent that the whole
army — under General Burnside, who had succeeded General
McClellan — was concentrating on the north side of the Rap-
pahannock.

About November 26th Jackson was directed to advance
toward Fredericksburg, and, as some of the enemy's gunboats
had appeared in the river at Port Royal, and it was possible
that an attempt might be made to cross in that vicinity, D. H.
Hill's division was stationed near that place, and the rest of
Jackson's corps so disposed as to support Hill or Longstreet, as

352 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

occasion might require. The fords of the Rappahannock above
Fredericksburg were closely guarded by our cavalry, and the
brigade of General W. H. F. Lee was stationed near Port Royal
to watch the river above and below. The interval before the
advance of the foe was employed in strengthening our lines,
extending from the river about a mile and a half above Fred-
ericksburg along the range of hills in the rear of the city to the
Richmond Railroad. As these hills were commanded by the
opposite heights, in possession of General Burnside's force,
earthworks were constructed on their crest at the most eligible
positions for artillery. To prevent gunboats ascending the
river, a battery, protected by epaulements, was placed on the
bank four miles below the city. The plain of Fredericksburg
is so completely commanded by the Stafford Heights, that no
effectual opposition could be made to the passage of the river
without exposing our troops to the destructive fire of the nu-
merous batteries on the opposite heights. At the same time,
the narrowness of the Rappahannock and its winding course
presented opportunities for laying down pontoon-bridges at
points secure from the fire of our artillery. Our position was
therefore selected with a view to resist an advance after cross-
ing, and the river was guarded by detachments of sharpshooters
to impede the laying of pontoons until our army could be pre-
pared for action.

Before dawn, on December 11th, General Burnside was in
motion. About 2 a. m. he commenced preparations to throw
two bridges over the Rappahannock opposite Fredericksburg,
and one about a mile and a quarter below, near the mouth of
Deep Run. From daybreak until 4 p. m., the troops, sheltered
behind the houses on the river-bank, repelled his repeated
efforts to lay bridges opposite the town, driving back his work-
ing parties and their supports with great slaughter. At the
lower point, where there was no such protection, he was suc-
cessfully resisted until nearly noon, when, being exposed to
the severe fire of the batteries on the opposite heights and a
superior force of infantry on the river-banks, our troops were
withdrawn, and about 1 p. m. the bridge was completed. Soon
afterward, one hundred and fifty pieces of artillery opened a

1862] A CONTINUOUS AND HEAVY FIRE. 353

furious fire upon the city, causing our troops to retire from the
river-bank about 4 p. m. The enemy then crossed in boats, and
proceeded rapidly to lay down the bridges. His advance into
the town was bravely contested until dark, when our troops
were recalled, the necessary time for concentration having been
gained.

Brigadier-General William Barksdale, who commanded the
force placed in Fredericksburg to resist the crossing, performed
that service with his well-known gallantry. The enemy was
prevented from constructing bridges, and his attempts to cross
in boats, under the cover of artillery and musketry fire, were,
repelled until late in the afternoon, when General Barksdale
was ordered to retire ; he had directed Lieutenant-Colonel Fizer,
commanding the Seventeenth Mississippi Regiment, of Barks-
dale's brigade, to select some skillful marksmen, and proceed
to check the operations of the pioneers, who had commenced
to lay pontoons above the city. Colonel Fizer described to
me the novel and bold expedient to which he successfully
resorted. He said his sharpshooters were placed in rifle-pits,
on the bank opposite to that from which the bridge was start-
ed; that his men were instructed to aim only at the bridge-
builders. At dawn the workmen came forward to lay the cover
on the bridge ; fire was opened, some were killed, and the rest
of the party driven ashore. Then the enemy's batteries and
riflemen opened a heavy fire on his position, when his men
would sit down in the rifle-pits and remain quiet until the can-
nonade ceased. Probably under the supposition that our sharp-
shooters had been driven off, the workmen would return ; our
sharpshooters would arise and repeat the lesson lately given.
This, he said, with intervals of about an hour, during which
a continuous and heavy fire of artillery was kept up, occurred
nine times, with the same result — a repulse with severe loss ; and
that, for twelve hours, every attempt to construct a bridge at
that point was defeated. Then, under orders, they withdrew.

During the night and the succeeding day the enemy crossed

in large numbers at and below the town, secured from material

interruption by a dense fog. Longstreet's corps constituted our

left, with Anderson's division resting on the river, and those of

35i RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

McLaws, Pickett, and Hood extending to the right. A. P.
Hill, of Jackson's corps, was posted between Hood s right and
Hamilton's Crossing, on the railroad. His front line occupied
the edge of a wood. Early and Taliaferro's divisions consti-
tuted Jackson's second line, D. H. Hill's division his reserve.
His artillery was distributed along his line in the most eligible
positions, so as to command the open ground in front.

Shortly after 9 a. m., the partial rising of the mist disclosed
a large force moving in line of battle against Jackson. Dense
masses appeared in front of A. P. Hill, stretching far up the
river in the direction of Fredericksburg. As they advanced, Ma-
jor Pellham, of Stuart's horse-artillery, opened a rapid and well-
directed enfilade fire, which arrested their progress. Four bat-
teries immediately turned upon him, and, upon his withdrawal,
the enemy extended his left down the Port Eoyal road, and his
numerous batteries opened with vigor upon Jackson's line.
Eliciting no response, his infantry moved forward to seize the
position occupied by Lieutenant-Colonel Walker. The latter,
reserving the fire of his fourteen pieces until their line had ap-
proached within less than eight hundred yards, opened upon it
with such destructive effect as to cause it to waver and soon re-
treat in confusion.

About 1 p. m., the main attack on the right began by a furi-
ous cannonade, under cover of which three compact lines of
infantry advanced against Hill's front. They were received
as before and momentarily checked, but, soon recovering, they
pressed forward, until, coming within range of our infantry, the
contest became fierce and bloody. Archer and Lane, who occu-
pied the edge of a wood, repulsed those portions of the line
immediately in front of them ; but, before the interval between
these commands could be closed, the assailants pressed through
in overwhelming numbers and turned the left of Archer and
the right of Lane. Attacked in front and flank, two regiments
of the former and a brigade of the latter, after a brave resist-
ance, gave way. Archer held his fine until the arrival of rein-
forcements. Thomas came to the relief of Lane and repulsed
the column that had broken his line, and drove it back to the
railroad. In the mean time a large force had penetrated the

1862] THE EXEMY WAS QUICKLY ROUTED. 355

wood as far as Hill's reserve, where it was met by a fire for
which it was not unprepared. General Hill says : * " The ad-
vancing columns of the enemy encountered an obstacle at the
military road which they little expected. Gregg's brigade of
South Carolinians stood in the way." The advancing Federals
were allowed to approach quite near, when that brigade poured
a withering fire into the faces of Meade's men, and Early's di-
vision from the second line swept forward, and the contest in
the woods was short and decisive. The enemy was quickly
routed and driven out with very heavy loss, and, though largely
reenforced, was pressed back and pursued to the shelter of the
railroad embankment. Here he was gallantly charged by the
brigades of Hoke and Atkinson, and driven across the plain to
his batteries. The attack on Hill's left was repulsed by the
artillery on that part of the line, against which a hot fire from
twenty-four guns was directed. The repulse of the foe on our
right was decisive and the attack was not renewed, but his bat-
teries kept up an active fire at intervals, and sharpshooters skir-
mished along the front during the afternoon.

While these events were transpiring on our right, the enemy,
in formidable numbers, made repeated and desperate assaults
upon the left of our line. About 11 a. m., having massed his
troops under cover of the houses of Fredericksburg, he moved for-
ward in strong columns to seize Marye's and Willis's Hills. All
his batteries on the Stafford Heights directed their fire upon the
positions occupied by our artillery, with a view to silence it,
and cover the movement of the infantry. Without replying to
this furious cannonade, our batteries poured a rapid and destruc-
tive fire into the dense lines of the infantry as they advanced to
the attack, frequently breaking their ranks, and forcing them to
retreat to the shelter of the houses. Six times did he, not-
withstanding the havoc inflicted by our batteries, press on with
great determination to within one hundred yards of the foot of
the hill ; but here, encountering the deadly fire of our infantry,
his columns were broken, and fled in confusion to the town.
The last assault was made shortly before dark. This effort met
the fate of those that preceded it, and, when night closed in,

* " Reports of the Army of Northern Virginia," vol. ii, p. 463.

356 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

his shattered masses had disappeared in the town, leaving the
field covered with his dead and wounded.

During the night our lines were strengthened by the con-
struction of earthworks at exposed points, and preparations made
to receive the enemy on the next day. The 14th passed, however,
without a renewal of the attack. The hostile batteries on both
sides of the river played upon our lines at intervals, our own fir-
ing but little. On the 15th General Burnside still retained his
position, apparently ready for battle, but the day passed as the
preceding. But, on the morning of the 16th, it was discovered
that he had availed himself of the darkness of the night and
the prevalence of a violent storm of wind and rain to recross
the river. The town was immediately reoccupied, and our posi-
tions on the river-bank resumed.

In the engagement we captured more than 900 prisoners
and 9,000 stand of arms. A large quantity of ammunition was
found in Fredericksburg. On our side 458 were killed and
3,743 wounded ; total, 4,201. The loss of the enemy was
1,152 killed, 9,101 wounded, and 3,234 missing ; total, 13,771.

General Burnside testified before the Committee on the
Conduct of the War that he " had about 100,000 men on the
south side of the river, and every single man of them was under,
artillery-fire, and about half of them were at different times
formed in columns of attack." *

Less than 20,000 Confederate troops were actively engaged.
This number composed about one fourth of the army under
General Lee. The returns of the Army of Northern Virginia ;
show that on the 10th of December, 1862, General Lee had
present for duty 78,228, and, on December 20th, 75,524 of all
arms.f

Upon being asked what causes he assigned for the failure of
his attack, General Burnside replied to the Committee on the
Conduct of the "War : " It was found impossible to get the men
up to the works. The enemy's fire was too hot for them." \

After the battle of Fredericksburg the Army of Northern

* " Report of Committee on the Conduct of the War," Part I, p. 656.

f Taylor's " Four Years with General Lee."

\ " Report of Committee on the Conduct of the War," Part I, p. 656.

1862] TO RESIST A DIRECT ADVANCE. 357

Yirginia remained encamped on the south side of the Rappa-
hannock until the latter part of April, 1863. The Federal
army occupied the north side of the river opposite Fredericks-
burg, extending to the Potomac. Two brigades of Ander-
son's division — those of Mahone and Posey — were stationed
near United States Mine or Bank Mill Ford. The cavalry was
distributed on both flanks — Fitzhugh Lee's brigade picketing
the Rappahannock above the mouth of the Rapidan and "W. H.
F. Lee's near Port Royal. General Longstreet, with two di-
visions of his corps, was detached for service south of James
River in February, and did not rejoin the army until after the
battle of Chancellorsville. Excepting a cavalry engagement
near Kelly's Ford, on March 17th, nothing of interest transpired
during this period of inactivity. On April 14, 1863, the ene-
my's cavalry was concentrating on the upper Rappahannock,
but his efforts to establish himself on the south side of the
river were successfully resisted. About the 21st, small bodies
of infantry appeared at Kelly's Ford and the Rappahannock
Bridge ; at the same time a demonstration was made oppo-
site Port Royal. These movements indicated that the army,
now commanded by Major-General Hooker, was about to re-
sume active operations. On the 28th, early in the morning,
the enemy crossed the river in boats near Fredericksburg, laid
a pontoon-bridge, and built another about a mile below. A
considerable force crossed on these bridges during the day, and
was massed under the high banks of the river, which afforded
protection from our artillery, while the batteries on the opposite
heights completely commanded the wide plain between our lines
and the narrow river. As in the first battle at Fredericksburg,
our dispositions were made with a view to resist a direct ad-
vance against us. But the indications were that the principal
effort would be made in some other quarter. On the 29th it
was reported that he had crossed in force near Kelly's Ford,
and that a heavy column was moving from Kelly's toward Ger-
mania Ford on the Rapidan, and another toward Ely's Ford.
The routes they were pursuing, after crossing the Rapidan, con-
verged near Chancellorsville, whence several roads led to the
rear of our position at Fredericksburg. General Anderson pro-

358 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

ceeded to cover these roads on the 29th, but, learning that the
enemy had crossed the Rapidan and was approaching in strong
force, he retired early on the next morning to the intersection
of the Mine and plank roads near Tabernacle Church, and began
to intrench himself. His rear-guard, as he left Chancellors-
ville, was attacked by cavalry, but, being vigorously repulsed,
offered no further opposition to his inarch.

The enemy on our front near Fredericksburg continued in-
active, and it was now apparent that the main attack would be
made upon our flank and rear. It was therefore determined to
leave sufficient troops to hold our lines, and with the main body
of the army to give battle to the approaching column. Early's
division of Jackson's corps and Barksdale's brigade of McLaws's
division, with part of the reserve artillery under General Pen-
dleton, were intrusted with the defense of our position at Fred-
ericksburg, and at midnight on the 30th General McLaws
marched with the rest of his command toward Chancellorsville.
General Jackson followed at dawn next morning with the re-
maining divisions of his corps. He reached the position occu-
pied by General Anderson at 8 a. m., and immediately began to
make preparations to advance. At 11 A. m. the troops moved for-
ward on the plank and old turnpike roads. The enemy was soon
encountered on both roads, and heavy skirmishing with infantry
and artillery ensued, our troops pressing steadily forward. A
strong attack upon McLaws was repulsed with spirit by Semmes's
brigade ; and General Wright, by direction of General Ander-
son, diverging to the left of the plank-road, marched by way of
the unfinished railroad from Fredericksburg to Gordonsville
and turned the Federal right. His whole line thereupon retreat-
ed rapidly, vigorously pursued by our troops until they arrived
within about one mile of Chancellorsville. Here the enemy
had assumed a position of great natural strength, surrounded on
all sides by a dense forest filled with a tangled undergrowth, in
the midst of which breastworks of logs had been constructed
with trees felled in front so as to form an almost impenetrable
abatis. His artillery swept the few narrow roads by which his
position could be approached from the front, and commanded the
adjacent woods. The left of his line extended from Chancellors-

1862] THE EXECUTION OF THE PLAN. 359

ville toward tlie Rappahannock, covering the Bank Mill Ford,
where he communicated with the north bank of the river bj a
pontoon-bridge. His right stretched westward along the Ger-
mania Ford road more than two miles. Darkness was approach-
ing before the strength and extent of his line could be ascer-
tained ; and, as the nature of the country rendered it hazardous
to attack by night, our troops were halted and formed in line of
battle in front of Chancellorsville at right angles to the plank-
road, extending on the right to the Mine road, and to the left
in the direction of the " Furnace."

It was evident that a direct attack by us would be attended
with great difficulty and loss, in view of the strength of his po-
sition and his superiority of numbers. It was therefore resolved
to endeavor to turn his right flank and gain his rear, leaving
a force in front to hold him in check and conceal the move-
ment. The execution of this plan was intrusted to Lieuten-
ant-General Jackson with his three divisions. The commands
of Generals McLaws and Anderson, with the exception of "Wil-
cox's brigade which during the night had been ordered back
to Banks's Ford, remained in front of the enemy. Early on
the morning of the 2d General Jackson marched by the Fur-
nace and Brock roads, his movement being effectually covered
by Fitzhugh Lee's cavalry under General Stuart in person. As
the rear of his train was passing the furnace a large force of the
enemy advanced from Chancellorsville and attempted its cap-
ture, but this advance was arrested. After a long and fatiguing
march General Jackson's leading division under General Rodes
reached the old turnpike about three miles in rear of Chancel-
lorsville at 4 p. m. As the different divisions arrived, they
were formed at right angles to the road — Rodes's in front,
Trimble's, under Brigadier-General Colston, in the second, and
A. P. Hill's in the third line. At 6 p. m. the advance was or-
dered. The enemy was taken by surprise, and fled after a brief
resistance. General Rodes's men pushed forward with great
vigor and enthusiasm, followed closely by the second and third
lines. Position after position was carried, the guns captured,
and every effort of the foe to rally defeated by the impetuous
rush of our troops. In the ardor of pursuit through the thick

360 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

and tangled woods, the first and second lines at last became min-
gled and moved on together as one. The fugitives made a stand
at a line of breastworks across the road, but the troops of Rodes
and Colston dashed over the intrenchments together, and the
flight and pursuit were resumed and continued until our advance
was arrested by the abatis in front of the line of works near the
central position at Chancellorsville. It was now dark, and Gen-
eral Jackson ordered the third line under General Hill to ad-
vance to the front and relieve the troops of Rodes and Colston,
who were completely blended and in such disorder from their
advance through intricate woods and over broken ground that
it was necessary to reform them. As Hill's men moved for-
ward, General Jackson, with his staff and escort, returning from
the extreme front, met the skirmishers advancing, and in the
obscurity of the night were mistaken for the enemy and fired
upon. Captain Bos well, chief engineer of the corps, and sev-
eral others, were killed and a number wounded, among whom
was General Jackson, who was borne from the field. The
command devolved upon Major-General Hill, whose division
under General Heth was advanced to the line of intrenchments
which had been reached by Rodes and Colston. A furious
fire of artillery was opened upon them, under cover of which
infantry advanced to the attack, but were handsomely re-
pulsed. General Hill was soon afterward disabled, and the
command was turned over to General Stuart. He immediately
proceeded to reconnoiter the ground and make himself acquaint-
ed with the disposition of the troops. The darkness of the
night and the difficulty of moving through the woods and un-
dergrowth rendered it advisable to defer further operations until
morning, and the troops rested on their arms in line of battle.

As soon as the sound of cannon gave notice of Jackson's
attack on the enemy's right, the troops in front began to press
strongly on the left to prevent reinforcements being sent to the
point assailed. They advanced up to the intrenchments, while
several batteries played with good effect until prevented by the
increasing darkness.

Early on the morning of May 3d General Stuart renewed
the attack upon General Hooker, who had strengthened his right

1862] THREE TIMES CARRIED. 361

wing during the night with additional breastworks, while a large
number of guns, protected by intrench ments, were posted so as
to sweep the woods through which our troops had to advance.
Hill's division was in front, with Colston in the second line, and
Rodes in the third. The second and third lines soon advanced
to the support of the first, and the whole became hotly engaged.
The breastworks at which the attack was suspended on the pre-
ceding evening were carried by assault, under a terrible fire of
musketry and artillery. In rear of these breastworks was a bar-
ricade, from which the enemy was quickly driven. The troops
on the left of the plank-road, pressing through the woods, at-
tacked and broke the next line, while those on the right bravely
assailed the extensive earthworks behind which General Hook-
er's artillery was posted. Three times were these works car-
ried, and as often were the brave assailants compelled to aban-
don them — twice by the retirement of the troops on their left,
who fell back after a gallant struggle with superior numbers,
and once by a movement of the enemy on their right caused by
the advance of General Anderson. The left, being reenforced,
finally succeeded in driving back the enemy, and the artillery
under Lieutenant-Colonels Carter and Jones, being thrown for-
ward to occupy favorable positions secured by the advance of
the infantry, began to play with great precision and effect.
Anderson, in the mean time, pressed gallantly forward directly
upon Chancellorsville, his right resting upon the plank-road and
his left extending around the furnace, while McLaws made a
strong demonstration to the right of the road. As the troops
advancing upon the enemy's front and right converged upon
his central position, Anderson effected a junction with Jackson's
corps, and the whole line pressed irresistibly. General Hook-
er's army was driven from all its fortified positions with heavy
loss in killed, wounded, and prisoners, and retreated toward the
Rappahannock. By 10 a. m. we were in full possession of the
field. The troops, having become somewhat scattered by the
difficulties of the ground and the ardor of the contest, were im-
mediately reformed, preparatory to renewing the attack. The
enemy had withdrawn to a strong position nearer to the Rappa-
hannock, which he had fortified. His superiority of numbers,

3G2 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

the unfavorable nature of the ground, which was densely wood-
ed, and the condition of our troops, after the arduous and san-
guinary conflict in which they had been engaged, rendered great
caution necessary. Our operations were just completed, when
further movements were arrested by intelligence received from'
Fredericksburg.

Before dawn, on the morning of the 3d, it was known that
the enemy had occupied Fredericksburg in large force, and
laid down a bridge at the town. He made a demonstration
against the extreme right of the force left to hold our lines,
which was easily repulsed by General Early. Soon afterward a
column moved from Fredericksburg along the river-banks, as if
to gain the heights on the extreme left which commanded those
immediately in rear of the town. This attempt was foiled.
Yery soon the enemy advanced in large force against Ma-
rye's, and the hills to the right and left of it. Two assaults
were gallantly repulsed. After the second, a flag of truce was
sent from the town to obtain permission to provide for the
wounded. Three heavy lines advanced immediately upon the
return of the flag and renewed the attack. They were bravely
repulsed on the right and left, but the small force at the foot of
Marye's Hill, overpowered by more than ten times their num-
bers, was captured after an heroic resistance and the hill carried.
The success of the enemy enabled him to threaten our commu-
nications by moving down the Telegraph road, or to come upon
our rear at Chancellorsville by the plank-road. He began to
advance on the plank-road, his progress being gallantly disputed
by the brigade of General "Wilcox, who fell back slowly until
he reached Salem Church on the plank-road, about five miles
from Fredericksburg.

In this state of affairs in our rear, General Lee led General
McLaws with his three brigades to reenforce General Wilcox.
He arrived at Salem Church early in the afternoon, where he
found General Wilcox in line of battle, with a large force of
the enemy — consisting, as was reported, of one army corps and
part of another — in his front. The enemy's artillery played
vigorously upon our position for some time, when his infantry
advanced in three strong lines, the attack being directed mainly

1862] NO ATTEMPT TO FOLLOW. 303

against General Wilcox, but partially involving the brigades on
his left. The assault was met with the utmost firmness, and
after a fierce struggle the first line was repulsed with great
slaughter. The second then came forward, but immediately
broke under the close and deadly fire which it encountered, and
the whole mass fled in confusion to the rear. They were pur-
sued by the brigades of Wilcox and Semmes, which advanced
nearly a mile, when they were halted to reform in the presence
of the hostile reserve, which now appeared in large force. It
being quite dark, General Wilcox deemed it imprudent to push
the attack with his small numbers, and retired to his original
position, the enemy making no attempt to follow. The next
morning General Early advanced along the Telegraph road, and
recaptured Marye's and the adjacent hills without difficulty, thus
gaining the rear of the enemy's left. In the mean time General
Hooker had so strengthened his position near Chancel lorsville,
that it was deemed inexpedient to assail it with less than our
whole force, which had been reduced by the detachment led
to Fredericksburg to relieve us from the danger that menaced
our rear.

It has been heretofore stated that General Longstreet had
been sent with two divisions of Lee's army to cooperate with
General French on the south side of the James River, in the
capture of Suffolk, the occupation of which by the enemy inter-
rupted our collection of supplies in the eastern counties of North
Carolina and Virginia. When the advance of Hooker threat-
ened General Lee's front, instructions were sent to General
Longstreet to hasten his return to the army with the large force
detached with him. These instructions were repeated with ur-
gent insistence, yet his movements were so delayed that, though
the battle of Chancellorsville did not occur until many days
after he was expected to join, his force was absent when it oc-
curred. Had he rejoined his command in due time, Lee need
not have diminished his force in front of Hooker, so as to delay
the renewal of the attack and force him to a precipitate retreat,
involving the loss of his artillery and trains. It was accord-
ingly resolved still further to reenforce the troops in front, in
order, if possible, to drive Hooker across the Eappahannock.

364: RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

Some delay occurred in getting the troops into position,
owing to the broken and irregular nature of the ground, and
the difficulty of ascertaining the disposition of the opposing
forces. The attack did not begin until 6 p. m., when the en-
emy's troops were rapidly driven across the plank-road in the
direction of the Rappahannock. The speedy approach of dark-
ness prevented General HcLaws from perceiving the success
of the attack, until the foe began to recross the river a short
distance below Banks's Ford, where he had laid one of his pon-
toon-bridges. His right brigades advanced through the woods
in the direction of the firing, but the retreat was so rapid that
they could only join in the pursuit. A dense fog settled over
the field, increasing the obscurity and rendering great caution
necessary to avoid collision between our own troops. Their
movements were consequently slow. The next morning it was
found that the enemy had made good his escape and removed
his bridges. Fredericksburg was evacuated, and our rear no
longer threatened. But, as General Hooker had it in his power
to recross, it was deemed best to leave a force to hold our lines
as before. McLaws and Anderson being directed to return to
Chancellorsville, they reached their destination during the
afternoon, in the midst of a violent storm, which continued
throughout the night and most of the following day. Prepa-
rations were made to assail the enemy's works at daylight on
the 6th, but, on advancing our skirmishers, it was found that,
under cover of the storm and darkness of the night, he had
retreated over the river. A detachment was left to guard the
battle-field, while the wounded were removed and the captured
property collected. The rest of the army returned to its former
position.

The loss of the enemy, according to his own statement, was
1,512 killed and 9,518 wounded ; total, 11,030. His dead and a
large number of wounded were left on the field. About 5,000
prisoners, exclusive of the wounded, were taken, and 13 pieces
of artillery, 19,500 stand of arms, 17 colors, and a large quan-
tity of ammunition fell into our hands.

Our loss was much less in killed and wounded than that
of the enemy, but of the number was one, a host in himself,.

1862] HIS PLACE WAS NEVER FILLED. 365

Lieut en ant-General Jackson, who was wounded, and died on
May 10th. Of this great captain, General Lee, in his anguish
at his death, justly said, " I have lost my right arm." As an
executive officer he had no superior, and war has seldom shown
an equal. Too devoted to the cause he served to have any
personal motive, he shared the toils, privations, and dangers of
his troops when in chief command ; and in subordinate position
his aim was to understand the purpose of his commander and
faithfully to promote its success. He was the complement of
Lee ; united, they had achieved such results that the public felt
secure under their shield. To us his place was never filled.

The official return of the Army of Northern Virginia, on
March 31, 1863, shows as present for duty 57,112, of which
6,509 were cavalry and 1,621 reserve artillery. On May 20th,
two weeks after the battle, and when Pickett's and Hood's
divisions had rejoined the army, the total infantry force num-
bered but 55,261 effective men, from which, if the strength of
Hood's and Pickett's divisions is deducted, there would re-
main 41,358 as the strength of the commands that participated
in the battles of Chancellorsville.*

The Army of the Potomac numbered 120,000 men, infan-
try and artillery, with a body of 12,000 well-equipped cavalry,
and an artillery force of four hundred guns.f

A brief and forcible account of this battle is given by Tay-
lor : %

"A formidable force under General Sedgwick was thrown
across the river below Fredericksburg, and made demonstrations
of an intention to assail the Confederate front. Meanwhile, with
great celerity and secrecy, General Hooker, with the bulk of his
army, crossed at the upper fords, and, in an able manner and won-
derfully short time, had concentrated four of his seven army corps,
numbering fifty-six thousand men, at Chancellorsville, about ten
miles west of Fredericksburg. His purpose was now fully devel-
oped to General Lee, who, instead of awaiting its further prose-
cution, immediately determined on the movement the least ex-
pected by his opponent. He neither proceeded to make strong

* Taylor's " Four Years with General Lee."

| Swinton's " Army of the Potomac," p. 269. % " Four Years with General Lee."

3GG RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

his left against an attack from the direction of Chancellorsville
nor did he move southward so as to put his army between that of
General Hooker and the Confederate capital, but, leaving General
Early, with about nine thousand men, to take care of General Sedg-
wick, he moved with the remainder of his army, numbering forty-
eight thousand men, toward Chancellorsville. As soon as the ad-
vance of the enemy was encountered, it was attacked with vigor,
and very soon the Federal army was on the defensive in its appar-
ently impregnable position. It was not the part of wisdom to at-
tempt to storm this stronghold ; but Sedgwick would certainly soon
be at work in the rear, and Early, with his inadequate force, could
not do more than delay and harass him. It was, therefore, imper-
atively necessary to strike — to strike boldly, effectively, and at
once. There could be no delay. Meanwhile, two more army
corps had joined General Hooker, who now had about Chancel-
lorsville ninety-one thousand men — six corps except one division
of the Second Corps (Couch's), which had been left with Sedgwick
at Fredericksburg. It was a critical position for the Confederate
commander, but his confidence in his trusted lieutenant and brave
men was such that he did not long hesitate. Encouraged by the
counsel and confidence of General Jackson, he determined to still
further divide his army ; and, while he, with the divisions of An-
derson and McLaws, less than fourteen thousand men, should hold
the enemy in his front, he would hurl Jackson upon his flank and
rear, and crush and crumble him as between the upper and nether
millstone. The very boldness of the movement contributed much
to insure its success.

" The flank movement of Jackson's wing was attended with
extraordinary success. On the afternoon of the 2d of May, he
struck such a blow to the enemy on their extreme right as to
cause dismay and demoralization to their entire army ; this ad-
vantage was promptly and vigorously followed up the next day,
when Generals Lee and Stuart (the latter then in command of
Jackson's wing) joined elbows ; and, after most heroic and de-
termined effort, their now united forces finally succeeded in storm-
ing and capturing the works of the enemy.

" Meantime Sedgwick had forced Early out of the heights at
Fredericksburg, and had advanced toward Chancellorsville, thus
threatening the Confederate rear. General Lee, having defeated
the greater force and driven it from its stronghold, now gathered

1862] BETWEEN THE HOSTILE HOSTS. 367

up a few of the most available of his victorious brigades and turned
upon the lesser. On May 3d Sedgwick's force was encountered
near Salem Church, and its further progress checked by General
McLaws, with the five brigades detached by General Lee for this
service, including Wilcox's, which had been stationed at Banks's
Ford. On the next day, General Anderson was sent to reenf orce
McLaws with three additional brigades. Meanwhile, General
Early had connected with these troops, and in the afternoon, so
soon as dispositions could be made for attack, Sedgwick's lines
were promptly assailed and broken, the main assault being made
on the enemy's left by Early's troops. The situation was now a
critical one for the Federal lieutenant. Darkness came to his res-
cue, and on the night of the 4th he crossed to the north side of
the river.

" On the 5th General Lee concentrated for another assault on
the new line taken up by General Hooker ; but on the morning of
the 6th it was ascertained that the enemy, in General Lee's lan-
guage, 'had sought safety beyond the Rappahannock,' and the
river flowed again between the hostile hosts."

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

Relations with Foreign Nations. — The Public Questions. — Ministers abroad. — Usages
of Intercourse between Nations. — Our Action. — Mistake of European Nations ;
they follow the Example of England and France. — Different Conditions of the Bel-

»ligerents. — Injury to the Confederacy by the Policy of European Powers relative
to the Blockade. — Explanation. — The Paris Conference. — Principles adopted. —
Acceded to by the Confederacy with a Single Exception. — These Agreements
remained inoperative. — Extent of the Pretended Blockade. — Remonstrances
against its Recognition. — Sinking Vessels to Block up Harbors. — Every Pro-
scription of Maritime Law violated by the United States Government. — Pro-
test.— Addition made to the Law by Great Britain. — Policy pursued favorable
to our Enemies. — Instances. — Mediation proposed by France to Great Britain,
and Russian Letter of French Minister. — Reply of Great Britain. — Reply of
Russia. — Letter to French Minister at Washington. — Various Offensive Ac-
tions of the British Government. — Encouraging to the United States. — Hollow
Profession of Neutrality.

The public questions arising out of our foreign relations
were too important to be overlooked. At the end of the first
year of the war the Confederate States had been recognized

36S RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

by the leading governments of Europe as a belligerent power.
This continued unchanged to the close. Mr. Mason became our
representative in London, Mr. Slidell in Paris, Mr. Post i
Spain, and Mr. Mann in Belgium. They performed with en
ergy and skill the positions, but were unsuccessful in obtaining
our recognition as an independent power.

The usages of intercourse between nations require that offi-
cial communication be made to friendly powers of all organi
changes in the constitution of states. To those who are fa-
miliar with the principles upon which the States known as th
United States were originally constituted, as well as those upo
which the Union was formed, the organic changes made by th
secession and confederation of the Southern States are very ap-
parent. But to others an explanation may be necessary. Each
of the States was originally declared to be sovereign and ind
pendent. In this condition, at a former period, all of those the
existing were severally recognized by name by the only one o:
the powers which had denied their right to independence. Thi
gave to each a recognized national sovereignty. Subsequently
they formed a compact of voluntary union, whereby a new or-
ganization was constituted, which was made the representative
of the individual States in all general intercourse with othei
nations. So long as the compact continued in force, this agenl
represented merely the sovereignty of the States.. But, when
portion of the States withdrew from the compact and formed
new one under the name of the Confederate States, they had
made such organic changes in their Constitution as to require
official notice in compliance with the usages of nations.

For this purpose the Provisional Government took early
measures for sending to Europe Commissioners charged with
the duty of visiting the capitals of the different powers and
making arrangements for the opening of more formal diplo-
matic intercourse. Prior, however, to the arrival abroad of
these Commissioners, the Government of the United States had
addressed communications to the different Cabinets of Europe,
in which it assumed the attitude of being sovereign over the
Confederate States, and alleged that these independent States
were in rebellion against the remaining States of the Union, and

1862] SAME COURSE OF POLICY. 369

threatened Europe with manifestations of its displeasure if it
should treat the Confederate States as having an independent
existence. It soon became known that these pretensions were
not considered abroad to be as absurd as they were known to be
at home ; nor had Europe yet learned what reliance was to be
placed in the official statements of the Cabinet at Washington.
The delegation of power granted by the States to the General
Government to represent them in foreign intercourse had led
European nations into the grave error of supposing that their
separate sovereignty and independence had been merged into one
common sovereignty, and had ceased to have a distinct existence.
Under the influence of this error, which all appeals to reason
and historical fact were vainly used to dispel, our Commissioners
were met by the declaration that foreign Governments could not
assume to judge between the conflicting representations of the
two parties as to the true nature of their previous relations. The
Governments of Great Britain and France accordingly signified
their determination to confine themselves to recognizing the
self-evident fact of the existence of a war, and to maintain a
strict neutrality during its progress. Some of the other powers
of Europe pursued the same course of policy, and it became ap-
parent that by some understanding, express or tacit, Europe had
decided to leave the initiative in all action touching the contest
on this continent to the two powers just named, who were rec-
ognized to have the largest interests involved, both by reason of
proximity to and of the extent of intimacy of their commercial
relations with the States engaged in war.

It was manifest that the course of action adopted by Europe,
while based on an apparent refusal to determine the question or
to side with either party, was, in point of fact, an actual deci-
sion against our rights and in favor of the groundless preten-
sions of the United States. It was a refusal to treat us as an
independent government. If we were independent States, the
I refusal to entertain with us the same international intercourse
.which was maintained with our enemy was unjust, and was inju-
rious in its effects, whatever might have been the motive which
prompted it. Neither was it in accordance with the high moral
obligations of that international code, whose chief sanction is
71

370 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

the conscience of sovereigns and the public opinion of mankind,
that those eminent powers should have declined the perform-
ance of a duty peculiarly incumbent on them, from any appre-
hension of the consequences to themselves. One immediate
and necessary result of their declining the responsibility of a
decision, which must have been adverse to the extravagant pre-
tensions of the United States, was the prolongation of hostilities
to which our enemies were thereby encouraged, and which re-
sulted in scenes of carnage and devastation on this continent
and of misery and suffering on the other such as have scarcely
a parallel in history. Had those powers promptly admitted
our right to be treated as all other independent nations, none
can doubt that the moral effect of such action would have been
to dispel the pretension under which the United States per-
sisted in their efforts to accomplish our subjugation.

There were other matters in which less than justice was ren-
dered to the Confederacy by " neutral " Europe, and undue ad-
vantage conferred on the aggressors in a wicked war. At the
inception of hostilities, the inhabitants of the Confederate States
were almost exclusively agriculturists ; those of the United
States were also to a large extent mechanics, merchants, and
navigators. We had no commercial marine, while their mer-
chant-vessels covered the ocean. We were without a navy,
while they had powerful fleets built by the money we had in
full share contributed. The power which they possessed for
inflicting injury on our coasts and harbors was thus counter-
balanced in some measure by the exposure of their commerce
to attack by private armed vessels. It was known to Eu-
rope that within a very few years past the United States had
peremptorily refused to accede to proposals for the abolition
of privateering, on the ground, as alleged by them, that nations
owning powerful fleets would thereby obtain undue advantage
over those possessing inferior naval force. Yet no sooner was
war flagrant between the Confederacy and the United States
than the maritime powers of Europe issued orders prohibit-
ing either party from bringing prizes into their ports. This
prohibition, directed with apparent impartiality against both
belligerents, was in reality effective against the Confederate

1856] POLICY OF EUROPEAN POWERS. 371

States only, for they alone could find a hostile commerce on
the ocean. Merely nominal against the United States, the pro-
hibition operated with intense severity on the Confederacy by
depriving it of the only means of maintaining its struggle on
the ocean against the crushing superiority of naval force pos-
sessed by its enemies. The value and efficiency of the weapon
which was thus wrested from our grasp by the combined ac-
tion of " neutral " European powers, in favor of a power which
professes openly its intention of ravaging their commerce by
privateers in any future war, is strikingly illustrated by the
terror inspired among commercial classes of the United States
by a single cruiser of the Confederacy. One small steamer,
commanded by officers and manned by a crew who were de-
barred by the closure of neutral ports from the opportunity
of causing captured vessels to be condemned in their favor as
prizes, sufficed to double the rates of marine insurance in Northern
ports, and consign to forced inaction numbers of Northern ves-
sels, in addition to the direct damage inflicted by captures at sea.

But it was especially in relation to the so-called blockade
that the policy of European powers was so shaped as to cause
the greatest injury to the Confederacy, and to confer signal ad-
vantages on the United States. A few words in explanation may
here be necessary.

Prior to the year 1856 the principles regulating this subject
were to be gathered from the writings of eminent publicists,
the decisions of admiralty courts, international treaties, and the
usages of nations. The uncertainty and doubt which prevailed
in reference to the true rules of maritime law, in time of war,
resulting from the discordant and often conflicting principles
announced from such varied and independent sources, had be-
come a grievous evil to mankind. Whether a blockade was
allowable against a port not invested by land as well as by sea,
whether a blockade was valid by sea if the investing fleet was
merely sufficient to render ingress to the blockaded port evi-
dently dangerous, or whether it was further required for its
legality that it should be sufficient " really to prevent access,"
and numerous other similar questions, had remained doubtful
and undecided. '

372 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

Animated by the highly honorable desire to put an end " to
differences of opinion between neutrals and belligerents, which
may occasion serious difficulties and even conflicts " (such was
the official language), the five great powers of Europe, together
with Sardinia and Turkey, adopted in 1856 the following dec-
laration of principles :

" 1. Privateering is and remains abolished.

" 2. The neutral flag covers enemy's goods, with the excep-
tion of contraband of war.

"3. Neutral goods, with the exception of contraband of war,
are not liable to capture under enemy's flag.

" 4. Blockades, in order to be binding must be effective, that
is to say, maintained by a force sufficient- really to prevent ac-
cess to the coast of the enemy."

Not only did this solemn declaration announce to the world
the principles to which the signing powers agreed to conform in
future wars, but it contained a clause to which these powers
gave immediate effect, and which provided that the states, not
parties to the Congress of Paris, should be invited to accede to
the declaration. Under this invitation every independent state
in Europe yielded its assent — at least, no instance is known to
me of a refusal ; and the United States, while declining to assent
to the proposition which prohibited privateering, declared that
the three remaining principles were in entire accordance wTith
their own views of international law.

No instance is known in history of the adoption of rules
of public law under circumstances of like solemnity, with like
unanimity, and pledging the faith of nations with a sanctity so
peculiar.

"When, therefore, this Confederacy was "formed, and when
neutral powers, while deferring action on its demand for ad-
mission into the family of nations, recognized it as a belliger-
ent power, Great Britain and France made informal proposals,
about the same time, that their own rights as neutrals should be
guaranteed by our acceding, as belligerents, to the declaration
of principles made by the Congress of Paris. The request was
addressed to our sense of justice, and therefore met immediate
and favorable response in the resolutions of the Provisional

1861] THIS MONSTROUS PRETENSION. 373

Congress of the 13th of August, 1861, by which all the princi-
ples announced by the Congress of Paris were adopted as the
guide of our conduct during the war, with the sole exception of
that relative to privateering. As the right to make use of pri-
vateers was one in which neutral nations had, as to the then
existing war, no interest ; as it was a right which the United
States had refused to abandon, and which they remained at lib-
erty to employ against us ; as it was a right of which we were
already in actual enjoyment, and which we could not be expected
to renounce flagrante hello against an adversary possessing an
overwhelming superiority of naval forces — it was reserved with
entire confidence that neutral nations could not fail to perceive
that just reason existed for the reservation. Nor was this con-
fidence misplaced ; for the official documents published by the
British Government contained the expression of the satisfaction
of that Government with the conduct of officials who conducted
successfully the delicate transaction confided to their charge.

These solemn declarations of principle, this implied agreement
between the Confederacy and the two powers just named, were
suffered to remain inoperative against the menaces and outrages
on neutral rights committed by the United States with unceas-
ing and progressing arrogance during the whole period of the
war. Neutral Europe remained passive when the United States,
with a naval force insufficient to blockade effectively the coast
of a single State, proclaimed a paper blockade of thousands of
miles of coast, extending from the Capes of the Chesapeake to
those of Florida, and encircling the Gulf of Mexico from Key
West to the mouth of the Rio Grande. Compared with this
monstrous pretension of the United States, the blockades known
in history under the names of the Berlin and Milan Decrees, and
the British Orders in Council, in the years 1806 and 1807, sink
into insignificance. Those blockades were justified by the pow-
ers that declared them, on the sole ground that they were retali-
atory ; yet they have since been condemned by the publicists of
those very powers as violations of international law. It will be
remembered that those blockades evoked angry remonstrances
from neutral powers, among which the United States were the
most conspicuous, and were in their consequences the chief cause

374 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT. *

of the war between Great Britain and the United States in 1812 ;
also, that they formed one of the principal motives that led to
the declaration of the Congress of Paris in 1856, in the fond
hope of imposing an enduring check on the very abuse of mari-
time power which was renewed by the United States in 1861
and 1862, under circumstances and with features of aggravated
wrong without precedent in history.

Repeated and formal remonstrances were made by the Con-
federate Government to neutral powers against the recognition
of that blockade. It was shown by evidence not capable of con-
tradiction, and which was furnished in part by the officials of
neutral nations, that the few ports of the Confederacy, before
which any naval forces at all were stationed, were invested so
inefficiently that hundreds of entries were effected into them
after the declaration of the blockade ; that our enemies admitted
the inefficiency of their blockade in the most forcible manner,
by repeated official complaints of the sale to us of goods contra-
band of war — a sale which could not possibly have affected their
interests if thei." pretended blockade had been sufficient " really
to prevent access to our coasts " ; that they alleged their inabil-
ity to render their paper blockade effective as the excuse for
the odious barbarity of destroying the entrance to one of the
harbors by sinking vessels loaded with stone in the channel;
that our commerce with foreign nations was interrupted, not by
the effective investment of our ports, but by watching the ports
of the West Indies ; not only by the seizure of ships in the at-
tempt to enter the Confederate ports, but by the capture on the
high-seas of neutral vessels by the cruisers of our enemies, when-
ever supposed to be bound to any point on our extensive coast,
without inquiry whether a single blockading vessel was to be
found at such point ; that blockading vessels had left the ports
at which they were stationed for distant expeditions, were ab-
sent for many days, and returned without notice either of the
cessation or renewal of the blockade ; in a word, that every pre-
scription of maritime law and every right of neutral nations to
trade with a belligerent under the sanction of principles here-
tofore universally respected were systematically and persistently
violated by the United States. Neutral Europe received our

^^4^^ %^A^c^ %Jm^>

1862] THE EVIDENT DANGER. 375

remonstrances, and submitted in almost unbroken silence to all
the wrongs that the United States chose to inflict on its com-
merce. The Cabinet of Great Britain, however, did not confine
itself to such implied acquiescence in these breaches of interna-
tional law which resulted from simple inaction, but, in a pub-
lished dispatch of the Minister for Foreign Affairs, assumed to
make a change in the principle enunciated by the Congress of
Paris, to which the faith of the British Government was consid-
ered to be pledged. The change was so important and so preju-
dicial to the interests of the Confederacy that, after a vain
attempt to obtain satisfactory explanations from that Govern-
ment, I directed a solemn protest to be made.

In a published dispatch from her Majesty's Foreign Office
to her Minister at Washington, under date of February 11th,
1862, occurred the following passage :

" Her Majesty's Government, however, are of opinion that, as-
suming that the blockade was duly notified, and also that a num-
ber of ships is stationed and remains at the entrance of a port
sufficient really to prevent access to it, or to create an evident dan-
ger of entering it or leaving it, and that these ships do not volun-
tarily permit ingress or egress, the fact that various ships may
have successfully escaped through it (as in the particular instance
here referred to), will not of itself prevent the blockade from be-
ing an effectual one by international law."

The words which I have italicized were an addition made by
the British Government of its own authority to a principle, the
exact terms of which were settled with deliberation by the com-
mon consent of civilized nations, and by implied convention
with our Government, as already explained, and their effect was
clearly to reopen to the prejudice of the Confederacy one of the
very disputed questions on the law of blockade which the Con-
gress of Paris proposed to settle. The importance of this change
was readily illustrated by taking one of our ports as an example.
There was " evident danger," in entering the port of Wilming-
ton, from the presence of a blockading force, and by this test
the blockade was effective. " Access is not really prevented "
by the blockading fleet to the same port ; for steamers were con-

376 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

tinually arriving and departing, so that, tried by this test, the
blockade was ineffective and invalid. Thus, while every energy
of our country was evoked in the struggle for maintaining its
existence, the neutral nations of Europe pursued a policy which,
nominally impartial, was practically most favorable to our ene-
mies and most detrimental to us.

The exercise of the neutral right of refusing entry into their
ports to prizes taken by both belligerents was especially hurtful
to the Confederacy. It was sternly adhered to and enforced.

The assertion of the neutral right of commerce with a bel-
ligerent, whose ports are not blockaded by fleets sufficient really
to prevent access to them, would have been eminently bene-
ficial to the Confederate States, and only thus hurtful to the
United States. It was complaisantly abandoned.

The duty of neutral states to receive with cordiality and
recognize with respect any new confederation that independent
states may think proper to form, was too clear to admit of de-
nial, but its postponement was equally beneficial to the United
States and detrimental to the Confederacy. It was postponed.

In this statement of our relations with the nations of Eu-
rope, it has been my purpose to point out distinctly that the
Confederacy had no complaint to make that those nations de-
clared their neutrality. It could neither expect nor desire more.
The complaint was, that the declared neutrality was delusive, not
real ; that recognized neutral rights were alternately asserted and
waived in such manner as to bear with great severity onus, while
conferring signal advantages on our enemy.

Perhaps it may not be out of place here to notice a corre-
spondence between the Cabinets of France, Great Britain, and
Russia, relative to a mediation between the Confederacy and the
United States. On October 30, 1862, the French Minister of
Foreign Affairs, Drouyn de l'Huys, addressed a note to the am-
bassadors of France at London and St. Petersburg. In this
dispatch he stated that the Emperor had followed with painful
interest the struggle which had then been going on for more
than a year on this continent. He observed that the proofs of
energy, perseverance, and courage, on both sides, had been given
at the expense of innumerable calamities and immense blood-

1862] TO HAVE NO ISSUE. 377

shed ; to the accompaniments of civil conflict was to be added
the apprehension of servile war, which would be the climax of
so many irreparable misfortunes.

If these calamities affected America only, these sufferings of
a friendly nation would be enough to excite the anxiety and
sympathy of the Emperor ; but Europe also had suffered in one
of the principal branches of her industry, and her artisans had
been subjected to most cruel trials. France and the maritime
powers had, during the struggle, maintained the strictest neu-
trality, but the sentiments by which they were animated, far
from imposing on them anything like indifference, seem, on the
contrary, to require that they should assist the two belligerent
parties in an endeavor to escape from a position which appeared
to have no issue. The forces of the two sides had hitherto
fought with balanced success, and the latest accounts did not
show any prospect of a speedy termination of the war.

These circumstances, taken together, seemed to favor the
adoption of measures which might bring about a truce. The
Emperor of the French, therefore, was of the opinion that there
was now an opportunity of offering to the belligerents the good
offices of the maritime powers. He, therefore, proposed to
her Majesty, as well as to the Emperor of Russia, that the
three courts should endeavor, both at Washington and in com-
munication with the Confederate States, to bring about a sus-
pension of arms for six months, during which time every act of
hostility, direct or indirect, should cease, at sea as well as on
land. This armistice might, if necessary, be renewed for a
further period.

This proposal, he proceeded to say, would not imply, on the
part of the three powers, any judgment on the origin of the
war, or any pressure on the negotiations for peace, which it
was hoped would take place during the armistice. The three
powers would only interfere to smooth the obstacles, and only
within the limits which the two interested parties would pre-
scribe. The French Government was of the opinion that, even
in the event of a failure of immediate success, those overtures
might have proved useful in leading the minds of men heated
by passion to consider the advantages of conciliation and peace.

378 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT. "*

The reply of Great Britain, through Lord John Russell, on
^November 13, 1862, is really contained in this extract :

"After weighing all the information which has been received
from America, her Majesty's Government are led to the conclu-
sion that there is no ground at the present moment to hope that
the Federal Government would accept the proposal suggested,
and a refusal from Washington at the present time would prevent
any speedy renewal of the offer."

The Russian Government, in reply, said :

"According to the information we have hitherto received, we
are inclined to believe that a combined step between France,
England, and Russia, no matter how conciliatory, and how cau-
tiously made, if it were taken with an official and collective char-
acter, would run the risk of causing precisely the very opposite of
the object of pacification, which is the aim of the wishes of the
three courts."

The unfavorable reception of the proposal was communi-
cated by the French Minister of Foreign Affairs to the repre-
sentative of France at Washington. In this communication he
said :

" Convinced as we were that an understanding between the
three powers in the sense presented by us would answer as much
the interests of the American people as our own ; that even that
understanding was, in the existing circumstances, a duty of hu-
manity, you will easily form an idea of our regret at seeing the
initiative we have taken after mature reflection remain without
results. Being also desirous of informing Mr. Dayton, the United
States Minister, of our project, I confidently communicated it to
him, and even read in his presence the dispatch sent to London
and St. Petersburg. I could not but be surprised that the Minis-
ter of the United States should oppose his objections to the pro-
ject I communicated to him, and to hear him express personally
some doubts as to the reception which would be given by the Cabi-
net at Washington to the joint offers of the good offices of France,
Russia, and Great Britain."

It has already been stated that, by common understanding,
the initiative in all action touching the contest on this continent

1861] TRUE NATURE OF THE NEUTRALITY. 379

had been left by foreign powers to the two great maritime na-
tions of Western Europe, and that the Governments of these
two nations had agreed to take no measures without previous
concert. The result of these arrangements, therefore, placed it
in the power of either France or England to obstruct at pleas-
ure the recognition to which the Confederacy was justly enti-
tled, or even to prolong the continuance of hostilities on this
side of the Atlantic, if the policy of either could be promoted
by the postponement of peace. Each, too, thus became pos-
sessed of great influence in so shaping the general exercise of
neutral rights in Europe as to render them subservient to the
purpose of aiding one of the belligerents, to the detriment of the
other. Perhaps it may not be out of place to present a few
examples by which to show the true nature of the neutrality
professed in this war.

In May, 1861, the Government of her Britannic Majesty
assured our enemies that " the sympathies of this country [Great
Britain] were rather with the North than with the South.' '

On June 1, 1861, the British Government interdicted the
use of its ports "to armed ships and privateers, both of the
United States and the so-called Confederate States," with their
prizes. The Secretary of State of the United States fully ap-
preciated the character and motive of this interdiction, when he
observed to Lord Lyons, who communicated it, that " this meas-
ure and that of the same character which had been adopted by
France would probably prove a death-blow to Southern priva-
teering"— a means, it will be remembered, which the United
States had refused to abandon for themselves.

On the 12th of June, 1861, the United States Minister in
London informed her Majesty's Minister for Foreign Affairs
that the fact of his having held interviews with the Commission-
ers of our Government had given "great dissatisfaction, and
that a protraction of this would be viewed by the United States
as hostile in spirit, and to require some corresponding action ac-
cordingly." In response to this intimation her Majesty's Min-
ister gave assurance that " he had no expectation of seeing them
any more."

Further extracts will show the marked encouragement to

380 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

the United States to persevere in its paper blockade, and unmis-
takable intimations that her Majesty's Government would not
contest its validity.

On May 21, 1861, Earl Russell pointed out to the United
States Minister in London that " the blockade might, no doubt,
be made effective, considering the small number of harbors on
the Southern coast, even though the extent of three thousand
miles were comprehended in the terms of that blockade."

On January 14, 1862, her Majesty's Minister in Washing-
ton communicated to his Government that, in extenuation of
the barbarous attempt to destroy the port of Charleston by sink-
ing a stone fleet in the harbor, Mr. Seward had explained that
" the Government of the United States had, last spring, with a
navy very little prepared for so extensive an operation, under-
taken to blockade upward of three thousand miles of coast.
The Secretary of the Navy had reported that he could stop up
the ' large holes ' by means of his ships, but that he could not
stop up the ' small ones.' It has been found necessary, there-
fore, to close some of the numerous small inlets by sinking ves-
sels in the channel."

On May 6, 1862, so far from claiming the right of British
subjects as neutrals to trade with us as belligerents, and to dis-
regard the blockade on the ground of this explicit confession by
our enemy of his inability to render it effective, her Majesty's
Minister for Foreign Affairs claimed credit with the United
States for friendly action in respecting it. His lordship stated
that —

" The United States Government, on the allegation of a rebel-
lion pervading from nine to eleven States of the Union, have now,
for more than twelve months, endeavored to maintain a blockade
of three thousand miles of coast. This blockade, kept up irregu-
larly, but, when enforced, enforced severely, has seriously injured
the trade and manufactures of the United Kingdom.

" Thousands are now obliged to resort to the poor-rates for
subsistence owing to this blockade. Yet her Majesty's Govern-
ment have never sought to take advantage of the obvious im-
perfections of this blockade, in order to declare it ineffective.
They have, to the loss and detriment of the British nation, scru-

1862] TO SEIZE ONE VESSEL. 381

pulously observed the duties of Great Britain toward a friendly

state."

It is not necessary to pursue this subject further. Suffice it
to say that the British Government, when called upon to redeem
its pledge made at Paris in 1856, and renewed to the Confederacy
in 1861, replied that it could not regard the blockade of South-
ern ports as having been otherwise than " practically effective in
February, 1862," and that " the manner in which it .has since
been enforced gives to neutral governments no excuse for as-
serting that the blockade had not been effectively maintained."

The partiality of her Majesty's Government in favor of our
enemies was further evinced in the marked difference of its con-
duct on the subject of the purchase of supplies by the two bel-
ligerents. This difference was conspicuous from the very com-
mencement of the war. As early as May 1, 1861, the British
Minister in Washington was informed by the Secretary of State
of the United States that he had sent agents to England, and
that others would go to France, to purchase arms ; and this fact
was communicated to the British Foreign Office, which inter-
posed no objection. Yet, in October of the same year, Earl
Russell entertained the complaint of the United States Minister
in London, that the Confederate States were importing contra-
band of war from the Island of Nassau, directed inquiry into
the matter, and obtained a report from the authorities of the
island denying the allegations, which report was inclosed to Mr.
Adams, and received by him as satisfactory evidence to dissi-
pate " the suspicion thrown upon the authorities by that unwar-
rantable act." So, too, when the Confederate Government
purchased in Great Britain, as a neutral country (with strict
observance both of the law of nations and the municipal law of
Great Britain), vessels which were subsequently armed and com-
missioned as vessels of war after they had been far removed
from English waters, the British Government, in violation of its
own laws, and in deference to the importunate demands of the
United States, made an ineffectual attempt to seize one vessel,
and did actually seize and detain another which touched at the
Island of Nassau, on her way to a Confederate port, and sub-

382 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

jected her to an unfounded prosecution, at the very time when
cargoes of munitions of war were openly shipped from British
ports to New York, to be used in warfare against us. Further
instances need not be adduced to show how detrimental to us,
and advantageous to our enemy, was the manner in which the
leading European power observed its hollow profession of neu-
trality toward the belligerents.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

Advance of General E. K. Smith. — Advance of General Bragg. — Retreat of General
Buell to Louisville. — Battle at Perryville, Kentucky. — General Morgan at
Hartsville. — Advance of General Rosecrans. — Battle of Murf reesboro. — General
Van Dorn and General Price. — Battle at Iuka. — General Van Dorn. — Battle of
Corinth. — General Little. — Captures at Holly Springs. — Retreat of Grant to
Memphis. — Operations against Vicksburg. — The Canal. — Concentration. — Raid
of Grierson. — Attack near Port Gibson. — Orders of General Johnston. — Reply
of General Pemberton. — Baker's Creek. — Big Black Bridge. — Retreat to Vicks-
burg.— Siege. — Surrender. — Losses. — Surrender of Port Hudson. — Some Move-
ments for its Relief.

Operations in the "West now claim attention. General
Bragg, soon after taking command, as has been previously stated,
advanced from Tupelo and occupied Chattanooga. Meantime
General E. K. Smith with his force held Knoxville, in East
Tennessee. Subsequently, in August, he moved toward Ken-
tucky, and entered that State through Big Creek Gap, some
twenty miles south of Cumberland Gap. After several small
and successful affairs, he reached Richmond in the afternoon of
August 30th. Here a force of the enemy had been collected to
check his progress, but it was speedily routed, with the loss of
some hundred killed and several thousand made prisoners, and a
large number of small-arms, artillery, and wagons were captured.
Lexington was next occupied ; thence he advanced to Frankfort ;
and, moving forward toward the Ohio River, a great alarm was
created in Cincinnati, then so little prepared for defense that,
had his campaign been an independent one, he probably could
and would have crossed the Ohio and captured that city. His

18G2] TIIERE TO GIVE BATTLE. 383

division was but the advance of General Bragg's, and his duty
to cooperate with it was a sufficient reason for not attempting
so important a movement.

General Bragg marched from Chattanooga on September
5th, and, without serious opposition, entered Kentucky by the
eastern route, thus passing to the rear of General Buell in Mid-
dle Tennessee, who, becoming concerned for his line of com-
munication with Nashville and Louisville, and especially for the
safety of the latter city, collected all his force and retreated
rapidly to Louisville. This was a brilliant piece of strategy on
the part of General Bragg, by which he manoeuvered the foe
out of a large and to us important territory. By it north
Alabama and Middle Tennessee were relieved from the presence
of the enemy, without necessitating a single engagement.

General Buell in his retreat followed the line of the railroad
from Nashville to Louisville. General Bragg moved more to
the eastward, so as to unite with the forces under General E. K.
Smith, which was subsequently effected when the army was
withdrawing from Kentucky.

On September 18th General Bragg issued an address to the
citizens of Kentucky. Some recruits joined him, and an im-
mense amount of supplies was obtained, which he continued to
send to the rear until he withdrew from the State. The enemy,
having received reinforcements, as soon as our army began to
retire, moved out and pressed so heavily on its rear, under
Major-General Hardee, that he halted and checked them near
Perryville. General Bragg then determined there to give
battle.

Concentrating three of the divisions of his old command,
then under Major-General Polk, he directed him to attack on
the morning of October 8th. The two armies were formed
on opposite sides of the town. The action opened at 12.30
p. m., between the skirmishers and artillery on both sides.
Finding the enemy indisposed to advance, General Bragg or-
dered him to be assailed vigorously. The engagement became
general soon after, and was continued furiously until dark.
Although greatly outnumbered, our troops did not hesitate to
engage at any odds, and, though the battle raged with varying

384: RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

fortune, our men eventually carried every position, and drove
the Federals about two miles. The intervention of night termi-
nated the action. Our force captured fifteen pieces of artillery,
killed one and wounded two brigadier-generals and a very large
number of inferior officers and men, estimated at no less than
four thousand, and captured four hundred prisoners. Our loss
was twenty-five hundred killed, wounded, and missing.

Ascertaining that the enemy was heavily reenforced during
the night, General Bragg on the next morning withdrew his
troops to Harrodsburg. General Smith arrived the next day
with most of his forces, and the whole were then withdrawn to
Bryantsville, the foe following slowly but not closely. Gen-
eral Bragg finally took position at Murfreesboro, and the hos-
tile forces concentrated at Nashville, General Buell having been
superseded by General Kosecrans.

Meantime, on November 30th, General Morgan with thir-
teen hundred men made an attack on a brigade of the enemy at
Hartsville. It was found strongly posted on a hill in line of
battle. Our line was formed under fire, and the advance was
made with great steadiness. The enemy was driven from his
position, through his camps, losing a battery of Parrott guns,
and finally hemmed in on the river-bank, where he surrendered.
The contest was severe, and lasted an hour and a half. The
prisoners numbered twenty-one hundred.

Late in the month of December General Kosecrans com-
menced his advance from Nashville upon the position of Gen-
eral Bragg at Murfreesboro. His movement began on Decem-
ber 26th by various routes, but such was the activity of our
cavalry as to delay him four days in reaching the battle-field, a
distance of twenty -six miles. On the 29th' General Wheeler
with his cavalry brigade gained the rear of Rosecrans's army,
and destroyed several hundreds of wagons loaded with sup-
plies and baggage. After clearing the road, he made the cir-
cuit of the enemy and joined our left. Their strength, as we
have ascertained, was 65,000 men. The number of fighting
men we had on the field on December 31st was 35,000, of
which 30,000 were infantry and artillery.

Our line was formed about two miles from Murfreesboro,

1862] TOO FORMIDABLE FOR ASSAULT. 385

and stretched transversely across Stone River, which was ford-
able from the Lebanon pike on the right to the Franklin road
on the left. As General Rosecrans made no demonstration on
the 30th, General Bragg determined to begin the conflict early
on the morning of the 31st by the advance of his left. The ene-
my was taken completely by surprise, and his right was stead-
ily driven until his line was thrown entirely back at a right
angle to his first position and near to the railroad, along which
he had massed reserves. Their resistance after the first surprise
was most gallant and obstinate. At night he had been forced
from every position except the one on his extreme left, which
rested on Stone River, and was strengthened by a concentra-
tion of artillery, and now seemed too formidable for assault.

On the next day (January 1st) the cannonading opened on
the right center about 8 a. m., and after a short time subsided.
The enemy had withdrawn from the advanced position occu-
pied by his left flank ; one or two short contests occurred on
the 3d, but his line was unchanged. Our forces had now
been in line of battle five days and nights, with little rest, as
there were no reserves. Their tents had been packed in the
wagons, which were four miles to the rear. The rain was con-
tinuous, and the cold severe. Intelligence was received that
heavy reinforcements were coming to Rosecrans by a rapid
transfer of all the troops from Kentucky, and for this and the
reasons before stated General Bragg decided to fall back to Tul-
lahoma, and the army was withdrawn in good order.

In the series of engagements near Murfreesboro we captured
over 6,000 prisoners, 30 pieces of artillery, 6,000 small-arms, a
number of ambulances, horses, and mules, and a large amount
of other property. Our losses exceeded 10,000, and that of the
enemy was estimated at over 25,000.

After the battle of Shiloh, West Tennessee and north Mis-
sissippi were occupied by a force under General Grant. Subse-
quently this force was increased, and General Rosecrans assigned
to its command. Many positions were held in "West Tennessee
and north Mississippi, extending from Memphis to the north-
eastern part of the State of Mississippi, with garrisons aggre-
gating about 42,000 men. The most important of these posi-
72

386 RISE ^~D FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

tions was that of the fortified town of Corinth. As part of the
plan to subjugate the Southwestern States, extensive prepara-
tions were made for an advance through Mississippi and an at-
tack on Vicksburg by combined land and naval forces. A large
number of troops occupied Middle Tennessee and north Ala-
bama. To defeat their general plan, and to relieve the last-
mentioned places of the presence of the enemy, General Bragg
moved his army into Kentucky, which, by this time, the Federal
Government thought it needless to overawe by the presence of
garrisons. General Yan Dorn and General Price commanded
the Confederate troops then in north Mississippi. General
Bragg, when he advanced into Kentucky, had left them with
instructions to operate against the Federals in that region, and
especially to guard against their junction with Buell in Middle
Tennessee. Though Yan Dorn was superior in rank, he had no
power to command General Price, unless they should happen to
join in the field and do duty together. General Price on this
as on other occasions manifested his entire willingness to make
a junction with his superior officer, and about the last of August
proposed to General Yan Dorn to join him, but at that time
Yan Dom's available force for the field had been sent with Gen-
eral Breckinridge in his campaign against Baton Rouge. After
that force had rejoined General Yan Dorn, he wrote to Price,
inviting him to unite with him, that, with their two divisions,
they might make an attack upon Corinth, by the capture of
which main position of the enemy in that section of the country
he hoped to be subsequently able to drive him from north Mis-
sissippi and West Tennessee. Price felt constrained by his
instructions to observe and if possible to prevent Rosecrans's
forces in Mississippi from effecting a junction with Buell's in
Tennessee ; therefore the invitation was . unfortunately post-
poned to a future time.

Subsequently General Price learned that Rosecrans was mov-
ing to cross the Tennessee and join Buell ; he therefore marched
from Tupelo and reached Iuka on the 19th of September. His
cavalry advance found the place occupied by a force, which
retreated toward Corinth, abandoning a considerable amount
of stores. On the 24th Yan Dorn renewed in urgent terms

1862] AXD NOT SOOXER. 387

liis request for Price to come with all his forces to unite with
him and make an attack upon Corinth. On the same day
Price received a letter from General Ord, informing him that
" Lee's army had been destroyed at Antietam ; that, therefore,
the rebellion must soon terminate, and that, in order to spare
the further effusion of blood, he gave him this opportunity
to lay down his arms." Price replied, correcting the rumor
about Lee's army, thanked Ord for his kind feeling, and prom-
ised to " lay down his arms whenever Mr. Lincoln should ac-
knowledge the independence of the Southern Confederacy, and
not sooner." On that night General Price held a council of
war, at which it was agreed on the next morning to fall back
and make a junction with Van Dorn, it being now satisfactorily
shown that the enemy was holding the line on our left instead
of moving to reenforce Buell. The cavalry pickets had re-
ported that a heavy force was moving from the south toward
Iuka on the Jacinto road, to meet which General Little had ad-
vanced with his Missouri brigade, an Arkansas battalion, the
Third Louisiana Infantry, and the Texas Legion. It proved to
be a force commanded by General Rosecrans in person. A
bloody contest ensued, and the latter was driven back, with the
loss of nine guns. Our own loss was very serious. General
Maury states that the Third Louisiana regiment lost half its
men, that Whitfield's legion suffered heavily, and adds that
these two regiments and the Arkansas battalion of about a hun-
dred men had charged and captured the enemy's guns. In this
action General Henry Little fell, an officer of extraordinary
merit, distinguished on many fields, and than whom there was
none whose loss could have been more deeply felt by his Mis-
souri brigade, as well as by the whole army, whose admiration
he had so often attracted by gallantry and good conduct. It
was afterward ascertained that this movement of Rosecrans
was intended to be made in concert with one by Grant mov-
ing from the west, but the former had been beaten before the
latter arrived. Before dawn Price moved to make the proposed
junction with Yan Dorn, which was effected at Ripley on the
28th of September, at which time Yan Dorn in his report
says : " Field returns showed my strength to be about 22,000.

388 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

Posecrans at Corinth had about 15,000, with about 8,000 addi-
tional men at outposts from twelve to fifteen miles distant." In
addition to this force, the enemy had at Memphis, under Sher-
man, about 6,000 men ; at Bolivar, under Ord, about 8,000 ; at
Jackson, Tennessee, under Grant, about 3,000 ; at bridges and
less important points, 2,000 or 3,000 — making an aggregate of
42,000 in West Tennessee and north Mississippi.

Corinth, though the strongest, was from its salient position
the point it was most feasible to attack, and, under the circum-
stances, the most important to gain. Yan Dorn, therefore,
decided to move so rapidly upon it as to take it by surprise, and
endeavor to capture it before reinforcements could arrive. In
a previous chapter notice has been taken of the character and
conduct of General Price ; here it is proposed in like manner to
say something of General Yan Dorn, rendered the more appro-
priate because of the criticism to which his attack upon Corinth
has been subjected. He was an educated soldier, had served
with marked distinction in the war with Mexico ; indeed, had
been quite as often noticed in official reports for gallantry and
good conduct as any officer who served in that war. After its
close he had served on the "Western frontier, and in Indian
warfare exhibited a like activity and daring as that shown in
the greater battles with Mexico. Immediately on the seces-
sion of his native State, Mississippi, he resigned from the United
States Army, and, together with his veteran commander in
Texas, General Twiggs, commenced recruiting men for the
anticipated war. He was among the first to leave the service
of the United States, and came to offer his sword to Missis-
sippi. In the military organization there authorized, he was
appointed a brigadier-general, and, when the State troops were
transferred to the Confederacy, he entered its service. Gen-
tle as he was brave, and generous, freely sharing all the dan-
gers and privations to which his troops were subjected, he
possessed, like his associate Price, both the confidence and affec-
tion of his men. Without entering into details of the disposi-
tion of his troops in the attack on the works at Corinth, the
result shows that they were skillfully made, and, though final
success did not crown the effort, the failure was due to other

1862] ONE HOUR MORE OF DAYLIGHT. 389

causes than the defect of pkn or want of energy and personal
effort on the part of Van Dorn. His opponent, Rosecrans, was an
engineer of high ability, and proved himself one of the best
generals in the United States Army. He had- materially strength-
ened the works around Corinth, and had interposed every pos-
sible obstacle to an assault.. Our army had moved rapidly from
Ripley, its point of junction, had cut the railroad between Corinth
and Jackson, Tennessee, and at daybreak on the 3d of March
was deployed for attack. By ten o'clock our force confronted
the enemy inside his intrenchments. In half an hour the whole
line of outer works was carried, the obstructions passed, and
the battle opened in earnest ; the foe, obstinately disputing
every point, was finally driven from his second line of detached
works, and at sunset had retreated to the innermost lines.

The battle had been mainly fought by Price's division on
our left. The troops had made a quick march of ten miles over
dusty roads without water ; the line of battle had been formed
in forests with undergrowth ; the combats of the day had been
so severe that General Price thought his troops unequal to fur-
ther exertion on that day, and it was decided to wait until
morning. Of this, General Yan Dorn says :

"I saw with regret the sun sink behind the horizon as the last
shot of our sharpshooters followed the retreating foe into their in-
nermost lines. One hour more of daylight, and victory would have
soothed our grief for the loss of the gallant dead who sleep on that
lost but not dishonored field."

During the night batteries were put in position to open
on the town at 4 a. m. At daybreak the action was to begin
on the left, to be immediately followed by an advance on the
extreme right. The order "was not executed, the commander
of the wing which was to make the attack failed to do so, and
another officer was sent to take his place. In the mean time
the center became engaged, and the action extended to the left.
The plan had been disarranged; nevertheless, the center and
left pushed forward and planted their colors on the last strong-
hold of the enemy; his "heavy guns were silenced, and all
seemed about to be ended, when a heavy fire from fresh troops

390 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

that had succeeded in reaching Corinth was poured into our
thin ranks," and, with this combined assault on Price's exhausted
corps, which had sustained the whole conflict, those gallant
troops were driven back. The day was lost. The enemy, re-
enforced, was concentrated against our left, and Lo veil's divis-
ion, which was at this time advancing, pursuant to orders, and
was on the point of assaulting the works, was ordered to move
to the left to prevent a sortie, and cover their retreat. Our
army retired during the day to Chewalla without pursuit, and
rested for the night free from molestation.

Our loss was very heavy of gallant men and officers. In the
fierce conflicts the officers displayed not only daring, but high
military skill, their impetuous charges being marked by judi-
cious selection of time and place. Colonel William S. Barry,
who, as commander of the burial party, visited General Rose-
crans, was courteously received by that officer, who, while de-
clining to admit the command within his lines, sent assurance
to General Yan Dorn that " every becoming respect should be
shown to his dead and wounded. . . . He had the grave of
Colonel Rodgers, who led the Second Texas sharpshooters, in-
closed and marked with a slab, in respect to the gallantry of his
charge. Rodgers fell before Gates called on me to reenforce
him on the edge of the ditch of Battery Robbinet." * This
officer, W. P. Rodgers, was a captain in the First Regiment
of Mississippi Rifles in the war with Mexico, and the gallantry
which attracted the admiration of the enemy at Corinth was in
keeping with the character he acquired in the former service re-
ferred to. Of this retreat, that able soldier and military critic,
General Dabney H. Maury, in a contribution to the "Annals
of the War," wrote :

" Few commanders have ever been so beset as Yan Dorn was
in the forks of the Hatchie, and very few would have extricated
a beaten army as he did then. One, with a force stated at ten
thousand men, headed him at the Hatchie Bridge ; while Rose-
crans, with twenty thousand men, was attacking his rear at the
Tuscumbia Bridge, only five miles off. . The whole road between
was occupied by a train of nearly four hundred wagons, and a de-

* General D. H. Maury.

1862] RETREAT HASTILY FROM THE STATE. 391

feated army of about eleven thousand muskets. But Van Dorn
was never for a moment dismayed. He repulsed Ord, and pun-
ished him severely ; while he checked Rosecrans at the Tuscum-
bia, until he could turn his train and army short to the left, and
cross the Hatchie by the Boneyard road, without the loss of a
wagon."

He then moved near Holly Springs, Mississippi, to await
further developments. In the mean time General Grant massed
a heavy force, estimated at eighty thousand men, at various
points on the Memphis and Charleston Railroad. Thence he
moved south, through the interior of Mississippi, until he en-
camped near Water Valley. The country was teeming with
great quantities of breadstuffs and forage, and he accumulated
an immense depot of supplies at Holly Springs, and hastened
every preparation necessary to continue his advance southward.
Unless his progress was arrested, the interior of the State, its
capital, Jackson, Yicksburg, and its railroads, would fall into his
possession. As we had no force in front sufficient to offer battle,
our only alternative was to attack his communications. For this
purpose, General Yan Dorn, on the night of December 15th,
quietly withdrew our cavalry, amounting to less than twenty-
five hundred men, from the enemy's front, and marched for
Holly Springs. That place was occupied by a brigade of in-
fantry and a portion of the Seventh Illinois Cavalry. The
movement of Yan Dorn was so rapid that early on the morn-
ing of the 19th he surprised and captured the garrison, and
before eight o'clock was in quiet possession of the town. The
captured property, amounting to millions of dollars, was burned
before sunset, with the exception of the small quantity used in
arming and equipping his command. General Grant was thus
forced to abandon his campaign and to retreat hastily from the
State.

After the battle of Murfreesboro, which closed in the first
days of 1863, there was a cessation of active operations in that
portion of Tennessee, and attention was concentrated upon the
extensive preparations which were in progress for a campaign
into Mississippi, with Yicksburg as the objective point. The

392 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

plan, as it was developed, was for a combined movement by
land and river, the former passing through the interior of
Mississippi to approach Vicksburg in rear, the latter to descend
the Mississippi River and attack the city in front. General
Pemberton, with the main body of his command, held the po-
sition on the Tallahatchie and Yazoo Rivers, and among the
various devices to turn that position was one more ingenious
than ingenuous. It was an offer to furnish, at prices lower
than ruled in our markets, provisions of which we stood in
need, to be sent through the Yazoo Pass and transported in
boats through to the Yazoo River if we should desire. I had,
some time before, directed that cypress rafts, as far as practi-
cable, of sinking timber, should be thrown into the main chan-
nel leading down from the Yazoo Pass ; and saw that, if it was
not the purpose of the proposer, the effect of accepting the
proposition would be to open a water line of approach from the
Mississippi, below Memphis, then in the hands of the enemy,
to the interior in rear of Vicksburg : for that reason, I re-
sisted much importunity in favor of allowing the supplies to
be brought in that manner.

In the latter part of December General Sherman, having
descended the Mississippi River, entered the Yazoo with four
divisions of land troops and five gunboats, the object being to
reduce our work at Haines's Bluff and turn Yicksburg so as to
attack it in rear. The first point at which the range of hills
extending from Yicksburg up the Yazoo approaches near to the
river is at Haines's Bluff, some twenty miles by the course of
the Yazoo from the Mississippi River. Here the troops were
landed the 26th of December to attack the redoubts which had
been built upon the bluff.

On the 27th little progress was made. On the 28th the at-
tempt, by one division, to approach the causeway north of the
Chickasaw Bayou, was repulsed with heavy loss. The troops
were withdrawn and moved down the river to a point below
the bayou, there to unite with the rest of the command. At
daylight on the 29th the attack was resumed and continued
throughout the most of the day1; the enemy were again repulsed
with heavy loss. On the next day there was firing on both sides

1863]

A NEW PLAN OF OPERATIONS.

393

without conclusive results. On the 31st General Sherman sent
in a flag of truce to bury the dead.

Thereafter nothing important occurred until the latter part
of January, when the troops under General Grant embarked at
Memphis and moved down the Mississippi River to Young's
Point, on the Louisiana shore, a few miles above Vicksburg.
The expected cooperation by his forces with those of Sherman
had been prevented by the brilliant cavalry expedition under
Van Dorn, which captured and destroyed the vast supplies col-
lected at Holly Springs for the use of Grant's forces in the land
movement referred to. This compelled Grant to retreat to

Memphis, and frustrated the combined movement which had
been projected, in connection with the river campaign, by Sher-
man, and a new plan of operations resulted therefrom, in which,
however, still prominently appears the purpose of turning Yicks-
burg on the north. After General Grant, descending the Mis-
sissippi from Memphis, arrived (2d of February, 1863) in the
neighborhood of Yicksburg and assumed command of the ene-
my's forces, an attempt was made, by removing obstructions to
the navigation of the Yazoo Pass and Cold "Water, small streams
which flow from the Mississippi into the Tallahatchie River, to

394 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

pass to the rear of Fort Pemberton at the mouth of the latter.
The never-to-be-realized hope was to reduce that work, and thus
open the way down the Yazoo River to the right flank of the
defenses of Vicksburg.

At the same time another attempt was made, by means of

WATERS- SON

the network of creeks and bayous on the north side of the Ya-
zoo, to pass around and enter the Yazoo above Haines's Bluff ;
but our sharpshooters, availing themselves of every advantageous

1863] UTTERLY DISCOMFITED. 395

position, picked off the men upon the boats, and Colonel (after-
ward General) Ferguson, with a few men and a section of field-
pieces, so harassed and beset them that they were driven back
utterly discomfited.

Admiral Porter had, with his fleet, gone some distance up
Deer Creek, and, but for the land-forces sent to sustain him,
would probably never have returned, an adventurous party
having passed in below him with axes to fell trees so as to pre-
vent his egress. He is described as follows : *

" I soon found Admiral Porter, who was on the deck of one of
his ironclads, with a shield made of the section of a smoke-stack,
and I doubt if he was ever more glad to meet a friend than he was
to see me. He explained that he had almost reached the Rolling
Fork, when the woods became full of sharpshooters, who, taking
advantage of trees, stumps, and the levee, would shoot down every
man that poked his nose outside the protection of their armor.
. . . He informed me at one time things looked so critical that
he had made up his mind to blow up the gunboats, and to escape
with his men through the swamp to the Mississippi River."

This attempt to get through to Yazoo, above Haines's Bluff,
had so signally failed, that the expedition was ordered back to
the Louisiana shore above Yicksburg, where they arrived on
the 27th of March, 1863. General Grant was now in command
of a large army, holding various positions on the Mississippi
River opposite to Yicksburg, extending from Milliken's Bend
above to New Carthage below, with a fleet of gunboats in
the river above Yicksburg, and another some eight miles be-
low. Lieutenant-General Pemberton's military district in-
cluded Yicksburg, and Major-General Gardner was in com-
mand at Port Hudson. These posts, as long as they could be
maintained, gave us some control over the intermediate space
of the river, about two hundred and sixty miles in length, and
to that extent secured our communication with the trans-Mis-
sissippi. The enemy, after his repeated and disastrous attempts
to turn the right flank of Yicksburg, applied his attention to
the opposite direction. General Grant first endeavored to di-

* " Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman," vol. i, pp. 310, 311.

396 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

vert the Mississippi from its channel, by cutting a canal across
the peninsula opposite to Yicksburg, so as to make a practicable
passage for transport-vessels from a point above to one below
the city. His attempt was quite unsuccessful, and, whatever
credit may be awarded to his enterprise, none can be given to
his engineering skill, as the direction given to his ditch was

such that, instead of being washed out by the current of the
river, it was filled up by its sediment.

Another attempt to get into the Mississippi, without passing
the batteries at Yicksburg, was by digging a canal to connect
the river with the bayou in rear of Milliken's Bend, so as to

1863] A FURIOUS CANNONADE. 397

have water communication by way of Richmond to Kew Car-
thage. These indications of a purpose to get below Yicksburg
caused General Pemberton, early in February, 1863, to detach
Brigadier-General John S. Bowen, with his Missouri Brigade,
to Grand Gulf, near the mouth of the Big Black, and establish
batteries there to command the mouth of that small river,
which might be used to pass to the rear of Vicksburg, and also
by their fire to obstruct the navigation of the Mississippi.

On the 19th of March the flag-ship of Admiral Farragut,
with one gunboat from the fleet at !New Orleans, passed up the
river in defiance of our batteries ; but, on the 25th, four gun-
boats from the upper fleet attempted to pass down and were
repulsed, two of them completely disabled.

On the 16th of April a fleet of ironclads with barges in tow,
Admiral Porter commanding, under cover of the night ran the
Yicksburg batteries. One of the vessels was destroyed, and an-
other one crippled, but towed out of range. Subsequently, on the
night of the 26th, a fleet of transports with loaded barges was
floated past Yicksburg. One or more of them was sunk, but
enough escaped to give the enemy abundant supplies below
Yicksburg and boats enough for ferriage uses. On the 20th of
April the movement of the, enemy commenced through the
country on the west side of the river to their selected point of
crossing below Grand Gulf.

On the 29th the enemy's gunboats came down and took their
stations in front of our batteries and rifle-pits at Grand Gulf.
A furious cannonade was continued for many hours, and the
fleet withdrew, having one gunboat disabled, and otherwise re-
ceiving and inflicting but little damage. Among the casualties
on our side was that of Colonel William Wade, the chief of
artillery, an officer of great merit, alike respected and beloved,
whose death was universally regretted.

In a short time the fleet reappeared from behind a point
which had concealed them from view. The gunboats now had
transports lashed to their farther side, and, protected by their
iron shields, ran by our batteries at full speed, losing but one
transport on the way.

On the evening of the 29th of April the enemy commenced

398 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

ferrying over troops from the Louisiana to the Mississippi shore
to a landing just below the mouth of Bayou Pierre. General
Green with his brigade moved thither, and, when the enemy
on the night of the 30th commenced his advance, General
Green attacked him with such impressive vigor as to render
their march both cautious and slow. As additional forces came
up, Green retired, skirmishing. In the mean time Generals
Tracy and Baldwin, with their brigades, had by forced marches
joined General Green, and about daylight a more serious con-
flict occurred, lasting some two hours and a half, during which
General Tracy, a distinguished citizen of Alabama, of whom
patriotism made a soldier, fell while gallantly leading his bri-
gade in the unequal combat in which it was engaged. Step
by step, disputing the ground, Green retired to the range of
hills three miles southwest of Port Gibson, where General
Bowen joined him and arranged a new line of battle. The
enemy's forces were steadily augmented by the arrival of rein-
forcements from the rear. Our troops continued most valiantly
to resist until, between nine and ten o'clock, outflanked both
on our right and left, their condition seemed almost hope-
less, when, by a movement to which desperation gave a power
quite disproportionate to the numbers, the right wing of the
enemy was driven back, and our forces made good their re-
treat across the bridge over Bayou Pierre. General Cocker-
ell, commanding our left wing, led this forlorn hope in person,
and to the fortune which favors the brave must be attrib-
uted the few casualties which occurred in a service so haz-
ardous. General Bowen promptly intrenched his camp on the
east side of Bayou Pierre and waited for future developments.
The relative forces engaged in the battle of the 1st of May were,
as nearly as I have been able to learn, fifty-five hundred Con-
federates and twenty thousand Federals. Fresh troops were
reported to be joining Grant's army, and one of his corps had
been sent to cross by a ford above so as to get in rear of our
position. The reinforcements which were en route to Bowen
had not yet approached so near as to give him assurance of co-
operation.

To divert notice from this movement to get in the rear of

1863] MARCHING INTO THE INTERIOR. 399

Bowen, on the morning of the 2d, Grant ordered artillery-fire
to be opened on our intrenchments across Bayou Pierre. It
was quite ineffectual, and probably was not expected to do more
than occupy attention. During the forenoon Bowen sent a flag
of truce to ask suspension of hostilities for the purpose of bury-
ing the dead. This was refused, and a demand made for surren-
der. That was as promptly as decidedly rejected, and, as the
day wore away without the arrival of reenforcement, Bowen,
under cover of night, commenced a retreat, his march being
directed toward Grand Gulf. General Loring with his divi-
sion soon joined him. Directions were sent to the garrison at
Grand Gulf to dismantle the fortifications and evacuate the
place. On the morning of the 3d General Grant commenced a
pursuit of the retreating force, which, however, was attended
with only unimportant skirmishes ; Bowen, with the reinforce-
ments which were marching to his support, recrossed the Big
Black at Hankinson's Ferry, and all, under the orders of Gen-
eral Pemberton, were assigned to their respective positions in
the army he commanded.

While the events which have just been narrated were tran-
spiring, Colonel Grierson with three regiments of cavalry made
a raid from the northern border of Mississippi through the in-
terior of the State, and joined General Banks at Baton Rouge
in Louisiana. Among the expeditions for pillage and arson this
stands prominent for savage outrages against defenseless women
and children, constituting a record alike unworthy a soldier and
a gentleman.

Grant with his large army was now marching into the in-
terior of Mississippi, his route being such as might either be
intended to strike the capital (Jackson) or Vicksburg. The coun-
try through which he had to pass was for some distance com-
posed of abrupt hills, and all of it poorly provided with roads.
There was reasonable ground to hope that, with such difficult
communications with his base of supplies, and the physical obsta-
cles to his progress, he might be advantageously encountered at
many points and be finally defeated. In such warfare as was
possible, that portion of the population who were exempt or in-
capable of full service in the army could be very effective as

400 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

an auxiliary force. I therefore wrote to the Governor, Pettus,
a man worthy of all confidence, as well for his patriotism as his
manhood, requesting him to use all practicable means to get every
man and boy, capable of aiding their country in its need, to turn
out, mounted or on foot, wTitk whatever weapons they had, to aid
the soldiers in driving the invader from our soil. The facilities
the enemy possessed in river transportation and the aid which
their iron-clad gunboats gave to all operations where land and
naval forces could be combined were lost to Grant in this in-
terior march which he was making. Success gives credit to
military enterprises ; had this failed, as I think it should, it
surely would have been pronounced an egregious blunder.
Other efforts made to repel the invader will be noticed in the
course of the narrative.

After the retreat of Bowen which has been described, Gen-
eral Pemberton, anticipating an attack on Yicksburg from the
rear, concentrated all the troops of his command for its defense.
All previous demonstrations indicated the special purpose of
the enemy to be its capture. Its strategic importance justified
the belief that he would concentrate his efforts upon that ob-
ject, and this opinion was enforced by the difficulty of supply-
ing his army in the region into which he was marching, and the
special advantages of Yicksburg as his base. The better mode
of counteracting his views, whatever they might be, it would be
more easy now to determine than it was when General Pem-
berton had to decide that question. The superior force of the
enemy enabled him at the same time, while moving the main
body of his troops through Louisiana to a point below Yicks-
burg, to send a corps to renew the demonstration against Haines's
Bluff. Finding due preparation made to resist an attack there,
this demonstration was merely a feint, but, had Pemberton with-
drawn his troops, that feint could have been converted into a
real attack, and the effort so often foiled to gain the heights
above Yicksburg would have become a success. When that
corps retired, and proceeded to join the rest of Grant's army
which had gone toward Grand Gulf, Pemberton commenced
energetically to prepare for what was now the manifest object
of the enemy. From his headquarters at Jackson, Mississippi,

1863] TO HARASS THE EXEMY. 401

he, on the 23d of April, directed Major-General Stevenson, com-
manding at Vicksburg, " that communications, at least for in-
fantry, should be made by the shortest practicable route to
Grand Gulf. The indications now are that the attack will not
be made on your front or right, and all troops not absolutely
necessary to hold the works at Vicksburg should be held as a
movable force for either Warrenton or Grand Gulf." On the
28th Brigadier-General Bo wen, commanding at Grand Gulf,
reported that " transports and barges loaded down with troops
are landing at Hard-Times on the west bank." Pemberton re-
plied by asking : u Have you force enough to hold your posi-
tion? If not, give me the smallest additional number with
which you can." At this time the small cavalry force remain-
ing in Pemberton's command compelled him to keep infantry
detachments at many points liable to be attacked by raiding
parties of the enemy's mounted troops, a circumstance seriously
interfering with the concentration of the forces of his command.
Instructions were sent to all the commanders of his cavalry de-
tachments to move toward Grand Gulf, to harass the enemy in
flank and rear, obstructing, as far as might be, communications
with his base. A dispatch was sent to Major-General Buckner,
commanding at Mobile, asking him to protect the Mobile and
Ohio Railroad, as Pemberton required all the troops he could
spare to strengthen General Bowen. A dispatch was also sent
to General J. E. Johnston, at Tullahoma, saying that the Army
of Tennessee must be relied on to guard the approaches through
north Mississippi. To Major-General Stevenson, at Vicksburg,
he sent a dispatch : " Hold five thousand men in readiness to
move to Grand Gulf, and, on the requisition of Brigadier-
General Bowen, move them ; with your batteries and rifle-pits
manned, the city front is impregnable." At the same time the
following was sent to General Bowen : " I have directed Gen-
eral Stevenson to have five thousand men ready to move on
your requisition, but do not make requisition unless absolutely
necessary for your position. I am also making arrangements
for sending you two or three thousand men from this direction
in case of necessity."

The policy was here manifested of meeting the enemy in
73

402 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

the liills east of the point of his debarkation, jet all unfriendly
criticism has treated General Pemberton's course on that occa-
sion as having been voluntarily to withdraw his troops to with-
in the intrenchments of Vicksburg. His published reports
show what early and consistent efforts he made to avoid that
result.

After General J. E. Johnston had recovered from the wound
received at Seven Pines, he was on the 2±th of November, 1862,
by special order No. 275, assigned to the command of a geo-
graphical department including the States of Tennessee, Mis-
sissippi, Alabama, and parts of Louisiana, Georgia, and North
Carolina. The order gives authority to establish his headquar-
ters wherever, in his judgment, will best secure facilities for
ready communication with the troops of his command; and
provides that he " will repair to any part of said command
whenever his presence may for the time be necessary or desir-
able." While the events which have been described were oc-
curring in Pemberton's command, he felt seriously the want of
cavalry, and was much embarrassed by the necessity for substi-
tuting portions of his infantry to supply the deficiency of cav-
alry.

These embarrassments and the injurious consequences at-
tendant upon them were frequently represented. In his re-
port he states, after several other applications for cavalry, that
on March 25th he wrote to General Johnston, commanding
department, "urgently requesting that the division of cavalry
under Major-General Van Dorn, which had been sent to the
Army of Tennessee for special and temporary purposes, might
be returned." He gives the following extract from General
Johnston's reply of April 3d to his request :

" In the present aspect of affairs, General Van Dorn's cavalry
is much more needed in this department than in that of Missis-
sippi and East Louisiana, and can not be sent back as long as this
state of things exists. You have now in your department five
brigades of the troops you most require, viz., infantry, belonging
to the Army of Tennessee. This is more than a compensation for
the absence of General Van Dorn's cavalry command."

1863] THE STAKE IS A GREAT ONE. 403

To this Pemberton rejoined that cavalry was indispensable,
stating the positions where the enemy was operating on his
communications, and the impossibility of defending the rail-
roads by infantry. Referring to the advance of the enemy
from Bruinsburg, Pemberton, in his report, makes the follow-
ing statement :

" With a moderate cavalry force at my disposal, I am firmly
convinced that the Federal army under General Grant would have
been unable to maintain its communication with the Mississippi
River, and that the attempt to reach Jackson and Vicksburg
would have been as signally defeated in May, 1863, as a like at-
tempt from another base had, by the employment of cavalry, been
defeated in December, 1862."

Pemberton commenced, after the retreat of Bowen, to con-
centrate all his forces for the great effort of checking the invad-
ing army, and on the 6th of May telegraphed to the Secretary
of War that the reinforcements sent to him were very insuffi-
cient, adding : " The stake is a great one ; I can see nothing so
important." On the 12th of May he sent a telegram to General
J. E. Johnston, and a duplicate to the President, announcing
his purpose to meet the enemy then moving with heavy force
toward Edwards's Depot, and indicated that as the battle-field;
he urgently asked for more reinforcements : " Also, that three
thousand cavalry be at once sent to operate on this line. I urge
this as a positive necessity. The enemy largely outnumbers me,
and I am obliged to hold back a large force at the ferries on
Big Black." This was done to prevent the foe passing to his
rear.

Large bodies of troops continued to descend the river, land
above Yicksburg, and, to avoid our batteries at that place, to move
on the west side of the river to reenforce General Grant. This
seemed to justify the conclusion that the main effort in the West
was to be made by that army, and, supposing that General John-
ston would be convinced of the fact if he repaired to that field
in person, as well as to avail ourselves of the public confidence
felt in his military capacity, he was ordered, on the 9th of May,
1863, to " proceed at once to Mississippi and take chief com-

404 RISE AND FALL 0F TnE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

mand of the forces, giving to those in the field, as far as prac-
ticable, the encouragement and benefit of your personal direc-
tion. Arrange to take, for temporary service, with you, or to
be followed without delay, three thousand good troops," etc.

On the 12th, the same day General Pemberton had applied
for reinforcements, he instructed Major-General Stevenson as
follows :

"From information received, it is evident that the enemy is
advancing in force on Edwards's Depot and Big Black Bridge ;
hot skirmishing has been going on all the morning, and the
enemy are at Fourteen-Mile Creek. You must move with your
whole division to the support of Loring and Bowen at the bridge,
leaving Baldwin's and Moore's brigades to protect your right."

In consequence of that information, Brigadier-General
Gregg, who was near Raymond, received cautionary instruc-
tion ; notwithstanding which, he was attacked by a large body
of the enemy's forces, and his single brigade, with great gal-
lantry and steadiness, held them in check for several hours, and
then retired in such good order as to attract general admiration.
Meantime, bodies of the enemy's troops were sent into the in-
terior villages, and much damage was done in them, and to the
defenseless, isolated homes in the country.

General Johnston arrived at Jackson on the 13th of May,
1863, and telegraphed to J. A. Seddon, Secretary of War, as
follows :

"I arrived this evening, finding the enemy in force between
this place and General Pemberton, cutting off the communication, j
I am too late."

In the order assigning General Johnston to the geographi-
cal Department of the West, he was directed to repair in person
to any part of his command, whenever his presence might be
for the time necessary or desirable. On the 9th of May, 18G3,
he was ordered to proceed at once to Mississippi and take chief
command of the forces in the field.

"When he reached Jackson, learning that the enemy was be-
tween that place and the position occupied by General Pember-

1863] TIME IS ALL-IMPORTANT. 405

ton's forces, about thirty miles distant, he halted there and
opened correspondence with Pemberton, from which a confu-
sion with consequent disaster resulted, which might have been
avoided had he, with or without his reinforcements, proceeded
to Pemberton's headquarters in the field. "What that confusion
or want of co-intelligence was, will best appear from citing the
important part of the dispatches which passed between them.
On May 13th General Johnston, then at Jackson, sent the fol-
lowing dispatch to General Pemberton, which was received on
the 14th :

" I have lately arrived, and learn that Major-General Sherman
is between us, with four divisions at Clinton. It is important to
reestablish communications, that you may be reenf orced. If prac-
ticable, come up in his rear at once — to beat such a detachment
would be of immense value. Troops here could cooperate. All
the troops you can quickly assemble should be brought. Time is
all-important."

On the same day, the 14th, General Pemberton, then at Bo-
vina, replied :

" I have the honor to acknowledge receipt of your communi-
cation. I moved at once with whole available force, about six-
teen thousand, leaving Vaughan's brigade, about fifteen hundred,
at Big Black Bridge ; Tilghman's brigade, fifteen hundred, now
at Baldwin's Ferry, I have ordered to bring up the rear of my
column ; he will be, however, from fifteen to twenty miles behind
it. Baldwin's Ferry will be left, necessarily, unprotected. To
hold Vicksburg are Smith's and Forney's divisions, extending
from Snyder's Mills to Warrenton, numbering effectives seven
thousand eight hundred men. ... I do not think that you fully
comprehend the position that Vicksburg will be left in ; but I
comply at once with your order."

On the same day, General Pemberton, after his arrival at
Edwards's Depot, called a council of war of all the general offi-
cers present. He placed General Johnston's dispatch before
them, and stated his own views against the propriety of an ad-
vance, but expressed the opinion that the only possibility of
success would be by a movement on the enemy's communica-

406 RISE AND FALL OF T1IE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

tions. A majority of the officers present expressed themselves
favorable to the plan indicated by General Johnston. The
others, including Major-Generals Loring and Stevenson, "pre-
ferred a movement by which the army might attempt to cnt off
the enemy's supplies from the Mississippi River." General
Pemberton then sent the following dispatch to General John-
ston:

"Edwards's Depot, May 14, 18G3.
" I shall move as early to-morrow morning as practicable, with
a column of seventeen thousand men, to Dillon's, situated on the
main road leading from Raymond to Port Gibson, seven and a
half miles below Raymond, and nine and a half miles from Ed-
wards's Depot. The object is to cut the enemy's communication
and to force him to attack me, as I. do not consider my force suf-
ficient to justify an attack on the enemy in position, or to attempt
to cut my way to Jackson. At this point your nearest communi-
cation would be through Raymond."

The movement commenced about 1 p. m. on the 15th. Gen-
eral Pemberton states that the force at Clinton was an army
corps, numerically greater than his whole available force in the
field ; that —

" The enemy had at least an equal force to the south, on my right
flank, which would be nearer Vicksburg than myself, in case I
should make the movement proposed. I had, moreover, positive
information that he was daily increasing his strength. I also
learned, on reaching Edwards's Depot, that one division of the
enemy (A. J. Smith's) was at or near Dillon's."

On the morning of the 16th, about 6.3J3 o'clock, Colonel
Wirt Adams, commanding the cavalry, reported to General
Pemberton that his pickets were skirmishing with the enemy
on the Raymond road in our front. At the same moment a
courier arrived and delivered the following dispatch from Gen-
eral Johnston :

"Canton Road, ten Miles from Jackson,
"May 15, 1863, 8.30 o'clock a. m.

" Our being compelled to leave Jackson makes your plan im-
practicable. The only mode by which we can unite is by your

1863] AS RAPIDLY AS POSSIBLE. 407

moving directly to Clinton and informing me, that We may move
to that point with about six thousand."

Pemberton reversed his column to return to Edwards's De-
pot and take the Brownsville road, so as to proceed toward
Clinton on the north side of the railroad, and sent a reply to
General Johnston to notify him of the retrograde movement
and the route to be followed. Just as the reverse movement
commenced, the enemy drove in the cavalry pickets and opened
fire with artillery.

The continuance of the movement was ordered, when, the
demonstrations of the enemy becoming more serious, orders were
issued to form a line of battle, with Loring on the right, Bowen
in the center, and Stevenson on the left. Major-General Ste-
venson was ordered to make the necessary dispositions for pro-
tecting the trains on the Clinton road and the crossing of Ba-
ker's Creek. The line of battle was quickly formed in a position
naturally strong, and the approaches from the front well cov-
ered. The enemy made his first demonstration on the right,
but, after a lively artillery duel for an hour or more, this attack
was relinquished, and a large force was thrown against the left,
where skirmishing became heavy. About ten o'clock the battle
began in earnest along Stevenson's entire front. About noon
Loring was ordered to move forward and crush the enemy in
his front, and Bowen to cooperate. Xo movement was made
by Loring ; he said the force was too strongly posted to be at-
tacked, but that he would seize the first opportunity to assault
if one should offer. Stevenson soon found that unless reen-
forced he would be unable to resist the heavy and repeated at-
tacks along his line. Aid was sent to him from Bowen, and for
a time the tide of battle turned in our favor. The enemy still
continued to move troops from his left to his right, thus increas-
ing on that flank his vastly superior forces. General Pember-
ton, feeling assured that there was no important force in front of
Loring, again ordered him to move to the left as rapidly as pos-
sible. To this order, the answer was given that the enemy was
in strong force and endeavoring to turn his flank. As there was
no firing on the right, the order was repeated. Much time was

408 KISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

lost in exchanging these messages. At 4 p. m. a part of Steven-
son's division broke badly and fell back. Some assistance finally
came from Loring, but it was too late to save the day, and the
retreat was ordered. Had the left been promptly supported
when it was first sp ordered, it is not improbable that the posi-
tion might have been maintained and the enemy possibly driven
back, although his increasing numbers would have rendered it
necessary to withdraw during the night to save our communi-
cations with Vicksburg unless promptly reenforced. The dis-
patch of the 15th from General Johnston, in obedience to which
Pemberton reversed his order of march, gave him the first in-
telligence that Johnston had left Jackson ; but, while making the
retrograde movement, a previous dispatch from Johnston, dated
"May 14, 1863, camp seven miles from Jackson," informed
Pemberton that the body of Federal troops, mentioned in his
dispatch of the 13th, had compelled the evacuation of Jackson,
and that he was moving by the Canton road ; he refers to the
troops east of Jackson as perhaps able to prevent the enemy
there from drawing provisions from that direction, and that his
command might effect the same thing in regard to the country
toward Panola, and then asks these significant questions :

" Can he supply himself from the Mississippi ? Can you not
cut him off from it ? Above all, should he be compelled to fall
back for want of supplies, beat him ? As soon as the reinforce-
ments are all up, they must be united to the rest of the army. . . .
If prisoners tell the truth, the force at Jackson must be half of
Grant's army. It would decide the campaign to beat it, which
can only be done by concentrating, especially when the remainder
of the eastern troops arrive. They are to be twelve or thirteen
thousand."

From Pemberton's communication it is seen that he did not
feel his army strong enough to attack the corps in position at
Clinton, and that he hoped by the course adopted to compel
the enemy to attack our force in position. Whether the move-
ment toward Dillon's was well or ill advised, it was certainly a
misfortune to reverse the order of march in the presence of the
enemy, as it involved the disadvantage of being attacked in

1863] THEY WERE NOT ROUTED. 409

rear. As Las been described, the dispositions for battle were
promptly made, and many of the troops fought with a gal-
lantry worthy of all praise. Though defeated, they were not
routed.

Stevenson's single division for a long time resisted a force
estimated by him at " more than four times " his own. In the
afternoon he was reenforced by the unfaltering troops of Bo wen's
division. Cockerell, commanding the First Missouri Brigade,
fought with like fortitude under like disadvantage. When
Pemberton saw that the masses assailing his left and left cen-
ter by their immense numbers were pressing our forces back
into old fields, where the advantages of position would be in
his adversary's favor, he directed his troops to retire, and sent
to Brigadier-General Lloyd Tilghman instructions to hold the
Raymond road to protect the retreat. General Pemberton says
of him :

" It was in the execution of this important duty, which could
not have been confided to a fitter man, that the lamented General
bravely lost his life."

He was the officer whose devoted gallantry and self-sacrific-
ing generosity were noticed in connection with the fall of Fort
Henry. This severe battle was signalized by so many feats of
individual intrepidity that its roll of honor is too long for the
limits of these pages.

Though some gave way in confusion, and others failed to
respond when called on, the heroism of the rest shed luster on
the field, and "the main body of the troops retired in good
order." The gallant brigades of Green and Cockerell covered
the rear.

The topographical features of the position at the railroad-
bridge across the Big Black were such as, with the artificial
strength given to it, made it quite feasible to defend it against
a direct approach even of an army as much superior in numbers
to that of Pemberton as was that of Grant ; but the attack need
not be made by a direct approach. The position could be
turned by moving either above or below by fords and ferries, and
thus advancing upon Vicksburg by other and equally eligible

410 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

routes. From what has already been quoted, it will be under-
stood that General Pemberton considered the occupation of
Yicksburg vitally important in connection with the command of
the Mississippi River, and the maintenance of communication
with the country beyond it. It was therefore that he had been
so reluctant to endanger his connection with that point as his
base. Pressed as he was by the enemy, whose object, it had been
unmistakably shown, was to get possession of Yicksburg and its
defenses, the circumstances made it imperative that he should '
abandon a position, the holding of which would not effect his
object, and that he should withdraw his forces from the field to
unite them with those within the defenses of Yicksburg, and
endeavor, as speedily as possible, to reorganize the depressed
and discomfited troops.

One of the immediate results of the retreat from Big Black
was the necessity of abandoning our defenses on the Yazoo, at
Snyder's Mills ; this position and the line of Chickasaw Bayou
were no longer tenable. All stores that could be transported
were ordered to be sent into Yicksburg as rapidly as possible,
the rest, including heavy guns, to be destroyed. During the
night of the 17th nothing of importance occurred. On the ;
morning of the 18th the troops were disposed from right to
left on the defenses. On the entire line, one hundred and two
pieces of artillery of different caliber, principally field-guns, were
placed in position at such points as were deemed most suitable
to the character of the gun. Instructions had been given from
Bovina that all the cattle, sheep, and hogs, belonging to pri-
vate parties, and likely to fall into the hands of the enemy,
should be driven within our lines. Grant's army appeared on
the 18th.

The development of the intrenched ]ine from our extreme
right was about eight miles, the shortest defensible line of
which the topography of the country admitted. It consisted of
a system of detached works, redans, lunettes, and redoubts, on
the prominent and commanding points, with the usual profile of
raised field-works, connected in most cases by rifle pits. To
hold the entire line there were about eighteen thousand five hun-
dred infantry, but these could not all be put in the trenches,

1863] HAD LOST THE OPPORTUNITY. 411

as it was necessary to keep a reserve always ready to reenforce
any point heavily threatened.

The campaign against Vicksburg had commenced as early as
[November, 1862, and reference has been made to the various
attempts to capture the position both before and after General
Grant arrived and took command in person. He had now by a
circuitous march reached the rear of the city, established a base
on the Mississippi River a few miles below, had a fleet of gun-
boats in the river, and controlled the navigation of the Yazoo
up to Haines's Bluff, and was relieved from all danger in regard
to supplying his army. We had lost the opportunity to cut his
communications while he was making his long march over the
rugged country between Bruinsburg and the vicinity of Yicks-
burg. Pemberton had by wise prevision endeavored to secure
supplies sufficient for the duration of an ordinary siege, and, on
the importance which he knew the Administration attached to
the holding of Yicksburg, he relied for the cooperation of a re-
lieving army to break any investment which might be made.
Disappointed in the hope which I had entertained that the
invading army would be unable to draw its supplies from
Bruinsburg or Grand Gulf, and be driven back before crossing
the Big Black, it now only remained to increase as far as possi-
ble the relieving army, and depend upon it to break the invest-
ment. The ability of the Federals to send reinforcements was
so much greater than ours, that the necessity for prompt action
was fully realized ; therefore, when General Johnston on May 9th
was ordered to proceed to Mississippi, he was directed to take
from the Army of Tennessee three thousand good troops, and
informed that he would find reinforcements from General Beau-
regard. On May 12th a dispatch was sent to him at Jackson,
stating, " In addition to the live thousand men originally ordered
from Charleston [Beauregard], about four thousand more will
follow. I fear more can not be spared to you." On May 22d
I sent the following dispatch to General Bragg, at Tullahoma,
Tennessee :

" The vital issue of holding the Mississippi at Yicksburg is de-
pendent on the success of General Johnston in an attack on the

412 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

investing force. The intelligence from there is discouraging.
Can you aid him ? "

To this he replied on the 23d of May, 1863 :

" Sent thirty-five hundred with the General, three batteries of
artillery and two thousand cavalry since ; will dispatch six thou-
sand more immediately."

In my telegram to General Bragg, after stating the neces-
sity, I submitted the whole question to his judgment, having
full reliance in the large-hearted and comprehensive view which
his self-denying nature would take of the case, and I responded
to him :

" Your answer is in the spirit of patriotism heretofore mani-
fested by you. The need is sore, but you must not forget your
own necessities."

On the 1st of June General Johnston telegraphed to me
that the troops at his disposal available against Grant amounted
to twenty-four thousand one hundred, not including Jackson's
cavalry command and a few hundred irregular cavalry. Mr.
Seddon, Secretary of War, replied to him stating the force to be
thirty-two thousand. In another dispatch, of June 5th, the Sec-
retary says his statement rested on official reports of numbers
sent, regrets his inability to promise more, as we had drained
our resources even to the danger of several points, and urged
speedy action. " With the facilities and resources of the enemy
time works against us." Again, on the 16th, Secretary Seddon
says:

" If better resources do not offer, you must hazard attack."

On the 18th, while Pemberton was inspecting the intrench-
ments along which his command had been placed, he received
by courier a communication from General Johnston, dated
" May 17, 1863, camp between Livingston and Brownsville,"
in answer to Pemberton's report of the result of the battles of
Baker's Creek and Big Black, and the consequent evacuation of
Snyder's Mills. General Johnston wrote :

1863] EVERY EFFORT SHOULD BE MADE. 413

" If Haines's Bluff is untenable, Vicksburg is of no value and
can not be held. If, therefore, you are invested in Vicksburg, you
must ultimately surrender. Under such circumstances, instead of
losing both troops and place, we must, if possible, save the troops.
If it is not too late, evacuate Vicksburg and its dependencies, and
march to the northeast."

Pemberton, in his report, remarks :

"This meant the fall of Port Hudson, the surrender of the
Mississippi River, and the severance of the Confederacy."

He recurs to a former correspondence with myself in which
he had suggested the possibility of the investment of Vicks-
burg by land and water, and the necessity for ample supplies to
stand a siege, and says his application met my favorable con-
sideration, and that additional ammunition was ordered. Con-
fident in his ability, with the preparations which had been made,
to stand a siege, and firmly relying on the desire of the Presi-
dent and of General Johnston to raise it, he " felt that every
effort would be made, and believed it would be successful." He,
however, summoned a council of war, composed of all his gen-
eral officers, laid before them General Johnston's communication,
and desired their opinion on " the question of practicability,"
and on the 18th replied to General Johnston that he had placed
his instructions before the general officers of the command, and
that " the opinion was unanimously expressed that it was im-
possible to withdraw the army from this position with such
morale and material as to be of further service to the Confeder-
acy." He then announces his decision to hold Vicksburg as
long as possible, and expresses the hope that he may be assisted
in keeping this obstruction to the enemy's free navigation of
the Mississippi River. He closes his letter thus :

" I still conceive it to be the most important point in the Con-
federacy."

While the council of war was assembled, the guns of the
enemy opened on the works, and the siege proper commenced.

Making meager allowance for a reserve, it required the
whole force to be constantly in the trenches, and, when they

414 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

were all on duty, it did not furnish one man to the yard of the
developed line. On the 19th two assaults were made at the
center and left. Both were repulsed and heavy loss inflicted ;
our loss was small. At the same time the mortar-fleet of Ad-
miral Porter from the west side of the peninsula kept up a bom-
bardment of the city.

Yicksburg is built upon hills rising successively from the
river. The intrenchments were upon ridges beyond the town,
only approaching the river on the right and left flanks, so that
the fire of Porter's mortar-fleet was mainly effective upon the
private dwellings, and the women, the children, and other non-
combatants.

The hills on which the city is built are of a tenacious calcare-
ous clay, and caves were dug in these to shelter the women and
children, many of whom resided in them during the entire siege.
From these places of refuge, heroically facing the danger of
shells incessantly bursting over the streets, gentlewomen hourly
went forth on the mission of humanity to nurse the sick, the
wounded, and to soothe the dying of their defenders who were
collected in numerous hospitals. "Without departing from the
softer character of their sex, it was often remarked that, iu
the discharge of the pious duties assumed, they seemed as
indifferent to danger as any of the soldiers who lined the
trenches.

During the 20th, 21st, and the forenoon of the 22d, a heavy
fire of artillery and musketry was kept up by the besiegers, as
well as by the mortar- and gun-boats in the river. On the after-
noon of the 22d preparation was made for a general assault. The
attacking columns were allowed to approach to within good
musket-range, when every available gun was opened with grape
and canister, and our infantry, " rising in the trenches, poured
into their ranks volley after volley with so deadly an effect that,
leaving the ground literally covered in some places with their
dead and wounded, they [the enemy] precipitately retreated."
One of our redoubts had been breached by their artillery pre-
vious to the. assault, and a lodgment made in the ditch at the
foot of the redoubt, on which two colors were planted. Gen-
eral Stevenson says in his report :

1863] THE FLAGS WERE IN OUR POSSESSION. 415

" The work was constructed in such a manner that the ditch
was commanded by no part of the line, and the only means by
which they could be dislodged was to retake the angle by a des-
perate charge, and either kill or compel the surrender of the whole
party by the use of hand-grenades. A call for volunteers for this
purpose was made, and promptly responded to by Lieutenant-Colo-
nel E. W. Pettus, Twentieth Alabama Regiment, and about forty
men of Waul's Texas Legion. A more gallant feat than this
charge has not illustrated our arms during the war. The prepa-
rations were quietly and quickly made, but the enemy seemed at
once to divine our intentions, and opened upon the angle a ter-
rible fire of shot, shell, and musketry. Undaunted, this little
band, its chivalrous commander at its head, rushed upon the work,
and, in less time than it required to describe it, the flags were
in our possession. Preparations were then quickly made for the
use of hand-grenades, when the enemy in the ditch, being in-
formed of our purpose, immediately surrendered.

" From this time forward, although on several occasions their
demonstrations seemed to indicate other intentions, the enemy
relinquished all idea of assaulting us, and confined himself to
the more cautious policy of a system of gradual approaches and
mining."

His force was not less than sixty thousand men. Tims af-
fairs continued until July 1st, when General Pemberton thus
describes the causes which made capitulation necessary :

" It must be remembered that, for forty-seven days and nights,
those heroic men had been exposed to burning suns, drenching
rains, damp fogs, and heavy dews, and that during all this period
they never had, by day or by night, the slightest relief. The ex-
tent of our works required every available man in the trenches,
and even then they were in many places insufficiently manned.
It was not in my power to relieve any portion of the line for a
single hour. Confined to the narrow limits of trench, with their
limbs cramped and swollen, without exercise, constantly exposed
to a murderous storm of shot and shell. ... Is it strange that the
men grew weak and attenuated ? . . . They had held the place
against an enemy five times their number, admirably clothed and
fed, and abundantly supplied with all the appliances of war.

416 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

Whenever the foe attempted an assault, they drove him back
discomfited, covering the ground with his killed and wounded,
and already had they torn from his grasp five stands of colors as
trophies of their prowess, none of which were allowed to fall again
into his hands."

Under these circumstances, he says, he became satisfied that
the time had arrived when it was necessary either to evacuate
the city by cutting his way out or to capitulate. Inquiries
were made of the division commanders respecting the ability
of the troops to make the marches and undergo the fatigues
necessary to accomplish a successful sortie and force their way
through the enemy ; all of whom reported their several com-
mands quite unequal to the performance of such an effort.
Therefore, it was resolved to seek terms of capitulation. These
were obtained, and the city was surreudered on July 4th.

The report of General Pembertou contains this statement :

"Knowing the anxious desire of the Government to relieve
Yicksburg, I felt assured that, if within the compass of its power,
the siege would be raised ; but, when forty-seven days and nights
had passed, with the knowledge I then possessed that no ade-
quate relief was to be expected, I felt that I ought not longer to
place in jeopardy the brave men whose lives had been intrusted
to my care. Hence, after the suggestion of the alternative of
cutting my way out, I determined to make terms, not because my
men were starved out, not because I could not hold out yet a
little longer, but because they were overpowered by numbers,
worn down with fatigue, and each day saw our defenses crum-
bling beneath their feet. . . . With an unlimited supply of pro-
visions, the garrison could, for the reasons already given, have held
out much longer."

At the close of General Pemberton's report he notices two
officers, whose gallant services have been repeatedly mentioned
in the foregoing pages, as follows :

" I can not close this report without brief tribute to the mem-
ory of two of the best soldiers in the Confederate service. I refer
to Major-General John S. Bowen and Brigadier-General Martin
E. Green. Always faithful, zealous, and brave, they fell, as became

1863] EFFORTS TO RELIEVE VICKSBURG. 417

them, in the discharge of their duty. General Green died upon
the lines he had so long and so gallantly defended. General
Bowen, having passed scathless through the bloody scenes of
Shiloh, Iuka, Corinth, Grand Gulf, Port Gibson, Baker's Creek,
and Vicksburg, perished by disease after the capitulation."

With an unlimited supply of provisions the garrison could
not, for the reasons already given, have held out much, longer.
Our loss in killed, wounded, and missing, from the landing of
the enemy on the east to the capitulation, was 5,632 ; that of
the enemy, according to his own statement, was 8,875. The
number of prisoners surrendered, as near as I can tell, did not
exceed 28,000.

In addition to the efforts made to relieve Vicksburg by an
attack on Grant's army in the rear, instructions were sent to
General Ivirby Smith, commanding on the west side of the river,
to employ a part of his forces in cooperation with our troops on
the east side. From General Eichard Taylor's work, " Destruc-
tion and Reconstruction," I learn that —

" the Federal army withdrew from Alexandria [a town on Red
River, Louisiana] on the 13th of May, and on the 23d crossed
the Mississippi and proceeded to invest Port Hudson. ... A com-
munication from General Kirby Smith informed me that Major-
General Walker, with a division of infantry and three batteries,
four thousand strong, was on the march from Arkansas, and would
reach me within the next few days ; and I was directed to employ
Walker's force to relieve Vicksburg, now invested by General
Grant, who had crossed the Mississippi on the 1st of May."

General Taylor states that his view was that this force might
be best employed for the relief of Vicksburg by a movement to
raise the siege of Port Hudson, which he regarded as feasible,
while a direct movement toward Vicksburg he considered would
be unavailing, because the peninsula opposite to that city was
partially occupied by the enemy and commanded by the gun-
boats in the river ; he states, however, that he was overruled,
and proceeded with Walker's division to cross the Tensas and
attack two Federal camps on the bank of the Mississippi, the
one ten and the other fourteen miles above Vicksburg, but that,
after driving the troops over the levee, the gunboats in the river
74 '

413 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

protected them from any further assault. Then, being convinced
that nothing useful could be effected in that quarter, he, in con-
formity with his original idea, ordered General Walker to retire
to Alexandria, intending to go thence to the Teche. He says
this order was countermanded and the division kept in the
region between the Tensas and the Mississippi until the fall of
Yicksburg. Taylor had left Mouton's and Green's brigades in
the country west of the Teche, and thither he went in person.
At Alexandria he found three regiments of Texan mounted men,
about six hundred and fifty aggregate, under the command of
Colonel (afterward Brigadier-General) Major, and these were
ordered to Morgan's Ferry on the Atchafalaya. Taylor then
proceeded to the camps of Mouton and Green, on the lower
Teche. After giving instructions preparatory to an attack on
a work which the Federals had constructed at Berwick's Bay,
Taylor returned to join Colonel Major's command on the Atcha-
falaya, and with it moved down the Fardoche and Grossetete
to Fausse Riviere, opposite to Port Hudson. Here the noise
of the bombardment then in progress could be distinctly heard,
and here he learned that the Federal force left in New Orleans
did not exceed one thousand men.

It was now the 19th of June. He was about one hundred
miles from the Federal force at Berwick's Bay. He furnished
Colonel Major with guides, informed him that he must be at
Berwick's Bay on the morning of the 23d, as Mouton and Green
would attack at dawn on that day. Taylor then hastened to the
camp of Mouton and Green. The country through which Major
was to march was in possession of the enemy, therefore secrecy and
celerity were alike required for success. The men carried their
rations, and the wagons were sent back across the Atchafalaya.
In his rapid march, Major captured seventy prisoners and
burned two steamers, and the combined movements of Mou-
ton, Green, and Major, all reached their goal at the appointed
time, of which General Taylor says : " Although every precau-
tion had been taken to exclude mistakes and insure cooperation,
such complete success is not often attained in combined military
movement ; and I felt that sacrifices were due to fortune."

At Berwick's Bay the Federals had constructed works to

1863] A NUMBER OF SUGAR- COOLERS WERE COLLECTED. 41 9

strengthen a position occupied as a depot of supplies. The
effective garrison was small, the principal number of those
present being sick and convalescents. The works mounted
twelve guns, thirty-twos and twenty-fours, and a gunboat was
anchored in the bay. Our object was to capture Berwick's
Bay, and thence proceed to the execution of the plan above in-
dicated. For this purpose, having arrived on the Teche, a short
distance above Berwick's Bay, some small boats (skiffs) and a
number of sugar-coolers were collected, in which the men were
embarked. Major Hunter, of the Texas regiment, and Major
Blair, of the Second Louisiana, were placed in command, and
detachments were drawn from the forces. They embarked at
night, and paddled down the Teche to the Atchafalaya and
Grand Lake. They had about twelve miles to go, and were
expected to reach the northeast end of the island, a mile from
Berwick's, before daylight, where they were to remain until
they heard the guns of our force on the west side of the bay.
At dawn on June 23d our guns opened on the gunboat and
speedily drove it away. Fire was then directed on the earth-
works, and the enemy attempted to reply, when a shout was
heard in the rear, and Hunter with his party came rushing on.
Resistance ceased at once. The spoils of Berwick's were of
vast importance. Twelve thirty-two- and twenty-four-pounder
guns, many small arms and accouterments, great quantities of
quartermaster's and commissary's, ordnance, and medical stores,
and seventeen hundred prisoners were taken. Then, as promptly
as circumstances would permit, Taylor, with three thousand men
of all arms, proceeded, with the guns and munitions he had ac-
quired, to the execution of the object of his campaign — to raise
the siege of Port Hudson, by cutting Banks's communication
with New Orleans and making a demonstration which would
arouse that city. " Its population of two hundred thousand was
bitterly hostile to Federal rule, and the appearance of a Con- J
federate force on the opposite bank of the river would raise r
such a storm as to bring Banks from Port Hudson, the garrison
of which could then unite with General Joseph Johnston in the
rear of General Grant."

In the first week in July, twelve guns were placed on the

420 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

river below Donaldsonville. Fire was opened and one trans-
port destroyed and several turned back. Gunboats attempted
to dislodge our batteries, but were driven away by dismounted
men, protected by the levee. For three days the river was
closed to transports, and mounted scouts were pushed down to
a point opposite Kenner, sixteen miles above New Orleans. A
few hours more, and there would have been great excitement in
the city. But, by the surrender of Port Hudson on July 9th,
the enemy were in sufficient force, not only to arrest Taylor's
movements, but to require a withdrawal from the exposed posi-
tion which this little command had assumed for the great object
of relieving that place, and thus giving of its garrison, per-
haps about five thousand men, as a reenforcement to break
the investment of Yicksburg.

Port Hudson, which thus capitulated, was situated on a
bend of the Mississippi, about twenty-two miles above Baton
Rouge, Louisiana, and one hundred and forty-seven above New
Orleans. The defenses in front, or on the water-side, consisted
of three series of batteries situated on a bluff and extending
along the river above the place. Farther up was an impassable
marsh forming a natural defense, and in the rear the works
were strong, consisting of several lines of intrenchments and rifle-
pits, with heavy trees felled in every direction. General Banks
with a large force landed on May 21, 1863, and on the 27th an
assault was made on the works, and repulsed. A bombardment
from the river was then kept up for several days, and on June
14th another unsuccessful assault was made. This was their last
assault, but the enemy, resorting to mines and regular ap-
proaches, was slowly progressing with these_ when the news of
the surrender of Yicksburg was received. Major-General Gard-
ner, who was in command, then made a proposal to General
Banks to capitulate, which was accepted by the latter, and the
position was yielded to him on the next day. The surrender
included about six thousand persons all told, fifty-one pieces of
artillery, and a quantity of ordnance stores. Our loss in killed
and wounded in the assaults was small compared to that of the
enemy, and by the fall of Yicksburg the position of Port Hud-
son had ceased to have much importance.

1863]

THE GALLANTRY OF THE DEFENSE.

421

L1J K * $%

More than six weeks the garrison, which had resisted a vastly
superior force attacking by both land and water, had cheerfully
encountered danger and fatigue without a murmur, had borne
famine and had repulsed every assault, and yielded Port Hud-
son only when the fall of Vicksburg had deprived the position
of its importance. A chivalric foe would have recognized the
gallantry of the defense in the terms usually given under like
circumstances ; such, for instance, as were granted to Major

422 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

Anderson at Fort Sumter, or, at the least, have paroled the
garrison.

I had regarded it of vast importance to hold the two posi-
tions of Yicksburg and Port Hudson. Though gunboats had
passed the batteries of both, they had found it hazardous, and
transport-vessels could not prudently risk it. The garrisons
of both places had maintained them with extraordinary gal-
lantry, inspired no doubt as well by consciousness of the im-
portance of their posts as by the soldierly character common to
Confederate troops. Taylor on the 10th received intelligence
of the fall of Port Hudson, and some hours later learned that
Yicksburg had surrendered. His batteries and outposts were
ordered in to the Lafourche, and Mouton was sent to Berwick's
to cross the stores to the west side of the bay. On the 13th a
force of six thousand men followed his retreat down the La-
fourche ; but Green, with fourteen hundred dismounted men
and a battery, attacked the Federals so vigorously as to drive
them into Donaldson ville, capturing two hundred prisoners,
,many small-arms, and two guns. Undisturbed thereafter, Taylor
continued his march, removed all the stores from the fortifica-
tion at Berwick's, and on the 21st of July moved up the Teche.
The pickets left at Berwick's reported that the enemy's scouts
only reached the bay twenty-four hours after Taylor's troops
had withdrawn.

In the recital of those events connected with the sieges of
Port Hudson and Yicksburg, enough has been given to show
the great anxiety of the Administration to retain those two po-
sitions as necessary to continued communication between the
Confederate States on the east and west sides of the Mississippi
Piver. The reader will not have failed to observe that General
Johnston, commanding the department, and General Pemberton,
the district commander, entertained quite different views. The
former considered the safety of the garrisons of such paramount
importance, that the position should be evacuated rather than the
loss of the troops hazarded ; the latter regarded the holding of
Yicksburg as of such vital consequence that an army should be
hazarded to maintain its possession. When General Pemberton
and his forces were besieged in Yicksburg, every effort was

1863] TO CUT HIS WAY OUT. 423

made to supply General Johnston with an army which might
raise the siege. While General Johnston was at Jackson, pre-
paring to advance against the army investing Yicksburg, the
knowledge that the enemy was receiving large reinforcements
made it evident that the most prompt action was necessary for
success; of this General Johnston manifested a clear percep-
tion, for on the 25th of May he sent Pemberton the following
message :

" Bragg is sending a division ; when it comes, I will move to
you."

After all the troops which could be drawn from other points
had been sent to him, it was suggested that he might defeat the
force investing Port Hudson, and unite the garrison with his
troops at Jackson, but he replied :

" We can not relieve Port Hudson without giving up Jackson,
by which we should lose Mississippi."

On June 29th General Johnston reports that —

" Field transportation and other supplies having been obtained,
the army marched toward the Big Black, and on the evening of
July 1st encamped between Brownsville and the river."

The 2d and 3d of July were spent in reconnaissance, from
which the conclusion was reached that an attack on the north
side of the railroad was impracticable, and examinations were
commenced on the south side of the railroad. On the 3d a
messenger was sent to General Pemberton that an attempt
would be made about the 7th, by an attack on the enemy, to
create a diversion which might enable Pemberton to cut his
way out. The message was not received, and Pemberton, de-
spairing of aid from the exterior, capitulated on the 4th.

General Grant, in expectation that an attack in his rear would
be made by General J. E. Johnston, formed a provisional corps
by taking brigades from several corps, and assigned General
Sherman to command it. He was sent in the direction of Big
Black. Colonel Wilson, then commanding the Fifteenth Illi-
nois Cavalry, was sent to the Big Black River to watch for the

424 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

expected advance of Johnston, when Sherman was to be noti-
fied, so that he might meet and hold Johnston in check until
additional reinforcements should arrive. Wilson never sent
the notice. An officer of Grant's army, whose rank and posi-
tion gave opportunity for accurate information, writes :

" It was always a matter of surprise to Grant and his com-
manders that Johnston failed to make the attempt to break up the
siege of Vicksburg, of which from the long line and consequent
weakness of the army of the North there seemed a fair chance of
accomplishment."

General Johnston, being informed on the 5th of the surren-
der of Vicksburg, fell back to Jackson, where his army arrived
on the 7th.

" On the morning of the 9th the enemy appeared in heavy
force in front of the works thrown up for the defense of the place ;
these, consisting of a line of rifle-pits prepared at intervals for
artillery, . . . were badly located and constructed, presenting but
a slight obstacle to a vigorous assault." *

The weather was hot, deep dust covered the country roads,
and for about ten miles there was no water to supply the troops
who were advancing in heavy order of battle from Clinton ; and
the circumstances above mentioned caused General Johnston, as
he states, to expect that the enemy " would be compelled to make
an immediate assault." Sherman, in command of the attacking
column, did not, however, elect to assault the intrenchments,
but moved the left of his line around so as to rest upon Pearl
Eiver above, and then, extending his right so as to reach the
river below, commenced intrenching a line of investment. As
early as May 27th Brigadier- General J. G. Eains had been
directed to report to General Johnston in connection with tor-
pedoes and sub-terra shells, and a request had been made for
"all reasonable facilities and aid in the supply of men or
material for the fair trial of his torpedoes and shells." There
could scarcely have been presented a better opportunity for

* General Johnston's " Report of Operations in Mississippi and East Louisiana,"
pp. 12, 13.

1863] BEEN TAKEN AT GREAT DISADVANTAGE. 425

their use than that offered by the heavy column marching
against Jackson, and the enemy would have been taken at great
disadvantage if our troops had met them midway between Jack-
son and Clinton. As the defenses of Jackson had not been so
corrected in location and increased in strength as to avail against
anything other than a mere assault, it is greatly to be regretted
that the railroad-bridge across Pearl River was not so repaired
that the large equipments of the Central road might have been
removed for use elsewhere and at other times. One of the
serious embarrassments suffered in the last two years of the war
was from the want of rolling-stock, with which to operate our
railroads, as required for the transportation of troops and sup-
plies. On the 12th of July a heavy cannonade was opened, and
the missiles reached all parts of the town. An assault was also
made on Major-General Breckinridge's position on our extreme
left. His division, with the aid of Cobb's and Slocum's bat-
teries, repulsed it, inflicting severe loss, and capturing two hun-
dred prisoners, besides the wounded, and taking three regi-
mental colors. On the 15th General Johnston was assured
that the remainder of Grant's army was moving from Yicks-
burg to Jackson, and on the night of the 16th he, having pre-
viously sent forward his sick and wounded, successfully with-
drew his army across the Pearl River, and moved toward
Brandon, and continued the march as far as Morton, about
thirty-five miles from Jackson. The enemy followed no farther
than Brandon, which was reached on the 19th, and manifested
no higher purpose than that of arson, which was exhibited on
a still larger scale at Jackson.

Thus, within the first half of July, our disasters had fol-
lowed close upon the heels of one another. Though not defeated
at Gettysburg, we had suffered a check, and an army, to which
nothing was considered impossible, had been compelled to re-
tire, leaving its opponent in possession of the field of battle.
The loss of Yicksburg and Port Hudson was the surrender of
the Mississippi to the enemy. It was true that gunboats had
run by our batteries, but not with impunity, and some of them
had been sunk in the attempt. Transports for troops, supplies,
and merchandise could not, except at great risk, use the river

426 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

while our batteries at those two points remained effective, and
gunboats cruising between them would have but a barren field.
Moreover, they needed to be very numerous to prevent inter-
course between the two sides of the river, which, thus far, they
had never been able to effect.

CHAPTER XL.

Inactivity in Tennessee. — Capture of Colburn's Expedition. — Capture of Streight's
Expedition. — Advance of Rosecrans to Bridgeport. — Burnside in East Tennes-
see.— Our Force at Chattanooga. — Movement against Burnside. — The Enemy
moves on our Rear near Ringgold. — Battle at Chickamauga. — Strength and Dis-
tribution of our Forces. — The Enemy withdraws. — Captures. — Losses. — The
Enemy evacuates Passes of Lookout Mountain. — His Trains captured. — Failure
of General Bragg to pursue. — Reinforcements to the Enemy, and Grant to com-
mand.— His Description of the Situation. — Movements of the Enemy. — Conflict
. at Chattanooga.

Aftee the battle at Murfreesboro, in Tennessee, a period of
inactivity ensued between the large armed forces, which was
disturbed only by occasional expeditions by small bodies on
each side. On March 5, 1863, an expedition of the enemy, under
Colonel Colburn, was captured at Spring Hill, ten miles south of
Franklin, by Generals Van Dorn and Forrest. Thirteen hun-
dred prisoners were taken. In April another expedition, under
Colonel Streight, into northern Georgia, was captured near
Home by our vigilant, daring cavalry leader, Forrest. This was
one of the most remarkable, and, to the enemy, disastrous raids
of the war. Seventeen hundred prisoners were taken. In
June some movements were made by General Rosecrans, which
were followed by the withdrawal of our forces from Middle
Tennessee, and a return to the occupation of Chattanooga. At
this time General Buckner held Knoxville and commanded the
district of East Tennessee ; General Samuel Jones commanded
the district of southwest Virginia, his headquarters at Abingdon,
Virginia. Between the two was Cumberland Gap, the well-
known pass by which the first pioneer, Daniel Boone, went into
Kentucky, and the only one in that region through which it was

1863] THE FUTILITY OF RESISTANCE. 427

supposed an army, with the usual artillery and wagon-train,
could march from the north into East Tennessee or southwest
Yirginia. It was, therefore, occupied and partially fortified,
which, with the precipitous heights flanking it on the right and
left, would, it was hoped, suffice against an attack in front, and
prove an adequate barrier to an advance on our important line
of communication in its rear, which Buckner and Jones were
relied on to defend.

On the 20th of August Brigadier-General I. "W. Frazier, an
educated soldier in whom I had much confidence, assumed, by
assignment, the command of this position, and energetically
commenced to perfect the defenses, and ingeniously though un-
successfully endeavored to bring a supply of water into the
fortifications. He reported his force to amount to seventeen
hundred effective infantry and artillery, and about six hundred
cavalry ; the supply of ammunition was deficient, and some of
it damaged by a badly constructed magazine.

About August 20th it was ascertained that the army under
General Rosecrans had crossed the mountains to Stevenson and
Bridgeport. His force of infantry and artillery amounted to
seventy thousand men, divided into four corps. About the
same time General Burnside advanced from Kentucky, crossed,
by using pack-mules, the rugged mountains west of Cumber-
land Gap, and, about the 1st of September, approached Knox-
ville, East Tennessee, with a force estimated at over twenty-
five thousand men. General Buckner, therefore, evacuated
Knoxville, and took position at Loudon, with a force of about
five thousand infantry, artillery, and cavalry ; this rendered
the occupation of Cumberland Gap hazardous to the garrison,
and comparatively of little value to us, but, when its surrender
was demanded by a force which might be resisted, General Fra-
zier promptly refused to comply with the demand. Subse-
quently, General Burnside advanced with a large body of
troops, and, approaching from the south, renewed the demand,
when General Frazier, recognizing the inutility as well as fu-
tility of resistance, surrendered on the 9th of September, 1863.*

* Some of the garrison of Cumberland Gap escaped, and stated to General Jones
that the surrender had been made without resistance, on the demands of the smaller

428 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

The main body of our army was encamped near Chattanooga,
while the cavalry force was recruiting from fatigue and ex-
haustion near Home, Georgia. The enemy first attempted to
strike Buckner in the rear, but failing, commenced a move-
ment against our left and rear. On the last of August he
had crossed his main force over the Tennessee River at Car-
penter's Ferry, near Stevenson. Our effective force of in-
fantry and artillery was about thirty-five thousand. By active
reconnaissance of our cavalry, which had been brought for-
ward, it was ascertained that Roseerans's general movement
was toward our left and rear, in the direction of Dalton and
Rome, keeping Lookout Mountain between us. The want of
supplies in the country and the force under Burnside on our
right rendered hazardous a movement on the rear of the for-
mer with our force. General Lee, with commendable zeal for
the public welfare and characteristic self-denial, had consented
to remain for a time on the defensive for the purpose of reen-
forcing Bragg's army, and General Longstreet had been de-
tached with his corps for that purpose. These troops were to
come by rail from Atlanta, and might soon be expected to
arrive. It was, therefore, determined to retire toward our ex-
detachments which had preceded General Burnside, and I was not advised of the
fact that Buckner had previously retreated toward Chattanooga, and that Burn-
side was in possession of Knoxville. In my message of December 12, 1863, I re-
ferred to the event, as reported to the War Department, as follows :

" The country was painfully surprised by the intelligence that the officer in com-
mand of Cumberland Gap had surrendered that important and easily defensible pass,
without firing a shot, upon the summons of a force still believed to have been inade-
quate to its reduction, and when reinforcements were in supporting distance and
had been ordered to his aid. The entire garrison, including its commander, being
still held prisoners by the enemy, I am unable to suggest any explanation of this
disaster winch laid open Eastern Tennessee and southwestern Virginia to hostile
operations."

So far as censure of General Frazier was implied in these remarks, I am now
fully satisfied it was unjust, and I can only regret that the authentic information
recently furnished to me had not been received at an earlier date, so that I might
have relieved General Frazier from the reflection while I held executive authority.
It gives me pleasure now to say that full and exact information justifies the high
estimate I placed upon him when he was assigned to the separate command of that
important post. Full justice can be done to General Frazier only when his report
and those of his subordinate officers shall have been published.

1863] PUT IN A SAFE POSITION. 429

pected re enforcements, as well- as to meet the foe in front when
he should emerge from the mountain-gorges.

As we could not thus hold Chattanooga, our army, on Sep-
tember 7th and 8th, took position from Lee and Gordon's Mill
to Lafayette, on the road leading south from Chattanooga and
fronting the east slope of Lookout Mountain. The forces on
the Hiawassee and at Chickamauga Station took the route by
Ringgold. A small cavalry force was left in observation at
Chattanooga, and a brigade of infantry at Ringgold to cover the
railroad.

The enemy immediately moved the corps that threatened
Buckner into Chattanooga, and, shortly after, it commenced to
move on our rear by the roads to Lafayette and Ringgold.
Another corps was nearly opposite the head of McLemore Cove,
in Will's Valley, and one at Colonel Winston's opposite Alpine.
During the 9th it was ascertained that a column, between four
and five thousand, had crossed Lookout Mountain by Stevens's
and Cooper's Gaps into McLemore's Cove. An effort was made
by General Bragg to capture this column, with intent then to
turn upon the others, and beat each in succession. But, some
delay having occurred in the advance of our forces through the
gaps, the enemy took advantage of it and retreated to the
mountain-passes. He then withdrew his corps from the route
toward Alpine to unite with the one near McLemore's Cove,
which was gradually extended toward Lee and Gordon's Mills.
It was now determined to turn upon the Third Corps of the
enemy, approaching us from the direction of Chattanooga. The
forces sent toward the Cove were accordingly withdrawn to
Lafayette, and Polk's and Walker's corps were moved imme-
diately in the direction of Lee and Gordon's Mills, Lieutenant-
General Polk commanding. He was ordered to attack early
the next morning, as the enemy's corps was known to be di-
vided, and it was hoped by successive attacks to crush his army
in detail; but the expectation was not realized, as his forces
withdrew and formed a junction. Our trains and supplies were
then put in a safe position, and all our forces were concen-
trated along the Chickamauga, threatening the opposing force
in front. Major-General Wheeler, with two divisions of cavalry,

430 RISE AND FALL OF TOE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

occupied the extreme left, vacated by Hill's corps, and was
directed to press the enemy in McLemore's Cove ; to divert his
attention from the real movement, General Forrest covered the
movement on our front and right ; General B. K. Johnson was
moved from Ringgold to the extreme right of the line ; Walk-
er's corps formed on his left opposite Alexander's Bridge, Buck-
ner's next, near Tedford Ford, Polk opposite Lee and Gordon's
Mills, and Hill on the extreme left. Orders were issued to cross
the Chickamauga at 6 a. m., commencing by the extreme right.
The movements were unexpectedly delayed by the difficulty
of the roads and the resistance of the enemy's cavalry. The
right column did not effect its crossing until late in the after-
noon of the 18th ; at this time, Major-General Hood, from the
Army of Northern Virginia, arrived and assumed command of
the column. General TV. H. T. TValker had a severe skirmish
at Alexander's Bridge, from which he finally drove the enemy,
but not before he had destroyed it ; General TValker, however,
found a ford, crossed, and Hood united with him after night.
The advance was resumed at daylight on the 19th, when Buck-
ner's corps with Cheatham's division of Polk's corps crossed the
Chickamauga, and our line of battle was thus formed : Buck-
ner's left rested on the bank of the stream about one mile
below Lee and Gordon's Mills ; on his right came Hood with
his own and Johnson's divisions, and Walker's formed the
extreme right ; Forrest with his cavalry was in advance to the
right. He soon became engaged with such a large force that
two brigades were sent from TValker's division to his support.
Forrest, here fighting with his usual tenacity, desperately held
in check the comparatively immense force which he was re-
sisting. General TValker, being ordered to commence the
attack on the right, boldly advanced, and soon developed op-
posing forces greatly superior to his own ; he, however, drove
them handsomely, capturing several batteries of artillery, by
dashing charges. As he pressed back the force in his front,
it rested upon such heavy masses in the rear, that he was in
turn repulsed. Cheatham's division was ordered to his sup-
port ; it came too late. Before it could reach him, assailed on
both flanks, he had been forced back to his first position, but

1863] SLEPT UPOX THE FIELD. 431

the two commands united, though yet greatly outnumbered,
and, by a spirited attack, recovered our advantage. These
movements on our right were in such direction as to create
an opening between the left of Cheatham's division and the
right of Hood's. To fill this, Stewart's division, the reserve
of Buckner's corps, was ordered up, and soon became engaged,
as now did Hood's whole front. The enemy had transferred
forces from his extreme right so as to concentrate his main body
on his left, acutely perceiving the probability of an effort on
our part to gain his rear, and cut off his communication with
his base at Chattanooga. The main part of the battle, there-
fore, was fought on the opposite flank from that where both
armies had probably expected it. Lieutenant- General Polk was
now directed to move the remainder of his corps across the
stream, and to assume command in person ; Hill's corps was
also directed to move to our right. Stewart, by a gallant assault,
broke the enemy's center, and pushed forward until he became
exposed to an enfilading fire. Hood steadily advanced, driving
the force in his front until night. Cleburne, of Hill's corps, im-
mediately on reaching the right, closed so impetuously with the
enemy as to create surprise, and drove him in great disorder.
From prisoners and otherwise, the commanding General became
satisfied that his antagouist had by marching night and day suc-
ceeded in concentrating his whole force, and that it had that
day been fought on the field of Chickamauga. A part of the
forces on our extreme left had not reached the field of actual
conflict in time to participate in the engagement of that day ;
they, together with the remainder of Longstreet's corps, were
brought up and put in position to renew the battle in the morn-
ing. Our troops slept upon the field they had so bravely con-
tested. The Confederate troops engaged on the right were as
follows :

General W. H. T. Walker's division 5,500

Cheatham's division 7,000

A. P. Stewart's division 4,040

Cleburne's division 5,115

Hood's, B R. Johnson's, and Trigg's troops 8,428

Forrest's and Pegram's cavalry 3,500

Total 33,583

432 RISE AXD FALL OF THE COXFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

General Wheeler with his cavalry had been in observation
on the left, and for a fortnight, daily skirmishing with the
enemy. On the 17th he was ordered to move into McLemo-re's
Cove to make a demonstration in that direction, where, after a
severe engagement, he developed a force too large to be dis-
lodged. On the 18th he was directed to hold the gap in Pig-
eon Mountain, so as to prevent the enemy from moving on
onr left. As appeared subsequently, General Rosecrans, by
forced marches, had made a detour^ and formed a junction of
his forces in front of ours, so that it was no longer needful to
hold the passes of the Pigeon Mountain, and Wheeler with his
cavalry was called to take position on the left of our line.

On the night of the 19th, the whole force having been assem-
bled, including the five thousand effective infantry sent for
temporary service from Virginia, the command was organized
as two corps, the one on the right to be commanded by Lieu-
tenant-General Polk ; the other, on the left, to be commanded by
Lieutenant-General Longstreet. These corps consisted respec-
tively as follows: Polk's right wing, of Breckinridge's, Cle-
burne's, Cheatham's, and "Walker's divisions, and Forrest's cav-
alry— aggregate, 22,471 ; Longstreet's left wing, of Preston's,
Hindman's, Johnson's (Hood's), Law's, Kershaw's, Stewart's di-
visions, and Wheeler's cavalry — aggregate, 24,850: grand aggre-
gate of both wings, 47,321. The forces under Posecrans, as has
been subsequently learned, consisted of McCook's corps, 14,345 ;
Thomas's, 24,072 ; Crittenden's, 13,975 ; Granger's, about 5,000 ;
cavalry, 7,000 : whole number, 64,392. On the night of the
19th General Bragg gave his instructions orally, to the general
officers whom he had summoned to his camp-fire, as to the
position of the different commands ; and the order of battle was
that the attack should commence on the right at daybreak, and
be taken up successively to the left. From a combination of
mishaps, it resulted that the attack was not commenced until
nine or ten o'clock in the day, and, what was much more impor-
tant, the troops from right to left did not in rapid succession
engage, so as to have that effectiveness which would have re-
sulted from concert of action. Prodigies of valor were per-
formed, many partial successes were gained in the beginning of

1863] YIELDED ALONG THE WHOLE LINE. 433

the battle, but in the first operations the troops so frequently
moved to the assault without the necessary cohesion in a charg-
ing line, that nearly all early assaults by our right wing were
successively repulsed with loss. Though at first invariably suc-
cessful, our troops were subsequently compelled to retire before
the heavy reinforcements constantly brought.

"Wheeler with his cavalry struck boldly at the enemy's ex-
treme right and center, and with such effect that, in the Federal
battle reports, it appears the attack was mistaken for a flank
movement by General Longstreet.

Eosecrans having transferred his main strength to our right,
the attack of the left met with less resistance, and was success-
fully and vigorously followed up. About 4 p. m. a general
assault was made by the right, and the attack was pressed
from right to left until the enemy gave way at different points,
and, finally, about dark, yielded along the whole line. Our
army bivouacked on the ground it had so gallantly won. The
foe, though driven from his lines, continued to confront us
when the action closed. But it was found the next morning
that he had availed himself of the night to withdraw from our
front, and that his main body was soon in position within his
lines at Chattanooga. We captured over eight thousand prison-
ers, fifty-one pieces of artillery, fifteen thousand stand of small
arms, and quantities of ammunition, with wagons, ambulances,
teams, and medicines with hospital stores in large quantities.
From the appearance of the field the enemy's losses must have
largely exceeded ours, and the victory was complete ; but these
results could not console us for the lives they cost. Pride in the
gallantry of our heroes, rejoicing at the repulse of the invader,
was subdued by the memory of our fallen brave.

After General Rosecrans's retreat to Chattanooga, he with-
drew his forces from the passes of Lookout Mountain, which
covered his line of supplies from Bridgeport. These command-
ing positions were immediately occupied by our troops, and a
cavalry force was sent across the Tennessee, which destroyed a
large wagon-train in the Sequatchie Valley, captured McMinns-
ville and other points on the railroad, and thus temporarily cut
off the source of supplies for the army at Chattanooga.
75

434 RISE AXD FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

The reasons why General Bragg did not promptly pursue
are stated in his report thus :

" Our supplies of all kinds were greatly reduced, the railroad
having been constantly occupied in transporting troops, prisoners,
and our wounded, and the bridges having been destroyed to a
point two miles south of Ringgold. These supplies were ordered
to be replenished, and, as soon as it was seen that we could be sub-
sisted, the army was moved forward to seize and hold the only
communication the enemy had with his supplies in the rear. His
important road, and the shortest by half to his depot at Bridge-
port, lay along the south bank of the Tennessee. The holding of
this all-important route was confided to Lieutenant-General Long-
street's command, and its possession forced the enemy to a road
double the length, over two ranges of mountains, by wagon trans-
portation. At the same time, our cavalry, in large force, was
thrown across the river to operate on this long and difficult route.
These dispositions, faithfully sustained, insured the enemy's speedy
evacuation of Chattanooga for want of food and forage."

These reverses caused the enemy to send forward rein-
forcements from the army at Vicksburg, and also to assign
General Grant to the command in Tennessee. As early as
September 23d the Eleventh and Twelfth Corps of the Army
of the Potomac were detached, and sent under General Hooker
to Tennessee, and assigned to protect Rosecrans's line of com-
munication from Bridgeport to Nashville. It was on October
23d that General Grant arrived at Chattanooga, and only in
time to save their army from starvation or evacuation. The
investment by General Bragg had been so close and their
communications had been so destroyed that Bragg was on the
point of realizing the evacuation of Chattanooga, which he had
anticipated. The report of Grant thus describes the situation
on his arrival :

"Up to this period our forces in Chattanooga were practically
invested, the enemy's lines extending from the Tennessee River,
above Chattanooga, to the river at and below the point of Look-
out Mountain, below Chattanooga, with the south bank of the
river picketed nearly to Bridgeport, his main force being fortified

1863J ALMOST CERTAIN ANNIHILATION. 435

in Chattanooga Valley, at the foot of and on Missionary Ridge
and Lookout Mountain, and a brigade in Lookout Valley. True,
we held possession of the country north of the river, but it was
from sixty to seventy miles over the most impracticable roads to
army supplies.

" The artillery horses and mules had become so reduced by
starvation that they could not have been relied upon for moving
anything. An attempt at retreat must have been with men alone,
and with only such supplies as they could carry. A retreat would
have been almost certain annihilation, for the enemy, occupying
positions within gunshot of and overlooking our very fortifica-
tions, would unquestionably have pursued retreating forces. Al-
ready more than ten thousand animals had perished in supplying
half rations to the troops by the long and tedious route from Ste-
venson and Bridgeport to Chattanooga over Waldron's Ridge.
They could not have been supplied another week."

The first movement under Grant was, therefore, to estab-
lish a new and shorter line of supplies.' For this purpose a
night expedition was sent down the river from Chattanooga,
which seized the range of hills at the mouth of Lookout Val-
ley, and covered the Brown's Ferry road. By 10 a. m. a
bridge was laid across the river at the ferry, which secured
the end of the road nearest to our forces and the shorter line
over which the enemy could move troops. General Hooker
also entered Lookout Valley at "Wauhatchie, and took up posi-
tions for the defense of the road from Whiteside's, over which
he had marched, and also the road leading from Brown's Ferry
to Kelly's Ferry. General Palmer crossed from the north side
of the river opposite Whiteside's, and held the road passed over
by Hooker. An unsuccessful attack was made on a portion of
Hooker's troops the first night after he entered the valley. Sub-
sequently, we lost the remaining heights held by us west of
Lookout Creek.

Further operations of the enemy were delayed until the
arrival of Sherman's force from Memphis. After his arrival,
on November 23d, an attempt was made to feel our lines.
This was done with so much force as to obtain possession of
Indian Hill and the low range of hills south of it. That night

436 RrsE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

Sherman began to move to obtain a position just below the
mouth of the South Chickamauga, and by daylight on the 24th
he had eight thousand men on the south side of the Tennes-
see, and fortified in rifle-trenches. By noon pontoon-bridges
were laid across the Tennessee and the Chickamauga, and the
remainder of his forces crossed. During the afternoon he took
possession of the whole northern extremity of Missionary Ridge
nearly to the railroad-tunnel, and fortified the position equally
with that held by us. A raid was also made on our line of com-
munication, cutting the railroad at Cleveland. On the same day
Hooker scaled the western slope of Lookout Mountain. On the
25th he took possession of the mountain-top with a part of his
force, and with the remainder crossed Chattanooga Valley to
Rossville. Our most northern point was assailed by Sherman,
and the attack kept up all day. He was reenforced by a part
of Howard's corps. In the afternoon the whole force of the
enemy's center, consisting of four divisions, was moved to the
attack. They got possession of the rifle-pits at the foot of Mis-
sionary Ridge, and commenced the ascent of the mountain from
right to left, and continued it until the summit was reached,
notwithstanding the volleys of grape and canister discharged at
them. Our forces retreated from the ridge as the multitudinous
assailants neared the thin line on the crest, and during the night
withdrew from the positions on the plain below. General
Grant, after advancing a short distance from Chattanooga, dis-
patched a portion of his forces to the relief of Burnside in East
Tennessee, where he was closely besieged by General Longstreet
in Knoxville. Longstreet moved east into Virginia, and ulti-
mately joined General Lee. He had left the army of General
Lee, and moved to the West with his force, on the condition that
he should return when summoned. This summons had been
sent to him. The loss of the enemy in the conflicts at Chat-
tanooga was 757 killed, 4,529 wounded, and 337 missing ; total,
5,616. Our loss in killed and wounded was much less than
theirs.

18631 THE OBJECTIVE POINT OF THE WAR. 437

CHAPTEE XLI.

Movement to draw forth the Enemy. — Advance to Culpeper Court-House. — Cav-
alry Engagement at Beverly's and Kelly's Fords. — Movement against Winches-
ter.— Milroy's Force captured. — Prisoners. — The Enemy retires along the Poto-
mac.— Maryland entered. — Advance into Pennsylvania. — The Enemy driven back
toward Gettysburg. — Position of the Respective Forces. — Battle at Gettysburg.
— The Army retires. — Prisoners. — The Potomac swollen. — Xo Interruption by
the Enemy. — Strength of our Force. — Strength of the Enemy. — The Campaign
closed. — Observations. — Kelly's Ford. — Attempt to surprise our Army. — Sys-
tem of Breastworks. — Prisoners.
•

In the spring of 1863 the enemy occupied his former posi-
tion before Fredericksburg. He was in great strength, and, so
far as we could learn, was preparing on the grandest scale for
another advance against Richmond, which in political if not
military circles was regarded as the objective point of the war.
The consolidated report of the Army of the Potomac, then
under the command of Major-General Hooker, states the force
present on May 10, 1863, to be 136,704.

General Lee's forces had been reorganized into three army
corps, designated the First, Second, and Third Corps. In the
order named, they were commanded by Lieutenant- Generals
Longstreet, Ewell, and A. P. Hill.

The zeal of our people in the defense of their country's cause
had brought nearly all of the population fit for military service
to the various armies then in the field, so that but little increase
could be hoped for by the Army of Northern Virginia. Under
these circumstances, to wait until the enemy should choose to
advance was to take the desperate hazard of the great inequal-
ity of numbers, as well as ability to reenforce, which he pos-
sessed. In addition to the army under General Hooker, a
considerable force occupied the lower part of the Yalley of the
Shenandoah.

It was decided by a bold movement to attempt to transfer
hostilities to the north side of the Potomac, by crossing the
river and marching into Maryland and Pennsylvania, simultane-
ously driving the foe out of the Shenandoah Yalley. Thus,

43 S KISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

it was hoped, General Hooker's army would be called from
Virginia to meet our advance toward the heart of the enemy's
country. In that event, the vast preparations which had been
made for an advance upon Richmond would be foiled, the plan
for his summer's campaign deranged, and much. of the season
for active operations be consumed in the new combinations
and dispositions which would be required. If, beyond the Po-
tomac, some opportunity should be offered so as to enable us
to defeat the army on which our foe most relied, the measure
of our success would be full"; but, if the movement only re-
sulted in freeing Virginia from the presence of the hostile
army, it was more than could fairly be expected from awaiting
the attack which was clearly indicated.

Actuated by these and other considerations, the campaign
was commenced on June 3, 1863. Our forces advanced to Cul-
peper Court-House, leaving A. P. Hill to occupy the lines ii
front of Fredericksburg. On the 5th Hooker, having discov-
ered our movement, crossed an army corps to the south side oJ
the Pappahannock, but, as this was apparently for observation,
it was not thought necessary to oppose it.

On the 9th a large force of the enemy's cavalry crossed at
Beverly's and Kelly's Fords and attacked General Stuart. A
severe engagement ensued, continuing from early in the morn-
ing until late in the afternoon, when Stuart forced histassailant
to recross the river with heavy loss, leaving four hundred pris
oners, three pieces of artillery, and several stands of colors in
our hands.

Meantime, General Jenkins with a cavalry brigade had beei
ordered to advance toward Winchester, to cooperate with an in-
fantry expedition into the lower Valley, and General Imboden
made a demonstration toward Pomney to cover the movement
against Winchester, and prevent reinforcements from the line
of the Baltimore and Ohio Pailroad. Both these officers were
in position when Ewell left Culpeper Court-House on the 6th.
Crossing the Shenandoah near Front Poyal, Podes's division
went to Berry ville to dislodge the force stationed there, and
cut off the communication between Winchester and the P(
tomac. General Ewell, on the 13th of June, advanced directly

1863] BEHIND THE HILLS OF STAFFORD. 439

upon Winchester, driving the enemy into his works around the
town. On the next day he stormed the works, and the whole
army of General Milroy was captured or put to night. Most
of those who attempted to escape were intercepted and made
prisoners. Unfortunately, among the exceptions, was their com-
mander, who had been guilty of most unpardonable outrages
upon defenseless non-combatants.

General Rodes marched from Berryville to Martinsburg,
entering the latter place on the 14th, and capturing seven hun-
dred prisoners, five pieces of artillery, and a considerable quan-
tity of stores. These operations cleared the Valley of the
enemy. More than four thousand prisoners, twenty-nine pieces
of artillery, two hundred and seventy wagons and ambulances,
with four hundred horses, were captured, besides a large
amount of military stores. Our loss was small. On the night
that Ewell appeared at "Winchester, the enemy at Fredericks-
burg recrossed the Rappahannock, and on the next day disap-
peared behind the hills of Stafford.

The whole army of General Hooker, in retiring, pursued the
roads near the Potomac, offering no favorable opportunity for
attack. His purpose seemed to be to take a position which
would enable him to cover the approaches to Washington City.
To draw him farther from his base, and to cover the march of
A. P. Hill, who had left for the Yalley, Longstreet moved from
Culpeper Court-House on the 15th, and occupied Ashby's and
Snicker's Gaps. The cavalry under General Stuart was in front
of Longstreet to watch the enemy, and encountered his cavalry
on the 17th near Aldie, and drove it back. The engagement
was renewed on the next day, but the cavalry of the latter being
now strongly supported by infantry, Stuart was compelled to
retire. He had, however, taken in these engagements about
four hundred prisoners and a considerable number of horses and
arms.

• Meantime, General Ewell, with the advance of his corps,
had entered Maryland. Jenkins, with his cavalry, penetrated
as far as Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. As these demonstra-
tions did not cause the hostile army to leave Virginia, nor
did it seem disposed to advance upon Longstreet's position, he

440 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

was withdrawn to the west side of the Shenandoah. General
Hill had already reached the Valley. General Stuart was left
to guard the passes of the mountains and observe the move-
ments of the enemy, whom he was instructed to harass and im-
pede as much as possible should he attempt to cross the Poto-
mac. In that event General Stuart was directed to move into
Maryland, crossing the Potomac east or west of the Blue Ridge,
as in his judgment should seem best, and take position on the
right of our column as it advanced. General Longstreet says :

" General Stuart held the gap for a while, and then hurried
around beyond Hooker's army, and we saw nothing more of him
until the evening of July 2d, when he came down from York and
joined us, having made a complete circuit of the Federal army."

Longstreet and Hill crossed the Potomac, to be within sup-
porting distance of Ewell, and advanced into Pennsylvania,
encamping near Chambersburg on the 27th of June. The
cavalry, under Colonel White, advanced to the Susquehanna.

On the night of the 27th information was received that Gen-
eral Hooker had crossed the Potomac, and was advancing north-
ward, and that the head of the column had reached South Moun-
tain. This menaced our communications, and it was resolved to
prevent his further progress by concentrating our army on the
east side of the mountain. Accordingly, the different com-
mands were ordered to proceed to Gettysburg. This march
was conducted more slowly than it would have been had the
movements of Hooker been known. Heth's, the leading divis-
ion of Hill's corps, met the enemy in front of Gettysburg on
the morning of July 1st, driving him back to within a short
distance of the town ; the advance there encountered a larger
force, with which two of Hill's divisions became engaged.
Ewell, coming up with two of his divisions, joined in the en-
gagement ; and the opposing force was driven through Gettys-
burg with heavy loss, including about five thousand prisoners
and several pieces of artillery.

Under the instructions given to them not to bring on a gen-
eral engagement, these corps bivouacked on the ground they
had won.

1863] THERE WAS UNACCOUNTABLE DELAY. 441

In an address delivered at Lexington, Virginia, on January
17, 1873, General "W. N. Pendleton, chief of artillery, makes
the following statement :

" The ground southwest of the town was carefully examined
by me after the engagement on July 1st. Being found much less
difficult than the steep ascent fronting the troops already up, its
practicable character was reported to our commanding General.
He informed me that he had ordered Longstreet to attack on that
front at sunrise the next morning. And he added to 'myself, *I
want you to be out long before sunrise so as to reexamine and
save time/ He also desired me to communicate with General
Longstreet as well as with himself. The reconnaissance was
accordingly made, as soon as it was light enough on the 2d, and
made through a long distance — in fact, very close to what there
was of the enemy's line. No insuperable difficulty appearing,
and the marching up — far off, the enemy's reenforcing columns
being seen — the extreme desirableness of immediate attack there,
was at once reported to the commanding General ; and, according
to his wish, message was also sent to the intrepid but deliberate
corps commander whose sunrise attack there had been ordered.
There was, however, unaccountable delay. My own messages
went repeatedly to General Lee, and his, I know, was urgently
pressed on General Longstreet, until, as I afterward learned from
officers who saw General Lee, as I could not at the time, he mani-
fested extreme displeasure with the tardy corps commander. That
hard-fighting soldier, to whom it had been committed there to
attack early in the day, did not, in person, reach the commanding
General, and with him ride to a position whence to view the ground
and see the enemy's arriving masses, until twelve o'clock ; and
his column was not up and ready for the assault until 4 p. m. All
this, as it occurred under my personal observation, it is nothing
short of imperative duty that I should thus fairly state."

For the reasons set forth by General Pendleton, whose
statement, in regard to a fact coming nnder his personal obser-
vation, none who know him will question, preparations for a
general engagement were unfortunately delayed until the after-
noon, instead of being made at sunrise ; then troops had been
concentrated, and " Round-Top," the commanding position, un-

442 FJSE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

occupied in the morning, had received the force which inflicted
such disaster on our assaulting columns. The question as to the
responsibility for this delay has been so fully discussed in the
Southern Historical Society papers as to relieve me from the ne-
cessity of entering into it.

The position at Gettysburg was not the choice of either side.
South from the town an irregular, interrupted line of hills runs,
which is sometimes called the " Gettysburg Ridge." This ridge,
at the town, turns eastward and then southward. At the turn
eastward is Cemetery Hill and at the turn southward Culps's
Hill. From Cemetery Hill the line runs southward about three
miles in a well-defined ridge, since the battle called Cemetery
Ridge, and terminates in a high, rocky, and wooded peak named
Round-Top, which was the key of the enemy's position, as it
flanked their line. The less elevated portion, near where the
crest rises into Round-Top, is termed " Little Round-Top," a
rough and bold spur of the former. Thus, while Cemetery and
Culps's Hills require the formation of a line of battle to face
northward, the direction of Cemetery Ridge requires the line to
face westward. The crest has a good slope to the rear, while
to the west it falls off in a cultivated and undulating valley,
which it commands. About a mile distant is a parallel crest,
known as Seminary Ridge, and which our forces occupied dur-
ing the battle. Longstreet, with the divisions of Hood and
McLaws, faced Round-Top and a good part of Cemetery Ridge ;
Hill's three divisions continued the line from the left of Long-
street, fronting the remainder of Cemetery Ridge ; while Ewell,
with his three divisions, held a line through the town, and,
sweeping round the base of Cemetery Hill, terminated the left
in front of Culps's Hill.

These were the positions of the three corps after the arrival
of General Longstreet's troops.

The main purpose of the movement across the Potomac was
to free Yirginia from the presence of the enemy. If this could
he done by manoeuvering merely, a most important result would
be cheaply obtained. The contingency of a battle was of course
deemed probable, and, with any fair opportunity, the Army of
Northern Yirginia was considered sure to win a victory.

rlall Jr .

LDEOnr.SEKioJARfflEg) L^M^ST^EElTo

1863] THE BATTLE CEASED AT DARK. 443

It had not been intended to fight a general battle at such a
distance as Gettysburg from our base, unless attacked ; but,
being unexpectedly confronted by the opposing army, it became
a matter of difficulty to withdraw through the mountains with
our large trains. At the same time the country was unfavorable
for collecting supplies while in the presence of the main army
of the enemy, as he was enabled to restrain our foraging par-
ties by occupying the passes of the mountains with both regular
and local troops. Encouraged by the successful issue of the
engagement of the first day, and in view of the valuable re-
sults that would ensue from the defeat of the army of Gen-
eral Meade (who had succeeded General Hooker), General Lee
thought it preferable to renew the attack.

General Meade held the high ridge above described, along
which he had massed a large amount of artillery. General
Ewell occupied the left of our line, General Hill the center,
and General Longstreet the right. In front of General Long-
street the enemy held a position, from which, if he could be
driven, it was thought that our army could gain the more ele-
vated ground (Round-Top) beyond, and thus enable our guns
to rake the crest of the ridge. That officer was directed to
endeavor to carry this position, while General Ewell attacked
directly the high ground on the enemy's right, which had al-
ready been partially fortified. General Hill was instructed to
threaten the center of the line, in order to prevent reinforce-
ments to either wing, and to avail himself of any opportunity
that might present itself to attack. After a severe struggle
Longstreet succeeded in getting possession of and holding the
ground in his immediate front. Ewell also carried some of the
strong positions which he assailed, and the result was such as to
lead to the belief that he would ultimately be able to dislodge
the force in his front. The battle ceased at dark. These par-
tial successes determined Lee to continue the assault on the next
day. Pickett, with three of his brigades, joined Longstreet on
the following morning, and our batteries were moved forward
to the position gained by him on the day before. The general
plan of attack was unchanged, except that one division and two
brigades of Hill's corps were ordered to support Longstreet.

444 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

General Meade, in the mean time, had strengthened his line
with earthworks. The morning was occupied in necessary prep-
arations, and the battle recommenced in the afternoon of the
3d, and raged with great violence until sunset. Our troops
succeeded in entering the advanced works of the enemy, and
getting possession of some of his batteries ; but, our artillery
having nearly expended its ammunition, the attacking columns
became exposed to the heavy fire of the numerous batteries near
the summit of the ridge, and, after a most determined and gal-
lant struggle, were compelled to relinquish their advantage and
fall back to their original positions with severe loss.

Owing to the strength of the enemy's position and the
exhaustion of our ammunition, a renewal of the engagement
could not be hazarded, and the difficulty of procuring supplies
rendered it impossible to continue longer where we were.
Such of the wounded as could be removed and a part of the
arms collected on the field were ordered to Williamsport.
The army remained at Gettysburg during the 4th, and at
night began to retire by the road to Fairfield, carrying with
it about four thousand prisoners. Nearly two thousand had
been previously paroled ; but the numerous wounded that had
fallen into our hands after the first and second day's engage-
ments were left behind. Little progress was made that night,
owing to a severe storm, which greatly embarrassed our move-
ments. The rear of the column did not leave its position near
Gettysburg until after daylight on the 5th. The march was
continued during that day without interruption by the enemy,
except an unimportant demonstration upon our rear in the
afternoon, when near Fairfield, which was easily checked. The
army, after a tedious march, rendered more difficult by the
rains, reached Hagerstown on the afternoon of the 6th and
morning of the 7th of July.

The Potomac was so much swollen by the rains, that had
fallen almost incessantly since our army entered Maryland, as
to be unfordable. A pontoon-train had been sent from Rich-
mond, but the rise in the river gave to it a width greater than
was expected, so that additional boats had to be made by the
army on its retreat. Our communication with the south side

1863] WOULD HAVE RESULTED DISASTROUSLY. 445

was thus interrupted, and it was found difficult to procure
either ammunition or subsistence, the latter difficulty being en-
hanced by the high water impeding the working of the mills.
The trains with the wounded and prisoners were compelled to
wait at Williamsport for the subsiding of the river or the con-
struction of additional paptoon-boats. The enemy had not yet
made his appearance, but, as he was in a condition to obtain
large re enforcements and our want of supplies was daily be-
coming more embarrassing, it was deemed advisable to recross
the river. By the 13th a good bridge was thrown over at
Falling Waters. On the 12th Meade's army approached. A
position had been previously selected to cover the Potomac
from Williamsport to Falling "Waters, and an attack was
awaited during that and the succeeding day. This did not
take place, though the two armies were in close proximity, the
enemy being occupied in fortifying his own lines.

General Meade, in his testimony before the Committee on
the Conduct of the War, said that he ordered an attack on
our forces on the morning of the 14th, and, if it had been made,
it was his opinion that " it would have resulted disastrously."
When asked the reasons for that opinion, he replied :

"If I had attacked the enemy in the position which he tben
occupied — he having the advantage of position, and being on the
defensive, his artillery in position, and his infantry behind para-
pets and rifle-pits — the very same reasons and causes which pro-
duced my success at Gettysburg would have operated in his favor
there, and be likely to produce success on his part."

Our preparations being completed, and the Potomac, though
still deep, being pronounced fordable, the army commenced to
withdraw to the south side on the night of the 13th. Ewell's
corps forded the river at Williamsport, those of Longstreet and
Hill crossed upon the bridge. Owing to the condition of the
roads the troops did not reach the bridge until after daylight on
the 14th, and the crossing was not completed until 1 p. m., when
the bridge was removed. General Lee said that the enemy
offered no serious interruption, and the movement was attended
with no loss of material except a few disabled wagons and two

446 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

pieces of artillery, which the horses were unable to move
through the deep rnud. During the slow and tedious march
to the bridge, in the midst of a violent storm of rain, some of
the men lay down by the way to rest. Officers sent back for
them failed to find many in the obscurity of the night, and
these, with some stragglers, a few of Heth's division most re-
mote from the bridge, were captured. On the following day the
army marched to Bunker Hill, in the vicinity of which it en-
camped for several days. Owing to the swollen condition of
the Shenandoah River, the campaign which was contemplated
when the Potomac was recrossed, could not be immediately
commenced. Before the waters had subsided, the movements of
the enemy required us to cross the Blue Ridge and take position
south of the Rappahannock.

The strength of our army at Gettysburg is stated at 62,000
of all arms.* The report of the Army of the Potomac under
General Meade, on June 30, 1863, states the force present at
112,988 men. Before the Committee on the Conduct of the
War, General Meade, in reference to his force at Gettysburg,
said, " Including all arms of the service, my strength was a lit-
tle under 100,000 men— about 95,000."

If the strength of General Lee's forces, according to the
last accessible report before the movement northward, be com-
pared with that made after his return into Virginia, there is
a decrease of nineteen thousand of the brave men who had set
the seal of invincibility upon the Army of Northern Virginia.

General Lee, in his report, noticing the large loss of men
and officers, says :

" I can not speak of these brave men as their merits and ex-
ploits deserve. Some of them are appropriately mentioned in the
accompanying reports, and the memory of all will be gratefully and
affectionately cherished by the people in whose defense they fell.

"The loss of Major-General Pender is severely felt by the
army and the country. . . . Brigadier-Generals Armistead, Barks-
dale, Garnet, and Semmes, died as they had lived, discharging the
highest duty of patriots writh devotion that never faltered, and
courage that shrank from no danger."

* " Four Years with General Lee."

1863] THUS CLOSED THE CAMPAIGN. 447

The testimony of General Meade, above mentioned, con-
tains this statement respecting his losses :

" On the evening of the 2d of July, after the battle of that day
had ceased, and darkness had set in, being aware of the very
heavy losses of the First and Eleventh Corps on the 1st of July,
and knowing how severely the Third Corps, the Fifth Corps, and
other portions of the army, had suffered in the battle of the 2d of
July — in fact, as subsequently ascertained, out of the twenty-four
thousand men killed, wounded, and missing, which was the amount
of my losses and casualties at Gettysburg — over twenty thousand
of them had been put hors de combat before the night of the 2d
of July."

Thus closed the campaign in Pennsylvania. The wisdom
of the strategy was justified by the result. The battle of Get-
tysburg was unfortunate. Though the loss .sustained by the
enemy was greater than our own, theirs could be repaired, ours
could not.

Had General Lee been able to compel the enemy to attack
him in position, I think we should have had a complete victory,
and the testimony of General Meade quoted above shows that
he was not at all inclined to make the experiment. If General
Lee, by moving to the right, would only have led General
Meade to fall back on his preferred position of Pipe Creek, his
ability to wait and the impossibility under such circumstances
for General Lee to supply his army for any length of time
seem to me an answer to that point in the criticism to which
our great Captain has been subjected. To compel Meade to
retire would have availed but little to us, unless his army had
first been routed. To beat that army was probably to secure our
independence. The position of Gettysburg would have been
worth nothing to us if our army had found it unoccupied. The
fierce battle that Lee fought there must not be considered as for
the position ; to beat the great army of the North was the ob-
ject, and that it was of possible attainment is to be inferred
from the various successes of our arms. Had there been a con-
centrated attack at sunrise on the second day, with the same gal-
lantry and skill which were exhibited in the partial assaults, it

418 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

may reasonably be assumed that the enemy would have been
routed. This, from the best evidence we have, was the plan and
the expectation of General Lee. These having failed, from what-
ever cause, and Meade having occupied in force the commanding
position of Kound-Top, it must be conceded that it would have
been better to withdraw than to renew the attack on the third
day. The high morale and discipline of our army, together with
the unqualified confidence of the men in their commanding Gen-
eral, excluded the supposition that they would be demoralized by
retreat. Subsequent events proved how little cause there was
to fear it. It is not admitted that our army was defeated,
and the enemy's claim to a victory is refuted by the fact that,
when Lee halted on the banks of the Potomac, Meade, instead
of attacking as a pursuing general would a defeated foe, halted
also, and commenced intrenching.

The battle of Gettysburg has been the subject of an un-
usual amount of discussion, and the enemy has made it a mat-
ter of extraordinary exultation. As an affair of arms it was
marked by mighty feats of valor to which both combatants
may point with military pride. It was a graceful thing in
President Lincoln if, as reported, when he was shown the steeps
which the Northern men persistently held, he answered, " I am
proud to be the countryman of the men who assailed those
heights."

The consequences of the battle have justified the amount of
attention it has received. It may be regarded as the most
eventful struggle of the war. By it the drooping spirit of the
North was revived. Had their army been there defeated, those
having better opportunities to judge than I or any one who was
not among them, have believed it would have ended the war.
On the other hand, a drawn battle, where the Army of Northern
Yirginia made an attack, impaired the confidence of the South-
ern people so far as to give the malcontents a power to repre-
sent the Government as neglecting for Virginia the safety of
the more southern States.

In all free governments, the ability of its executive branch
to prosecute a war must largely depend upon public opinion ; in
an infant republic, this, for every reason, is peculiarly the case.

1863] ROSE LIKE THE SON OF TERRA. 449

The volume given to the voice of disaffection was therefore most
seriously felt by us.

Shattered, it is true, but not disheartened, the Army of
^Northern Virginia after recrossing the Potomac rose like the
son of Terra, with renewed vigor, and entered on the brilliant
campaign hereafter to be generally described.

Early in October General Lee, with two corps (E well's and
Hill's), the First Corps of his army having been temporarily de-
tached for service in Tennessee, crossed the Rapidan to attack
the flank of the enemy, or to compel him to retreat. It resulted
in the capture of fifteen hundred prisoners, and forced Meade's
1 army back to Alexandria and Centre ville. The campaign was
: an unbroken success, with the exception of a rash and ill-con-
i ducted affair at Bristoe Station, where our advance engaged a
corps, and was repulsed, losing a number of men and five guns.
' Thus, without a general battle, a large portion of the State
I was for the time liberated.

On November Tth the enemy advanced upon our force at
Kelly's Ford, of the Rappahannock River, effected a crossing,
and, rushing upon two brigades who were at Rappahannock Sta-
tion defending the bridges, overwhelmed and captured most
of them, taking between twelve and fifteen hundred men, and
four pieces of artillery. The movements of the enemy were
concealed by the darkness, and his attack was a surprise.

On November 26th the army under General Meade crossed
the Rapidan, with the intention of interposing between the
widely separated wings of his adversary. Instead of being
successful, this movement resulted in an entire failure. Gen-
eral Meade found Lee's army posted behind Mine Run, and
ready to receive an attack whenever he was disposed to make
it. "Meade declared, it is related, that he could carry the
position with a loss of thirty thousand men ; but, as that idea
Iwas frightful, there seemed nothing to do but retreat." * Lee
had inaugurated that system of breastworks which did him good
service in his long campaign with General Grant. When the
troops were halted in a wood, the men felled the large trees,
heavy logs were dragged without loss of time to the prescribed

* " Life of General R. E. Lee," by J. E. Cooke.
76

450 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

line, where they were piled upon one another in double walls,
which were filled in rapidly with earth ; so that, in a short space
of time, defenses which would turn a cannon-shot were often
constructed. In front, for some distance, the felled timber
made a kind of abatis. As General Meade did not attack, Gen-
eral Lee, on the night of December 1st, determined to assail his
adversary on the next morning; but, when the dawn broke
over the hills, his camps were seen to be deserted. General
Meade had abandoned the campaign, and was in full retreat
toward the Rapidan. Pursuit was immediately made, but he
had too much the start, and reached the north side of the
Rapidan before he could be overtaken. Both armies then re-
tired to their original positions. ¥e captured about seven hun-
dred prisoners, four hundred mules and horses, and destroyed
or secured one hundred and twenty wagons.

CHAPTER XLII.

Subjugation of the States of Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Virginia. — Object
of a State Government ; its Powers are " Just Powers " ; how exercised ; its
Duty ; necessarily sovereign ; its Entire Order ; how founded ; how destroyed.
— The Crime against Constitutional Liberty. — What is the Government of the
United States ? — It partakes of the Nature of a Limited Partnership ; its
Peaceful Objects. — Distinction between the Governments of the States and
that of the United States. — Secession. — The Government of the United States
invades the State; refuses to recognize its Government; thus denies the
Fundamental Principle of Popular Liberty. — Founded a New State Govern-
ment based on the Sovereignty of the United States Government. — Annihila-
tion of Unalienable Rights. — Qualification of Voters fixed by Military Power. —
Condition of the Voter's Oath. — Who was the Sovereign in Tennessee ? — Case
of Louisiana. — Registration of Voters. — None allowed to register who could
not or would not take a Certain Oath ; its Conditions. — Election of State Offi-
cers.— Part of the State Constitution declared void. — All done under the Mili-
tary Force of the United States Government.

The most painful pages of this work are those which now
present the subjugation of the State governments by the Gov-
ernment of the United States. The patriot, the lover of his
country and of the liberties of mankind, can not contemplate

1863] A REVOLUTION UNLIKE ANY OTHER 451

these facts without a feeling of grief which will not be com-
forted. That the work of the fathers of the republic, that the
most magnificent system of constitutional government which
the wisdom of man has devised, should be turned from its ob-
ject, changed from its order, rendered powerless to protect the
unalienable rights and sovereignty of the people, and made the
instrument by which to establish and maintain imperialism, is a
revolution unlike any other that may be found in the history of
mankind. The result established the truthfulness of the assertion,
so often made during the progress of the war, that the Northern
people, by their unconstitutional warfare to gain the freedom
of certain negro slaves, would lose their own liberties.

It has been shown that the governments of the States were
instituted to secure certain unalienable rights of the citizens
with which they were endowed by their Creator, and that
among these rights were life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi-
ness ; that they derived their just powers from the consent of
the governed ; and that these powers were organized by the
citizens in such form as seemed to them most likely to effect
their safety and happiness. "Where must the American citizen
look for the security of the rights with which he has been en-
dowed by his Creator ? To his State government. "Where shall
he look to find security and protection for his life, security
and protection for his personal liberty, security and protection
for his property, security and protection for his safety and hap-
piness \ Only to his State government.

The powers which the State government possesses for the
security of his life, his liberty, his property, his safety, and
his happiness, are "just powers." They have been derived
from the unconstrained consent of the governed, and they have
been organized in such form as seems most likely to effect these
objects.

Is the citizen's life in danger from violence ? The State
guarantees his protection, and it is its duty to rescue him from
danger and obtain redress from the offender, whether an indi-
vidual or a foreign nation. Are the freedom and personal liberty
of the citizen in danger from unlawful arrest and imprisonment ?
The State guarantees both, and it is its duty to secure and pre-

452 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

serve his freedom. Is the property of the citizen in danger of
a violent and unjust seizure and unlawful detention or destruc-
tion ? The State government guarantees his title, restores the
property, or obtains damages. Is the personal property of the
citizen in danger of robbery or abduction ? The State govern
ment throws over it the shield of its protection, and regards
the burglar and the robber as the enemies of society. It is un-
necessary to proceed further with this enumeration.

The duty of the State government is to give to its citi-
zens perfect and complete security. It is necessarily sovereign
within its own domain, for it is the representative and the con-
stituted agent of the inherent sovereignty of the individuals.
For the performance of its duty of protection it may unite with
other sovereignties ; and also, for better safety and security to
its citizens, it may withdraw or secede from such Union.

It will be seen that the entire order of the State government
is founded on the free consent of the governed. From this it
springs ; from this it receives its force and life. It is this con-
sent alone from which " just powers " are derived. They can
come from no other source, and their exercise secures a true
republican government. All else are usurpations, their exer-
cise is a tyranny, and their end is the safety and security of the
usurper, to obtain which the unalienable rights of the people are
sacrificed. The " just powers," thus derived, are organized in
such form as shall seem to the governed to be most likely to
secure their safety and happiness. It is the governed who de-
termine the form of the government, and not the ruler nor his
military force, unless he comes as a conqueror to make the sub-
jugated do his will. The object, or end, for which these " just
powers " are derived from the consent of the governed and or-
ganized in such form as seems most likely to effect that object,
is solely to secure the unalienable rights of men — such as life,
liberty, property, justice, peace and order, and the pursuit of
happiness.

It will now be seen by the reader that, whenever any one of
the features of this order is perverted in its origin or progress, or
thwarted, or caused to deviate from its natural operation by any
internal or external interference, the order is destroyed, and the

1863] TO STRENGTHEN THE HANDS OF DESPOTISM. 453

State government, which represents it, is subverted, turned from
its object, changed from its natural purpose, rendered powerless
to protect the unalienable rights of its citizens, and made an
instrument to strengthen the hands of despotism. The commis-
sion of such a subversion of the peaceful and fraternal States of
this once happy republic is fearlessly charged upon the Govern-
ment of the United States, as in itself constituting a monstrous
crime against constitutional liberty ; and it is asserted that, when
the circumstances attending the deed are considered — the rage
against a whole people, the pillage, the arson, the inciting of
servile war, the slaughter of defenseless non-combatants, the
devastation of whole peaceful regions, the indiscriminate destruc-
tion of property — no parallel can be found in the annals of man-
kind.

What, then, is the Government of the United States? It is
an organization of a few years' duration. It might cease to
exist, and yet the States and the people continue prosperous,
peaceful, and happy. Unlike the governments of the States,
which find their origin deep in the nature of man, it sprang
from certain circumstances which existed in the course of hu-
man affairs. Unlike the governments of the States and of
separate nations, which have a divine sanction, it has no war-
rant for its authority but the ratification of the sovereign States.
Unlike the governments of ike States, which were instituted to
secure generally the unalienable rights of man, it has only the
enumerated objects, and is restrained from passing beyond them
by the express reservation of all undelegated functions. It keeps
no records of property, and guarantees to no one the possession
of his estate. Marriage, from which springs the family and the
State, it can neither confirm nor annul. It partakes of the na-
ture of an incorporation for certain purposes, beyond which it
has neither influence nor authority. It is an anomaly among
governments, and arose out of the articles of agreement made
by certain friendly States, which proposed to form a society of
States and invest a common agent with specified functions of
sovereignty. Its duration was intended to be permanent, as it
was hoped thus to promote the peaceful ends for which it was
established ; but, to have declared it perpetual, would have been

454 RISE AND FALL 0F THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

to deny the right of a people to alter or abolish their govern-
ment when it should cease to answer the ends for which it was
instituted.

The objects which its creation was designed to secure to the
States and their people were of a truly peaceful nature, and
commended themselves to the approbation of men. They were
stated by its authors in a form called " the preamble " of their
work, which is in these words :

"We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more
perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, pro-
vide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and
secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do
ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States."

Mankind must contemplate with horror the fact that an or-
ganization established for such peaceful and benign ends did,
within the first century of its existence, lead the assault in a
civil war that brought nearly four millions of soldiers into the
field, destroyed thousands and thousands of millions of treas-
ure, trampled the unalienable rights of the people under foot,
subverted and subjugated the governments of the States, and
ended by establishing itself as supreme and sovereign over all.
Some Christian writer has suggested the thought that there may
not be a spot of the earth's surface in the Old World but has wit-
nessed the commission of some human crime or been wet with
human gore. How nearly true this may be of the New World's
once- vaunted asylum for the victims of despotism, misrule, and
oppression, these pages can bear some testimony. After all, it is
the civil disorders, the violations of rights, and the perversions
of wise and useful institutions, that are the most disastrous in
their consequences. They last for ages ; and often, too often,
the lapse of time brings no remedy to the suffering people. In
their despair, they say the past is gone for ever — a new era has
opened ; but what horrors may be developed in its revolving
years no mortal can foresee, so they hug the chains they feel
powerless to break.

How distinct in its nature and objects was the Government
of the United States from the governments of the States, may

1863] WHEN THE USURPER CAME. 455

be seen from that which has already been said. The former
was established by common consent to look after the common
interests. It was to make peace or war with foreign nations,
protect the frontiers, extend the boundaries, decide disputes be-
tween citizens of different States, and administer general affairs
in a manner to promote the peace, the order, and the happiness
of all. But, to the fostering care of the State government, the
man, the citizen, the head of the family, the parent, the child,
the woman, the scholar, and the Christian all looked with full
confidence as to their natural and divinely sanctioned protector
against all foes within or without ; and relied upon its ever-
present arm for the safety and security of their persons, their
homes, their property, and their institutions. How wofully
the confiding people were betrayed when the usurper came, let
some of the Northern States answer !

Now let us proceed to notice the acts of the Government
of the United States, which subjugated the State governments.
The details in the case of Tennessee have been already stated.
In that instance, the government of the State, which derived
its powers from the consent of the governed, so that they were
"just powers," found, in the discharge of its duty to protect
the institutions of its people, that there were no means by which
it could fulfill that duty but by a withdrawal from the Union,
so as to be rid of the Government of the United States, and
thus escape the threatened dangers of usurpation and sectional
hostility. It therefore resolved to withdraw from the Union,
and the people gave their assent to this resolution ; so that
the State no longer considered itself a member of the Union,
nor recognized the laws and authority of its Government. The
Government of the United States, then, with a powerful mili-
itary force, planted itself at Nashville, the State capital. It
refused to recognize the State government, or any organization
under it, as having any existence, or to recognize the people
otherwise than as a hostile community. It said to them, in
effect : " I am the sovereign and you are the subjects. If you
are stronger than I am, then drive me out of the State ; if I am
stronger than you are, then I demand an unconditional surren-
der to my sovereignty." It is evident that the Government of

456 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

the United States was not there by the consent of those who
Were to be governed. It had not, therefore, any " just powers "
of government within the State of Tennessee. For, says the
Declaration of Independence of our fathers, governments " de-
rive their c just powers ' from the consent of the governed." It
is further evident that, by this action, the Government of the
United States denied the fundamental principle of popular lib-
erty— that the people are the source of all political power. In
this instance, it not only subverted the State government, but
carried that subversion to the extent of annihilation. It, there-
fore, proceeded to establish a new order of affairs, founded, not
on the principle of the sovereignty of the people, which was
wholly rejected, but on the assumption of sovereignty in the
United States Government. It appointed its military Governor
to be the head of the new order, and recognized no civil or po-
litical existence in any man, except some of its notorious adhe-
rents, until, betraying the State, he had taken an oath of alle-
giance to the sovereignty of the Government of the United
States. Now commenced a system of denial of unalienable
rights, for the methods of the usurper are the same everywhere.
Freedom of speech was suppressed by the imposition of lines
on those using " seditious " language, and the demand of secu-
rity for their future humility. The freedom of the press was
suppressed by suspension of publications and the confiscation of
the offices. Personal liberty was destroyed by arrests, impris-
onment, and exile.

In process of time, an effort was made to erect a form of
State government which should be subservient and subject to
the United States Government. For this purpose, no one could
be a voter until he had bound himself by an oath to support and
defend the Government of the United States. Under the State
governments, manhood, which came by nature, and residence,
which came by one's own will, were sufficient qualifications for
the voter.

It will be apparent from this statement that the voter's
right to cast his ballot came not to him as an unalienable right,
but rested upon the permission of the Government of the
United States, as his sovereign, to whom his allegiance was due,

1863] AS THE LORD PARAMOUNT. 457

and to whom he was required, in the first instance, to bind him-
self by an oath of allegiance without any mention whatever of
a State government. Indeed, a little later, the same oath was
required with additional conditions before a man was permitted
to vote for a State constitutional convention, or for delegates
to such a convention. These conditions were, that he would
faithfully support all acts of Congress and all proclamations of
the President of the United States, passed or made during the
rebellion, having reference to slaves. Thus, the voter's right
was made to rest, not only upon his binding himself in allegiance
to the United States as his sovereign, but in the binding by
oath his consent to certain unconstitutional acts and proclama-
tions expressly designed to destroy one of the most important
institutions of the State. This, sustained by a military force, was
exacted by the United States Government as the lord para-
mount— the sovereign within the State. At the same time, the
action of the voter, which should be perfectly free and uncon-
strained (for, under American political principles, he is the sov-
ereign over all), is limited and bound down by an oath faithfully
to support certain acts to which it was presumable he had ever
been conscientiously opposed.

Under these circumstances, who was the sovereign in Ten-
nessee ? The Government of the United States. Where was
the government of the State of Tennessee and the sovereign
people ? The former was subverted and overthrown, and the
latter subjugated. The approval by Tennessee, under such cir-
cumstances, of Article XIII, as an amendment to the Constitu-
tion of the United States prohibiting the existence of slavery,
was of no force ; for consent given by a party under constraint
has neither legal nor moral validity. The State Constitution
was so amended as to contain certain new provisions prescribed
by the Government of the United States by a so-called conven-
tion of delegates elected by the voters above specified, and then
submitted to these voters, and said to be ratified by them. They
were little more in numbers than a handful of the people of
Tennessee. Was this a Constitution amended and approved
by the consent of the people of Tennessee, the only sovereigns
known under our institutions, or was it a Constitution amended

458 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

and voted for by a small fraction of its population acting
under the authority of the Government of the United States,
as the only sovereign in the State ? Admitting, even, that
those who voted for the amended Constitution were the only
legal voters in the State, the Government of the United States
was no less an unlawful intruder and usurper when it pre-
scribed the amendments of the Constitution and designated the
voters. Nevertheless, this work was recognized by it, as con-
stituting a republican State government under the Constitution.
Let us next notice some points in the subversion of the
State government of Louisiana. One of the earliest steps taken
for a civil organization, after the occupation of New Orleans,
was to make a registration of voters. The United States Gov-
ernment was in possession by military force, and the object was
to secure its permanent supremacy. Therefore, the oath which
was administered to the person applying for registration con-
tained this condition :

" I now register myself as a voter, freely and voluntarily, for
the purpose of organizing a State government in Louisiana, loyal
to the Government of the United States."

It was also announced, with the approval of the military
Governor, that any person swearing falsely to any material part
of the oath would be deemed to be guilty of perjury, and be
liable to prosecution and punishment. The effect of this meas-
ure was to secure a registration only of persons who would
maintain the supremacy of the Government of the United States.
A proclamation was next issued by the commander of the United
States forces for an election of State officers under the laws
and Constitution of the State. It was declared that these offi-
cers, when thus elected, would constitute the so-called civil gov-
ernment of the State, under the Constitution and laws of Louis-
iana, " except so much of the said Constitution and laws as rec-
ognize, regulate, or relate to slavery," which were also declared
to be inoperative and void. It was further provided, in the
same proclamation, as follows :

" In order that the organic law of the State may be made to
conform to the will of the people and harmonize with the spirit of

1863] IT WAS NOT SO DONE. 4.59

the age, as well as to maintain and preserve the ancient landmarks
of civil and religious liberty, an election of delegates to a conven-
tion for the revision of the Constitution will be held," etc.

The effect of these acts was to establish a number of per-
sons, pledged to support the Government of the United States,
as the only qualified voters in the State, and to elect so-called
State officers and delegates to a so-called Constitutional Conven-
tion by their ballots. But this was a work that could be done
only by the sovereign people acting through their lawful State
government. It was not so done, because the Government of
the United States, with a powerful military force, had taken
possession of New Orleans, refused to recognize the officers of
the State government, and sought to capture and imprison
them, although it recognized the validity of the State Constitu-
tion in part, and commanded these things to be done as if it was
the ultimate sovereign over all.

Thus the government of the State was subverted, the Con-
stitution of the State in part set aside, and the sovereignty
of the people trampled down by a power that had no rightful
authority for such acts. Subsequently, a so-called convention
was held, a so-called new Constitution adopted, complying with
the views of the Government of the United States, the amend-
ment to the Constitution of -the United States as above men-
tioned was adopted, the State Eepresentatives were admitted to
seats in Congress, and the people acquiesced in the fraud which
they had not the power to correct.

The proceedings in the States of Arkansas and Virginia,
which resulted in an entire subversion of the State Govern-
ments, the destruction of the sovereignty of the people, and the
establishment of the supremacy of the Government of the
United States, have been stated on a preceding page.

460 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

CHAPTEE XLIII.

Subjugation of the Border States, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri. — A Military
Force invades Maryland and occupies Baltimore. — Martial Law declared. — A
Military Order. — Banishment from the State. — Civil Government of the State
suspended. — Unalienable Rights of the Citizens invaded. — Arrests of Citizens
commenced. — Number. — Case of John Merryman. — Opinion of Chief-Justice
Taney. — Newspapers seized. — Houses searched for Arms. — Order of Command-
ing General to Marshals to put Test to Voters. — The Governor appeals to the
President. — His Reply. — Voters imprisoned. — Statement of the Governor. — Re-
sult of the Election. — State Constitutional Convention. — Emancipation hardly
carried. — First Open Measures in Kentucky. — Interference at the State Election
by the United States Government. — Voters excluded. — Martial Law declared. —
Soldiers keeping the Polls. — The Vote. — Statement of the Governor. — Attempt
to enroll Able-bodied Negroes. — The Governor visits Washington. — The Result. —
Arrests, Imprisonment, and Exile of Citizens. — Suspension of the Writ of Habeas
Corpus by President Lincoln. — Interference with the State Election. — Order to
the Sheriffs. — Proclamation of the Governor. — Enlistment of Slaves. — Emanci-
pation by Constitutional Amendment. — Violent Measures in Missouri. — The Gov-
ernor calls out the Militia. — His Words. — The Plea of the Invader. — " The
Authority of the United States is Paramount," said President Lincoln. — Bravery
of the Governor. — Words of the Commanding General. — Troops poured into
the State. — Proceedings of the State Convention. — Numberless Usurpations. —
Provisional Governor. — Emancipation Ordinance passed.

If the State government is instituted with certain powers
which become " just powers " by the formal consent of the gov-
erned, for the purpose of enforcing security to the unalienable
rights of man, it must be evident that any interference with
those rights by which their enjoyment is diminished, endangered,
or destroyed, is not only an obstruction to the operation of the
" just powers " of the State government, but is subversive of
the purpose which it was instituted to effect.

In this manner the State government of Maryland was sub-
jugated. A military force, under the authority of the Govern-
ment of the United States, occupied the city of Baltimore at a
time when no invasion of the State was threatened, and when
there had been no application of the Legislature, or of the Ex-
ecutive, for protection against domestic violence, which circum-
stances alone could give a constitutional authority for this or-
ganized military force to occupy the State. The commanding

1863] HAD NO CONSTITUTIONAL PERMISSION. 461

General, Schenck, soon issued an order, of which the following
is an extract :

" Martial law is declared and hereby established in the city
and county of Baltimore, and in all the counties of the Western
Shore of Maryland. The commanding General gives assurance
that this suspension of civil government within the limits defined
shall not extend beyond the necessities of the occasion. All the
civil courts, tribunals, and political functionaries of State, county,
or city authority, are to continue in the discharge of their duties
as in times of peace, only in no way interfering with the exercise
of the predominant power assumed and asserted by the military
authority."

It will be noticed that this military force of the Government
of the United States had no constitutional permission to come
into Maryland and exercise authority; that the commanding
General says that the civil government of the State is suspended
within certain limits ; that this suspension will be continued
according to the necessities of the occasion; that the courts
and political functionaries may discharge their duties, only in
no way interfering with the exercise of the predominant mili-
tary power. Now, where were the " just powers " of the State
government at this time ? They were suspended in a part of
the State, says the commanding General, and for so long a time
as the military authority may judge the necessities of the occa-
sion to require, and that the courts and political functionaries
may discharge their duties while recognizing the supremacy of
the military power. Thus was the State government subju-
gated.

A further subversion of the State government was now com-
menced by an invasion and denial of some of the unalienable
rights of the citizens, for the security of which that govern-
ment was instituted. The Constitution of the United States
says:

" No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, with-
out due process of law." *

" The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses,

* Article V, amendment.

462 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,
shall not be violated." *

" Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines im-
posed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." f

" Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech,
or of the press." \

The Declaration of Independence says :

" That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalien-
able rights ; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness ; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted
among men."

Immediately upon the issue of the order of the commanding
General, the arrests of citizens commenced by provost-marshals.
The family residence of a lady was forced open ; she was seized,
put on board of a steamer, and sent to the Confederate States.
A man was arrested for being "disloyal" to the United States
Government, and held for examination. Another was charged
with interfering with the enrollment ; he was held for further
examination. Another, charged with being " disloyal " to the
United States Government, took the oath of allegiance, and was
released. A woman charged with the attempt to resist the
enrollment was arrested, and subsequently released. A man,
on a charge of " disloyalty," took the oath, and was released.
Another, charged with having given improper information to
enrolling officers, was released on furnishing the information.
Another, charged with having powder in his possession, was
released on taking the oath of allegiance. Two others, charged
with abuse of the negroes laboring on the fortifications, were
held for examination. Another, charged with rendering assist-
ance to wounded Confederate soldiers, and expressing treason-
able sentiments, took the oath of allegiance and was released.
Another, charged with being a soldier in the Confederate army
and paroled, was ordered to be sent across the lines. A man,
charged with treasonable language, was ordered to be sent across

* Article IV, amendment. f Article VIII, amendment

% Article I, amendment.

1863] SEIZED IN HIS BED. 463

the lines. Two others, charged with aiding Confederate sol-
diers, took the oath of allegiance and were discharged. Another,
charged with receiving letters from Confederates for the pur-
pose of delivery, took the oath of allegiance, and was dis-
charged. Another, charged with expressing treasonable senti-
ments, was held for examination. Two, charged with cheering
for Jefferson Davis, took the oath and were released.

One case more must be stated. On May 25, 1861, John
Merryman, a most respectable citizen of the State, residing in
Baltimore County, was seized in his bed by an armed force, and
imprisoned in Fort McHenry. He petitioned the Chief -Justice
of the United States that a writ of habeas corpus might be
issued, which was granted. The officer upon whom it was
served declined to obey the writ. An attachment was issued
against the officer. The marshal was refused admittance to the
fort to serve it. Upon such return being made, the Chief -Jus-
tice said :

" I ordered the attachment yesterday, because upon the face of
the return the detention of the prisoner was unlawful upon two
grounds :

"1. The President, under the Constitution and laws of the
United States, can not suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas
corpus, nor authorize any military officer to do so.

"2. A military officer has no right to arrest and detain a per-
son not subject to the rules and articles of war for an offense
against the laws of the United States, except in aid of the judicial
authority and subject to its control ; and, if the party is arrested
by the military, it is the duty of the officer to deliver him over
immediately to the civil authority, to be dealt with according to
law.

"Under the Constitution of the United States, these principles
are the fundamental law of the Union. In relation to the present
return, I propose to say that the marshal has legally the power to
summon out the posse comitatus to seize and bring into court the
party named in the attachment ; but it is apparent he will be
resisted in the discharge of that duty by a force notoriously supe-
rior to the posse comitatus, and, such being the case, the Court has
no power under the law to order the necessary force to compel
the appearance of the party.

464 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

" I shall reduce to writing the reasons under which I have acted,
and which have led me to the conclusions expressed in my opinion,
and shall report them, with these proceedings, to the President of
the United States, and call upon him to perform his constitutional
duty to enforce the laws ; in other words, to enforce the process
of this court."

During the month of July arrests were made of 361 persons,
on charges like the above mentioned, by the military authority.
Of this number, 317 took the oath of allegiance to the Govern-
ment of the United States, and were released ; 5 were sent to
Fort McHenry, 3 to Washington for the action of the authori-
ties there, 11 to the North, 6 across the lines, and 19 were held
for further examination.

On September 11, 1863, one of the city newspapers pub-
lished the poem entitled " The Southern Cross." The publish-
ers and editor were immediately arrested, not allowed commu-
nication with any person whatever, and on the same day sent
across the lines, with the understanding that they should not
return during the war. On July 2d an order was issued which
forbade the citizens of Baltimore City and County to keep arms
unless they were enrolled as volunteer companies. The Fifty-
first Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers was placed at the
disposal of General E. E. Tyler, assisted by the provost-marshal
and the chief of police. The soldiers, in concert with the police, .
formed into parties of three or four, and were soon diligently
engaged in searching houses. Large wagons were provided, and
muskets, carbines, rifles, revolvers of all kinds, sabers, bayonets,
swords, and bird and ducking guns in considerable quantities
were gathered. The Constitution of the United States says :

" The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be
infringed." *

A further subversion of the State government of Maryland
was next made by a direct interference with the elections. An
election was to be held in the State for members of the Legisla-
ture and members of Congress on November 3, 1863. The com- i

* Article II, amendment.

1863] THE MOST UNDENIABLE STATEMENT. 465

manding General, on October 27th, issued an order to all mar-
shals and military officers to cause their direct interference with
the voters. The Governor (Bradford) applied to the President
of the United States to have the order revoked, and protested
against any person who offered to vote being put to any test not
found in the laws of Maryland. President Lincoln declined to
interfere with the order, except in one less important point.
The Governor issued a proclamation on the day preceding the
election, which the military commander endeavored to suppress,
and issued an order charging that the tendency of the procla-
mation was to invite and suggest disturbance. One or more
regiments of soldiers were sent out and distributed among sev-
eral of the counties to attend the places of election, in defiance
of the known laws of the State prohibiting their presence.
Military officers and provost-marshals were ordered to arrest
voters, guilty, in their opinion, of certain offenses, and to men-
ace judges of election with the power of the army in case this
order was not respected.

But, perhaps, the forcible language of the Governor to the
Legislature will furnish the most undeniable statement of the
facts. He says :

" On Monday evening preceding the election I issued a proc-
lamation giving the judges of election the assurance of the pro-
tection of the State to the extent of its ability. Before the fol-
lowing morning, orders were sent to the Eastern Shore, directing
its circulation to be suppressed ; the public papers were forbidden
to publish it, and an embargo laid on all steamers in port trading
with that part of the State, lest they might carry it.

" The abuses commenced even before the opening of the polls.
On the day preceding the election, the officer in command of the
regiment which had been distributed among the counties of the
Eastern Shore, and who had himself landed in Kent County, com-
menced his operations by arresting and sending across the bay
some ten or more of the most estimable and distinguished of its
citizens, including several of the most steadfast and most uncom-
promising loyalists of the Shore. The jail of the county was
entered, the jailer seized, imprisoned, and afterward sent to Balti-
more, and prisoners confined therein under indictment set at lib-

4:66 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

erty. The commanding officer gave the first clew to the kind of
disloyalty against which he considered himself as particularly
commissioned, by printing and publishing a proclamation in which,
referring to the election to take place on the next day, he invited
all the truly loyal to avail themselves of that opportunity , and
establish their loyalty, ' by giving a full and ardent support to
the whole Government ticket, upon the platform adopted by the
Union League Convention,' declaring that ' none other is recog-
nized by the Federal authorities as loyal or worthy of the sup-
port of any one who desires the peace and restoration of the
Union.'

" This Government ticket was in several, if not all, of those
counties designated by its color. It was a yellow ticket, and,
armed with that, a voter could safely run the gantlet of the sa-
bers and carbines that guarded the entrance to the polls, and
known sympathizers with the rebellion were allowed to vote un-
questioned if they would vote that ticket, while loyal and respected
citizens, ready to take the oath, were turned back by the officer in
charge without even allowing them to approach the polls. In one
district the military officer took his stand at the polls before they
were opened, declaring that none but the ' yellow ticket should
be voted,' and excluded all others throughout the day. In another
district a similar officer caused every ballot offered to be ex-
amined, and, unless it was the favored one, the voter was re-
quired to take the oath, and not otherwise. In another district,
after one vote only had been given, the polls were closed, the
judges were all arrested and sent out of the county, and mili-
tary occupation taken of the town. Other statements might be
made.

"These abuses present a humiliating record, such as I had
never supposed we should be called upon to read in any State,
still less in a loyal one like this. Unless it be, indeed, a fallacy to
suppose that any rights whatever remain to such a State, or that
any line whatever marks the limit of Federal power, a bolder
stride across that line that power never made, even in a rebel
State, than it did in Maryland on the 3d of last November. A
part of the army, which a generous people had supplied for a very
different purpose, was on that day engaged in stifling the freedom
of election in a faithful State, intimidating its sworn officers, vio-
lating the constitutional rights of its loyal citizens, and obstruct-

1863] VIOLATION OF THE RIGHTS OF VOTERS. 407

ing the usual channels of communication between them and their
Executive."

The result was the election of a majority of members of the
Legislature in favor of a State Constitutional Convention. The
acts necessary for this object were passed. At the election of
delegates, the military authority again interfered in order to
secure a majority in favor of immediate and unconditional
emancipation. The so-called Convention assembled and drafted
a so-called Constitution, in which the twenty-third article of the
Bill of Eights prohibited the existence of slavery in the State,
and said, " All persons held to service or labor as slaves are
hereby declared free."

It was urged, in objection to the adoption of the so-called
Constitution by the Convention, that " the election by which
the Convention was called and its members elected was not free
for the legal voters of the State, but was held and conducted in
clear violation of the rights of voters, in consequence of which
a majority of the legal voters of the State were excluded from
the polls." A rigid article on the qualifications of voters at the
State elections was embodied in the Constitution, with the
shameless provision that it should be in force at the election
for ratification or rejection of the so-called Constitution which
was to create the disabilities. The- instrument also authorized
a poll to be opened in each company of every Maryland regi-
ment in the service of the United States at the quarters of the
commanding officer, and that the commissioned officers of such
company should act as the jndges of election. The aid of
the President of the United States was also obtained to help
on the ratification of the new Constitution, and he concludes a
letter on the subject by saying, " I shall be gratified exceed-
ingly if the good people of the State shall, by their votes, rat-
ify the new Constitution."

Notwithstanding the aid of the President, of the soldiers'
votes, and a most stringent oath, and the exclusion of every per-
son who had in any manner, by word or act, aided the cause of
the Confederacy, the majority for the so-called Constitution was
only 375. The total vote was 59,973. In 1860 the vote of the
State was 92,502. Thus was the State government subjugated

468 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

and made an instrument of destruction to the people ; thus were
their rights ruthlessly violated, and property millions of dollars
in value annihilated.

The reader must have noticed, in all these proceedings
which resulted in the subjugation of the State governments,!
the cautious and stealthy manner in which the Govern-
ment of the United States proceeded at the outset in each
instance until it got a strong foothold, that then the mask
was thrown off, and both Governor and people were made
the unresisting victims of its unscrupulous and lawless out-
rages.

In the State of Kentucky, the first open and direct meas-
ures taken by the Government of the United States for the
subjugation of the State government and people, thereby to effect
the emancipation of the slaves, consisted in an interference with
the voters at the State election in August, 1863. This interfer-
ence was by means of a military force stationed at the polls to
sustain and enforce the action of some of the servants of the
Government of the United States, the object being to overawe
the judges of election, secure the administration of a rigid oath
of allegiance, and thereby the rejection of as many antago-
nistic votes as possible. Indeed, it was intended that none
but so-called "Union" men should vote — that is, men who
were willing to approve of every measure which the Govern-
ment of the United States might adopt to carry on the war
and revolutionize the State. At the same time, no man was
allowed to be a candidate or to receive any votes unless he
was a well-known advocate of the Government of the United
States. It will be seen that these measures excluded the
largest portion of the former Democratic party, although
they might be practically " Union " men, and , placed every-
thing in the hands of the Administration party, where, by
the use of similar machinery, it remained a great many years
after the war closed.

Meantime, on July 31, 1863, the commanding General of
the Department of the Ohio issued an order declaring the State
under martial law, and said, " It is for the purpose, only, of
protecting, if necessary, the rights of loyal citizens and the free-

1863] TEN SOLDIERS AT EACH VOTING PLACE. 469

dom of elections." He would have more correctly said, " It is
for the purpose of enforcing and securing a majority for the
candidates of my views." The General in command in the
western part of the State issued an order to regulate the elec-
tion in that quarter, and the colonels at every post did likewise.
In Louisville, on the day of election, there were ten soldiers
with muskets at each voting-place who, with crossed bayonets,
stood in the doors, preventing all access of voters to the polls
but by their permission, and who arrested and carried to the mil-
itary prison all whom they were told to arrest. Out of some
eight thousand voters in the city, less than five thousand votes
were taken. How many of the missing three thousand were
deterred from attempting to vote could not be ascertained, nor
was it necessary, for the intimidation of three thousand voters
is no greater outrage than the intimidation of only three hun-
dred. The interpretation generally put on the order of the
commanding officer by the opposition party was, that no man
was to have the privilege of having his right to vote tested
by the judges of election if he was pointed out to the guard
by any one of the detectives as a proper person to be arrested.
As the commanding officer had not the semblance of legal or
rightful power to interfere with the election, the most sinister
suspicions were naturally aroused, and very many were said
to have been deterred from going to the polls through fear
that they would be made the victims to personal or party
malice. Similar intimidation was practiced in other parts of
the State. The result was, that there was not only direct
military interference with the election, but it was conducted
in most of the State under the intimidation of the bayonets
of the Government of the United States. The total vote
was 85,695. In 1860 the vote of the State was 146,216. The
Governor-elect in his message spoke, of such an unjust election,
as follows :

" The recent elections clearly and unmistakably define the pop-
ular will and public judgment of Kentucky. It is settled that
Kentucky will, with unwavering faith and unswerving purpose,
stand by and support the Government in every effort to suppress
the rebellion and maintain the Union. "

470 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

The true sense of this language is, that the Government of
the United States had so far subverted the State government
and destroyed the sovereignty of the people that they could
not withstand its further aggressions.

The Government of the United States was now ready to
move forward in its design to destroy one of the most valuable
institutions of the State. Steps were taken by its officers to
enroll all able-bodied male negroes in the State between the
ages of twenty and forty-five years, that they might form a
part of its forces. The effect of this measure was to break up
the labor system of the State, and meanwhile the pseudo-
philanthropists furnished food for powder, and indulged
their ideas of freedom at their neighbors' expense. The ex-
citement produced caused the Governor to visit Washing-
ton and effect agreements by which all recruiting should cease
when a county's quota was full, all recruits should be re-
moved from the State, and other similar provisions. A year
later, he said to the Legislature : " Had these agreements
been earned out, a very different state of feeling would have
existed in Kentucky. But, instead of carrying them out,
the most offensive and injurious modes were adopted to vio-
late them."

The next step taken by the Government of the United
States in the subversion of the government of Kentucky was
the destruction of the unalienable right of personal liberty of
the citizens, which the State was in duty bound to protect.
The Union Governor of the State, whose election was aided by
the United States military officers, as above stated, is the witness
for the facts. In his message to the Legislature of January,
1865, he says :

" The gravest matter of military outrage has been, and yet is,
the arrest, imprisonment, and banishment of loyal citizens without
a hearing, and without even a knowledge of the charges against
them. There have been a number of this class of arrests, merely
for partisan political vengeance, and to force them to pay heavy
sums to purchase their liberation. How the spoils so infamously
extorted are divided, has not transpired to the public information.

1863] THE PKOGRESS OF SUBJUGATION. 471

For partisan political ends, General John B. Huston was arrested
at midnight preceding the election, and hurried off under circum-
stances of shameful aggravation. He was, however, released in a
few days ; but that does not atone for the criminality of his mali-
cious arrest and false imprisonment. The battle-scarred veteran,
Colonel Frank Wolford, whose name and loyal fame are part of
his country's proudest memories, and whose arrest for political
vengeance should put a nation's cheek to blush, is yet held in
durance vile, without a hearing and without an accusation, so far
as he or his friends can ascertain.

" Lieutenant-Governor Jacobs, whose yet unclosed wounds were
received in battle for his country, was made a victim to partisan
and personal enmity, and hurried without a hearing and without
any known accusation through the rebel lines into Virginia. The
action in this case is in defiance of Federal and State Constitutions
and laws, in defiance of the laws of humanity and liberty, dishon-
ors the cause of our country, and degrades the military rank to the
infamous uses of partisan and personal vengeance. Other cases
might be mentioned, but these are selected because they are known
to the whole country ; the acts of these men are part of the glori-
ous history of loyal heroism."

The next step in the progress of the subjugation of the State
government was taken by President Lincoln on July 5, 1864,
when be issued a proclamation establishing martial law through-
out the State, and the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus.
Civil proceedings were allowed to be continued, "which did
not affect the military operations or the constituted author-
ities of the Government of the United States." Arrests of in-
dividuals by military force soon commenced, and a large num-
ber of eminent Kentuckians of all professions and pursuits
were imprisoned. A group of persons, consisting of judges,
magistrates, wealthy merchants, and young women, without
having been allowed a hearing, or trial, or any opportunity
to vindicate themselves, were banished from the State. In
this destruction of the unalienable right of personal liberty,
the State government was passive; indeed, it was powerless
to resist.

A State election was to be held on the first Monday of Au-

472 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

gust for local officers and a Judge of the High Court of Appeals
from one district. Chief -Justice Duvall was one of the two
candidates. * On July 29th an order was issued by the Major-
General, commanding, to the sheriffs of the counties concerned,
as follows :

"You will not allow the name of Alvin Duvall to appear
upon the poll-books as a candidate for office at the coming elec-
tion."

Another name was substituted. The election of a Presi-
dent of the United States was to be held in November, but
the Government of the United States seems to have regarded
the vote of the State as unnecessary to secure the reelec-
tion of its officials, and refrained from interference. Under
these circumstances, the Governor of the State took courage
and issued a proclamation to the election officers. It is of
no importance except as showing their powers and duties,
and how grossly they had neglected them at previous elections.
He said :

" As no officer of any rank, from the President down, has any
right or authority to interfere with elections, no order to do so
can legalize the act. If there be sufficient power in the citizens
present, at any place where such interference may be attempted,
to arrest the offenders, and hold them over to answer to the vio-
lated laws, it will be the duty of the sheriff to make the arrest in
such case. He has authority to require the aid of every citizen,
and it should be readily and promptly given, in defense of a com-
mon right — of a blood-bought franchise. If the force employed
to interfere with the election be too great, at any place of voting,
to be arrested, the officers of election, in such case, should adjourn
and not proceed with the election. If you are unable to hold a
free election, your duty is to hold none at all."

By enlistment, over twenty-two thousand of the most valu-
able slaves in the State had gone into the service of the United
States, and on March 3, 1865, its Congress passed an act declar-
ing that the wives and children of all such soldiers should be

1863] SENSIBLE OF HIS DUTY. 473

free. But the final moment was near at hand when the anni-
hilation of more than one hundred millions of property and the
destruction of one of the most important institutions of the State
was to take place by one of those fictions so peculiar to this ad-
ministration of the Government of the United States. That was
the pretended adoption of a constitutional amendment, prohib-
iting the existence of slavery in the United States. "When a
whole people suffers itself to be cajoled in this unaccountable
manner by its unscrupulous rulers, it argues as little regard for
the fundamental law of the Union as for the rights of the
States.

The subversion of the State government of Missouri by the
Government of the United States was more rapid and more
desperate than in the case of Kentucky. As previously stated,
the Governor of the State, at the commencement of the diffi-
culties, proposed the most conciliatory terms to the Government
of the United States, which were rejected. He then, like a Gov-
ernor, sensible of his duty to protect the rights of his people
and of the sacred obligations of his official oath, issued his
proclamation calling into active service fifty thousand of the
State militia, " for the purpose of repelling invasion, and for
the protection of the lives, liberty, and property of the citizens."
He said:

" A series of unprovoked and unparalleled outrages have been
inflicted upon the peace and dignity of this Commonwealth and
upon the rights and liberties of its people, by wicked and unprin-
cipled men, professing to act under the authority of the Govern-
ment of the United States ; solemn enactments of your Legisla-
ture have been nullified ; your volunteer soldiers have been taken
prisoners ; your commerce with your sister States has been sus-
pended ; your trade with your own fellow-citizens has been and is
subjected to -the harassing control of an armed soldiery ; peaceful
citizens have been imprisoned without warrant of law ; unoffend-
ing and defenseless men, women, and children have been ruthlessly
shot down and murdered ; and other unbearable indignities have
been heaped upon your State and yourselves."

The plea of the invader was contained in an order is-

474 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

sued from "Washington to the commanding General in these
words :

" The President observes with concern that, notwithstanding
the pledge of the State authorities to cooperate in preserving the
peace of Missouri, loyal citizens in great numbers continue to be
driven from their homes. It is immaterial whether the outrages
continue from inactivity or indisposition on the part of the State
authorities to prevent them. It is enough that they continue,
and it will devolve on you the duty of putting a stop to them
summarily by the force under your command, to be aided by
such troops as you may require from Kansas, Iowa, and Illinois.
. . . The authority of the United States is paramount, and,
whenever it is apparent that a movement, whether by order of
State authority or not, is hostile, you will not hesitate to put it
down."

In this order the only pretext put forward is that of domes-
tic violence. But in that case the Constitution of the United
States gives no authority to the United States Government to
interfere except on the express conditions of an "application
of the Legislature, or of the Executive, when the Legislature
can not be convened." There had been no application of the
Legislature or of the Executive. On the contrary, the Govern-
or of the State, like a brave man, told the Executive of the
United States to keep his hands off, and to keep his military
forces without the State, and he pledged himself to preserve its
peace and neutrality. But arguments or pledges on the part of
the victim have never yet stopped the progress of the remorse-
less usurper. The subjugation of the State government of
Missouri to the will and designs of the Government at Wash-
ington had been determined upon, and the sovereignty of the
people was to be crushed by troops from the sister States of
Kansas, Iowa, and Illinois.

But the bravery of the Governor and the determination of
the Legislature caused the Government of the United States
to depart from its usually stealthy progress in the invasion of
the State government and the sovereignty of the people, and
to adopt bolder measures. The Governor was charged with

•

1863] THE SATRAP OF A USURPER. 475

purposes of treason and secession, for his attempt faithfully to
discharge the duties of a conscientious Governor to the citizens.
Says the commander of the United States forces, in his procla-
mation :

" The recent proclamation of Governor Jackson, by which he
has set at defiance the authorities of the United States and urged
you to make war upon them, is but a consummation of his trea-
sonable purposes, long indicated by his acts and expressed opin*
ions, and now made manifest."

These are fine words to come from the satrap of a usurper
who invades a State of the Union without lawful permission or
authority, with the design to subvert its government and over-
throw the sovereignty of its people, and to be applied by him to
the only Governor in the Northern States who strove defiantly
to protect the unalienable rights and sovereignty of his con-
stituents !

Troops were now poured into the State by the Government
of the United States so rapidly as to render the successful op-
position of the lawful authorities impossible, and the control of
a large portion of the State was soon held by the military forces.
The Governor, unable to resist, retired to the southern part of
the State. Meantime, the State Convention, which had been
called to consider the relations between the Government of the
United States and the State of Missouri, and to adopt such
measures for vindicating the sovereignty of the State as were
necessary, reassembled on the call of its committee. Entirely
forgetful of the objects for which the people had called it to-
gether, it proceeded to declare the State offices vacant, and
to elect a provisional Governor and other officers entirely sub-
servient to the will and behests of the Administration at Wash-
ington. The commanding General now declared martial law
in the State, and the emancipation of all slaves belonging to
persons who had taken an active part with us. This eman-
cipation clause was soon modified by the President as in ad-
vance of the times.

The attention of the reader is called to the numerous usurpa-

476 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

tions and violations of constitutional principles and of laws, by
the Government of the United States and its champions, con-
tained in the few lines of the preceding paragraph, viz. : the
invasion with military force, the expulsion of the lawful State
authorities, the assumption by the State Convention of unlaw-
ful powers, the election and introduction of persons to offices
not vacant, the abandonment of all protection of the unalienable
rights of the people, the declaration of martial law without any
authority for it, and the attempt to emancipate the slaves in vio-
lation of every law and constitutional principle.

The severity of the Executive of the United States now
began to be felt by the citizens of the State. All disaffected
persons were silenced or arrested, prisoners of war were treated
as criminals, and every obstacle to complete subjugation to the
will of the conqueror sought to be removed. The State gov-
ernment was represented by a provisional Governor ; and a State
Convention, that adjourned its sessions from year to year, after
dallying periodically with the subject of the emancipation of
the slaves, finally passed an ordinance for that purpose, to take
effect in 1870. This was not immediate emancipation, so the
disturbances were kept up in the State until, at a session of the
Legislature in February, 1864, a bill was passed for a so-called
State Convention to revise the State Constitution, and the elec-
tion of delegates in November. It is remarkable how much
the orders of the commanding General now contained relative
to disorderly persons. This was preparatory to the occupation .
of the polls by the military force, and the exclusion of all op-
position voters. The delegates were elected, and the so-called
Convention assembled on January 6, 1865. An immediate
emancipation ordinance was passed, and the State organization
was subjugated to do the will of the usurper and to disregard
the will of the sovereign people.

1863] THE HAND OF THE USURPER. 477

CHAPTER XLIY.

Subjugation of the Northern States. — Humiliating Spectacle of New York. — " Ring-
ing of a Little Bell." — Seizure and Imprisonment of Citizens. — Number seized.
— Paper Safeguards of Liberty. — Other Safeguards. — Suspension of the Writ of
Habeas Corpus absolutely forbidden with One Exception. — How done. — Not
able to authorize another. — Abundant Protective Provisions in New York, but
all failed. — Case of Pierce Butler. — Arrest of Secretary Cameron. — The Presi-
dent assumes the Responsibility of the Crime. — No Heed given to the Writ of
Habeas Corpus issued by the Court. — The Governor passive. — Words of Jus-
tice Nelson. — Prison overflowing. — How relieved. — Oath required of Applicants
for Relief*. — Oath declined by some. — Reasons. — Order forbidding the Employ-
ment of Counsel by Prisoners. — Victims in almost Every Northern State. — De-
feat at the Elections. — Result. — Suit for Damages commenced. — Congress inter-
feres to protect the Guilty. — State Courts subjugated. — How suspend Habeas
Corpus. — Congress violates the Constitution. — What was New York? — Writ
suspended throughout the United States. — What is " Loyalty " ? — Military
Domination. — Correspondence between General Dix and Governor Seymour. —
Seizure of Newspapers. — Governor orders Arrest of Offenders. — Interference
with the State Election. — Vote of the Soldiers. — State Agents arrested. — Pro-
vost-Marshals appointed in Every Northern State. — Their Duties. — Sustained by
Force. — Trials by Military Commission. — Trials at Washington. — Assassination
of the President. — Trial of Henry Wirz. — Efforts to implicate the Author. — In-
vestigation of a Committee of Congress as to Complicity in the Assassination.
— Arrest, Trial, and Banishment of Clement C. Vallandigham. — Assertions of
Governor Seymour on the Case.

Now follows the humiliating spectacle of the subjugation
of the State government of New York — the- "Empire " State,
as she calls herself — where, with all her men and treasures,
it might have been supposed that some stanch defenders of
constitutional liberty would have sprung up. On the contrary,
under the pretext of " preserving the Union," her deluded chil-
dren aided to destroy the Constitution on which the Union was
founded, and put forth all their strength to exalt the Govern-
ment of the United States to supremacy. Thus the States were
brought to a condition of subjugation, and their governments
subverted from the protection of the rights for which they were
instituted. These unalienable rights of the people were left
without a protector or a shield before the crushing hand of the
usurper ; the sovereignty of the people was set aside, and in its
place arose the sovereignty of the Government of the United

478 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE, GOVERNMENT.

States. TV^ith. the foundation undermined, the superstructure
subverted, the ends for which the Great Republic was organ-
ized entirely lost to sight, and the true balance of the system
destroyed, unless the dormant virtue and love for their inher-
ited rights shall arouse the citizens to a vigorous effort to restore
the republican institutions and powers of the States, the em-
perors and kings of the earth have only to await cajmly the
lapse of time to behold a fulfillment of their evil prophecies
in regard to the " Great Republic " of the world.

To show how the laws were disregarded, and how despoti-
cally the personal liberty of the citizen was invaded, let this
example bear witness : The Secretary of State at Washington,
William H. Seward, a favored son of the State of New York,
would " ring a little bell," which brought to him a messenger,
to whom was given a secret order to arrest and confine in Fort
Lafayette a person designated. This order was sent by tele-
graph to the United States Marshal of the district in which
would be found the person who was to be arrested. The arrest
being forcibly made by the marshal with armed attendants with-
out even the form of a warrant, the prisoner without the knowl-
edge of any charge against him was conveyed to Fort Hamilton
and turned over to the commandant. An aid with a guard of
soldiers then conveyed him in a boat to Fort Lafayette and
delivered him to the keeper in charge, who gave a receipt for
the prisoner. He was then divested of any weapons, money,
valuables, or papers in his possession. His baggage was opened
and searched. A soldier then took him in charge to the desig-
nated quarter, which was a portion of one of the casemates for
guns, lighted only from the port-hole, and occupied by seven or
eight other prisoners. All were subjected to prison fare. Some
were citizens of New York, and the others of different States.
This manner of imprisonment was subsequently put under the
direction of the Secretary of War, and continued at intervals
until the close of the war.

In the brief period between July 1 and October 19, 1861,
the Secretary of State, "William H. Seward, made such diligent
use of his "little bell," that one hundred and seventy-five of the
most respectable citizens of the country were consigned to im-

1861] HONORED NAME OF LAFAYETTE. 479

prisonment in this Fort Lafayette, a strong fortress in the lower
part of the harbor of New York. A decent regard for the
memory of the friend of Washington, and for the services ren-
dered to the colonies in their struggle for independence, might
have led Mr. Seward to select for such base uses some other
place than that which bore the honored name of Lafayette.

The American citizen has always, like the ancient Roman,
felt that his personal liberty was secure. He supposed himself
to be surrounded with numerous paper safeguards, which, to-
gether with the love of justice and respect for law, common to
his fellow-citizens, would be sufficient for his protection against
any usurper. These now proved to be as weak as the paper
upon which they were written. What were these supposed
safeguards ? There was the Constitution of the State of New
York, an instrument for the protection and government of the
people. It had received the consent of the people of the State
who were governed by it, and therefore its powers were " just
powers." Its first object was to protect the unalienable rights
of its citizens, relative to which it contains various provisions in
its Bill of Eights : its declarations respecting personal liberty ;
its regulations to secure and enforce the great writ of freemen,
the habeas corpus / the powers granted to the courts which it
created; the Legislature; the Executive, in whose hands was
placed the richest purse and the strongest sword of the sover-
eign States to protect the rights of its citizens.

Further safeguards were placed in the Constitution of the
United States. These were designed to restrain that Govern-
ment from any invasion of the citizen's personal liberty. They
are as follows :

" The right of the people to be secure in their persons . . .
shall not be violated, and no warrant shall issue but upon probable
cause,, supported by oath, or affirmation, and particularly describ-
ing . . . the persons to be seized." *

Again :

" No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or prop-
erty, without due process of law." f

* Article IV, amendment. f Article V, amendment.

480 RISE AND FALL OF THE COXFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

Again :

" No person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise
infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand
jury." *

Again :

"In all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right
to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and
district wherein the crime shall have been committed, and to be
informed of the nature and cause of the accusation ; to be con-
fronted with the witnesses against him ; to have compulsory pro-
cess for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance
of counsel for his defense." f

Among the enumerated powers of Congress is the following
clause :

" The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be sus-
pended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public
safety may require." J

This clause first forbids the suspension of the writ abso-
lutely. A single exception is then made by the words " unless
the public safety may require." A condition is attached to this
exception which still further limits it, by the words " in cases
of rebellion or invasion." There is still another and far more
sweeping limitation attached to this clause. The writ must be
suspended by an act of Congress, which can be passed only
when Congress is in session. This suspension must be positive
and absolute by Congress, not indefinite and dependent on any
future contingency. For the acts of Congress are not absolute
powers, if between enactment and enforcement they can be
set aside by a contingency, unless such contingency was attached
in the clause of the grant creating the power. But in these
words of the Constitution there is no contingency expressed.
Congress alone by positive enactment can suspend the writ of
habeas corpus. It can not authorize the President to suspend
its force, nor has he any authority under the Constitution to do
it. Neither can Congress make an intermittent suspension of

* Article V, amendment. \ Article VI, amendment. % Article I, section 9.

1863] ILLUSTRATION OF THE FACTS. 481

the force of the writ ; but it must be absolute under the specific
condition.

It is evident that the citizen of ~New York was abundantly
provided with the safeguards of personal liberty ; yet they all
proved to be of no avail to secure and enforce his right in the
hour of trial. A few instances will afford an illustration of the
facts. Mr. Pierce Butler was suspected of corresponding with
persons in the Confederate States. He was arrested in Phila-
delphia on August 19, 1861, by order of Simon Cameron, then
Secretary of War, without process of law and without any as-
signed cause. His trunks and drawers, wardrobe, and entire
apartments were searched, and his private papers taken by the
marshal and his four assistants. His office was also examined,
and his books and papers taken, and within an hour he was on
his way to Fort Lafayette with an armed guard. After five
weeks of detention he was liberated. No reason was given
for his discharge any more than for his arrest. As Mr. Cam-
eron was about to sail as Minister to Russia, in January ensuing,
he was arrested for assault and battery and false imprisonment,
at the suit of Mr. Butler. The case was brought to the knowl-
edge of the President of the United States, and on April 18,
1862, the Secretary of State, Seward, replied as follows :

" The communication has been submitted to the President,
and I am directed by him to say in reply that he avows the
proceeding of Mr. Cameron referred to as one taken by him
when Secretary of War, under the President's directions, and
deemed necessary for the prompt suppression of the existing
rebellion."

The writ of habeas corpus was issued by some of the State
i courts, directing the officer in command at the fort to bring
I some one or other of the prisoners into court for an investiga-
tion of the cause and authority for his detention. But no atten-
i tion was given to these writs by the officer. Neither did the
1 Governor of the State make any effort to enforce the processes of
I the courts. He, perhaps, expected that his efforts might be
resisted by an overpowering force. But expectations, of what-
soever nature, do not justify or excuse the neglect of a positive
78

482 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

duty. It is through such weaknesses that the liberties of man-
kind have been too often lost.

Thus the Constitution, the laws, the courts, the Executive of
the State of New York, were subverted, turned aside from the
end for which they were instituted, and all the specific arrange-
ments were of no avail to secure this guaranteed right of its
citizens. Probably every one of the prisoners was entirely in-
nocent of any act whatever that was criminal under the laws,
either of the State or of the United States.

In opinion they were opposed to the military proceedings of
the Government of the United States ; and these opinions they
had expressed, which liberty is a part of the birthright of free-
men. Indeed, Judge Nelson, of the Supreme Court of the
United States, in the Circuit of New York, in an opinion de-
livered about this time, thus expressed himself :

" Words, oral, written, or printed, however treasonable, seditious,
or criminal of themselves, do not constitute an overt act of trea-
son within the definition of the crime. When spoken, written, or
printed, in relation to an act or acts which, if committed with a
treasonable design, might constitute such overt act, they are ad-
missible as evidence, tending to characterize it and show the intent
with which the act was committed."

Finally, the prison in New York Harbor became so full that
many prisoners were sent to Fort Warren in the harbor of Bos-
ton. At this time the Government of the United States used
the Old Capitol at Washington, Fort McHenry of Baltimore,
Fort Lafayette at New York, and Fort Warren at Boston, i
for the confinement of those whom the usurper designated as
" state prisoners." Still further to relieve the fullness of the
prisons, two men, John A. Dix, of the army, and Edwards Pierre-
pont, of civil life, were sent to investigate the cases of the pris-
oners, and release some who were willing to take an " oath of
allegiance." Next it was made a condition precedent to an
investigation that the said oath should be taken by the prisoner.
As an instance, this proposal was made to two persons named
Flanders, citizens of the interior of New York. The oath was
as follows :

1363] WE HAVE BEEN GUILTY OF NO OFFENSE. 483

" I do solemnly swear that I will support, protect, and defend
the Constitution and Government of the United States against all
enemies, whether domestic or foreign, and that I will bear true
faith, allegiance, and loyalty to the same, any ordinance, resolution,
or law of any State Convention, or Legislature, to the contrary
notwithstanding ; and, further, that I do this with a full determi-
nation, pledge, and purpose, without any mental reservation or
evasion whatsoever ; and, further, that I will well and faithfully
perform all the duties which may be required of me by law."

These persons declined to take the prescribed oath. The
reasons which they gave for this refusal furnish painful evi-
dence of the extreme subjugation of the government of the
State of New York, and its silent submission to the arbitrary
and unconstitutional acts of the Government of the United
States, even at the sacrifice of the most sacred rights of free-
men. They said :

" We have been guilty of no offense against the laws of our
country, but have simply exercised our constitutional rights as
free citizens in the open and manly expression of our opinions
upon public affairs. We have been placed here without legal
charges, or, indeed, any charges whatsoever being made against us,
and upon no legal process, but upon an arbitrary and illegal order
of the Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State of the United
States. Every moment of our detention here is a denial of our
most sacred rights. We are entitled to and hereby demand an
unconditional discharge ; and, while we could cheerfully take the
oath prescribed by the Constitution of the United States, because
we are, always have been, and ever intend to be loyal to that
instrument (though at the same time protesting against the right
of the Government to impose even such oath upon us as the con-
dition of our discharge), we can not consent to take the oath now
required of us, because we hold no office of any kind under the
Government of the United States, and it is an oath unknown to
and unauthorized by the Constitution, and commits us to the sup-
port of the Government though it may be acting in direct conflict
with the Constitution, and deprives us of the right of freely dis-
cussing, and by peaceful and constitutional methods opposing its
measures — a right which is sacred to freedom, and which no

484 RISE AND FALL OP THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

American citizen should voluntarily surrender. That such is the
interpretation put upon this oath by the Government, and such its
intended effect is plainly demonstrated oy the fact that it is dic-
tated to us as a condition of our release from an imprisonment
inflicted upon us for no other cause than that we have exercised
the above-specified constitutional rights."

One important fact which illustrates the flagrant outrage
committed on all these prisoners should not be omitted. The
Constitution of the United States declares as follows :

" In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right
... to have the assistance of counsel for his defense."

On December 3, 1861, the commanding officer at Fort La-
fayette came to the prisoners' quarters, and read a document, of
which the following is a copy :

" To the political prisoners in Fort Lafayette :

" I am instructed by the Secretary of State to inform you that
the Department of State of the United States will not recognize
any one as an attorney for political prisoners, and will look with
distrust upon all applications for release through such channels ;
and that such applications will be regarded as additional reasons
for declining to release the prisoners.

" And, further, that if such prisoners wish to make any com-
munication to the Government, they are at liberty to make it
directly to the State Department. Seth C. Hawley."

Space will not permit me further to notice the instances of
this immense class of cases. In almost every Northern State
the victims of this violence were to be found. That there was
no just cause for these invasions of the rights of the States, and
of the citizens, was demonstrated in the most decisive manner.
At this time (November 4, 1862) the friends of the Administra-
tion of the United States Government were decisively defeated
at the elections. On November 22d ensuing, the War Depart-
ment issued an order releasing all except prisoners of war. The
order was muffled up in a phraseology suited to hide from the
observation of the people that the result of the elections had
stricken home to the sensibilities of the usurpers. It said :

1863] THEN VIGOROUSLY RENEWED. 485

" Ordered — 1. That all persons now in military custody, who
have been arrested for discouraging volunteer enlistments, oppos-
ing the draft,* or for otherwise giving aid and comfort to the
enemy, in States where the draft has been made or the quota of
volunteers and militia has been furnished, shall be discharged
from further military restraint."

Thus these arrests were for a short period suspended, and
then vigorously renewed.

Many of these persons who had been illegally seized and im-
prisoned now commenced suits for damages. This led to an-
other step on the part of the Government of the United States,
by which the judiciary of the State was entirely subverted and
deprived of all jurisdiction in these cases. Congress passed an
act on March 3, 1863, which provided that any order of the
President of the United States, or arrest made under his au-
thority, when pleaded, should be a defense, in all courts, to any
action or prosecution for any search, seizure, arrest, or imprison-
ment made, done, or committed, or any acts omitted to be done,
under or by virtue of such order, or under color of any law of
Congress. The act further provided that all actions against offi-
cers and others for torts in arrests might be removed for trial to
the next Circuit Court of the United States held in the district,
and said :

" It shall then be the duty of the State court to accept the
surety and proceed no further in the cause or prosecution, and the
bail that shall have been originally taken shall be discharged."

It will be noticed that by the terms of this act the case could
be removed to the Circuit Court when the defendant " filed a
petition stating the facts verified by affidavit." Thus the juris-
diction of all the courts of the State of ISTew York was made to
terminate and cease upon the simple word of the defendant ac-
companied by an affidavit. But these courts were instituted by
the consent of the governed, for the protection of the personal
freedom of the citizen ; yet in the cases brought before them

* The first act of Congress providing for an enrollment and draft was passed on
March 3, 1863, three and a half months later than this order.

436 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

they ordered the removal on the ground that they involved
the question of the constitutionality of an act of Congress, over
which the courts of the United States had a jurisdiction. The
absurdity of this plea is manifest ; for it is founded on the
presumption that the question, whether, under authority from
the President of the United States, any one, without interven-
tion of the judicial tribunals, can incarcerate a citizen, is a ques-
tion which can be treated as constituting a case arising under
the Constitution of the United States. Any statute authorizing
such acts is palpably void, and not entitled to be a ground for
a hearing under an appeal.

The subjugation of the government of the State of. New
York was made in another section of the same act of Congress
of March 3, 1863. It declares :

" That, during the present rebellion, the President of the United
States, whenever in his judgment the public safety may require it,
is authorized to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus
in any case throughout the United States, or any part thereof."

Let us turn to the words of the Constitution of the United
States which are contained in the grant of powers to Congress :

" The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be sus-
pended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public
safety may require it."

It will be seen that two facts are required to exist before the
Congress of the United States can suspend the privilege of this
writ. Congress must, therefore, determine the existence of these
facts before it has power constitutionally to act. If it finds
either fact to exist and not the other, it has no power to suspend
the privilege of the writ. There must be rebellion, and the
public safety must require the suspension. When Congress
finds these facts to exist, it can enact the suspension. It is the
judgment of Congress alone that can determine that the public
safety requires the suspension. This can not be delegated to
the judgment of any other department of the Government.
Therefore, when Congress tells the President, in the above-
mentioned act, that he is authorized to suspend the privilege

1SG3] IT HAS NO AUTHORITY. 487

of this writ whenever, in his judgment, the public safety may
require it, then that body undertakes to do that for which it
has no authority in the Constitution. The States delegated the
power solely to Congress ; an act to transfer the trust to any
other depository could rightfully have no force whatever.

Now, the State of New York, in which this writ was thus
suspended by the Government of the United States, was one of
the Northern States and a most ardent advocate of the Union.
It had contributed more men and money to support the Gov-
ernment of the United States than any other State, and than
some whole sections of States. Peace reigned throughout all
its borders. Yet, in this quiet and " loyal " State, whose people
had given so freely to aid the Government of the United States,
a claim was now set up to the right to nullify the rights and
immunities of every citizen, by that Government which had
already nullified the powers of every court in the State. This
was done by the declaration of the President that " the pub-
lic safety " required the suspension of the privilege of the writ
of habeas corpus.

The act of Congress was passed on March 3, 1863, and on
September 15th the President issued his proclamation, and, re-
ferring to the authority claimed to have been granted by the
act, he proceeded to say :

" Whereas, In the judgment of the President, the public safe-
ty does require that the privilege of said writ shall now be sus-
pended throughout the United States, in cases where, by the
authority of the President of the United States, military, naval,
and civil officers of the United States, or either of them, hold per-
sons under their custody, either as prisoners of war, spies, or aid-
ers or abettors of the enemy, or officers, soldiers, or seamen, en-
rolled, drafted, or mustered, or enlisted in, or belonging to, the
land or naval forces of the United States, or as deserters there-
from, or otherwise amenable to military law, or to the rules or
articles of war, or the rules and regulations prescribed for mili-
tary and naval service by the authority of the President of the
United States, or for resisting a draft, or for any other offense
against the military or naval service : Therefore I do hereby pro-
claim and make known that the privilege of the writ of habeas

488 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

corpus is suspended throughout the United States in the several
cases before mentioned throughout the duration of said rebellion."

No autocrat ever issued an edict more destructive of the
natural right to personal liberty. Not only was the State gov-
ernment of New York deprived of the power to fulfill its obli-
gations to protect and preserve this right of its citizens, but
every State government of the Northern States was in like
manner subverted. The only distinction known among the citi-
zens was that established by the Government of the United
States in answer to the question applied to each one, "Is he
loyal or disloyal 2 " The only test of loyalty was based on sub-
mission, and, as usual in such cases, the most abject in spirit
were the most loyal to the usurper. All those liberties of
conduct and action which stamp the true freeman everywhere
throughout the world disappeared ; and the suppressed voice,
the apprehensive look, and the cautious movements were substi-
tuted for the free speech, the open brow, and fearless tread
which had characterized the American.

Another step in the subjugation of the government of the
State of New York was made by the domination over it of
the military power of the Government of the United States.
This took place in a time of peace in the State, when the courts
were all open and the civil administration of affairs was unob-
structed. On July 30, 1863, the United States commanding
General of that department addressed a letter to Governor Sey-
mour, saying :

" As the draft under the act of Congress of March 3, 1863, for
enrolling and calling out the national forces, will probably be re-
sumed in this city (New York) at an early day, I am desirous of
knowing whether the military power of the State may be relied
on to enforce the execution of the law, in case of forcible resist-
ance to it. I am very anxious there should be perfect harmony
of action between the Federal Government and that of the State
of New York ; and if, under your authority to see the laws faith-
fully executed, I can feel assured that the act referred to will be
enforced, I need not ask the War Department to put at my dis-
posal, for the purpose, troops in the service of the United States."

1863] THE PAINFUL QUESTIONS. 489

Governor Seymour replied on August 3d :

" I have this day sent to the President of the United States a
communication in relation to the draft in this State. I believe his
answer will relieve you and me from the painful questions grow-
ing out of an armed enforcement of the conscription law in this
patriotic State, which has contributed so largely and freely to the
support of the national cause during the existing war."

On August 8th General Dix writes again :

" It is my duty, as commanding officer of the troops in the ser-
vice of the United States in this department, if called on by the
enrolling officers, to aid them in resisting forcible opposition to
the execution of the law ; and it is from an earnest desire to avoid
the necessity of employing for the purpose any of my forces,
which have been placed here to garrison the forts and protect the
public property, that I wished to see the draft enforced by the
military power of the State, in case of armed or organized resist-
ance to it. ... I designed, if your cooperation could not be relied
on, to ask the General Government for a force which should be
adequate to insure the execution of the law and to meet any
emergency growing out of it."

Meantime Governor Seymour received no answer to his
letter to the President. He had asked for a suspension of the
draft, on the ground that the enrollments in the city were ex-
cessive as compared with other portions of the State, and that
due credit was not given for the past. He therefore replied to
General Dix, saying :

"As you state in your letter that it is your duty to enforce the
act of Congress, and, as you apprehend its provisions may excite
popular resistance, it is proposed you should know the position
which will be held by the State authorities. Of course, under no
circumstances, can they perform duties expressly confided to
others, nor can they undertake to relieve others from their proper
responsibilities. But there can be no violations of good order, or
riotous proceedings, no disturbances of the public peace, which are
not infractions of the laws of the State ; and those laws will be
enforced under all circumstances. I shall take care that all the
executive officers of this State perform their duties vigorously and

490 IUSE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

thoroughly, and, if need be, the military power will be called into
requisition. As you are an officer of the General Government, and
not of the State, it does not become me to make suggestions to
you with regard to your action under a law of Congress. You
will, of course, be governed by your instructions and your own
views of duty."

On August 18th General Dix thus wrote to the Gov-
ernor :

" Not having received an answer from you, I applied to the Sec-
retary of War on the 14th inst. for a force adequate to the object.
The call was promptly responded to, and I shall be ready to meet
all opposition to the draft."

The force sent by the Secretary of War, to keep the peace
and subjugate the sovereignty of the people, amounted to forty-
two regiments and two batteries. There was no occasion for
the exertion of their powers, but the wrong to the State of New
York was none the less gross.

Again, the subjugation of the government of the State of
New York by the domination of the military power was made
still more manifest by another act on the part of the Govern-
ment of the United States. A spurious proclamation, seeming
to have been issued by the President, calling for four hundred
thousand men, by a fraudulent imposition appeared in two
papers of New York City (the " Journal of Commerce " and the
" World ") on the morning of May 18, 1864. It was immedi-
ately contradicted by the authorities at Washington, and orders
were issued, under which the offices of these papers were en-
tered by armed men, the property of the owners seized, the
premises held by force for several days, and the publications sus-
pended. At the same time the office of the independent tele-
graph line was occupied by a military force in the name of the
Government of the United States. The operators were taken
into custody, and the proprietors of the newspapers were ordered
to be arrested and imprisoned. But these orders were sus-
pended.

Governor Seymour immediately instructed the District At-
torney to proceed against the offenders, saying :

1863] INVESTIGATION WAS MADE. 491

" In the month of July last, when New York was a scene of
violence, I gave warning that ' the laws of the State must be en-
forced, its peace and order maintained, and the property of its
citizens protected at every hazard.' The laws were enforced at a
fearful cost of blood and life. The declaration I then made was
not intended merely for that occasion, or against any class of men.
It is one of an enduring character, to be asserted at all times, and
against all conditions of citizens without favor or distinction.
Unless all are made to bow to the law, it will be respected by
none. Unless all are made secure in their rights of person and
property, none can be protected."

An investigation was made by one of the city judges, and
warrants were issued for the arrest of Major-General Dix and
several of his officers. They voluntarily appeared by counsel
on July 6th, and the argument was set down for the 9th. On
that day the counsel for the defense said :

" Since this warrant was issued, the President of the United
States has issued another order to General Dix, which directs him
that, while this civil war lasts, he * must not relieve himself from
his command, or be deprived of his liberty to obey any order of a
military nature which the President of the United States directs
him to execute.' "

The result of the arguments was that the officers were held
to await the action of the grand jury, who, however, took no
action on the charges. The guilty person was arrested in two
or three days after the appearance of the proclamation, and im-
prisoned in Fort Lafayette ; the newspaper and telegraph offices
were restored to the owners, and the publications resumed. But
the government of New York never obtained any indemnifica-
tion of these losses by its citizens.

Another subversion of the State government was brought
about by the military interference on the part of the Govern-
ment of the United States with the State election. This was in
1864, when President Lincoln and General McClellan were the
candidates for the Presidency of the United States. As usual,
in all these cases, proceedings to work up a pretended necessity
for interference on the part of the United States Government

492 EISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

were commenced by the appearance of a grandiloquent procla*
mation from the commanding General, Dix, telling what hor-
rible designs, there was reason to believe, the agents of the
Confederate States in Canada had prepared to be executed on
election- day, by an invasion of voters from Canada to colonize
different points. Therefore, to avert these dreadful dangers
and arrest the guilty parties, it was necessary that provost-mar-
shals, sustained by a military force, should be present with au-
thority at the polls. At the same time the State Department
issued a dispatch, saying :

" Information has been received from the British provinces
to the effect that there is a conspiracy on foot to set fire to the
principal cities in the Northern States on the day of the Presiden-
tial election."

Thus was created an apparent necessity for the military force
to be very active on the day of election. Governor Seymour
issued a proclamation, saying :

" There is no reason to doubt that the coming election will be
conducted with the usual quiet and order."

Major-General Butler was sent to take command in the city,
and seven thousand additional men were placed in the forts of
the harbor, and proclamations were issued, threatening, by the
United States Government, the severest punishment upon every
person who might attempt improperly to vote at the election in
the State of New York.

The State Legislature, at its previous session, had passed an
act to provide for the vote of the soldiers- in the field, to be
taken previous to the day of election. Agents were appointed
by the State government, to the localities where the soldiers were
stationed, to receive the votes. The informers of the United
States Government immediately brought charges of fraud against
some of these agents, and they were seized by the military au-
thorities, sent to Washington, cast into prison, and held to be
tried by a military commission. The Governor of New York
immediately appointed Amasa J. Parker and two other most
respectable citizens as commissioners, to proceed to Washing-

1863] nOW UTTER WAS THE SUBVERSION. 493

ton in behalf of the State and investigate the difficulties. They
informed the Governor that several hundred ballots, which had
been seized, were given up, and that they visited the principal
agent of the State of New York in his prison, through the per-
mission of Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War. They re-
ported thus :

" The undersigned availed themselves of the permit granted
them to visit Colonel North, M. M. Jones, and Levi Cohn. They
found them in the ' Carroll Prison,' in close confinement. They
then learned that Messrs. North and Cohn had been confined to-
gether in one room, and had not been permitted to leave it for
a moment during the four days they had been prisoners, even for
the purposes of answering the calls of nature. They had been
supplied with meager and coarse prison-rations, to be eaten in
their room, where they constantly breathed the foul atmosphere
t arising from the standing odor. They had no vessel out of which
to drink water, except the one furnished them for the purpose of
urination. They had but one chair, and had slept three of the
nights of their confinement upon a sack of straw upon the floor.
They had not been permitted to see a newspaper, and were ignorant
of the cause of their arrest. All communication between them
and the outer world had been denied them, and no friend had been
allowed to see them. The undersigned complained to the acting
superintendent, who seemed humanely disposed, but justified his
course by the prison rules and the instructions of his superiors."

The commissioners further say :

" From the best investigation the undersigned have been able
:to make, though there may have been irregularities, they have
'found no evidence that any frauds, either against any elector or
ithe elective franchise, have been committed by any person con-
nected with the New York agency."

The commissioners then addressed a communication to the
Secretary of War. A few extracts from this communication
will show how utter was the subversion of the authority of the
government of the State of New York. They say :

" They, North, Cohn, and Jones, were not in the military or
naval service of the United States, and by no law of which we

494 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

are aware were they subject to the martial and military laws of
the United States, or to the orders of the War Department. . . .
The charges, so far as we can learn, are not for the violation of
any law of the United States, but relate to acts purporting to
have been done under the law of the State of New York concern-
ing elections, and making provisions for soldiers voting in that
State ; it being claimed that certain irregularities have intervened
which give reason to suspect that frauds and forgeries are intend-
ed, and may be consummated. These suspected and anticipated
frauds have respect solely to the election laws of the State of
New York, and the action of the Government in making the
arrest is claimed to be justified upon the ground that, unless thus
prevented, frauds will be perpetrated against the ballot-box at the
approaching election in the State of New York. We beg leave,
in behalf of the State, respectfully to protest against this jurisdic-
tion, assumed as well over the alleged offense as over the persons
of the accused, who are citizens of the State, in its employ, and
entitled to its protection. The proper business of the State
agency is greatly interfered with by the arrest and detention of
the agents, and the State is deprived of its proper jurisdiction
over its agents and citizens, over offenses against its laws, and
over its own ballot-box and the exercise of the elective franchise
within its limits."

The demands made by the State of New York through
these commissioners were refused. The persons arrested were
finally tried before a military commission, clearly without juris-
diction, in violation of their personal rights, and in usurpation
of the just powers of the State. They were, however, acquit-
ted and discharged, glad to get off no worse.-

The proposed limits will not permit me further to present
the details relative to the subjugation of the State govern-
ment of New York by the Government of the United States.
Neither can space be spared to relate the details of the sub-
jugation of the government of each Northern State. In many
the events were similar to those in New York ; in others they
arose under dissimilar circumstances; but, in all, the sover-
eignty of the people was entirely disregarded, and the opera-
tion of the institutions which had been established for the pro-

1863] HOW COMPLETE WAS THE WORK. 495

tection of their rights was suspended, or nullified, by a military
force of the Government of the United States. Only such
events, therefore, can be stated as serve to show how universal
and how complete was the work done by the United States
Government to secure a recognition of its supremacy, over not
only acts but even words, from every citizen. All were its sub-
jects ; the " loyal," as some were called, were its friends, and
could be trusted ; the " disloyal " were its disaffected subjects,
and must be watched by spies and informers, and, if necessary,
put in prison to secure their passive submission.

A military domination was established in all of the .Northern
States, under the pretext of securing the arrest of deserters from
the army. This was accomplished on September 24, 1862, by
the appointment of a Provost-Marshal- General of the War De-
partment at Washington, and in each State one or more special
provost-marshals, who were required to report to and receive
instructions from the Provost-Marshal-General. It was made
the duty of the special marshals —

"To arrest all deserters, whether regulars, volunteers, or mi-
litia, and send them to the nearest military commander or military
post, where they can be cared for and sent to their respective regi-
ments ; to arrest, upon the warrant of the Judge Advocate, all
disloyal persons subject to arrest under the orders of the War
Department ; to inquire into and report treasonable practices,
seize stolen or embezzled property of the Government, detect spies
of the enemy, and perform such other duties as may be enjoined
on them by the War Department."

To enable these marshals to perform their duties efficiently,
they were authorized to call on any available military force
within their respective districts, or else to employ the assistance
of citizens, constables, sheriffs, or police officers, so far as might
be necessary. IsTo trial was allowed to any person thus arrested
except before a military commission consisting of military offi-
cers designated for the purpose ; the prosecutor was the Judge
Advocate, and the punishments were exemplary, unusual, and
too often such as were unknown to the laws. The State gov-
ernments within whose domains the courts were open, the civil

496 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

institutions in quiet operation, and the transactions of peaceful
life uniform and constant, were powerless to protect their citi-
zens in their unalienable rights of freedom of speech and per-
sonal liberty, and the mandates of their courts were treated with
contempt. In utter disregard of the principles of civil liberty, a
military control was established in every Northern State, the
declarations of rights in their Constitutions were violated, their
laws nullified, and the authority of their governments subverted
by an absolute and direct usurpation on the part of the Govern-
ment of the United States.

The country was filled with horror during 1865 by two trials
held before a military commission in the city of Washington.
The first commenced on May 13th, and ended on June 29th.
The specification was —

" That David E. Harold, Edward Spangler, Lewis Payne, John
H. Surratt, Michael O'Loughlin, Samuel Arnold, George A. Atze-
rott, Samuel A. Mudd, and Mary E. Surratt, did on April 15,
1865, combine, confederate, and conspire together to murder Presi-
dent Abraham Lincoln, Vice-President Andrew Johnson, Lieuten-
ant-General U. S. Grant, and Secretary of State William H. Sew-
ard."

President Lincoln had been shot, and Secretary Seward was
badly wounded with a knife. The others were uninjured.

The sentence of the commission was that David E. Harold,
G. A. Atzerott, Lewis Payne, and Mary E. Surratt, be hanged
by the proper military authority, under the direction of the Sec-
retary of War, on July 7, 1865. The others were sentenced to
imprisonment at hard labor for a term of- years or for life.
With only one day's delay, the sentences were carried into exe-
cution. John H. Surratt escaped before trial. He was sought
for by the spies of the War Department half round the world,
and after a long time was found serving as a soldier in the corps
of Papal Zouaves at Rome. He was brought back to Washing-
ton, tried, and acquitted.

The insertion of my name with those of others, honorable
gentlemen, as " inciting and encouraging " these acts, served as
an exhibition of the malignant spirit with which justice was ad-

1865] COMMITTED SUICIDE. 497

ministered by the authorities in Washington at that time. The
case of Mrs. Surratt, at whose house some of these persons had
boarded, awakened much sympathy. She was spoken of by her
counsel, Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland, as " a devout Christian,
ever kind, affectionate, and charitable," which was confirmed by
evidence and uncontradicted. On the day of the execution, her
daughter, who was quite a devoted and affectionate person,
sought to obtain an audience with President Johnson to implore
at least a brief suspension of the sentence of her mother. She
was obstructed and prevented from seeing the President by ex-
Senator Preston King, of New York, and Senator James H.
Lane, of Kansas, who were reported to have been at the Execu-
tive Mansion to keep guard over President Johnson. Each of
these Senators at a later period committed suicide.

The trial of Major Henry Wirz was the next in importance
which came before a military commission. In April, 1865,
President Johnson issued a proclamation, stating that, from
evidence in possession of the " Bureau of Military Justice," it
appeared that I, Jefferson Davis, was implicated in the assassi-
nation of President Lincoln, and for that reason he offered a
reward of one hundred thousand dollars for my capture. That
testimony was subsequently found to be entirely false, having
been a mere fabrication. The manner in which this was done
will be presently stated. Meantime, certain persons of influence
and public position at that time, either aware of the fabricated
character of this testimony or convinced of its insufficiency to
secure my conviction on a trial, sought to find ample material to
supply this deficiency, in the great mortality of the soldiers we
i had captured during the war and imprisoned at Andersonville.*

Orders were therefore issued by the authorities of the United
States Government to arrest a subaltern officer, Captain Henry
Wirz, a foreigner by birth, poor, friendless, and wounded, and
held as a prisoner of war. He had been included in the sur-
render of General J. E. Johnston. On May 7th he was placed
in the "Old Capitol" Prison at Washington. The poor man
was doomed before he was heard, and the permission to be
heard according to law was denied him. Captain Wirz had

* See chapter on exchange of prisoners.
79

498 ^ISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

been in command at the Confederate prison at Andersonville.
The first charge alleged against him was that of conspiring with
myself, Secretary Seddon, General Howell Cobb, General Win-
der, and others, to cause the death of thousands of the prisoners
through cruelty, etc. The second charge was alleged against
himself for murder in violation of the laws and customs of war.

The military commission before which he was tried was con-
vened by an order of President Johnson, of August 19th, direct-
ing the officers detailed for that purpose to meet as a special
military commission on August 20th, for the trial of such pris-
oners as might be brought before it. The commission convened,
and Wirz was arraigned on the charges above mentioned, and
pleaded not guilty.' At the suggestion of the Judge Advocate,
Joseph Holt, he was remanded to prison and the court adjourned.
The so-called trial afterward came on, and lasted for three months,
but no evidence whatsoever was produced showing the existence
of such a conspiracy as had been charged. Wirz was, however,
pronounced guilty, and, in accordance with the sentence of the
commission, he was executed on November 10, 1865.

On April 4, 1867, Mr. Louis Schade, of Washington, and the
attorney for Wirz on the trial, in compliance with the request
of Wirz so to do, as soon as the times should be propitious, pub-
lished a vindication of his character. The following is an extract
from this publication :

"On the night previous to the execution of the prisoner, some
parties came to the confessor of WTirz (Rev. Father Boyle) and
also to me. One of them informed me that a high Cabinet officer
wished to assure Wirz that, if he would implicate Jefferson Davis
with the atrocities committed at Andersonville, his sentence should
be commuted. He (the messenger, whoever he was) requested me
to inform Wirz of this. In presence of Father Boyle, I told him
next morning what had happened. The Captain simply and quietly
replied : 'Mr. Schade, you know that I have always told you that
I do not know anything about Jefferson Davis. He had no con-
nection with me as to what was done at Andersonville. If I knew
anything of him, I would not become a traitor against him or any-
body else to save my life.' Thus ended the attempt to suborn
Captain Wirz against Jefferson Davis."

1865] SPURNED THESE PROPOSITIONS. 499

The following is an extract from a letter of Captain C. B.
Winder to Mrs. Davis, dated Eastern Shore of Virginia, January
9, 1867 :

" The door of the room which I occupied while in confinement
at the Old Capitol Prison, Washington, was immediately opposite
Captain Wirz's door — both of which were occasionally open.
About two days before Captain Wirz's execution, I saw three or
four men pass into his room, and, upon their coming out, Captain
Wirz told me that they had given him assurances that his life
would be spared and his liberty given to him if he (Wirz) could
give any testimony that would reflect upon Mr. Davis or implicate
him directly or indirectly with the condition and treatment of
prisoners of war, as charged by the United States authorities ;
that he indignantly spurned these propositions, and assured them
that, never having been acquainted with Mr. Davis, either offi-
cially, personally, or socially, it was utterly impossible that he
should know anything against him, and that the offer of his life,
dear as the boon might be, could not purchase him to treason and
treachery to the South and his friend."

The following letter is from the Rev. Father F. E. Boyle,
of Washington :

" Washington, D. C, October 10, 1880.
"Hon. Jefferson Davts.

" Dear Sir : . . . I know that, on the evening before the day
of the execution of Major Wirz, a man visited me, on the part of a
Cabinet officer, to inform me that Major Wirz would be pardoned
if he would implicate Jefferson Davis in the cruelties of Ander-
sonville. No names were given by this messenger, and, upon my
refusal to take any action in the matter, he went to Mr. Louis
Schade, counsel for Major Wirz, with the same purpose and with
a like result.

" When I visited Major Wirz the next morning, he told me
that the same proposal had been made to him, and had been rejected
with scorn. The Major was very indignant, and said that, while
he was innocent of the cruel charges for which he was about to
suffer death, he would not purchase his liberty by perjury and a
crime, such as was made the condition of his freedom. I attended
the Major to the scaffold, and he died in the peace of God, and
praying for his enemies. I know he was indeed innocent of all

500 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

the cruel charges on which his life was sworn away, and I was
edified by the Christian spirit in which he submitted to his perse-
cutes. Yours very truly,

"F. E. Boyle."

In the other ease of the fabrication of evidence by some of
the authorities in Washington relative to myself, it will be suffi-
cient here to present what others have said and done. The
subject is noticed in these pages only to show the desperate ex-
tremities to which the agents of the Government of the United
States proceeded in order to compass my ignominious death.
Three principal measures were resorted to for the accomplish-
ment of this object : the charge in the case of "Wirz, above
mentioned ; the fabrications in the case now under considera-
tion ; and the cruel and inhuman treatment inflicted upon me
while a prisoner in Fortress Monroe.

At the session of Congress of 1865-'66, a committee was
appointed in the House of Representatives " to inquire into and
report upon the alleged complicity of Jefferson Davis with the
assassination of the late President Lincoln," or words to that
effect. George S. Bontwell was chairman of the committee,
and the majority of the members were extreme advocates of the
war. The charge emanated from the "Bureau of Military
Justice," as it was designated — a similar institution to the " Se-
cret Committee " of the French Revolution. Of this institu-
tion Judge- Advocate Joseph Holt was the chief. After an
investigation continuing through several months, a majority of
the committee made their report to Congress.

" That report not only failed to establish the charge, but the
committee were forced to confess in it that the witnesses, on
whose testimony Holt had affected to rely, were wholly untrust-
worthy. Shortly after this report was presented to the House,
Mr. A. J. Rogers, of the committee, a very respectable member
from New Jersey, made a minority report. He asserted that
much of the evidence was altogether suppressed, and that the wit-
nesses, who had received large sums of money from Holt for tes-
tifying to the criminality of Mr. Davis, recanted their evidence
before the committee, and acknowledged that they had perjured
themselves by testifying to a mass of falsehoods ; that they had

1 865] MORE MIGHT BE ADDED. 501

been tutored to do so by one S. Conover ; and that, from him down
through all the miserable list, the very names under which these
hired informers were known to the public were as false as the nar-
ratives to which they had sworn." *

Much more might be added to show the evil purpose of
these men, together with the correspondence of Holt and his
associates, but it would be out of place if it was put in these
pages.

Another case of this kind occurred in the State of Ohio, in
April, 1863, in the arrest, trial, and banishment of Clement L.
Vallandigham. On April 13th Major-Gen eral Ambrose E.
Burnside, commanding the Department, issued an order, declar-
ing—

" That, hereafter, all persons found within our lines who com-
mit acts for the benefit of the enemies of our country will be tried
as spies or traitors, and, if convicted, will suffer death." (The dif-
ferent classes of persons were then named in the order.) " The
habit of declaring sympathies for the enemy will no longer be tol-
erated in this department. Persons committing such offenses will
be at once arrested, with a view to being tried as above stated, or
sent beyond our lines into the lines of their friends. It must be
distinctly understood that treason, expressed or implied, will not
be tolerated in this department."

Mr. Vallandigham commented upon this order, on May 1st,
at a public meeting of citizens. Three days afterward a body
of soldiers was sent by railroad from Cincinnati to Dayton, who,
with violence, broke into his residence at three o'clock in the
morning, seized, and hurried him to the cars before a rescue

[ could be made, and departed for Cincinnati, where he was con-
fined in a military prison. He was brought to trial before a
military commission on May 6th. The specification made against

'■ him in the charge was that " he addressed a large meeting of
citizens at Mount Yernon, and did utter sentiments in words,

: or in effect, as follows : declaring the present war c a wicked,
cruel, and unnecessary war ' ; 6 a war not being waged for the

* Baltimore "Gazette," September 25, 1866.

502 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

preservation of the Union ' ; ' a war for the purpose of crush-
ing out liberty and creating a despotism ' ; i a war for the free-
dom of the blacks and the enslavement of the whites ' ; stating
that, '.if the Administration had so wished, the war could have
been honorably terminated months ago'; characterizing the
military order ' as a base usurpation' of arbitrary authority ' ;
declaring ' that he was at all times and upon all occasions re-
solved to do what he could to defeat the attempts now made to
build up a monarchy upon the ruins of our free government.' "
He was adjudged as guilty, and sentenced to confinement
in Fort Warren, Boston Harbor, during the war. This sen-
tence was changed by President Lincoln to banishment to the
Confederate States. This military usurpation was spoken of
by Governor Seymour, of New York, in a letter written at the
time, in these words :

" The transaction involved a series of offenses against our most
sacred rights. It interfered with the freedom of speech ; it vio-
lated our rights to be secure in our homes against unreasonable
searches and seizures ; it pronounced sentence without a trial, save
one which was a mockery, which insulted as well as wronged. The
perpetrators now seek to impose punishment, not for an offense
against law, but for a disregard of an invalid order, put forth in
utter violation of the principles of civil liberty. If this proceed-
ing is approved by the Government and sanctioned by the people,
it is not merely a step toward revolution, it is revolution ; it will
not only lead to military despotism, it establishes military despot-
ism. If it is upheld, our liberties are overthrown. The safety of
our persons, the security of our property, will hereafter depend
upon the arbitrary wills of such military rulers as may be placed
over us, while our constitutional guarantees will be broken down.
Even now the Governors and the courts of some of the great
Western States have sunk into insignificance before the despotic
powers claimed and exercised by military men who have been sent
into their borders."

A large number of such arrests were made in Ohio, news-
papers were suspended, and editors imprisoned. Like scenes
were very numerous in Indiana and Illinois. In Pennsylvania
arrests were made, newspapers suspended, editors imprisoned,

1863] WHERE WAS THE SOVEREIGNTY? 503

and offices destroyed. In New Hampshire, Yermont, and Wis-
consin many similar scenes occurred. The provost-marshal sys-
tem was used as a weapon of vindictiveness against influential
citizens of opposite political views throughout all the Northern
States. No one of such persons knew when he was safe. A
complaint of his neighbors, supported by affidavit of " disloyal "
words spoken or " disloyal " acts approved, received prompt at-
tention from all marshals. Everything was brought into sub-
jection to the will of the Government of the United States and
its military officers.

In view of all the facts here presented relative to the North-
ern States, let the reader answer where the sovereignty de facto
resided. Most clearly in the Government of the United States.
That presided over the ballot-box, held the keys of the prisons,
arrested all citizens at its pleasure, suspended or suppressed
newspapers, and did whatever it pleased under the declaration
that the public welfare required it. But, under the principles
of American liberty, the sovereignty is inherent in the people as
an unalienable right ; and, for the preservation and protection of
this and other rights, the State governments were instituted.
If, therefore, the people have lost this inherent sovereignty, it
is evident that the State governments have failed to afford that
protection for which they were instituted. If they have thus
failed, it has been in consequence of their subversion and loss
of power to fulfill the object for which they were established.
This subversion was achieved when the General Government,
under the pretext of preserving the Union, made war on its
creators the States, thus changing the nature of the Federal
Union, which could rightfully be done only by the sovereign,
the people of the States, in like manner as it was originally
formed. If they should permit their sovereignty to be usurped
and themselves to be subju^kted, individuals might remain,
States could not. Of their wreck a nation might be built, but
there could not be a Union, for that implies entities united, and
of a State which has lost its sovereignty there may only be writ-
ten, " It was."

504 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

CHAPTER XLY.

Inactivity of the Army of Northern Virginia. — Expeditions of Custer, Kilpatrick, and
Dahlgren for the Destruction of Railroads, the Burning of Richmond, and Kill-
ing the Officers of the Government. — Repelled by Government Clerks. — Papers
on Dahlgren's Body. — Repulse Of Butler's Raid from Bermuda Hundred. — Ad-
vance of Sheridan repulsed at Richmond. — Stuart resists Sheridan. — Stuart's
Death. — Remarks on Grant's Plan of Campaign. — Movement of General Butler.
— Drury's Bluff. — Battle the^e. — Campaign of Grant in Virginia.

Both the Army of Northern Virginia and the army under
General Meade remained in a state of comparative inaction dur-
ing the months of January and February, 1864.

On February 26, 1864, while General Lee's headquarters
were at Orange Court-House, two corps of the army of the
enemy left their camp for Madison Court-House. The object
was, by a formidable feint, to engage the attention of General
Lee, and conceal from him their plans for a surprise and, if
possible, capture of the city of Richmond. This was to be a con-
certed movement, in which General Butler, in command of the
forces on the Peninsula, was to move up and make a demon-
stration upon Richmond on the east, while Generals Custer and
Kilpatrick and Colonel Dahlgren were to attack it and enter
on the west and north.

Two days later another army corps left for Madison Court-
House, and other forces subsequently followed. At the same
time General Custer, with two ten-inch Parrott guns and fif-
teen hundred picked men, marched for Charlottesville by the
James City road. His purpose was to destroy the Orange and
Alexandria Railroad, running by Charlottesville to Gordonsville,
where the junction was made of the railroad running north from
Lynchburg, with the Central running to Richmond. The cap-
ture of the army stores there, the destruction of the tracks run-
ning south, west, and east, and cutting the telegraph, would
have severed the communication between Lee's army and Rich-
mond by that route. This movement, with the destruction of
railroads by General Kilpatrick, and of the Central Railroad and

Gekieds&l mtD)E MARffllPT©

^ewYork. D.Appleton &Co .

1864] FLED AT A GALLOP. 505

the James River and Kanawha Canal by Colonel Dahlgren,
would have isolated that army from its base of supplies.

Three hours later, on the same day on which General Custer
started, General Kilpatrick with five thousand picked cavalry
and a light battery of six guns, left Stevensburg, near Culpep-
er Court-House, for the lower fords of the Rapidan. His ob-
ject was to make a dash upon Richmond for the purpose of
releasing the United States prisoners, and doing whatever injury
might be possible. He moved rapidly, destroying railroads and
depots, and plundering the country, but found no obstacle except
in being closely harassed in his rear by Colonel Bradley T.
Johnson with his sixty Marylanders, who, with extraordinary
daring, activity, and skill, followed him until he reached the line
of the defenses of Richmond. There, while attacked in the
rear by Colonel Johnson and his pickets driven in, he was at
the same time opposed in front by Colonel "W. H. Stevens, who,
with a detachment of engineer troops, manned a few sections of
light artillery. After an engagement of thirty minutes, Kilpat-
rick's entire force began to retreat in the direction of the Meadow
Bridge on the Central Railroad. At night his camp-fires were
discovered by General Wade Hampton, who dismounted one
hundred men to act as infantry, and, supported by the cavalry,
opened his two-gun battery upon the enemy at short range. He
then attacked the camp of Davies's and of a part of two other
brigades. The camp was taken, and the whole force of Kilpat-
rick fled at a gallop, leaving one hundred and five prisoners
and more than one hundred horses.

Colonel Dahlgren started with General Kilpatrick, but at
Spottsylvania Court-House was dispatched with five hundred
men to Frederickhall, a depot of the Central Railroad, where
some eighty pieces of our reserve artillery had been parked.
His orders were to destroy the artillery, the railroads, and tele-
graph-lines. Finding the artillery too well guarded, he pro-
ceeded to destroy the line of railroad as far as Hanover Junc-
tion. Thence he moved toward the James River and Kanawha
Canal, which he reached twenty-two miles west of Richmond.
Thence his command moved toward the city, pillaging and
destroying dwelling-houses, out-buildings, mills, canal-boats,

50G KISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

grain, and cattle, and cutting one lock on the canal. The first
resistance met was by a battalion of General G. W. C. Lee's
force, consisting of about two hundred and twenty of the armory-
men, under command of their major, Ford. This small body
was driven back until it joined a battalion of the Treasury De-
partment clerks, who, in the absence of their major, Henly,
were led by Captain Mcllhenney. The officers and men were all
clerks of the Treasury Department, and, like those of other
departments and many citizens of Richmond, who were either
too old or too young to be in the army, were enrolled and organ-
ized to defend the capital in the absence of troops. Captain
Mcllhenney, as soon as he saw the enemy, promptly arranged to
attack. This was done with such impetuosity that Dahlgren
and his men were routed, leaving some eighteen killed, twenty
to thirty wounded, and as many more prisoners. About a hun-
dred horses, with equipments, a number of small-arms, and one
three-inch Napoleon gun were captured. Our loss was one cap-
tain and two lieutenants killed, three lieutenants and seven
privates wounded — one of the latter mortally. This feat of
the Clerks' Battalion commanded the grateful admiration of
the people, and the large concourse that attended the funeral
of the fallen expressed the public lamentation.

Dahlgren now commenced his retreat. To increase the
chances of escape, the force was divided, he leading one party
in the direction of King and Queen County. The home guard
of the country turned out against the raiders, and, being joined
by a detachment from the Forty-second Battalion of Virginia
Cavalry and some furloughed cavalry-men of Lee's army, sur-
prised and attacked the retreating column of~ Dahlgren, killed
the leader, and captured nearly one hundred prisoners, with ne-
groes, horses, etc.

On the body of Dahlgren was found an address to his offi-
cers and men, another paper giving special orders and instruc-
tions, and one giving his itinerary, the whole disclosing the un-
soldierly means and purposes of the raid, such as disguising the
men in our uniform, carrying supplies of oakum and turpen-
tine to burn Richmond, and, after releasing their prisoners on
Belle Isle, to exhort them to destroy the hateful city, while on

2864] THAT RASCALLY VIRTUE. 507

all was impressed the special injunction that the city must be
burned, and "Jeff Davis and Cabinet killed."

The prisoners, having been captured in disguise, were, under
the usages of war, liable to be hanged as spies, but their protes-
tations that their service was not voluntary, and the fact that as
enlisted men they were subject to orders, and could not be held
responsible for the infamous instructions under which they were
acting, saved them from the death-penalty they had fully in-
curred. Photographic copies of the papers found on Dahlgren's
body were taken and sent to General Lee, with instructions to
communicate them to General Meade, commanding the enemy's
forces in his front, with an inquiry as to whether such practices
were authorized by his Government, and also to say that, if any
question was raised as to the copies, the original paper would
be submitted. No such question was then made, and the denial
that Dahlgren's conduct had been authorized was accepted.

Many sensational stories, having not even a basis of truth,
were put in circulation to exhibit the Confederate authorities as
having #cted with unwarrantable malignity toward the deceased
Colonel Dahlgren. The fact was, that his body was sent to
Richmond and decently interred in the Oakwood Cemetery,
where other Federal soldiers were buried. The enormity of
his offenses was not forgotten, but resentment against him ended
with his life. It was also admitted that, however bad his pre-
ceding conduct had been, he met his fate gallantly, charging at
the head of his men when he found himself inextricably en-
compassed by his foe.

Custer and Kilpatrick, who were to cooperate with him in
the expedition, especially the first-named, manifested a saving
degree of " that rascally virtue," as Charles Lee, of Revolu-
tionary memory, called it. After the feeble demonstration upon
some parked artillery which has been described, he fancied that
he heard the roaring of cars coming with reinforcements, and
retreated, burning the bridges behind him — a precaution quite
in vain, as there were none there to pursue him.

Kilpatrick, followed as above stated by Colonel Bradley T.
Johnson, who hung close upon his rear, finally reached the de-
fenses of Richmond. There, out of respect to the field artillery

508 RISE AND FALL OF TIIE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

he encountered, he turned off to cross the Chickahominy, and
that night he was routed by the cavalry command of our gal-
lant cavalier General Wade Hampton. Thus ended the com-
bined movement with which Northern papers had regaled their
readers by anDOuncing as made "with instructions to sack the
rebel capital."

During the first week in May, Major-General B. F. Butler
landed at Bermuda Hundred with a considerable force, and
moved up so as to cut the telegraph line and reach by a raiding
party the railroad at Chester, between Richmond and Peters-
burg. General Ransom, then in command of the defenses at
Richmond and those of Drury's Bluff, with a small force, at*
tacked the advance of General Butler, and after a sharp skir-
mish compelled him to withdraw.

Meantime, because of the warning which Stuart had sent,
General Ransom was summoned to Richmond to resist an im-
pending assault by General Sheridan on the outer works north
of the city. Taking the two disposable brigades of Gracie and
Fry and a light battery, he hastened forward, arriving at ,the for-
tifications on the Mechanics ville Turnpike just in time to see a
battery of artillery, then entirely unsupported, repulse the ad-
vance of Sheridan. During the night the clerks and citizens,
under General G. W. Custis Lee, had formed a thin line along
part of the fortifications on the west side of the city. As the
day advanced, Grade's brigade was thrown in front of the works
and pressed forward to feel Sheridan ; but it was regarded as
worse than useless with two small brigades to engage in an open
country many times their number of well-appointed cavalry.
Sheridan showed no purpose to attack, but withdrew from be-
fore our defenses, and the two brigades returned to the vicinity
of Drury's Bluff — the approach on the south side of James River,
by forces under General Butler, being then considered the most
imminent danger to Richmond.

After the battle of the Wilderness, on May 4th and 5th, as
hereafter narrated, General Grant moved his army toward
Spottsylvania Court-House, and General Lee made a correspond-
ing movement. At this time Sheridan, with a large force of
United States cavalry, passed around and to the rear of our

1864] SHOT BY A FUGITIVE. 509

army, so as to place himself on the road to Richmond, which, in
the absence of a garrison to defend it, he may have not unrea-
sonably thought might be surprised and captured.

Stuart, our most distinguished cavalry commander — fearless,
faithful Stuart — soon knew of Sheridan's movement, perceived
its purpose, and, with his usual devotion to his country's wel-
fare, hastily collected such of his troops as were near, and
pursued Sheridan. He fell upon Sheridan's rear and flank at
Beaver Dam Station, where a pause had been made to destroy
the railroad, some cars, and commissary's stores, and drove it
before him. The route of the enemy being unmistakably to-
ward Richmond, Stuart, to protect the capital, or at least to
delay attack, so as to give time to make preparation for de-
fense, made a detour around Sheridan, and by a forced march
got in front of him, taking position at a place called Yellow
Tavern, about seven or eight miles from Richmond. Here,
with the daring and singleness of purpose which characterized
his whole career, he decided, notwithstanding the great ine-
quality between his force and that of his foe, to make a stand,
and offer persistent resistance to his advance. The respective
strength of the two commands, as given by Colonel Heros von
Borke, chief of General Stuart's staff, was, Stuart, eleven hun-
dred; Sheridan, eight thousand. While engaged in this des-
perate service, General Stuart sent couriers to Richmond to
give notice of the approach of the enemy, so that the defenses
might be manned.

Notwithstanding the great disparity of force, the contest was
obstinate and protracted, and fickle Fortune cheered our men
with several brilliant successes. Stuart, who in many traits re-
sembled the renowned Murat, like him was always a leader
when his cavalry charged. On this occasion he is represented
when he was wounded to have been quite in advance, to have
fired the last load in his pistol, and to have been shot by a fugi-
tive whom he found cowering under a fence, and ordered to sur-
render. The " heavy battalions " at last prevailed, our line was
broken, and our chieftain, though mortally wounded, still kept
in his saddle, invoking his men to continue the fight.* Oar

* Address of Major H. B. McClellan before Army of Northern Virginia Association.

510 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

gallant chieftain was brought wounded into Richmond, a noble
sacrifice on the altar of duty.

Long accustomed to connect him only with daring exploits
and brilliant successes, there was much surprise and deeper sor-
row when the news spread through the city. Admired as a
soldier, loved as a man, honored as a Christian patriot, to whom
duty to his God and his country was a supreme law, the intense
anxiety for his safety made us all shrink from realizing his im-
minent danger. When I saw him in his very last hours, he
was so calm, and physically so strong, that I could not believe
that he was dying, until the surgeon, after I had left his bed-
side, told me he was bleeding inwardly, and that the end was
near.

Grant's plan of campaign, as now revealed to us, was to con-
tinue his movement against Lee's army, and, if, as experience
had taught him, he should be unable to defeat it and move
directly to his objective point, Richmond, he was to continue
his efforts so as to reach the James River below Richmond, and
thus to connect with the army under General Butler, moving
up on the south side of the James. The topography of the
country favored that design. The streams in the country in
which he was operating all trended toward the southeast, and
his change of position was frequently made under cover of
them. Butler, in the mean time, was ordered with the force of
his department, about twenty thousand, reenforced by Gilmer's
division of ten thousand, to move up to City Point, there in-
trench, and concentrate all his troops as rapidly as possible.
From this base he was expected to operate so as to destroy the
railroad connections between Richmond and the South. On
the 7th of May he telegraphed that he had " destroyed many
miles of railroad, and got a position which, with proper sup-
plies, we can hold out against the whole of Lee's army."

At this time Major-General Robert Ransom, as before men-
tioned, was in command at Richmond, including Drury's Bluff.
His force consisted, for the defense of both places, of the men
serving the stationary or heavy artillery, and three brigades of
infantry — Hunton's at Chapin's Bluff, and Barton's and Grade's
for field service. To these, in cases of emergency, the clerks

1864] DROVE HIM FROM THE RAILROAD. 511

and artisans in the departments and manufactories, were organ-
ized, to be called out as an auxiliary force when needed for the
defense of the capital. It was with this field force that Ran-
som, as has been related, moved upon Butler, and drove him
from the railroad, the destruction of which he had so vaunt-
ingly announced.

A few days thereafter he again emerged from his cover, but
this time changed his objective point, and, diverging from the
south bank of the James River, moved toward Petersburg, and
reached the railroad at Port Walthal Junction, where he encoun-
tered some of General Beauregard's command, which had been
ordered from Charleston, and was driven from the railroad and
turnpike. The troops ordered from Charleston with General
Beauregard had, by May 14th, reached the vicinity of Drury's
Bluff. In connection with the works and rifle-pits on the bluff,
which were to command the river and prevent the ascent of
gunboats, an intrenched line had been constructed on a ridge
about a mile south of the bluff, running across the road from
Richmond to Petersburg. This ridge was higher than the
ground on which the fort was built, and was designed to check
an approach of the enemy from the south, as well as to cover
the rear of the fort. In the afternoon of the 14th I rode
down to visit General Beauregard at his headquarters in the
field. Supposing his troops to be on the line of intrenchment,
I passed Major Drury's house to go thither, when some one by
the roadside called to me and told me that the troops were not
on the line of intrenchment, and that General Beauregard was
at the house behind me.

My first question on meeting him was to learn why the in-
trenchments were abandoned. He answered that he thought it
better to concentrate his troops. Upon my stating to him that
there was nothing then to prevent Butler from turning his po-
sition, he said he would desire nothing more, as he would then
fall upon him, cut him off from his base, etc.

According to my uniform practice never to do more than to
make a suggestion to a general commanding in the field, the sub-
ject was pressed no further. We then passed to the considera-
tion of the operations to be undertaken against Butler, who had

512 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

already advanced from his base at Bermuda Hundred. I offered,
for the purpose of attacking Butler, to send Major-General Ran-
som with the field force he had for the protection of Richmond.
In addition to his high military capacity, his minute knowledge
of the country in which they were to operate made him specially
valuable. He reported to General Beauregard at noon on the
15th, received his orders for the battle which was to occur the
next day, and about 10 p. m. was, with a division of four bri-
gades and a battery of light artillery, in position in front of the
breastworks. Colonel Dunovant, with a regiment of cavalry
not under Ransom's orders, was to guard the space between his
left and the river, so as to give him information of any move-
ment in that quarter. General Whiting, with some force, was
holding a defensive position at Petersburg. General Beaure-
gard proposed that the main part of it should advance and unite
with him in an attack upon Butler wherever he should be found
between Drury's and Petersburg. To this I offered distinct ob-
jection, because of the hazard during a battle of attempting to
make a junction of troops moving from opposite sides of the
enemy ; and proposed that Whiting's command should move at
night by the Chesterfield road, where they would not probably
be observed by Butler's advance. This march I supposed they
could make so as to arrive at Drury's by or soon after daylight.
The next day being Sunday, they could rest, and, all the troops
being assigned to their positions, could move to make a concerted
attack at daylight on Monday. He spoke of some difficulty in
getting a courier who knew the route and could certainly de-
liver the order to General Whiting. Opportunely, a courier ar-
rived from General Whiting, who had come up the Chesterfield
road. He then said the order would have to be drawn with a
great deal of care, and that he would prepare it as soon as he
could. I arose to take leave, and he courteously walked down
the stairs with me, remarking as we went that he was embar-
rassed for the want of a good cavalry commander. I saw in the
yard Colonel Chilton, assistant adjutant and inspector-general,
and said, " There is an old cavalry officer who was trained in
my old regiment, the First Dragoons, and who I think will an-
swer your requirements." Upon his expressing the pleasure

1864] WE DROVE HIM BACK. 513

it would give him to have Colonel Chilton, I told him of Gen-
eral Beauregard's want, and asked him if the service would be
agreeable to him. He readily accepted it, and I left, suppos-
ing all the preliminaries settled. In the next forenoon Colonel
Samuel Melton, of the adjutant and inspector-general's depart-
ment, called at my residence and delivered a message from
General Beauregard to the effect that he had decided to order
Whiting to move by the direct road from Petersburg, instead
of by the Chesterfield route, and, when I replied that I had stated
my objections to General Beauregard to a movement which gave
the enemy the advantage of being between our forces, he said
General Beauregard had directed him to explain to me that
upon a further examination he found his force sufficient ; that
his operations, therefore, did not depend upon making a junc-
tion with Whiting.

On Monday morning I rode down to Drury's, where I found
that the enemy had seized our line of intrenchments, it being
unoccupied, and that a severe action had occurred, with serious
loss to us before he could be dislodged. He had crossed the
main road to the west, entering a dense wood, and our troops
on the right had moved out and were closely engaged with him.
We drove him back, frustrating the attempt to turn the ex-
treme right of our line. The day was wearing away, a part of
the force had been withdrawn to the intrenchment, and there
was no sign of purpose to make any immediate movement.
General Beauregard said he was waiting to hear Whiting's
guns, and had been expecting him for some time to approach
on the Petersburg road. Soon after this, the foe in a strag-
gling, disorganized manner, commenced crossing the road, mov-
ing to the east, which indicated a retreat, or perhaps a pur-
pose to turn our left and attack Fort Drury in rear. He
placed a battery in the main road and threw some shells at our
intrenchment, probably to cover his retiring troops. General
Ransom, in an unpublished report, says that, at the time he
received the order of battle, General Beauregard told him, " As
you know the region, I have given you the moving part of the
army, and you will take the initiative." He further states that
at dawn of day he moved to the south of Kingsland Creek,
80

514 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

formed two lines with a short interval, and at once advanced
to the attack. A dense fog suddenly enveloped him, so as to
obscure all distant objects. Moving forward, the skirmishers
were quickly engaged, and the lighting was pressed so vigor-
ously that by sunrise he had captured a brigade of infantry, a
battery of artillery, and occupied about three quarters of a mile
of the enemy's temporary breastworks, which were strengthened
by wire interwoven among the trees in their front; this was
not effected, however, without considerable loss in killed and
wounded, and much confusion, owing to the denseness of the
fog. General Ransom's report continues:

" Having no ammunition- wagons and requiring replenishment
of infantry cartridges, and knowing that delay would mar the ef-
fect of the success gained, I sent instantly to Beauregard, report-
ing what had happened, and asked that Ransom's brigade might
come to me at once, so that I might continue the pressure and
make good the advantage already gained."

He then describes the further delay in getting ammunition,
and his renewal of the request for Ransom's brigade, which he
had organized and formerly commanded, but, instead of which,
two small regiments were sent to him, the timely arrival of
which, it is to be gratefully remembered, enabled him to repulse
an advance of the enemy. It would be neither pleasant nor
profitable to dwell on the lost opportunity for a complete vic-
tory, or to recount the possible consequences which might have
flowed from it. On the next morning, our troops moved down
the river road as far as Howlett's, about three or four miles,
but saw no enemy. The " back door " of Richmond was closed,
and Butler " bottled up."

Soon after the affair at Drury's Bluff, General Beauregard
addressed to me a communication, proposing that he should he
heavily reenforced from General Lee's army, so as to enable
him to crush Butler in his intrenchments, and then, with the
main body of his own force, together with a detachment from
General Lee's army, that he should join General Lee, over-
whelm Grant, and march to Washington. I knew that General
Lee was then confronting an army vastly superior to his in num-

1864] ASSUMED PERSONAL COMMAND. 515

bers, fully equipped, with inexhaustible supplies, and a persist-
ence in attacking of which sufficient evidence had been given.
I could not therefore expect that General Lee would consent to
the proposition of General Beauregard ; but, as a matter of
courteous consideration, his letter was forwarded with the usual
formal endorsement. General Lee's opinion on the case was
shown by the instructions he gave directing General Beaure-
gard to straighten his line so as to reduce the requisite number
of men to hold it, and send the balance to join the army north
of the James.

CHAPTER XLYI .

General Grant assumes Command in Virginia. — Positions of the Armies. — Plans of
Campaign open to Grant's Choice. — The Rapidan crossed. — Battle of the Wil-
derness.— Danger of Lee. — The Enemy driven back. — Flank Attack. — Longstreet
•wounded. — Result of the Contest. — Rapid Flank Movement of Grant. — Another
Contest. — Grant's Reinforcements. — Hanover Junction. — The Enemy moves
in Direction of Bowling Green. — Crosses Pamunkey. — Battle at Cold Harbor.
— Frightful Slaughter. — The Enemy's Soldiers decline to renew the Assault when
ordered. — Loss. — Asks Truce to bury the Dead. — Strength of Respective Ar-
mies.— General Pemberton. — The Enemy crosses the James. — Siege of Peters-
burg begun.

It was in March, 1864, that Major-General Ulysses S. Grant,
having been appointed lieutenant-general, assumed command
! of the armies of the United States. He subsequently proceeded
I to Culpeper and assumed personal command of the Army of
the Potomac, although nominally that army remained under
the command of General Meade. Reinforcements were gath-
ered from every military department of the United States and
sent to that army.

On May 3d General Lee held the south bank of the Rapidan
River, with his right resting near the mouth of Mine Run and
his left extending to Liberty Mills, on the road from Gordons-
j ville to the Shenandoah Valley. Ewell's corps was on the right,
Hill's on the left, and two divisions of Longstreet's corps, having
returned from East Tennessee, were encamped in the rear near
Gordonsville. The army of General Grant had occupied the

516 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

north bank of the Rapidan, with the main body encamped in
Culpeper County and on the Rappahannock River.

While Grant with his immense and increasing army was
thus posted, Lee, with a comparatively small force, and to
which few reinforcements could be furnished, confronted him
on a liue stretching from near Somerville Ford to Gordons-
ville. To Grant was left the choice to move directly on Lee
and attempt to defeat his army, the only obstacle to the cap-
ture of Richmond, and which his vast means rendered sup-
posable, or to cross the Rapidan above or below Lee's posi-
tion. The second would fulfill the condition, so imperatively
imposed on McClellan, of covering the United States capital ;
the third would be in the more direct line toward Richmond.
Of the three he chose the last, arid so felicitated himself on his
unopposed passage of the river as to suppose that he had, un-
observed, turned the flank of Lee's army, got between it and
Richmond, and necessitated the retreat of the Confederates to
some point where they might resist his further advance. So
little could he comprehend the genius of Lee, that he expected
him to be surprised, as appears from his arrangements contem-
plating only combats with the rear-guard covering the retreat.
Lee, dauntless as he was sagacious, seized the opportunity, which
the movement of his foe off ered, to meet him where his artil-
lery would be least available, where his massive columns would
be most embarrassed in their movements, and where South-
ern individuality and self-reliance would be specially effective.
Grant's object was to pass through " the Wilderness " to the
roads between Lee and Richmond. Lee resolved to fight hirn
in those pathless woods, where mind might best compete with
matter.

Providence held its shield over the just cause, and heroic
bands hurled back the heavy battalions shattered and discom-
fited, as will be now briefly described.

In order to cross the Rapidan, Grant's army moved on May
3d toward Germania Ford, which was ten or twelve miles from
our right. He succeeded in seizing the ford and crossing.
The direct road from this ford to Richmond passed by Spott-
sylvania Court-House, and, when Grant had crossed the river,

1864] REPULSED WITH SEVERE LOSS. 517

he was nearer than General Lee to Richmond. From Orange
Court-House there are two nearly parallel roads running east-
wardly to Fredericksburg. The one nearest the river is called
the " Stone Turnpike," and the other the " Plank-road." The
road from the ford to Spottsylvania Court-House crosses the
Old Stone Turnpike at the " Old Wilderness Tavern," and,
two or three miles farther on, it crosses the plank-road.

As soon as Grant's movement was known, Lee's troops were
put in motion. Ewell's corps moved on the Stone Turnpike,
and Hill's corps on the plank-road, into which Longstreet's
force also came from his camp near Gordonsville. Ewell's
corps crossed Mine Run, and encamped at Locust Grove, four
miles beyond, on the afternoon of the 4th. On the morning of
the 5th it was again in motion, and encountered Grant's troops
in heavy force at a short distance from the Old Wilderness Tav-
ern, and Jones's and Battle's brigades were driven back in some
confusion. Early's division was ordered up, formed across the
pike, and moved forward. It advanced through a dense pine-
thicket, and, with other brigades of Rodes's division, drove
the enemy back with heavy loss, capturing several hundred
prisoners and gaining a commanding position on the right.
Meantime, Johnson's division, on the left of the pike, and ex-
tending across the road to Germania Ford, was heavily engaged
in front, and Hays's brigade was sent to his left to participate
in a forward movement. It advanced, encountered a large
force, and, not meeting with the expected cooperation, was
drawn back. Subsequently, Pegram's brigade took position on
Hays's left, and just before night an attack was made on their
front, which was repulsed with severe loss to the enemy. Dur-
ing the afternoon there was hot skirmishing along the whole
line, and several attempts were made by the foe to regain the
position from which he had been driven. At the close of the
day, Ewell's corps had captured over a thousand prisoners, be-
sides inflicting on the enemy very severe losses in killed and
wounded. Two pieces of artillery had been abandoned and
were secured by our troops.

A. P. Hill, on the 4th, with Heth's and Wilcox's divisions
of his corps, moved eastwardly along the plank-road. They

518 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

bivouacked at night near Yerdiersville, and resumed their march
on the 5th with Heth in advance. About 1 p. m. musketry
firing was heard in front ; the sound indicated the presence
of a large body of infantry. Kirkland's brigade deployed
on both sides of the plank-road, and the column proceeded
to form in line of battle on its flanks. Hill's advance had
followed the plank - road, while E well's pursued the Stone
turnpike. These parallel movements were at this time from
three to four miles apart. The country intervening and round
about for several miles is known as the "Wilderness," and,
having very little open ground, consists almost wholly of a
forest of dense undergrowth of shrubs and small trees. In
order to open communication with Ewell, "Wilcox's division
moved to the left, and effected a junction with Gordon's bri-
gade on Ewell's extreme right. The line of battle thus com-
pleted extended from the right of the plank-road through a suc-
cession of open fields and dense forest to the left of the Stone
turnpike. It presented a line of six miles, and the thicket
that lay along the whole front of our army was so impenetrable
as to exclude the use of artillery save only at the roads. Heth's
skirmishers were driven in about 3 p. m. by a massive column
that advanced, firing rapidly. The struggle thus commenced in
Hill's front continued for two or three hours unabated. Heth's
ranks were greatly reduced, when Wilcox was ordered to his
support, but the bloody contest continued until night closed
over our force in the position it had originally taken. This
stubborn and heroic resistance was made by the divisions of
Heth and Wilcox, of Hill's corps, fifteen thousand strong,
against the repeated and desperate assaults of five divisions —
four divisions of Hancock's and one of Sedgwick's corps, num-
bering about forty-five thousand men. Our forces completely
foiled their adversaries, and inflicted upon them most seri-
ous loss.* During the day the Xinth Corps of the enemy
under General Burnside, had come on the field. The third
division of Hill's corps, under General Anderson, and the two
divisions of Longstreet's corps, did not reach the scene of con-
flict until dawn of day on the morning of the 6th. Simulta-

* " Four Years with General Lee."

1864] SOON HAVE MATTERS RECTIFIED. 519

neously the attack on Hill was renewed with great vigor. In
addition to the force he had so successfully resisted on the pre-
vious day, a fresh division of the enemy's Fifth Corps had
secured position on Hill's flank, and cooperated with the column
assaulting in front. After a severe contest, the left of Heth's
division and the right of Wilcox's were overpowered before
the advance of Longstreet's column reached the ground, and
were compelled to retire. The repulsed portions of the divi-
sions were in considerable disorder. General Lee now came
up, and, fully appreciating the impending crisis, dashed amid
the fugitives, calling on the men to rally and follow him.

"The soldiers, seeing General Lee's manifest purpose to ad-
vance with them, and realizing the great danger in which he then
was, begged him to go to the rear, promising that they would soon
have matters rectified. The General waved them on with some
words of cheer." *

The assault was checked.

Longstreet, having come up with two divisions, deployed
them in line of battle, and gallantly advanced to recover the
lost ground. The enemy was driven back over the ground he
had gained by his assault on Hill's line, but reformed in the
position previously held by him. About mid-day an attack on
his left flank and rear was ordered by Longstreet. For this
purpose three brigades were detached, and, moving forward,
were joined by General J. R. Davis's brigade, which had been
the extreme right of Hill's line. Making a sufficient detour to
avoid observation, and, rushing precipitately to attack the foe
in flank and reverse while he was preparing to resist the move-
ment in his front, he was taken completely by surprise. The
assault resulted in his utter rout, with heavy loss on that part
of his line.

Preparations were now made to follow up the advantages
gained by a forward movement of the whole line under General
Longstreet's personal direction. When advancing at the head
of Jenkins's brigade, with that officer and others, a body of
Confederates in the wood on the roadside, supposing the col-

* "Four Years with General Lee."

520 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

limn to be a hostile force, fired into it, killing General Jenkins,
distinguished alike for civil and military virtues, and severely
wounding General Longstreet. The valuable services of Gen-
eral Longstreet were thus lost to the army at a critical moment,
and this caused the suspension of a movement which promised
the most important results ; and time was thus afforded to the
enemy to rally, reenforce, and find shelter behind his intrench-
ments. Under these circumstances the commanding General
deemed it unadvisable to attack.

On the morning of the 6th the contest was renewed on the
left, and a very heavy attack was made on the front, occupied
by Pegram's brigade, but it was handsomely repulsed, as were
several subsequent attacks at the same point. In the afternoon
an attack was made on the enemy's right flank, resting in the
woods, when Gordon's brigade, with Johnson's in the rear and
followed by Pegram's, succeeded in throwing it into great con-
fusion, doubling it up and forcing it back some distance, cap-
turing two brigadier-generals and several hundred prisoners.
Darkness closed the contest. On the 7th an advance was made
which disclosed the fact that Grant had given up his line of
works on his right. During the day there was some skirmish-
ing, but no serious fighting. The result of these battles was
the infliction of severe loss upon the foe, the gain of ground,
and the capture of prisoners, artillery, and other trophies. The
cost to us, however, was so serious as to enforce, by additional
considerations, the policy of Lee to spare his men as much as
was possible.

A rapid flank movement was next made by Grant to secure
possession of Spottsylvania Court-House. General Lee compre-
hended his purpose, and on the night of the Tth a division of
Longstreet's corps was sent as the advance to that point. Stuart,
then in observation on the flank, and ever ready to work or to
fight as the one or the other should best serve the cause of his
country, dismounted his troopers, and, by felling trees, ob-
structed the roads so as materially to delay the march of the
enemy. The head of the opposing forces arrived almost at the
same moment on the 8th ; theirs, being a little in advance,
drove back our cavalry, but in turn was quickly driven from

1864] DO ITS DUTY MORE NOBLY. 521

the strategic point by the arrival of our infantry. On the 9th
the two armies, each forming on its advance as a nucleus, swung
round and confronted each other in line of battle.

The 10th and 11th passed in comparative quiet. On the
morning of the 12th the enemy made a very heavy attack on
Ewell's front, and broke the line where it was occupied by
Johnson's division. At this time and place the scene occurred
of which Mississippians are justly proud. Colonel Yenable, of
General Lee's staff, states that, on the receipt of one of the mes-
sages from General Rodes for more troops, he was sent by Gen-
eral Lee to bring Harris's Mississippi brigade from the extreme
right ; that General Lee met the brigade and rode at its head
until under fire, when a round shot passed so near to him that
the soldiers invoked him to go back ; and when he said, " If
you will promise me to drive those people from our works, I
will go back," the brigade shouted the promise, and Colonel
Yenable says :

" As the column of Mississippians came up at a double quick
an aide-de-camp came up to General Rodes with a message from,
Ramseur that he could hold out only a few minutes longer unless
assistance was at hand. Your brigade was thrown instantly into
the fight, the column being formed into line under a tremendous
fire and on very difficult ground. Never did a brigade go into
fiercer battle under greater trials ; never did a brigade do its duty
more nobly." *

A portion of the attacking force swept along Johnson's
line to Wilcox's left, and was checked by a prompt movement
on that flank. Several brigades sent to Ewell's assistance were
carried into action under his orders, and they all suffered se-
verely. Subsequently, on the same day, some brigades were
thrown to the front, for the purpose of moving to the left and
attacking the flank of the column which broke Ewell's line, to
relieve the pressure on him, and recover the part of the line
which had been lost. These, as they moved, soon encountered
the Ninth Corps, under Burnside, advancing to the attack.

* Letter from Colonel C. S Yenable, " Southern Historical Society Papers," vol.
viii, p. 106, March, 1880.

522 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

They captured over three hundred prisoners and three battle-
flags, and their attack on the enemy's flank, taking him by
surprise, contributed materially to his repulse.

Taylor, in his "Four Years with General Lee," says that
Lee, having detected the weakness of " the salient " occupied by
the division of General Edward Johnson, of E well's corps, di-
rected a second line to be constructed across its base, to which
he proposed to move the troops occupying the angle. Suspect-
ing another flank movement by Grant, before these arrange-
ments were quite completed, he ordered most of the artillery at
this portion of the lines to be withdrawn so as to be available.
Toward dawn on the 12th, Johnson, discovering indications of
an impending assault, ordered the immediate return of the ar-
tillery, and made other preparations for defense. But the un-
fortunate withdrawal was so partially and tardily restored, that
a spirited assault at daybreak overran that portion of the lines
before the artillery was put in position, and captured most of
the division, including its brave commander.

The above mentioned attacking column advanced, under
cover of a pine-thicket, to within a very short distance of a
salient defended by Walker's brigade. A heavy fire of mus-
ketry and artillery, from a considerable number of guns on
Heth's line, opened with tremendous effect upon the column,
and it was driven back with severe loss, leaving its dead in
front of our works.*

Several days of comparative quiet ensued. During this time
the army of General Grant was heavily reenforced from "Wash-
ington.

" In numerical strength his army so much exceeded that under
General Lee that, after covering the entire Confederate front
with double lines of battle, he had in reserve a large force with
which to extend his flank and compel a corresponding movement
on the part of his adversary, in order to keep between him and
his coveted prize — the capital of the Confederacy." f

On the 18th another assault was made upon our lines, but
it produced no impression. On the 20th of May, after twelve

* "Memoir of the Last Year," etc., by-General Early,
f "Four Years with General Lee."

1864] HIS MOVEMENT WAS A BLUNDER. 523

days of skirmish and battle at Spottsylvania against a superior
force, General Lee's information led him to believe that the
enemy was about to attempt another flanking movement, and
interpose his army between the Confederate capital and its de-
fenders. To defeat this purpose Longstreet was ordered to
move at midnight in the direction of Hanover Junction, and on
the following day and night E well's and Hill's corps marched
for the same point.

The Confederate commander, divining that Grant's objective
point was the intersection of the two railroads leading to Rich-
mond at a point two miles south of the North Anna River,
crossed his army over that stream and took up a line of battle
which frustrated the movement.

Grant began his flanking movement on the night of the
20'th, marching in two columns, the right, under General War-
ren, crossing the North Anna at Jericho Ford without opposi-
tion. On the 23d the left, under General Hancock, crossing
four miles lower down, at the Chesterfield or County Bridge,
was obstinately resisted by a small force, and the passage of the
river was not made until the 24th, After crossing the North
Anna, Grant discovered that his movement was a blunder, and
that his army was in a position of much peril.

The Confederate commander established his line of battle
on the south side of the river, both wings refused so as to form
an obtuse angle, with the apex resting on the river between
the two points of the enemy's crossing, Longstreet's and Hill's
corps forming the two sides, and Little River and the Hanover
marshes the base. Ewell's corps held the apex or center.

The hazard of Grant's position appears not to have been
known to him until he attempted to unite his two columns,
which were four miles apart, by establishing a connecting line
along the river. Foiled in the attempt, he discovered that the
Confederate army was interposed between his two wings, which
were also separated by the North Anna, and that the one could
^ive no support to the other except by a double crossing of the
river. That the Confederate commander did not seize the op-
portunity to strike his embarrassed foe and avail himself of the
advantage which his superior generalship had gained, may have

524: RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

been that, concluding from past observation of Grant's tactics,
he felt assured that the " continuous hammering " process was
to be repeated without reference to circumstances or position.
If Lee acted on this supposition, he was mistaken, as the Federal
commander, profiting by the severe lessons of Spottsylvania
and the Wilderness, with cautious, noiseless movement, with-
drew under cover of the night of the 26th to the north side of
the North Anna, and moved eastward down to the Pamunkey
River.

At Hanover Junction General Lee was joined by Pickett's
division of Longstreet's corps, which had been on detached
service in North Carolina, and by a small force under Gen-
eral Breckinridge from southwestern Virginia, twenty-two hun-
dred strong. Hoke's brigade, of Early's division, twelve hun-
dred strong, which had been on detached duty at the Junction,
here also rejoined its division. On the 29th the whole of
Grant's army was across the Pamunkey, while General Lee's
army on the next day was in line of battle with his left at
Atlee's Station. By another movement eastward the two ar-
mies were brought face to face at Cold Harbor on June 3d.
Here fruitless efforts were made by General Grant to pierce
or drive back the forces of General Lee. Our troops were
protected by temporary earthworks, and while under cover of
these were assailed by the enemy :

" But in vain. The assault was repulsed along the whole line,
and the carnage on the Federal side was fearful. I * well recall
having received a report, after the assault, from General Hoke —
whose division reached the army just previous to this battle — to
the effect that the ground in his entire front, over which the
enemy had charged, was literally covered with their dead and
wounded ; and that up to that time he had not had a single man
killed. No wonder that, when the command was given to renew
the assault, the Federal soldiers sullenly and silently declined.
1 The order f was issued through the officers to their subordinate
commanders, and from them descended through the wonted chan-
nels ; but no man stirred, and the immobile lines pronounced a

* Taylor, " Four years with General Lee."
f Swinton, " Army of the Potomac," p. 487.

1864] PRESENTED AN IMPREGNABLE FRONT. 525

verdict, silent yet emphatic, against further slaughter. The loss
on the Union side in this sanguinary action was over thirteen
thousand, while on the part of the Confederates it is doubtful
whether it reached that many hundreds.' After some disingenu-
ous proposals, General Grant finally asked a truce to enable him
to bury his dead. Soon after this he abandoned his chosen line of
operations, and moved his army so as to secure a crossing to the
south side of James River. The struggle from the Wilderness to
this point covered a period of over one month, during which time
there had been an almost daily encounter of arms, and the Army
of Northern Virginia had placed hors de combat, of the army
under General Grant, a number exceeding the entire numerical
strength, at the commencement of the campaign, of Lee's army,
which, notwithstanding its own heavy losses and the reinforce-
ments received by the enemy, still presented an impregnable front
to its opponent."

By the report of the United States Secretary of "War (Stan-
ton), Grant had, on the 1st of May, 1864, two days before he
crossed the Rapidan, 120,380 men, and in the Ninth Army
Corps 20,780, or an aggregate with which he marched against
Lee of 141,160. To meet this vast force, Lee had on the Rapi-
dan less than 50,000 men. By the same authority it appears
that Grant had a reserve upon which he could draw of 137,672.
Lee had practically no reserve, for he was compelled to make
detachments from his army for the protection of West Virginia
and other points, about equal to all the reinforcements which
he received. In the " Southern Historical Papers," vol. vi, page
144, upon the very reliable authority of the editor, there appears
the following statement :

" Grant says he lost, in the campaign from the Wilderness to
Cold Harbor, 39,000 men ; but Swinton puts his loss at over 60,000,
and a careful examination of the figures will show that his real
loss was nearer 100,000. In other words, he lost about twice as
many men as Lee had, in order to take a position which he could
have taken at first without firing a gun or losing a man."

On June 12th the movement was commenced by Grant
for crossing the James River. Pontoon-bridges were laid near

526 RISE AND FALL OF THE COXFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

Wilcox's Wharf for the passage of his army. J. C. Pemberton,
who, after the fall of Vicksburg, was left without a command
corresponding to his rank of lieutenant-general in the provi-
sional army, in order that he might not stand idle, nobly re-
signed that commission, and asked to be assigned to duty ac-
cording to his rank in the regular army, which was that of
lieutenant-colonel. He was accordingly directed to report to
General Lee for service with the Army of Northern Virginia.
Being a skillful artillerist, he was directed to find a position
where he could place a mortar so as to throw shells on the
enemy's bridge when it should be put into use. By a daring
reconnaissance and exact calculation, he determined a point from
which the desired effect might be produced by vertical fire,
over a wood. At the proper moment he opened upon the
bridge, and his expectations were verified by the shells falling
on the troops harassingly. This, his first service with the
Army of Northern Yirginia, was interrupted by the failure
to send promptly a covering force to protect the mortar, the
position of which was disclosed by its fire. The injury it
inflicted caused the Federal commander to send a detach-
ment which drove away the gunners and captured the
mortar.

On the 14th and 15th of June the crossing of Grant's army
was completed. It will be remembered that he had crossed
the Rapidan on the 3d of May. It had therefore taken him
more than a month to reach the south side of the James. In
his campaign he had sacrificed a hecatomb of men, a vast amount
of artillery, small-arms, munitions of war, and supplies, to reach
a position to which McClellan had already demonstrated there
was an easy and inexpensive route. It is true that the Confed-
erate army had suffered severely, and, though the loss was com-
paratively small to that of its opponents, it could not be repaired,
as his might be, from the larger population and his facility for
recruiting in Europe. To those who can approve the policy of
attrition without reference to the number of lives it might cost,
this may seem justifiable, but it can hardly be regarded as gen-
eralship, or be offered to military students as an example worthy
of imitation. After an unsuccessful attempt, by a surprise, to

1864] VOLUNTARILY JOINED HIM. 527

capture Petersburg, General Grant concentrated his army south
of the Appomattox River and commenced the operations to be
related hereafter.

CHAPTER XLVII.

Situation in the Shenandoah Valley. — March of General Early. — The Object. — At
Lynchburg. — Staunton. — His Force. — Enters Maryland. — Attack at Monocacy. —
Approach to "Washington. — The "Works. — Recrosses the Potomac. — Battle at
Kernstown. — Captures. — Outrages of the Enemy. — Statement of General Early.
— Retaliation on Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. — Battle near "Winchester. —
Sheridan's Force routed. — Attack subsequently renewed with New Forces. —
Incapacity of our Opponent. — Early falls back. — The Enemy retires. — Early ad-
vances.— Report of a Committee of Citizens on Losses by Sheridan's Orders. —
Battle at Cedar Creek. — Losses, Subsequent Movements, and Captures. — The
Red River Campaign. — Repulse and Retreat of General Banks. — Capture of Fort
Pillow.

Before the opening of the campaign of 1864, the lower
Shenandoah Valley was held by a force under General Sigel,
with which General Grant decided to renew the attempt which
had been made by Crook and Averill to destroy the Yirginia
and Tennessee Railroad west of Lynchburg as a means to his
general purpose of isolating Richmond ; and a prompt move-
ment of General Morgan had defeated those attempts and driven
off the invaders. Sigel, with about fifteen thousand men, com-
menced his movement up the Valley of the Shenandoah. Ma-
jor-General Breckinridge, commanding in southwestern Vir-
ginia, was notified, on the 4th of May, of the movement of
Sigel, and started immediately with two brigades of infantry to
Staunton, at which place he arrived on the 9th. The reserves
of Augusta County, under Colonel Harmon, were called out,
numbering several hundred men, and the cadets of the Military
Institute at Lexington, numbering two hundred, voluntarily
joined him. With this force Breckinridge decided to march
to meet Sigel. General Imboden, with a cavalry force of sev-
eral hundred, had been holding, as best he might, the upper
Valley, and joined Breckinridge in the neighborhood of New
Market, informing him that Sigel then occupied that place.

528 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

Breckinridge having marched so rapidly from Staunton
that it was probable that his advance was unknown to the
enemy, he determined to make an immediate attack. * His
troops were put in motion at one o'clock, and by daylight was
in line of battle two miles south of New Market. Sigel seems
to have been unconscious of any other obstruction to the cap-
ture of Staunton than the small cavalry force under Imboden.
At this time Lee was engaged with the vastly superior force of
Grant, which had crossed the Rapidan, and SigePs was a move-
ment to get upon our nank, and thus cooperate with Grant in
his attempt to capture Richmond. Breckinridge had an in-
fantry force not much exceeding three thousand. The hazard
of an attack was great, but the necessity of the case justified it.
Breckinridge's force was only enough to form one line of bat-
tle in two ranks, the cadets holding the center between the two
brigades. There were no reserves, and Colonel Harmon's com-
mand formed the guard for the trains. Skirmish lines were
promptly engaged, and soon thereafter the enemy fell back be-
yond ~New Market, where Sigel, assuming the defensive, took a
strong position, in which to wait for an attack. Our artillery
was moved forward, and opened with effect upon the enemy's
position ; then our infantry advanced, " with the steadiness of
troops on dress parade, the precision of the cadets serving well
as a color-guide for the brigades on either side to dress by. . . .
The Federal line had the advantage of a stone wall which served
as a breastwork." * Sigel's cavalry attempted to turn our right
flank, but was repulsed disastrously, and in a few moments the
enemy was in full retreat, crossing the Shenandoah and burning
the bridge behind him.

Breckinridge captured five pieces of artillery and over five
hundred prisoners, exclusive of the wounded left on the field.
Our loss was several hundred killed and wounded. General
Lee, after receiving notice of this, ordered Breckinridge to
transfer his command as rapidly as possible to Hanover Junc-
tion. The battle was fought on the 15th, and the command
reached Hanover Junction on the 20th of May.

* I. Stoddard Johnston, "Southern Historical Society Papers," June, 1879, p.
258, et seq.

1864] WITH THE STEADINESS OF VETERANS. 529

Before General Breckinridge left the Valley, he issued an
order thanking his troops, " particularly the cadets, who, though
mere youths, had fought with the steadiness of veterans."

Brigadier-General W. E. Jones had, with a small cavalry
force, come from southwestern Virginia to the Valley after
Breckinridge's departure, and this, with the command of Im-
boden, only sufficient for observation, was all that remained in
the Valley when the Federal General David Hunter, with a
larger force than Sigel's, succeeded the latter. Jones, with his
cavalry and a few infantry, encountered this force at Piedmont,
was defeated and killed. Upon the receipt of this information,
Breckinridge with his command was sent back to the Valley.

On June 13th Major-General Early, with the Second Corps
of Lee's army, numbering a little over eight thousand mus-
kets and two battalions of artillery, commenced a march to
strike Hunter's force in the rear, and, if possible, destroy it ;
then to move down the Valley, cross the Potomac, and threaten
Washington. On the 17th he reached Lynchburg, and Hunter
arrived at the same time. Preparations were made for the
attack of Hunter on the 19th, when he began to retreat, and
was pursued with much loss, until he was disposed of by
taking the route to the Kanawha River. On the 27th Early's
force reached Staunton on its march down the Valley. It
now amounted to ten thousand infantry and about two thou-
jsand cavalry, having been joined by Breckinridge, and Colo-
jnel Bradley T. Johnson, with a battalion of Maryland cavalry.
IThe advance was rapid. Railroad bridges were burned, the
[track destroyed, and stores captured. Th'e Potomac was crossed
on the 5th and 6th of June, and the move was made through
^the gaps of South Mountain to the north of Maryland Heights,
which were occupied by a hostile force. A brigade of cavalry
was sent north of Frederick to strike the railroads from Balti-
more to Harrisburg and Philadelphia, burn the bridges over
the Gunpowder, and to cut the railroad between "Washington
and Baltimore, and threaten the latter place. The other troops
moved forward toward Monocacy Junction, where a consider-
able body of Federal troops under General Wallace was found
posted on the eastern bank of the Monocacy, with an earth-
81

530 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

work and two block-houses commanding both bridges. The
position was attacked in front and on the flank, and it was
carried and the garrison put to flight. Between six and seven
hundred unwounded prisoners fell into our hands, and the ene-
my's loss in killed and wounded was far greater than ours, which
was about seven hundred.

An advance was made on the 10th nearly to Rockville, on
the Georgetown Pike. On the next day it was continued to
Washington, with the hope of getting into the fortifications
before they could be manned. But the heat and the dust im-
peded the progress greatly. Fort Stevens was approached soon
after noon, and appeared to be lightly manned, but, before our
force could get into the works, a column of the enemy from
Washington filed into them on the right and left, skirmishers
were thrown out in front, and an artillery-fire was opened on us !
from a number of batteries. An examination was now made to
determine if it were practicable to carry the defenses by assault.
" They were found to be exceedingly strong, and consisted of
what appeared to be inclosed forts for heavy artillery, with a
tier of lower works in front of each, pierced for an immense
number of guns, the whole being connected by curtains with
ditches in front, and strengthened by palisades and abatis. The
timber had been felled within cannon-range all around and left
on the ground, making a formidable obstacle, and every possible
approach was raked by artillery." As far as the eye could reach,
the works appeared to be of the same impregnable character.
The exhaustion of our force, the lightness of its artillery, and
the information that two corps of the enemy's forces had just
arrived in Washington, in addition to the veteran reserves and
hundred-days-men, and the parapets lined with troops, led us to
refrain from making an assault, and to retire during the night of
the 12th. On the morning of the 14th General Early recrossed
the Potomac, bringing off the prisoners captured at Monocacy
and everything else in safety, including a large number of beef-
cattle and horses. There was some skirmishing in the rear
between our cavalry and that which was following us, and on
the afternoon of the 14th there was artillery-firing across the
river at our cavalry watching the fords.

1864] HIS FAVORITE MODE OF WARFARE. 531

Meantime General Hunter had arrived at Harper's Ferry
and united with Sigel, and some skirmishing took place ; but
General Early determined to concentrate near Strasburg, so as
to enable him to put the trains in safety, and mobilize his com-
mand to make an attack. On the 22d he moved across Cedar
Creek toward Strasburg, and so posted his force as to cover all
the roads from the direction of Winchester. Learning on the
next day that a large portion of the column sent after him from
Washington was returning, and that the Army of West Yirginia,
under Crook, including Hunter's and Sigel's forces, with Av-
erill's cavalry, was at Kernstown, he determined to attack at
once.

After the enemy's skirmishers had been driven in, it was
: discovered that his left flank was exposed, and General Breckin-
i ridge was ordered to move Echols's division under cover of some
ravines on our right and attack that flank. The attacking
! division struck the enemy's left flank in open ground, dou-
bling it up and throwing his whole line into great confusion.
' The other divisions then advanced, and his rout became com-
plete. He was pursued by the infantry and artillery beyond
Winchester. Our loss was very light ; his loss in killed and
wounded was severe. The whole defeated force crossed the
Potomac, and took refuge at Maryland Heights and Harper's
Ferry. The road was strewed with debris of the rapid retreat
: — twelve caissons and seventy-two wagons having been aban-
doned, and most of them burned.

On the 26th the Confederate force moved to Martinsburg :

" While at Martinsburg," says General Early in his memoir,
l" it was ascertained beyond all doubt that Hunter had been again
, indulging in his favorite mode of warfare, and that, after his re-
turn to the Valley, while we were near Washington, among other
outrages, the private residences of Mr. Andrew Hunter, a member
of the Yirginia Senate, Mr. Alexander R. Boteler, an ex-member
of the Confederate Congress, as well as of the United States Con-
gress, and Edmund I. Lee, a distant relative of General Lee, all
in Jefferson County, with their contents, had been burned by his
orders, only time enough being given for the ladies to get oufof
the houses. A number of towns in the South, as well as private

532 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

country-houses, had been burned by Federal troops, and the ac-
counts had been heralded forth in some of the Northern papers
in terms of exultation, and gloated over by their readers, while
they were received with apathy by others. I now came to the
conclusion that we had stood this mode of warfare long enough,
and that it was time to open the eyes of the people of the North
to its enormity by an example in the way of retaliation. I did
not select the cases mentioned as having more merit or greater
claims for retaliation than others, but because they bad occurred
within the limits of the country covered by my command, and
were brought more immediately to my attention.*

" The town of Chambersburg was selected as the one on which
retaliation should be made, and McCausland was ordered to pro-
ceed with his brigade and that of Johnson's and a battery of artil-
lery to that place, and demand of the municipal authorities the
sum of one hundred thousand dollars in gold, or five hundred
thousand dollars in United States currency, as a compensation
for the destruction of the houses named and their contents ; and
in default of payment to lay the town in ashes, in retaliation
for the burning of those houses and others in Virginia, as well
as for the towns which had been burned in other Southern States.
A written demand to that effect was also sent to the municipal
authorities, and they were informed what would be the result
of a failure or a refusal to comply with it. I desired to give
the people of Chambersburg an opportunity of saving their
town, by making compensation for part of the injury done, and
hoped that the payment of such a sum would have the desired

* " I had often seen delicate ladies who had been plundered, insulted, and rendered
desolate by the acts of our most atrocious enemies, and, while they did not call for
it, yet in the anguished expressions of their features while narrating their misfor-
tunes, there was a mute appeal to every manly sentiment of my bosom for retribu-
tion, which I could no longer withstand. On my passage through the lower Valley
into Maryland, a lady had said to me, with tears in her eyes : ' Our lot is a hard one,
and we see no peace ; but there are a few green spots in our lives, and they are
when the Confederate soldiers come along and we can do something for them.'
May God defend and bless these noble women of the Valley, who so often minis-
tered to the wounded, sick, and dying Confederate soldiers, and gave their last mor-
sel of bread to the hungry ! They bore with heroic courage the privations, sufferings,
persecutions, and dangers to which the war, which was constantly waged in their
midst, exposed them, and upon no portion of the Southern people did the disasters,
which finally befell our army and country, fall with more crushing effect than on
them."

1864] THAT GREATLY OUTNUMBERED OURS. 533

effect, and open the eyes of people of other towns at the North
to the necessity of urging upon their Government the adoption of
a different policy.

" On July 30th McCausland reached Chambersburg, and made
the demand as directed, reading to such of the authorities as pre-
sented themselves the paper sent by me. The demand was not
complied with, the people stating that they were not afraid of
having their town burned, and that a Federal force was approach-
ing. The policy pursued by our army on former occasions had
been so lenient that they did not suppose the threat was in ear-
nest at this time, and they hoped for speedy relief. McCausland,
however, proceeded to carry out his orders, and the greater part
of the town was laid in ashes. He then moved in the direction of
Cumberland, but found it defended by a strong force. He then
withdrew and crossed the Potomac, near the mouth of the South
Branch, capturing the garrison and partly destroying the railroad-
bridge. Averill pursued from Chambersburg, and surprised and
routed Johnson's brigade, and caused a loss of four pieces of artil-
lery and about three hundred prisoners from the whole command."

Meantime a large force, consisting of the Sixth, Nineteenth,
and Crook's corps, of the Federal army, had concentrated at
Harper's Ferry under Major- General Sheridan. After various
manoeuvers, both armies occupied positions in the neighbor-
hood of Winchester. Early had about eight thousand five hun-
dred infantry fit for duty, nearly three thousand mounted men,
three battalions of artillery, and a few pieces of horse-artil-
lery. Sheridan's force, according to the best information, con-
sisted of ten thousand cavalry, thirty-five thousand infantry,
and artillery that greatly outnumbered ours both in men and
guns.

On the morning of September 19th, the enemy began to ad-
vance in heavy force on Ramseur's position, on an elevated
plateau between Abraham's Creek and Red Bud Run, about
a mile and a half from Winchester, on the Berry ville road.
Nelson's artillery was posted on Ramseur's line, covering the
approaches as far as practicable ; and Lomax, with Jackson's
cavalry and a part of Johnson's, was on the right, watching the
valley of Abraham's Creek and the Front Royal road beyond,

534- RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

while Fitzhugh Lee was on the left, across the Bed Bud, with
cavalry, watching the interval between Bamseur's left and the
Red Bud. These troops held the enemy's main force in check
until Gordon's and Bodes's divisions arrived, a little after 10
A. m. Gordon was placed under cover in rear of a piece of
woods, behind the interval between Bamseur's line and the
Bed Bud. Bodes was directed to form on Gordon's right, in
rear of another piece of woods. Meanwhile, we discovered
very heavy columns, that had been massed under cover between
the Bed Bud and the Berryville road, moving to attack Bam-
seur on his left flank, while another force pressed him in front.
Bodes and Gordon were immediately hurled upon the flank
of the advancing columns. But Evans's brigade, of Gordon's
division, on the extreme left of our infantry, was forced back
through the woods from behind which it had advanced by a
column, which followed to the rear of the woods and within
musket-range of seven pieces of Braxton's artillery. Brax-
ton's guns stood their ground and opened with canister. The
fire was so well directed that the column staggered, halted, and
commenced falling back. Just then Battle's brigade moved
forward and swept through the woods, driving the enemy be-
fore it, while Evans's brigade was rallied and cooperated. Our
advance was resumed, and the enemy's attacking columns, the
Sixth and Nineteenth Corps, were thrown into great confusion
and fled from the field. General Early exclaims, " It was a
grand sight to see this immense body hurled back in utter dis-
order before my two divisions, numbering very little over five
thousand muskets ! " This affair occurred about 11 a. m., and a
splendid victory had been gained. But the enemy still had a
fresh corps which had not been engaged, and there remained
his heavy force of cavalry. Our lines were now formed across
from Abraham's Creek to Bed Bud, and were very attenuated.
There was still seen in front a formidable force, and away to
the right a division of cavalry massed, with some artillery over-
lapping us at least a mile. Late in the afternoon, two divi-
sions of the enemy's cavalry drove in the small force that had
been watching it on the Martinsburg road, and Crook's corps,
which had not been engaged, advanced at the same time on

1864] THE INCAPACITY OF MY OPPONENT. 535

the north side of Red Bud and forced back our brigade of
infantry and cavalry. A considerable force of cavalry then
swept along the Martinsburg road to the skirts of Winchester,
thus getting in the rear of our left flank. This was soon driven
back by two of Wharton's brigades, and subsequently another
charge of cavalry was also repulsed. But many of the men in
the front line, hearing the fire in the rear, and thinking they
were flanked and about to be cut off, commenced to fall back.
At the same time Crook's corps advanced against our left, and
Evans's brigade was thrown into line to meet it, but, after an
obstinate resistance, that brigade also retired. The whole front
line had now given way, but was rallied and formed behind
some old breastworks, and with the aid of artillery the progress
of the enemy's infantry was arrested. Their cavalry afterward
succeeded in getting around on our left, producing great confu-
sion, for which there was no remedy. We now retired through
Winchester, a new line was formed, and the hostile advance
checked until nightfall. We then retired to Newton without
serious molestation. Our trains, stores, sick, and wounded that
could be removed had been sent to Fisher's Hill. This battle,
beginning with the skirmishing in Ramseur's front, had lasted
from daylight until dark, and, at the close of it, we had been
forced back two miles, after having repulsed the first attack
with great slaughter, and subsequently contested every inch of
ground with unsurpassed obstinacy. We deserved the victory,
and would have gained it but for the enemy's immense superi-
ority in cavalry. In his memoir General Early says :

" When I look back to this battle, I can but attribute my es-
cape from utter annihilation to the incapacity of my opponent."

Our loss was severe for the size of our force, but only a
fraction of that ascribed to us by the foe, while his was very
heavy, and some prisoners fell into our hands.

On the 22d, after two days spent in reconnoitering, the ene-
my prepared to make an attack upon our position at Fisher's
Hill ; but, as our force was not strong enough to resist a deter-
mined assault, orders were given to retire after dark. Before
sunset, however, an advance was made against Ramseur's left by

536 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

Crook's corps. The movement to put Pegram's brigades into
line successively to the left produced some confusion, when the
enemy advanced along his entire line, and, after a brief contest,
our force retired in disorder. We fell back to a place called
Xarrow Passage, all the trains being removed in safety. Some
skirmishing ensued as we withdrew up the Valley, but without
important result.

On October 1st our force was in position between Mount
Sidney and ^orth River, and the enemy's had been concen-
trated around Harrisonburg and on the north bank of the
river. On the 5th we were reenforced by General Rosser with
six hundred mounted men, and Kershaw's division, numbering
twenty-seven hundred muskets, with a battalion of artillery. On
the morning of the 6th it was discovered that the foe had re-
tired down the Yalley. General Early then moved forward
and arrived at New Market with his infantry on the 7th. Ros-
ser pushed forward on the back and middle roads in pursuit of
the cavalry, which was engaged in burning houses, mills, barns,
and stacks of wheat and hay, and had several skirmishes with it.

A committee, consisting of thirty-six citizens and the same
number of magistrates, appointed by the County Court of Rock-
ingham County, for the purpose of making an estimate of the
losses of that county by the execution of General Sheridan's
orders, made an investigation, and reported as follows :

"Dwelling-houses burned, 30 ; barns burned, 450 ; mills burned,
31 ; fences destroyed (miles), 100 ; bushels of wheat destroyed,
100,000 ; bushels of corn destroyed, 50,000 ; tons of hay destroyed,
6,233 ; cattle carried off, 1,750 ; horses carried off, 1,750 ; sheep
carried off, 4,200 ; hogs carried off, 3,350 ; factories burned, three ;
furnaces burned, one. In addition there was an immense amount
of farming utensils of every description destroyed, many of them of
great value, such as reapers and thrashing-machines ; also, house-
hold and kitchen furniture, and money, bonds, plate, etc., pillaged."

General Early, having learned that Sheridan was preparing
to send a part of his troops to Grant, moved down the Valley
again on the 12th, and reached Fisher's Hill. The enemy was
found on the north bank of Cedar Creek in strong force. He

1864] IX SIGHT OF EACH OTHER. 537

gave no indication of an intention to move, nor did he evince
any purpose of attacking us, though the two positions were in
sight of each other. At the same time it became necessary for
us to move back for want of provisions and forage, or to attack
him in his position writh the hope of driving him from it.
An attack was determined upon by General Early, and, as he
was not strong enough to assault the fortified position in front,
he resolved to get around one of the enemy's flanks and attack
him by surprise. His plan of attack is thus stated by him :

" I determined to send the three divisions of the Second Corps,
to wit, Gordon's, Ramseur's, and Pegram's, under General Gordon,
to the enemy's rear, to make the attack at 5 a. m., which would be a
little before daybreak on the 19th ; to move myself with Kershaw's
and Wharton's divisions and all the artillery along the pike through
Strasburg, and attack the enemy on the front and left flank as
soon as Gordon should become engaged, and for Rosser to move
with his own and Wickham's brigade on the back road across
Cedar Creek, and attack the enemy's cavalry simultaneously with
Gordon's attack, while Lomax should move by Front Royal, cross
the river, and come to the Valley pike, so as to strike the enemy
wherever he might be, of which he was to judge by the sound of
the firing."

Gordon moved at the appointed time. At 1 A. m. Kershaw
and "Wharton, accompanied by General Early, advanced. At
Strasburg, Kershaw moved to the right on the road to Bow-
man's Mill, and Wharton moved along the pike to Hupp's
Hill, with instructions not to display his forces, but to avoid
notice until the attack began, when he was to move forward,
support the artillery when it came up, and send a force to
get possession of the bridge on the pike over the creek. Ker-
shaw's division got in sight of the enemy at half -past three
o'clock. He was directed to cross his division at the proper
time over the creek as quietly as possible, and to form it into
column of brigades as he did so, and advance in that manner
against the left breastwork, extending to the right or left as
might be necessary. At half-past four he was ordered forward,
and, a very short time after he started, the firing from Rosser on

538 RISE AXD FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

our left and the picket-firing at the ford at which Gordon was
crossing were heard. Kershaw crossed the creek without mo-
lestation and formed his division as directed, and precisely at
five o'clock his leading brigade, with little opposition, swept
over the left work, capturing seven guns, which were at once
turned on the enemy. At the same time Wharton and the
artillery were just arriving at Hupp's Hill, and a very heavy
fire of musketry was heard in the rear from Gordon's column.
Wharton had advanced his skirmishers to the creek, captur-
ing some prisoners, but the foe still held the works on our
left of the pike, commanding that road and the bridge, and
opened with his artillery on us. Our artillery was at once
brought into action, and opened on the enemy, but he soon
evacuated his works, and our men from the other columns
rushed into them. Wharton was immediately ordered for-
ward. Kershaw's division had swept along the enemy's works
on the right of the pike, which were occupied by Crook's corps,
and he and Gordon had united at the pike, and their divisions
had pushed across it in pursuit. A delay of an hour at the
river had occurred in Gordon's movement, which enabled
Sheridan partially to form his lines after the alarm produced
by Kershaw's attack ; and Gordon's, which was after daylight,
was therefore met with greater obstinacy by the enemy than
it would otherwise have encountered, and the fighting had
been severe. Gordon, however, pushed his advance with such
energy, that the Nineteenth and Crook's corps were in complete
rout, and their camps, with a number of pieces of artillery and
a considerable quantity of small-arms, abandoned. The Sixth
Corps, which was on the right, and some distance from the
point attacked, had had time to get under arms and take posi-
tion so as to arrest our progress. A fog which had prevailed
soon rose sufficiently for us to see the Sixth Corps' position on a
ridge to the west of Middletown, and it was discovered to be a
strong one. The enemy had not advanced, but opened on us
with artillery, and orders were given to concentrate all our guns
on him. In the mean time a force of cavalry was moving along
the pike, through the fields to the right of Middletown, thus
placing our right and rear in great danger. Wharton was or-

1864] AN ATTACK WAS NOT MADE. 539

dered to form his division at once, and take position to hold
that cavalry in check. Discovering that the Sixth Corps could
not be attacked with advantage on its left flank, because the
approach in that direction was through an open flat and across
a boggy stream with high banks, Gordon in conjunction with
Kershaw was ordered to assail the right flank, while a heavy
fire of artillery was opened from our right. In a short time
eighteen or twenty guns were concentrated on the enemy,
and he was soon in retreat. Pamseur and Pegram advanced
at once to the position from which he was driven, and just
then his cavalry commenced pressing heavily on the right, and
Pegram's division was ordered to move to the north of Mid-
dletown and take position across the pike against the cavalry.
As soon as Pegram moved, Kershaw was ordered from the
left to supply his place. Posser had attacked the enemy
promptly at the appointed time, but had not been able to sur-
prise him, as he was found on the alert on that flank. There
was now one division of cavalry threatening our right flank, and
two were on the left near the Back road, held in check by Pos-
ser. His force was so weak he could only watch.

After he had been driven from his second position, the ene-
my had taken a new one about two miles north of Middletown.
An advance by Gordon and Kershaw and Pamseur was or-
dered, but, after it had been made for some distance, Gordon's
skirmishers came back, reporting a line of battle in front, be-
hind breastworks, and an attack was not made.

" It was now apparent that it would not do," says General
Early, " to press my troops farther. They had been up all night
and were much jaded. In passing over rough ground to attack
the enemy at dawn their own ranks had been much disordered and
the men scattered, and it had required time to reform them. Their
ranks were much thinned by the absence of the men engaged in
plundering the enemy's camps."

It was determined, therefore, to try to hold what had been
gained, and orders were given to carry off the captured and
abandoned artillery, small-arms, and wagons. A number of
bold attempts were made, during the subsequent part of the

540 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

day, by the enemy's cavalry, to break oar line on the right,
but they were invariably repulsed. Late in the afternoon,
his infantry advanced against Ramseur's, Kershaw's, and Gor-
don's lines, and the attack on Ramseur's and Kershaw's fronts
was handsomely repulsed ; but a portion of the assailants had
penetrated an interval which was between Evans's brigade
on the extreme left and the rest of the line, when that bri-
gade gave way, and Gordon's other brigades soon followed.
General Gordon made every possible effort to rally his men
and lead them back, but without avail. This affair was soon
known with exaggerations along Kershaw's and Ramseur's
lines, and their men, fearing to be flanked, began to fall back in
disorder, though no force was pressing them. At the same
time the enemy's cavalry, observing the disorder in our ranks,
made another charge on our right, but was again repulsed.
Every effort was made to rally the 'men, but the mass of them
continued to resist all appeals. Ramseur succeeded in retaining
with him two or three hundred men of his division, and about
the same number was retained by Major Goggin from Conner's
brigade ; these, aided by several pieces of artillery, held the
whole force on our left in check for one hour and a half until
Ramseur was shot down, and the ammunition of the artillery
was exhausted. While the latter was being replaced by other
guns, the force that had continued steady gave way also. Pe-
gram's and Wharton's divisions and Wofford's brigade had
remained steadfast on the right, and resisted every effort of
the cavalry, but no portion of this force could be moved to
the left without leaving the pike open to the cavalry, which
would have destroyed all hope at once. Every effort to rally
the men in the rear having failed, these troops were ordered to
retire. The disorder soon extended to them. The greater part
of the infantry was halted at Fisher's Hill, and Rosser, whose
command had retired in good order on the Back road, was
ordered to that point with his cavalry to cover the retreat, and
hold that position until the troops were beyond pursuit. He
fell back on the forenoon of the 20th, when the enemy had not
advanced to that place. The troops were halted at Newmarket,
seven miles from Mount Jackson. Our loss in the battle of

1864] PRECISELY THE SAME POSITION. 541

Cedar Creek was twenty-three pieces of artillery, some ord-
nance, and medical wagons and ambulances, about 1,860 killed
and wounded, and something over a thousand prisoners ; 1,500
prisoners were captured from the enemy and brought off, and
his loss in killed and wounded was very heavy. We had in
this battle about 8,500 muskets and a little over forty pieces of
artillery. Sheridan's cavalry numbered 8,700, and his infantry
force was fully as large as at Winchester.

Subsequently General Early confronted Sheridan's whole
force north of Cedar Creek for two days, November 11th and
12th, without an attack being made upon him. On November
27th the fortified post at New Creek on the Baltimore and Ohio
Railroad was surprised and captured by General Rosser. Two
regiments of Federal cavalry with their arms and colors were
taken, and eight pieces of artillery and a very large amount
of ordnance, quartermaster, and commissary stores fell into our
hands. Eight hundred prisoners, four pieces of artillery, and
some wagons and horses were brought off. When the campaign
closed, the invader held precisely the same position in the Val-
ley which he held before the opening of the campaign in the
spring.

In the Red River country of Louisiana, it became certain in
February, 1864, that the enemy was about to make an expedi-
tion against our forces under General Richard Taylor, not so
much to get possession of the country as to obtain the cotton
in that region. Their forces were to be commanded by Major-
General Banks, and to consist of his command, augmented by a
part of Major-General Sherman's army from Yicksburg, and ac-
companied by a fleet of gunboats under Admiral Porter. With
these the force under General Steele, in Arkansas, was to co-
operate. Taylor's forces at this time consisted of Harrison's
mounted regiment with a four-gun battery, in the north toward
Monroe ; Mouton's brigade, near Alexandria ; Polignac's, at
Trinity, on the Washita, fifty-five miles distant ; Walker's divi-
sion, at Marksville and toward Simmsport, with two hundred
men detached to assist the gunners at Fort De Russy, which,
though still unfinished, contained eight heavy guns and two
field-pieces. Three companies of mounted men were watch-

542 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

ing the Mississippi, and the remainder of a regiment was on the
Teche.

On March 12th Admiral Porter, with nineteen gunboats and
ten thousand men of Sherman's army, entered the Red River.
A detachment on the 14th marched to De Russy and took pos-
session of it. On the 15th the advance of Porter reached Alex-
andria, and on the 19th General Franklin left the lower Teche
with eighteen thousand men to meet him. General Steele, in
Arkansas, reported his force at seven thousand men. The force
of General Taylor at this time had increased to five thousand
and three hundred infantry, five hundred cavalry, and three
hundred artillerymen ; and Liddel on the north had about the
same number of cavalry and a four-gun battery. Some rein-
forcements were soon received. On March 31st Banks's ad-
vance reached Natchitoches, and Taylor moved toward Pleas
ant Hill, arriving on the next day. On April 4th and 5th, h(
moved to Mansfield, concentrating his force in that vicinity.
There two brigades of Missouri infantry and two of Arkansas,
numbering four thousand and four hundred muskets, joinec
him. On April 7th the enemy were reported from Pleasant
Hill to be advancing in force, but their progress was arrested by
a body of our cavalry.

General Taylor then selected his position in which to wait
for an attack expected on the next day. It was in the edge of
a wood, fronting an open field eight hundred yards in width
and twelve hundred in length, through the center of which the
road to Pleasant Hill passed. On the opposite side of the field
was a fence separating it from the pine-forest, which, open on
the higher ground and filled with underwood on the lower,
spread over the country. The position was three miles in front
of Mansfield, and covered a cross-road leading to the Sabine.
On each side of the main Mansfield-Pleasant Hill road at two
miles' distance, was a road parallel to it, and these were con-
nected by this Sabine cross-road.

On the 8th General Taylor disposed, on the right of the road
to Pleasant Hill, Walker's infantry division of three brigades
with two batteries ; on the left, Mouton's two brigades and two
batteries. As the horsemen came in from the front, they took

1864] SWEPT EVERYTHING BEFORE US. 543

position, dismounted, on Mouton's left. A regiment of horse-
men was posted on each of the parallel roads, and cavalry with
a battery held in reserve on the main road. Taylor's force
amounted to 5,300 infantry, 3,000 mounted men, and 500 artil-
lerymen ; total, 8,800. Banks left Grand Ecore with an esti-
mated force of 25,000.

As the enemy showed no disposition to advance, a forward
movement of the whole line was made. On the left our forces
crossed the field under a heavy fire and entered the wood, where
a bloody contest ensued, which resulted in gradually turning
their right, which was forced back with loss of prisoners and
guns. On the right little resistance was encountered until the
wood was entered. Finding that our force outflanked the op-
ponent's left, the right brigade was kept advanced, and we swept
everything before us.

His first line, consisting of all the mounted force and one
division of the Thirteenth Corps, was in full flight, leaving pris-
oners, guns, and wagons in our hands. Two miles to the rear
of the first position, the Second Division of the Federal Thir-
teenth Corps was brought up, but was speedily routed, losing
guns and prisoners. The advance was continued. Four miles
from the original position, his Nineteenth Army Corps was
found drawn up on a ridge overlooking a small stream. Sharp
work followed, but, as our force persisted, his fell back at night-
fall. Twenty-five hundred prisoners, twenty pieces of artil-
lery, several stands of colors, many thousands of small-arms, and
two hundred and fifty wagons, were taken.

On the next morning the enemy was found about a mile in
front of Pleasant Hill, which occupies a plateau a mile wide
from west to east along the Mansfield road. His lines extended
across the plateau from the highest ground on the west, his
left, to a wooded height on the right of the Mansfield road.
Winding along in front of this position was a dry gully cut
by winter rains, bordered by a thick growth of young pines.
This was held by his advanced infantry, his main line and guns
being on the plateau. The force of General Taylor — Church-
ill's brigade having joined him now — amounted to twelve thou-
sand five hundred men against eighteen thousand of General

544 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

Banks, among them the fresh corps of General A. J. Smith.
The action commenced about 4.30 p. M. It was the plan of
General Taylor, as no offensive movement on the part of the
enemy was anticipated, to turn both his flanks and subject him
to a concentric tire and overwhelm him. The right was suc-
cessfully turned, but our force on his left did not proceed far
enough to outflank him. An obstinate contest ensued, with
much confusion, and failure to execute the plan of battle. Kight
ended the conflict on our right, and both sides occupied their
original positions. General Banks made no attempt to recover
the ground from which his right and center had been driven.
During the night he retreated, leaving four hundred wounded,
and his dead unburied. On the next morning he was pursued
twenty miles before his rear was overtaken, and on the road
were found stragglers, and burning wagons and stores. Our loss
in the two actions of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill was twenty-
two hundred. At Pleasant Hill the loss was three guns and
four hundred and twenty-six prisoners. The loss of the enemy
in killed and wounded was larger than ours. We captured
twenty guns and twenty-eight hundred prisoners, not including
stragglers. Their campaign was defeated. In the second vol-
ume of the " Report of the Committee on the Conduct of the
"War," page 239, a report of Admiral Porter, dated Grand
Ecore, April 14, 1864, says :

" The army here has met with a great defeat, no matter what
the generals try to make of it," etc.

On April 21st General Banks retreated -from Grand Ecore
to Alexandria, harassed by a small cavalry force. A large part
of our forces had been taken by General E. K. Smith to follow
General Steele. On April 28th Porter's fleet was lying above
the falls, then impassable, and Banks's army was in and around
Alexandria behind earthworks. On May 13th both escaped
from Alexandria, and on May 19th Banks crossed the Atcha-
falaya, and the campaign closed at the place where it began.
Porter was able to extricate his eight ironclads and two wooden
gunboats by building a dam with transports, as shown in the
adjoining cut. General Banks boasted that the army obtained

1864] PICK OFF THE GARRISON. 545

ten thousand bales of cotton, to which Admiral Porter added
five thousand more as collected by the navy. This was the
compensation reported for the loss of many lives, much public
property, and a total defeat. Even for the booty as well as
for the escape of their fleet, they were probably indebted to the
unfortunate withdrawal of a large part of Taylor's force, as
mentioned above.*

On April 12, 1864, an attack -was made by two brigades of
General N. B. Forrest's force, under Brigadier-General J. R.
Chalmers, upon Fort Pillow. This was an earthwork on a bluff
on the east side of the Mississippi, at the mouth of Coal Creek.
It was garrisoned by four hundred men and six pieces of artil-
lery. General Chalmers promptly gained possession of the
outer works and drove the garrison to their main fortifications.
The fort was crescent-shaped, the parapet eight feet in height
and four feet across the top, surrounded by a ditch six feet
deep and twelve feet in width. About this time General For-
rest arrived and soon ordered his forces to move up. The bri-
gade of Bell, on the northeast, advanced until it gained a posi-
tion in which the men were sheltered by the conformation of
the ground, which was intersected by a ravine. The other bri-
gade, under McCulloch, carried the intrenchments on the high-
est part of the ridge, immediately in front of the southeastern
face of the fort, and occupied a cluster of cabins on its south-
ern face and about sixty yards from it. The line of investment
was now short and complete, within an average distance of one
hundred yards. It extended from Coal Creek on the north,
which was impassable, to the river-bank south of the fort. In
the rear were numerous sharpshooters, well posted on command-
ing ridges, to pick off the garrison whenever they exposed
:hemselves. At the same time, our forces were so placed that

he artillery could not be brought to bear upon them with much
3ffect except by a fatal exposure of the gunners. During all

his time a gunboat in the river kept up a continuous fire in all
directions, but without effect. General Forrest, confident of

lis ability to take the fort by assault, which it seemed must be

>erfectly apparent to the garrison, and desiring to prevent fur-

* "Destruction and Reconstruction," Taylor, p. 162, et seq.
82

546 KISE ^'D FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

ther loss of life, sent a demand for an unconditional surrender,
with the assurance that they should be treated as prisoners of
war. The answer was written with a pencil on a slip of pa-
per, " Negotiations will not attain the desired object." Mean-
time, three boats were seen to approach, the foremost of which
was apparently loaded with troops, and, as an hour's time had
been asked for to communicate with the officers of the gun-
boat, it seemed to be a pretext to gain time for reinforcements.
General Forrest, understanding also that the enemy doubted
his presence and had pronounced the demand to be a trick,
declared himself, and demanded an answer within twenty min-
utes whether the commander would fight or surrender. Mean-
while, the foremost boat indicated an intention to land, but a
few shots caused her to withdraw to the other side of the river,
along which they all passed up. The answer from the fort was
a positive refusal to surrender. Three companies on the left
were now placed in an old rifle-pit and almost in the rear of the
fort, and on the right a portion of Barton's regiment of Bell's
brigade was also under the bluff and in the rear of the fort.

On the signal, the works were carried without a halt. As
the troops poured into the fortification the enemy retreated to-
ward the river, arms in hand and firing back, and their colors
flying, doubtless expecting the gunboats to shell us away from
the bluff and protect them until they could be taken off or re-
enforced. As they descended the bank an enfilading and deadly
fire was poured in upon them from right and left by the forces
in rear of the fort, of whose presence they were ignorant. To
this was now added the destructive fire of the regiments that
had stormed the fort. Fortunately some of our men cut down
the flag, and the firing ceased. Our loss was twenty killed and
sixty wounded. Of the enemy two hundred and twenty-eight
were buried that evening and quite a number next day. We
captured six pieces of artillery and about three hundred and
fifty stand of small-arms. The gunboat escaped up the river.

1864] IN ALL THAT CONSTITUTES EFFICIENCY. 547

CHAPTEE XLVIII.

Assignment of General J. E. Johnston to the Command of the Army of Ten-
nessee.— Condition of his Army. — An Offensive Campaign suggested. — Pro-
posed Objects to be accomplished. — general Johnston's Plans. — Advance of
Sherman. — The Strength of the Confederate Position. — General Johnston ex-
pects General Sherman to give Battle at Dalton. — The Enemy's Flank Move-
ment via Snake-Creek Gap to Resaca. — Johnston falls back to Resaca. — Fur-
ther Retreat to Adairsville. — General Johnston's Reasons. — Retreat to €ass-
ville. — Projected Engagement at Kingston frustrated. — Retreat beyond the
Etowah River. — Strong Position at Alatoona abandoned. — Nature of the Coun-
try between Marietta and Dallas. — Engagements at New Hope Church. — Army
takes Position at Kenesaw. — Senator Hill's Letter. — Death of Lieutenant-Gen-
eral Polk. — Battle at Kenesaw Mountain. — Retreat beyond the Chattahoochee.
— Results reviewed. — Popular Demand for Removal of General Johnston. —
Reluctance to remove him. — Reasons for Removal. — Assignment of General
J. B. Hood to the Command. — He assumes the Offensive. — Battle of Peach-tree
Creek. — Death of General W. H. T. Walker. — Sherman's Movement to Jones-
boro. — Defeat of Hardee. — Evacuation of Atlanta. — Sherman's Inhuman Order.
— Visit to Georgia. — Suggested Operations. — "Want of Cooperation by the
Governor of Georgia. — Conference with Generals Beauregard, Hardee, and
Cobb, at Augusta. — Departure from Original Plan. — General Hood's Movement
against the Enemy's Communications. — Partial Successes. — Withdrawal of the
Army to Gadsden and Movement against Thomas. — Sherman burns Atlanta and
begins his March to the Sea. — Vandalism. — Direction of his Advance. — General
Wheeler's Opposition. — His Valuable Service. — Sherman reaches Savannah. —
General Hardee's Command. — The Defenses of the City. — Assault and Capture
of Fort McAlister. — The Results. — Hardee evacuates Savannah.

On December 16, 1863, I directed General J. E. Johnston
to transfer the command of the Department of Mississippi and
East Louisiana to Lieutenant-General Polk, and repair to Dal-
ton, Georgia, to assume command of the Army of Tennessee,
representing at that date an effective total of 43,094. My in-
formation led me to believe that the condition of that army, in all
that constitutes efficiency, was satisfactory, and that the men
were anxious for an opportunity to retrieve the loss of prestige
sustained in the disastrous battle of Missionary Ridge. I was
also informed that the enemy's forces, then occupying Chatta-
nooga, Bridgeport, and Stevenson, with a detached force at ELnox-

548 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

ville, were weaker in numbers than at any time since the battle
of Missionary Ridge, and that they were especially deficient in
cavalry and in artillery and train-horses. I desired, therefore,
that prompt and vigorous measures be taken to enable our troops
to commence active operations against the enemy as early as
practicable. It was important to guard against the injurious
results to the morale of the troops, which always attend a pro-
longed season of inactivity ; but the recovery of the territory in
Tennessee and Kentucky, which we had been compelled to
abandon, and on the supplies of which the proper subsistence
of our armies mainly depended, imperatively demanded an on-
ward movement. I believed that, by a rapid concentration of
our troops between the scattered forces of the enemy, without
attempting to capture his intrenched positions, we could compel
him to accept battle in the open field, and that, should we fail
to draw him out of his intrenchments, we could move upon his
line of communications. The Federal force at Knoxville de-
pended mainly for support on its connection with that at Chatta-
nooga, and both were wholly dependent on uninterrupted com-
munication with Nashville. Could we, then, by interposing
our force, separate these two bodies of the enemy, and cut off
his communication from Nashville to Chattanooga by destroying
the railroad, both conditions were fulfilled. Of $he practica-
bility of this movement I had little doubt ; of. its expediency,
if practicable, there could be none. I impressed repeatedly
upon General Johnston by letter, and by officers of my staff
and others, sent to him by me for the purpose of putting him
in possession of these views, the importance of a prompt aggres-
sive movement by the Army of Tennessee. The following
were among the considerations presented to General Johnston,
at my request, by Brigadier-General "W. N. Pendleton, chief
of artillery of the Army of Northern Virginia, on April 16,
1864:

1. To take the enemy at disadvantage while weakened, it is
believed, by sending troops to Yirginia, and having others still
absent on furlough.

2. To break up his plans by anticipating and frustrating
his combinations.

1864] CORDIALLY APPROVED OF. 549

3. So to press him in his present position as to prevent his
heavier massing in Virginia.

4. To defeat him in battle, and gain great consequent strength
in supplies, men, and productive territory.

5. To prevent the waste of the army incident to inac-
tivity.

6. To inspirit the troops and the country by success, and to
discourage the enemy.

7. To obviate the necessity of falling back, which might
probably occur if our antagonist be allowed to consummate his
plans without molestation.

General Johnston cordially approved of an aggressive move-
ment, and informed me of his purpose to make it as soon as re-
enforcements and supplies, then on the way, should reach him.
He did not approve the proposed advance into Tennessee. He
believed that the Federal forces in Tennessee were not weaker,
but if anything stronger, than at Missionary Ridge ; that defeat
beyond the Tennessee would probably prove ruinous to us, re-
sulting in the loss of his army, the occupation of Georgia by the
enemy, the " piercing of the Confederacy in its vitals," and the
loss of all the southwestern territory. He proposed, therefore,
to stand on the defensive until strengthened, a to watch, prepare,
and strike " as soon as possible. As soon as reenforced, he de-
clared his purpose to advance to Ringgold, attack there, and,
if successful, as he expected to be, to strike at Cleveland, cut
the railroad, control the river, and thus isolate East Tennessee,
and, as a consequence, force his antagonist to give battle on this
side of the Tennessee River. Simultaneously with, and in aid
of, this movement, General Johnston proposed that a large cav-
alry force should be sent to Middle Tennessee, in the rear of
the enemy. These operations, he thought, would result in
forcing the Federal army to evacuate the Tennessee Yalley,
and make an advance into the heart of the State safely prac-
ticable.

The irreparable loss of time in making any forward move-
ment as desired having sufficed for the combinations which
rendered an advance across the Tennessee River no longer prac-
ticable, I took prompt measures to enable General Johnston

550 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

to carry out immediately his own proposition to strike first
at Ringgold and then at Cleveland, proposing that General
Buckner should threaten Knoxville, General Forrest advance
into or threaten Middle Tennessee, and General Roddy hold the
enemy in northern Alabama, and thus prevent his concentra-
tion in our front. This movement, although it held out no such
promise as did the plan of advance before the enemy had had
time to make his combinations, might have been attended with
good results had it been promptly executed. Rut no such move-
ment was made or even attempted. General Johnston's belief
that General Grant would be ready to assume the offensive be-
fore he could be prepared to do so, proved too well founded,
while his purpose, if the Federal army did not attack, that we
should prepare and take the initiative ourselves, was never car-
ried out.*

On the morning of May 2, 1864, General Johnston discov-
ered that the enemy, under the command of General Sherman,
wras advancing against him, and two days subsequently it was
reported that he had reached Ringgold (about fifteen miles north
of Dalton) in considerable force.

At this date the official returns show that the effective
strength of the Army of Tennessee, counting the troops actu-
ally in position at Dalton and those in the immediate rear of
that place, was about fifty thousand. When to these is added
General Polk's command (then en route), and the advance of
which joined him at Resaca, the effective strength of General
Johnston's army was not less than 68,620 men of all arms, ex-
cluding from the estimate the thousands of men employed on
extra duty, amounting, as General Hood states, to ten thou-
sand when he assumed command of the army.

* It was during this time, i. e., in March and April, 1864, that Forrest made his
extraordinary expedition from north Mississippi across Tennessee to Paducah, Ken-
tucky, and continued his operations against depots of supplies, lines of communica-
tion, and troops moving to reenforce Sherman — having, on June 11th, a severe ac-
tion in Tishemingo with a force estimated at eight or nine thousand, supposed to be
on their way to join Sherman. The energy, strategy, and high purposes of Forrest,
during all this period, certainly entitle him to higher military rank than that of a
partisan, and enroll him in the list of great cavalry commanders. Some of his other
expeditions are elsewhere mentioned in these pages.

1864] -PLACED AT EIS DISPOSAL. 551

Army at Dalton, May 1, 1864, according to General John-
ston's estimates * 37,652 infantry.

2,812 artillery.
2,392 cavalry.

Mercer's brigade, joined May 2d 2,000 infantry.

Thirty-seventh Mississippi Regiment, en route 400 "

Dibrell's and Harrison's brigades in rear, recruiting their

horses 2,336 cavalry.

Martin's division at Cartersville 1,700 "

49,292
Polk's command 19,330

Total effective 68,620

To enable General Johnston to repulse the hostile advance
and assume the offensive, no effort was spared on the part of
the Government. Almost all the available military strength of
the south and west, in men and supplies, was pressed forward
and placed at his disposal. The supplies of the commissary,
quartermaster, and ordnance departments of his army were rep-
resented as ample and suitably located. The troops, encouraged
by the large accessions of strength which they saw arriving daily,
and which they knew were marching rapidly to their support,
were eager to advance, and confident in their power to achieve
victory and recover the territory which they had lost. Their
position was such as to warrant the confident expectation of suc-
cessful resistance at least. Long mountain-ranges, penetrated
by few and difficult roads and paths, and deep and wide rivers,
seemed to render our position one from which we could not be
dislodged or turned, while that of the enemy, dependent for
his supplies upon a single line of railroad from Nashville to the
point where he was operating, was manifestly perilous. The
whole country shared the hope which the Government enter-
tained, that a decisive victory would soon be won in the moun-
tains of Georgia, which would free the south and west from
invasion, would open to our occupation and the support of our
armies the productive territory of Tennessee and Kentucky,
and so recruit our army in the West as to render it impracti-
cable for the enemy to accumulate additional forces in Virginia.

* " Narrative," p. 302.

552 RISE AXD FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

On May 6th the Confederate forces were in position in and
near Dalton, which point General Johnston believed that Gen-
eral Sherman would attack with his whole force. This belief
seems to have been held by General Johnston until the evening
of May 12th, when, having previously learned the proximity of
the advance of Lieutenant-General Polk's command, and that
the rest of his troops were hurrying forward to reenforce him,
but discovering that the main body of Sherman's army was
moving round his left flank, via Snake-Creek Gap to Resaca,
under cover of Rocky-Face Mountain, he withdrew his troops
from Dalton and fell back on Resaca, situated on the Western
and Atlantic Railroad, eighteen miles south of Dalton on a
peninsula formed by the junction of the Oostenaula and Cona-
sauga Rivers. The Confederate position at this place was
strengthened by continuous rifle-pits and strong field-works, by
which it was protected on the flanks on the above-named rivers,
and a line of retreat across the Oostenaula secured. Informa-
tion, on May 15th, that the right of the Federal army was cross-
ing the Oostenaula near Calhoun (four miles south of Resaca),
thus threatening his line of communications, induced General
Johnston to fall back from Resaca toward Adairsville, thirteen
miles south on the railroad. General Johnston, in accounting
for his abandonment of his strong position at Dalton, and of his
subsequent position at Resaca, states that he was dislodged from
the first position — that in front of Dalton — by General Sher-
man's movement to his right through Snake-Creek Gap, threat-
ening our line of communication at Resaca ; and from the posi-
tion taken at Resaca to meet that movement, by a similar one
on the part of the Federal General toward Calhoun — the second
being covered by the river, as the first had been by the moun-
tains.

After abandoning Resaca, General Johnston hoped to find a
good position near Calhoun ; but, finding none, he fell back to a
position about a mile north of Adairsville, where the valley of the
Oothcaloga was supposed from the map to be so narrow that his
army, formed in line of battle across it, could hold the heights
on both flanks. On reaching this point, however, it was found
that the valley was so much broader than was supposed, that the

1864] THE BEST HE SAW DURING THE WAR. 553

army, in line of battle, could not obtain the anticipated advantage
of ground. Hence a further retreat to Cassville was ordered,
seventeen miles farther south, and a few miles to the east of the
railroad. Here, supposing that the Federal army would divide,
one column following the railroad through Kingston and the
other the direct road to the Etowah Railroad Bridge through
Cassville, General Johnston hoped that the opportunity would
be offered him to engage and defeat one of the enemy's columns
before it could receive aid from the other, and, as the distance
between them would be greatest at Kingston, he determined to
attack at this point. The coming battle was announced in or-
ders to each regiment of the army.

The battle, for causes which were the subject of dispute, did
not take place as General Johnston had originally announced,
and, instead of his attacking the divided columns of the enemy,
the united Federal army was preparing to attack him. Here
our army occupied a position which General Johnston describes
as " the best that he saw during the war," but owing, as he rep-
resents, to an expressed want of confidence on the part of Lieu-
tenant-Generals Hood and Polk in their ability to resist the
enemy, the army was again (May 19, 1864) ordered to retreat
beyond the Etowah.

General Hood, in his official report, and in a book written by
him since the war, takes a very different view of the position in
rear of Cassville, and states that he and General Polk explained
that their corps were on ground commanded and enfiladed by
the batteries of the enemy, therefore wholly unsuited for de-
fense, and, unless it was proposed to attack, that the position
should be abandoned. General Shoup, a scientific and gallant
soldier, confirms this opinion of the defects of the position, as
does Captain Morris, chief-engineer of the Army of Mississippi,
and others then on duty there.*

The next stand of our army was at Alatoona, in the Etowah

. Mountains, and south of the river of that name ; but the re-

, ported extension of the Federal army toward Dallas, threaten-

: ing Marietta, was deemed to necessitate the evacuation of that

strong position. The country between Dallas and Marietta,

* " Advance and Retreat," by J. B. Hood, pp. 98-116.

554 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

eighteen miles wide, and lying in a due westerly direction from
the latter place, constitutes a natural fortress of exceptional
strength. Densely wooded, traversed by ranges of steep hills,
seamed at intervals by ravines both deep and rugged, with very
few roads, and those ill constructed and almost impassable to
wheels, it is difficult to imagine a country better adapted for
defense, where the advantages of numerical superiority in an
invading army were more thoroughly neutralized, or where,
necessarily ignorant of the topography, it was compelled to
advance with greater caution.

The engagements at New Hope Church, June 27th and
28th, though severe and marked by many acts of gallantry, did
not result in any advantage to our army. Falling back slowly
as the enemy advanced to Acworth (June 8th), General John-
ston made his next stand in that mountainous country that lies
between Acworth and Marietta, remarkable for the three clearly
defined eminences : Kenesaw Mountain, to the west of the rail-
road, and overlooking Marietta ; Lost Mountain, half-way be-
tween Kenesaw and Dallas, and west of Marietta ; and Pine
Mountain, about half a mile farther to the north, forming, as it
were, the apex of a triaugle, of which Kenesaw and Lost Moun-
tains form the base. These heights are connected by ranges of
lower heights, intersected by numerous ravines, and thickly
wooded. The right of our army rested on the railroad, the line
extending four or five miles in a westerly direction, protected
by strong earthworks, with abatis on every avenue of approach.
While the enemy, feeling his way slowly, was skirmishing on
the right of our position, our army, our country, and mankind
at large, sustained an irreparable loss on June 13th in the
death of that noble Christian and soldier, Lieutenant-General
Polk. Having accompanied Generals Johnston and Hardee to
the Confederate outpost on Pine Mountain, in order to acquaint
himself more thoroughly with the nature of the ground in
front of the position held by his corps, he was killed by a
shot from a Federal battery six or seven hundred yards dis-
tant, which struck him in the chest, passing from left to right.
Since the calamitous fall of General Albert Sidney Johnston
at Shiloh and of General T. J. Jackson at Chancellorsville, the

1664] RETREAT FOLLOWED RETREAT. 555

country sustained no heavier blow than in the death of General
Polk.

On June 18th, heavy rains having swollen Nose's Creek on
the left of our position so that it became impassable, the Fed-
eral army, under cover of this stream, extended its lines several
miles beyond Johnston's left flank toward the Chattahoochee,
causing a further retrograde movement by a portion of his force.
For several days brisk fighting occurred at various points of our
line.

The cavalry attack on "Wheeler's force on the 20th, the at-
tack upon Hardee's position on the 24th, and the general assault
upon the Confederate position on the 27th were firmly met and
handsomely repulsed. On the 4th of July, it having been re-
ported by General G. W. Smith, in command of about a thou-
sand militia, and occupying the extreme left of our army, that
the enemy's " cavalry was pressing him in such force that he
would be compelled to abandon the ground he had been hold-
ing and retire before morning to General Shoup's line of re-
doubts," * constructed on the high ground near the Chattahoochee
and covering the approaches to the railroad-bridge and Turner's
Ferry, General Johnston deemed it necessary to abandon his
position at Kenesaw on July 5th and fall back to the line con-
structed by General Shoup, as the enemy's position covered one
of the main roads to Atlanta, and was nearer to that city than
• the main body of General Johnston's force. On the 9th, Sher-
: man having crossed the Chattahoochee with two corps on the
■ day previous, the Confederate army crossed that river and estab-
lished itself two miles in its rear.

Thus, from Dalton to Kesaca, from Resaca to Adairsville,
from Adairsville to Alatoona (involving by the evacuation of
; Kingston the loss of Rome, with its valuable mills, foundries,
:and large quantities of military stores), from Alatoona to Kene-
saw, from Kenesaw to the Chattahoochee, and then to Atlanta ;
retreat followed retreat, during seventy-four days of anxious
hope and bitter disappointment, until at last the Army of Ten-
nessee fell back within the fortifications of Atlanta. The Federal
army soon occupied the arc of a circle extending from the rail-

* Johnston's "Narrative," p. 346.

556 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

road between Atlanta and the Chattahoochee River to some miles
south of the Georgia Railroad (from Atlanta to Augusta) in a
direction north and northeast of Atlanta. We had suffered a
disastrous loss of territory.

Whether the superior numerical strength of the enemy, by
enabling him to extend his force beyond the flank of ours, did
thereby necessitate the abandonment of every position taken by
our army, and whether the enemy, declining to assault any of
our intrenched camps, would have ventured to leave it in rear,
upon his only line of communication and supply, or whether
we might have obtained more advantageous results by a vigor-
ous and determined effort to attack him in detail during some
of his many flank movements — are questions upon which there
has been a decided conflict of opinion, and upon which it would
be for me now neither useful nor pleasant to enter. When it be-
came known that the Army of Tennessee had been successively
driven from one strong position to another, until finally it had
reached the earthworks constructed for the exterior defense of
Atlanta, the popular disappointment was extreme. The possible
fall of the " Gate City," with its important railroad communica-
tion, vast stores, factories for the manufacture of all sorts of
military supplies, rolling-mill and foundries, was now contem-
plated for the first time at its full value, and produced intense
anxiety far and wide. From many quarters, including such as
had most urged his assignment, came delegations, petitions, and
letters, urging me to remove General Johnston from the com-
mand of the army, and assign that important trust to some
officer who would resolutely hold and defend Atlanta. While
sharing in the keen sense of disappointment at the failure of the
campaign wThich pervaded the whole country, I was perhaps
more apprehensive than others of the disasters likely to result
from it, because I was in a position to estimate more accurately
their probable extent. On the railroads threatened with de-
struction, the armies then fighting the main battles of the war
in Virginia had for some time to a great degree depended for
indispensable supplies, yet I did not respond to the wishes of
those who came in hottest haste for the removal of General
Johnston ; for here again, more fully than many others, I realized

1864] DANGER OF CHANGING COMMANDERS. 557

how serious it was to change commanders in the presence of the
enemy. This clamor for his removal commenced immediately
after it became known that the army had fallen back from Dal-
ton, and it gathered volume with each remove toward Atlanta.
Still I resisted the steadily increasing pressure which was
brought to bear to induce me to revoke his assignment, and only
issued the order relieving him from command when I became
satisfied that his declared purpose to occupy the works at At-
lanta with militia levies and withdraw his army into the open
country for freer operations, would inevitably result in the loss
of that important point, and where the retreat would cease could
not be foretold. If the Army of Tennessee was found to be
unable to hold positions of great strength like those at Dalton,
Eesaca, Etowah, Kenesaw, and on the Chattahoochee, I could
not reasonably hope that it would be more successful in the
plains below Atlanta, where it would find neither natural nor
artificial advantages of position. As soon as the Secretary of
War showed me the answer which he had just received in reply
to his telegram to General Johnston, requesting positive infor-
mation as to the General's plans and purposes, I gave my per-
mission to issue the order relieving General Johnston and
directing him to turn over to General Hood the command of
the Army of Tennessee. I was so fully aware of the danger of
changing commanders of an army while actively engaged with
the enemy, that I only overcame the objection in view of an
emergency, and in the hope that the impending danger of the
loss of Atlanta might be averted.

The following extracts are made from a letter of the Hon.
Benjamin H. Hill, of Georgia, written at Atlanta, October
12, 1878, and handed to me by the friend to whom it was ad-
dressed :

• •«.....

" On Wednesday or Thursday, I think the 28th or 29th of June,
1864, a messenger came to my house, sent, as he said, by General
Johnston, Senator Wigfall, of Texas, and Governor Brown, of
Georgia.

" The purpose of his mission, as he explained, was to persuade
me to write a letter to President Davis urging him to order either

558 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

Morgan or Forrest with five thousand men into Sherman's rear,
etc. . . .

" The result of this interview was a determination on my part
to go at once to see General Johnston, and place myself at his
service. I reached his headquarters near Marietta, on the line
of the Kenesaw, on Friday morning, which was the last day of
June or the first day of July. We had a full and free interview,
and I placed myself unreservedly at his disposal.

" He explained at length that he could not attack General Sher-
man's army in their intrenchments, nor could he prevent Sherman
from ditching round his (Johnston's) flank and compelling his
retreat.

" The only method of arresting Sherman's advance was to send
a force into his rear, cut off his supplies, and thus compel Sherman
either to give battle on his (Johnston's) terms or retreat. In
either case, he thought, he could defeat Sherman, and probably
destroy his army.

" I said to him, * As you do not propose to attack General Sher-
man in his intrenchments, could you not spare a sufficient number
of your present army, under Wheeler or some other, to accomplish
this work ? '

" He said he could not — that he needed all the force he had in
front.

"He then said that General Morgan was at Abingdon, Vir-
ginia, with five thousand cavalry, and, if the President would so
order, this force could be sent into Sherman's rear at once.

" He also said that Stephen D. Lee had sixteen thousand men
under him in Mississippi, including the troops under Forrest and
Roddy, and that, if Morgan could not be sent, five thousand of
those under Forrest could do the work. Either Morgan or For-
rest, with five thousand men, could compel Sherman to fight at a
disadvantage or retreat, and there was no reason why either should
not be sent if the President should give the order. He explained
that he (General Johnston) had had a consultation with Senator
Wigfall and Governor Brown, the result of which was the messen-
ger to me to secure my cooperation to influence President Davis
to make the order. I repelled the idea that any influence with the
President was needed, and stated that, if the facts were as Gen-
eral Johnston reported them, the reenforcement would be sent on
his request.

1864] THE PURPOSE OF MY MISSION. 559

" But the situation was so critical, involving, as I believed and
explained at length to General Johnston, the fate of the Confed-
eracy, that I said I would go in person to Richmond and lay all
the facts before the President, and I did not doubt he would act
promptly.

"I then said to General Johnston : 'How long can you hold
Sherman north of the Chattahoochee River ? This is important,
because I must go to Richmond, and Morgan must go from Vir-
ginia or Forrest from Mississippi, and this will take some time,
and all must be done before Sherman drives you to Atlanta.'
General Johnston did not answer this question with directness,
but gave me data which authorized me to conclude that he could
hold Sherman north of the Chattahoochee River at least fifty-four
days, and perhaps sixty days. I made this calculation with Gen-
eral Johnston's data in his presence, and told him the result, and
he assented to it. When this result was stated, General Hood,
who was present, said, ' Mr. Hill, when we leave our present line,
we will, in my judgment, cross the Chattahoochee River very rap-
idly.' ' Why, what makes you think that ? ' said General John-
ston, with some interest. ' Because,' answered General Hood,
' this line of the Kenesaw is the strongest line we can get in this
country. If we surrender this to Sherman, he can reconnoiter
from its summit the whole country between here and Atlanta, and
there is no such line of defense in the distance.'

"'I differ with your conclusion,' said General Johnston. 'I
admit this is a strong line of defense, but I have two more strong
lines between this and the river, from which I can hold Sherman
a long time.'

" I was delayed en route somewhat, and reached Richmond on
Sunday morning week, which I think was the 9th day of July. I
went to the hotel, and in a few moments was at the Executive
mansion.

" This interview with Mr. Davis I can never forget.

" I laid before him carefully, and in detail, all the facts elicited
in the conversation with General Johnston, and explained fully
the purpose of my mission. When I had gone through, the
President took up the facts, one by one, and fully explained the
situation. I remember very distinctly many of the facts, for the
manner as well as matter stated by Mr. Davis was impressive.
* Long ago,' said the President, * I ordered Morgan to make this

560 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

movement upon Sherman's rear, and suggested that his best plan
was to go directly from Abingdon through East Tennessee. But
Morgan insisted that, if he were permitted to go through Ken-
tucky and around Nashville, he could greatly recruit his horses
and his men by volunteers. I yielded, and allowed him to have
his own way. He undertook it, but was defeated, and has re-
treated back, and is now at Abingdon with only eighteen hun-
dred men, very much demoralized, and badly provided with
horses.' He next read a dispatch from General Stephen D. Lee, to
the effect that A. J. Smith had left Memphis with fifteen thousand
men, intended either as a reenforcement for Sherman or for an
attack on Mobile ; that, to meet this force, he (Lee) had only
seven thousand men, including the commands of Forrest and
Roddy. He would like to have reinforcements, but anyhow, with
or without reenf orcements, * he should meet Smith, and whip him,
too.' 'Ah! there is a man for you,' said Mr. Davis. And he
did meet Smith with his inferior force, and whipped him, too. He
next read a dispatch from a commander at Mobile (who, I think,
was General Maury), to the effect that Canby was marching from
New Orleans with twenty thousand men, and A. J. Smith from
Memphis with fifteen thousand, intending to make a combined
attack on Mobile. To meet this force of thirty-five thousand men
he had four thousand, and Lee, with Forrest and Roddy, seven
thousand, making eleven thousand in all. He asked for reen-
forcements.

" After going fully through this matter, and showing how utter-
ly General Johnston was at fault, as to the numbers of troops in
the different commands, the President said, ' How long did you
understand General Johnston to say he could hold Sherman north
of the Chattahoochee River ? ' From fifty-four to sixty days
I said, and repeated the facts on that subject as above stated.
Thereupon the President read me a dispatch from General John-
ston, announcing that he had crossed or was crossing the Chatta-
hoochee River."

• ••■•••■

"The next day (Monday), Mr. Seddon, the Secretary of War,
called to see me. He asked me to reduce my interview with
General Johnston to writing, for the use of the Cabinet, and I did
so, and gave it to him. Mr. Seddon said he was anxious for Gen-
eral Johnston's removal, and he was especially anxious because, he

1864] DECLINED TO GIVE ANY POSITIVE ADVICE. 561

said, he was one of those who was responsible for his appoint-
ment. He had urged his appointment very earnestly, but it was
a great mistake, and he desired to do all he could, even at this
late day, to atone for it. The President, he said, was averse to the
removal. He made the appointment against his own convictions,
but thought it a very hazardous thing to remove him now, and he
would not do it, if he could have any assurance that General
Johnston would not surrender Atlanta without a battle.

" Other members of the Cabinet, I know, had views similar to
those expressed by Mr. Seddon. The question, or rather the situ-
ation, was referred to General Lee, but he declined to give any
positive advice, and expressed regret that so grave a movement as
the removal of General Johnston, under the circumstances exist-
ing, should be found to be necessary." *

• •••••• •

" During all the time, a telegraphic correspondence was kept
up with General Johnston — the object being to ascertain if he
would make a determined fight to save Atlanta. His answers
were thought to be evasive. Finally, the question was put to
General Johnston categorically to this effect : * Will you surrender
Atlanta without a fight?' To this the answer was regarded as
not only evasive, but as indicating the contemplated contingency
of surrendering Atlanta, on the ground that the Governor of the
State had not furnished, as expected, sufficient State troops to
man the city while the army was giving battle outside. ' This
evasive answer to a positive inquiry,' said one of the Cabinet to
me, * brought the President over. He yielded very reluctantly.'
I was informed of the result at once, and was also informed that
Mr. Davis was the last man in the Cabinet to agree to the order of
removal.". . .

General Hood assumed command on the 18th of July. In
his report of the operations of the army while under his com-
mand, he states that the effective strength of his force on that

* Mr. Seddon, ex-Secretary of War, in a letter written to me on the 10th of Feb-
ruary, 1879, states, in regard to his interview with General Lee, that it was held after
the determination had been made " to remove General Johnston from his command
it Atlanta," and says of the purpose of the interview with General Lee : " It was de-
igned merely to secure General Lee's estimate of qualifications in the selection of a
successor for the command."

562 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

day was forty-eight thousand seven hundred and fifty men of all
arms.

Feeling that the only chance of holding Atlanta consisted in
assuming the offensive by forcing the enemy to accept battle, Gen-
eral Hood determined, on the 20th of July, to attack the corps
of Generals Thomas and Schofield, who wei'e in the act of cross-
ing Peachtree Creek, hoping to defeat Thomas before he could
fortify himself, then to fall on Schofield, and finally to attack
McPherson's corps, which had reached Decatur, on the Georgia
Railroad, driving the enemy back to the creek and into the nar-
row space included between that stream and the Chattahoochee
River. Owing to an unfortunate misapprehension of the order
of battle and the consequent delay in making the attack, the
movement failed. On the 21st, finding that McPherson's corps
was threatening his communications, General Hood resolved to
attack him at or near Decatur, in front and on flank, turn his
left, and then, following up the movement from the right to
the left with his whole army, force the enemy down Peachtree
Creek. This engagement was the hottest of the campaign, but
it failed to accomplish any other favorable result than to check
General McPherson's movement upon the communications of
our army, while it cost heavily in the loss of many officers
and men, foremost among whom was that preux chevalier and
accomplished soldier, Major-General W. H. T. Walker, of
Georgia.

Beyond expeditions by the enemy, for the most part by
cavalry, to destroy the lines of railroad by which supplies and
reinforcements could reach Atlanta, and successful efforts on
our part to frustrate their movements, resulting in the defeat
and capture of General Stoneman and his command near Ma-
con, the utter destruction of the enemy's cavalry force engaged
by General Wheeler at JSTewnan, and the defeat of Sherman's
design to unite his cavalry at the Macon and Western Railroad,
and effectually destroy that essential avenue for the conveyance,
of stores and ammunition for our army, no movement of special
importance took place between July 22d and August 26th, at
which latter date it was discovered that Sherman had aban-
doned his works upon our right, and, leaving a considerable

1864] PRIVATE PROPERTY SHOULD BE RESPECTED. 563

force to hold his intrenched position at the railroad-bridge over
the Chattahoochee, was marching his main body to the sonth
and southwest of Atlanta, to use it, as he himself has expressed
it, "against the communications of Atlanta, instead of against
its intrenchments." On the 30th, it being known that he was
moving on Jonesboro, the county town of Clayton County,
about twenty miles south of Atlanta, General Hood sent two
corps under General Hardee to confront him at that point, in
the hope that he could drive him across Flint River, oblige him
to abandon his works on the left, and then be able to attack him
successfully in flank. The attack at Jonesboro was unsuccessful.
General Hardee was obliged, on September 1st, to fall back to
Lovejoy's, seven miles south of Jonesboro, on the Macon and
"Western Railroad. Thus, the main body of the Federal army was
between Hardee and Atlanta, and the immediate evacuation of
that city became a necessity. There was an additional and co-
gent reason for that movement. Owing to the obstinately cruel
policy which the United States Government had pursued for
some time, of refusing on any terms to exchange prisoners of
war, upward of thirty thousand prisoners were at Andersonville
in southwestern Georgia at this time. To guard against the
release and arming of these prisoners, General Hood thought
it necessary to place our army between them and the enemy,
and abandon the project, which he thought feasible, of moving
on Sherman's communications and destroying his depots of sup-
plies at Marietta.

Upon abandoning Atlanta, Hood marched his army in a
westerly direction, and formed a junction with the two corps
which had been operating at Jonesboro and Lovejoy's under
General Hardee.

General Sherman, desisting from any further aggressive
movement in the field, returned to Atlanta, which had been
formally surrendered by the Mayor on September 2d, with
he promise, as reported, on the part of the Federal com-
nander, that non-combatants and private property should be
espected. Shortly after his arrival, the commanding Gen-
ral of the Federal forces, forgetful of this promise, and on
he pretense that the exigencies of the service required that

564 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

the place should be used exclusively for military purposes, is-
sued an order directing all civilians living in Atlanta, male and
female, to leave the city within five days from the date of the
order (September 5th). Since Alva's atrocious cruelties to
the non-combatant population of the Low Countries in the six-
teenth century, the history of war records no instance of such
barbarous cruelty as that which this order designed to perpe-
trate. It involved the immediate expulsion from their homes
and only means of subsistence of thousands of unoffending wo-
men and children, whose husbands and fathers were either in
the army, in Northern prisons, or had died in battle. In vain
did the Mayor and corporate authorities of Atlanta appeal to
Sherman to revoke or modify this inhuman order, represent
ing in piteous language " the woe, the horror, and the suffer-
ing, not to be described by words," * which its execution would
inflict on helpless women and infant children. His only reply
was:

"I give full credit to your statements of the distress that will
be occasioned by it, and yet shall not revoke my order, because
my orders are not -designed to meet the humanities of the case."

At the time appointed, the women and children were ex-
pelled from their houses, and, before they were passed within
our lines, complaint was generally made that the Federal offi-
cers and men who were sent to guard them had robbed them of
the few articles of value they had been permitted to take from
their homes. The cowardly dishonesty of its executioners was
in perfect harmony with the temper and spirit of the order.

During the month of September the Federal army in and
around Atlanta made no movement beyond strengthening its
defenses and collecting within it large quantities of military
supplies. General Hood, meantime, held his troops in the vi-
cinity of Jonesboro. His reports to the War Department rep-
resented the morale of his army as " greatly impaired by the
recurrence of retreat," decreasing in numbers day by day, and
the surrounding country devoid of natural strength or any ad-
vantageous position upon which he could retire. With a view

* Mayor Calhoun's Petition to General Sherman, September 11, 1864.

1864] MY FIRST OBJECT WAS. 565

to judge better the situation, and then determine after personal
inspection the course which should seem best to pursue, I visited
General Hood's headquarters at Palmetto. The crisis was grave.
It was not to be expected that General Sherman would remain
long inactive. The rapidity with which he was collecting re-
cruits and supplies at Atlanta indicated that he contemplated a
movement farther south, making Atlanta a secondary base. To
rescue Georgia, save the Gulf States, and retain possession of
the lines of communication upon which we depended for the
supplies of our armies in the field, an effort to arrest the fur-
ther progress of the enemy was necessary ; and to this end the
railroads in his rear must be effectually torn up, the great rail-
road-bridge over the Tennessee River at Bridgeport destroyed,
and the communication between Atlanta, Chattanooga, and
Nashville completely cut off. Could this be accomplished, all
the fruits of Sherman's successful campaign in Georgia would
be blighted, his capture of Atlanta would become a barren vic-
tory, and he would probably be compelled to make a retreat to-
ward Tennessee, at every mile of which he might be harassed
by our army. Or, should he, relying on Atlanta as a base, push
forward through Georgia to the Atlantic coast, our army, hav-
ing cut his communications north of Atlanta, could fall upon
his rear, and, with the advantages of a better knowledge of the
country, of the surrounding devoted population, of the auxiliary
force to be expected under the circumstances, and our superi-
ority in cavalry, it was not unreasonable to hope that retribu-
tive justice might overtake the ruthless invader.

My first object was to fill up the depleted ranks of the army,
to bring the absentees and deserters back to the ranks, and in-
duce the Governor and State officials to cooperate heartily and
earnestly with the Confederate Government in all measures that
might be found necessary to give the proposed movement a
reasonable prospect of success.

The avowed objection of the Governor of Georgia to the
acts of Congress providing for raising troops by conscription,
and his persistent opposition to the authority of the Confederate
Executive to appoint the generals and staff officers of the volun-
teer organizations received from the States to form the provi-

566 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

sional army of the Confederacy, caused him frequently to ob-
struct the Government officials in the discharge of their duty,
to withhold the assistance which he might be justly expected to
render, and, in the contemplation of his own views of the duties
and obligations of the Executive and legislative departments
of the General Government, to lose sight of those important
objects, the attainment of which an exalted patriotism might
have told him depended on the cooperation of the State and
Confederate governments. The inordinate exemption from
military service as State officials of men between the ages of
eighteen and forty-five (it was estimated that the number of
exempts in November, 1864, amounted to fifteen thousand) was
an abuse which I endeavored in vain to correct. Were the
majority of the men thus exempted, and who remained at home
" that the army might be fed," really engaged in that important
service, the end might be said to justify the means ; but, for any
less exigent demand, patriotism and humane consideration for
the brave men at the front required that the number of these
exempts should be reduced to the minimum, if, indeed, the num-
ber of those unfit for military duty was not sufficient to per-
form this service. After a thorough inspection of the Army of
Tennessee at Palmetto, after conference with several prominent
Georgians, and notably with that pure patriot and distinguished
statesman and soldier, General Howell Cobb, whose brain and
heart and means and energies were all at the service of his coun-
try, I proceeded to Augusta during the first week of October,
in order, with Generals Hardee and Cobb and other officers of
prominence, to meet and confer with General: Beauregard, whom
I had just assigned to the command of the Military Division
of the West, and to impart to him my views as to the exigen-
cies of the occasion, and how I thought that they might be most
advantageously met.

Before this time General Hood had already crossed the
Chattahoochee with his entire force, moving against the ene-
my's line of communication. General Forrest, with a strong
force of cavalry, had been ordered to Tennessee to strike the
railroad from Nashville to Chattanooga. During my visit to
Hood's army, I learned that the morale of it had been partially

1864] MUST SURRENDER OR DISPERSE. 567

restored, many absentees had returned to duty, and the waning
hope of the people was beginning to revive.

The plan of operations which I had discussed with General
Hood while at his headquarters was fully explained to General
Beauregard at Augusta, and by him cordially approved. It
comprised the occupation of a strong position on the enemy's
line of communication by the railroad between Atlanta and
Chattanooga, the capture of his depots of supplies and the small
garrisons left to guard them. If this, as was probable, should
cause Sherman to move to attack us in position, in that case,
if the tone of the troops justified it, a battle should be joined ;
otherwise, he should retreat toward Gadsden, where supplies
would be collected, and, should Sherman follow him so far, then
there, on the dividing line of the States of Georgia and Ala-
bama, the largest practicable number of militia and home-guards
of both States would be assembled as an auxiliary force, and
there a final stand should be made for a decisive battle. If vic-
torious, as under the circumstances it was hoped we should be,
the enemy could not retreat through the wasted country behind
him, and must surrender or disperse. If Sherman should not
pursue our retiring army to Gadsden, but return to Atlanta to
march toward the seacoast, he was to be pursued, and, by our
superiority in cavalry, to be prevented from foraging on the
country, which, according to our information as to his supplies
on hand at Atlanta, and as to his inadequate means of trans-
portation, would be indispensable for the support of his troops.
Should Sherman, contrary to that information, have supplies
and transportation sufficient to enable him to march across the
country, and he should start toward the seacoast, the militia,
the local troops, and others who could be employed, should ob-
struct the roads and fords in his front by felling trees, and, by
burning bridges and other available means, delay his progress
until his provisions should be consumed and absolute want
should deplete if not disintegrate his army. It was supposed
that Augusta, on account of our principal powder-manufactory
and some important workshops being located there, would be
the first objective point of Sherman, should he march toward
the east. General Hood's calculation was that, taking a route

568 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

north of Sherman's, where he would have smaller streams to
cross, he could reach Augusta as soon as Sherman.

General Cobb, the local commander in Georgia, in addition
to obstructing roads, etc., was, in the last supposed contin-
gency, to assemble at Augusta the invalid soldiers, the militia,
and others to defend the place. General George W. Rains, an
accomplished soldier and military engineer, was instructed to
enlarge and strengthen the defenses of the place, and General
G. R. Rains, the author of the system of defense by sub-terra
shells, was, on the coming of the enemy, to apply his invention
to the threatened approaches of the town. There was another
contemplated contingency, viz., that Sherman, emboldened by
his recent successes, would move against Hood with such over-
weening confidence as might offer to the latter the opportunity
to strike in detail.

After the full conversation with General Beauregard above
noticed, General Hardee was called in and asked to give his
opinion on the plan, which I regarded as entitled to great con-
sideration, not only because of his high capacity as a soldier, but
also because of his long connection with the Army of Tennessee,
and minute knowledge of the country in which it was proposed
to operate. He had previously been made fully aware of the
plans and purposes discussed between General Hood and my-
self, and stated to General Beauregard substantially that, while
he could not say the plan would succeed, he was confident it
was the best which we could adopt, and that, if it failed, none
other with our means would succeed. General Beauregard left
for General Hood's headquarters, as I supposed, to aid in the
execution of the proposed plan, to the success of which the
larger command with which he was invested, it was hoped,
would contribute.

General Hood moved as was expected upon the enemy's line
of communication, and his successes at Big Shanty and Acworth,
in capturing those stations and thoroughly destroying the rail-
road between them, and his partial success at Allatoona, caused
Sherman, leaving one corps to garrison Atlanta, to move out
with his main body to restore his communications. Hood fur-
ther succeeded in destroying the railroad from Resaca to Tun-

1864] HANGING ON HIS REAR. 569

nel Hill, capturing the enemy's posts at Tilton, Dalton, and
Mill-Creek Gap ; but, not deeming his army in condition to risk
a general engagement, withdrew his forces in a southwesterly
direction toward Gadsden, which place he reached October 20th,
finding there supplies adequate for the wants of his troops.
Sherman had turned back toward Atlanta, and Hood, instead of
hanging on his rear, not allowing him to repair the damage to
the railroad, and otherwise harassing him in his march as much
as possible, after conference with General Beauregard, decided
to continue his march into Tennessee.* His reasons for this
change of plan are elaborately and forcibly presented in his book,
" Advance and Retreat," published since the war, and in which
he emphatically contradicts the attempt which has been made to
represent that campaign into Tennessee as one projected by me.
The correspondence of General Sherman, published in the same
work, shows that Hood was not far wrong in the supposition
that Sherman would follow the movement made on his line of
communication ; the only error being that he could thus draw
him beyond the limits of Georgia. After my return to Rich-
mond, a telegram from General Beauregard informed me of the
change of programme. My objection to that movement re-
mained, and, though it was too late to regain the space and time
which had been lost, I replied promptly on November 30, 1864,
as follows :

" General Beauregard, care of Colonel W. M. Browne, Augusta,
Georgia.

"Yours of 24th received. It is probable that the enemy, if
short of supplies, may move directly for the coast. When that
is made manifest, you will be able to concentrate your forces upon
the one object, and I hope, if you can not defeat his attempt, that
you may reduce his army to such condition as to be inefficient for
further operations.

" Until Hood reaches the country proper of the enemy, he can
scarcely change the plans for Sherman's or Grant's campaigns.
They would, I think, regard the occupation of Tennessee and
Kentucky as of minor importance. Jefferson Davis."

* " Advance and Retreat," by General J. B. Hood ; letter of General Beauregard
to President Davis, p. 278, et seq.

570 RISE AND FALL OF TEE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

To the arguments offered to show that our army could not,
after it had reached the Tennessee River, have effectually pur-
sued Sherman in his march through southern Georgia, it is
only needful to reply that the physical difficulties set forth
would not have existed, had our army commenced the pursuit
from Gadsden.

To make the movement into Tennessee a success, even so
far as to recover that country, it was necessary that it should
be executed so promptly as to anticipate the concentration of
the enemy's forces, but unforeseen and unavoidable delays oc-
curred, which gave full time for preparation. After having
overcome many vexatious detentions, Hood on the 20th of
November completed his crossing of the Tennessee River at
Gunter's Landing, and moved forward into Tennessee on the
route to Nashville, whither Sherman had sent General Thomas
for the protection of his depots and communications against an
apprehended attack by cavalry under General Forrest.

Most unwilling to criticise the conduct of that very gallant
and faithful soldier who, battle-scarred and mutilated, survived
the war, and whose recent death our country has so much de-
plored, I must say after the event, as I did before it, that I con-
sider this movement into Tennessee ill-advised.

Thomas having been sufficiently reenforced in Tennessee to
enable him to hold Hood in check, and Sherman relieved from
the necessity of defending himself against an active army, and
of protecting a long line of railroad communication with a for-
tified base in his rear, resolved upon his march to the sea, aban-
doning Atlanta, after having first utterly destroyed that city
by fire. Not a single house was spared, not even a church.
Similar acts of vandalism marked the progress of the Federal
army at Rome, Kingston, Acworth, Marietta, and every town
or village along its route, thus carrying out General Sherman's
order " to enforce a devastation more or less relentless " along
the line of his march, where he only encountered helpless women
and children. The arson of the dwelling-houses of non-com-
batants and the robbery of their property, extending even to
the trinkets worn by women, made the devastation as relentless
as savage instincts could suggest.

18641 MILLIONS WORTH OF PROPERTY. 571

On November 16th Sherman left his intrenchments around
Atlanta, and, dividing his army into two bodies, each from
twenty-five to thirty thousand strong, the one followed the
Georgia Railroad in the direction of Augusta, and the other
took the line of the Macon and "Western Railroad to Jonesboro.
Avoiding Macon and Augusta, they passed through central
Georgia, taking Milledgeville on the way, marching in compact
column, and advancing with extreme caution, although only op-
posed by detachments of Wheeler's cavalry and a few hastily
formed regiments of raw militia. Partial efforts were made to
obstruct and destroy the roads in the front and on the flanks of
the invading army, and patriotic appeals by prominent citizens
were made to the people, to remove all provisions from its path,
but no formidable opposition was made, except at the railroad-
bridge over the Oconee, where Wheeler, with a portion of his
command and a few militia, held the enemy in check for two
or three days. With his small force, General Wheeler dar-
ingly and persistently harassed, and, when practicable, delayed
the enemy's advance, attacking and defeating exposed detach-
ments, deterring his foragers from venturing far from the main
body, defending all cities and towns along the railroad lines,
and affording protection to depots of supplies, arsenals, and
other important Government works. The report of his opera-
tions from November 14th to December 20th displays a dash,
activity, vigilance, and consummate skill, which justly entitle
him to a prominent place on the roll of great cavalry leaders.
By his indomitable energy, operating on all sides of Sherman's
columns, he was enabled to keep the Government and com-
manders of our troops advised of the enemy's movements, and,
by preventing foraging parties from leaving the main body,
he saved from spoliation all but a narrow tract of country, and
from the torch millions worth of property which would other-
wise have been certainly consumed.

It soon became manifest that Savannah was General Sher-
man's objective point. That city was occupied by General W.
J. Hardee with about eighteen thousand men, a considerable
portion of which was composed of militia, local troops, reserves,
and hastily organized regiments and battalions made up of con-

572 ftlSE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

valescents from the hospitals and artisans from the Govern-
ment shops. On the 10th of December the enemy's columns
reached the immediate vicinity of Savannah, and on the 12th
they occupied a semicircular line extending from the Savannah
River to the Savannah and Gulf Railroad. The defenses of the
city were strong, the earthworks and other fortifications were
flanked by inundated rice-swamps extending across the peninsula
formed by the Savannah and Ogeechee Rivers, and the cause-
ways leading through them were well fortified by works mount-
ing heavy guns. With a sufficient force to occupy his long lines
of defense, General Hardee could have sustained a protracted
siege. The city was amply supplied, and its lines of communi-
cation were still open. Although Sherman had reached Savan-
nah, he had not yet opened communication with the Federal
fleet. Fort McAllister, situated on the right bank of the Ogee-
chee, about six miles from Ossabaw Sound, was a serious obstacle
in his way, as it was a work of considerable strength, mounting
twenty-one heavy guns, a deep and wide ditch extending along
its front, with every avenue of approach swept by the guns
mounted upon its bastions. The fort was held by a garrison of
two hundred and fifty men under the command of experienced
officers. The work was attacked on the evening of the 13th,
and carried by assault after a short and feeble resistance. In
consequence of the loss of this fort, Sherman speedily opened
communication with the fleet, and became perfectly secure against
any future want of supplies. This also enabled him to obtain
heavy ordnance for use against the city. He proceeded imme-
diately to take measures to invest Savannah, and in a few days
had succeeded in doing so on every side of the city except that
fronting the river. While Hardee's troops had not yielded a sin-
gle position or lost a foot of ground, with the exception of Fort
McAllister, when, on December 20th, he discovered that Sher-
man had put heavy siege-guns in position near enough to bom-
bard the city, and that the enemy was threatening Union Cause-
way, which extends across the large swamps that lie between
Savannah and Charleston, and offered the only practicable line
of retreat, he determined to evacuate the place rather than ex-
pose the city and its inhabitants to bombardment. He also

IS 64] THE FIDELITY AND GALLANTRY OF THAT OFFICER. 573

thought holding it had ceased to be of any special importance,
and that his troops could do more valuable service in the field.
Accordingly, on the night of December 20th, having destroyed
the navy-yard, the ironclads, and other Government property,
and razed the fortifications below the city, he withdrew his
army and reached Hardeeville on the evening of the 22d, with-
out hindrance or molestation on the part of the enemy.

Having heretofore stated my objections to the plan of send-
ing Hood's army into Tennessee after the fall of Atlanta, I will
now follow it in that campaign, relying for the facts on the
official report of General Hood of the 15th of February, 1865.
The fidelity and gallantry of that officer and the well-known
magnanimity of his character are a sufficient guarantee of the
impartiality of his narration.

He reported the arrival of his army at Gadsden on the 20th
of October, 1864, where he was joined by General P. G. T. Beau-
regard, commanding the military department. He writes that,
after withdrawing from Atlanta, his hope had been that Sherman
in following might offer an opportunity to strike him in detail,
but in this he was disappointed. Hood reported that the morale
of his army, though improved, was not such as, in the opinion
of his corps commanders, would justify a general engagement
while the enemy remained united. At Gadsden he found a
thorough supply of shoes and other stores, but, after a full and
free conference with General Beauregard at Tuscumbia, he de-
cided to cross the Tennessee and move against Thomas, who
with his corps had been detached by Sherman and sent into
Middle Tennessee. General Beauregard had sent orders to
General Forrest to move with his cavalry into Tennessee ; the
main body of Hood's cavalry had been sent to follow Sher-
man. As the orders to Forrest were accidentally delayed, and
Hood had not cavalry enough to protect his trains, he was
compelled to wait for the coming of Forrest, and, to hasten
the meeting, moved down the river as far as Florence, where
he arrived on the 31st of October. This unfortunate delay
gave the enemy time to repair the railroad to Chattanooga,
and accumulate supplies at Atlanta for a march thence toward
the Atlantic coast. Forrest's cavalry joined on the 21st of

571 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

November, and the movement began. The enemy's forces at
that time were concentrated at Pulaski and at Lawrenceburg.
Hood endeavored to place his army between these forces and
[Nashville, but our cavalry, having driven off the enemy at Law-
renceburg, gave notice of our advance, and on the 23d he evacu-
ated Pulaski and moved rapidly by the turnpike and railroad
to Columbia. On the evening of the 27th of November our
army took position in front of the works at that place. During
the night the town was evacuated, and a strong position was
taken on the opposite side of the river, about a mile and a half
distant. On the evening of the 28th General Forrest crossed
Duck Piver a few miles above Columbia, and in the morning
of the 29th Stewart's and Cheatham's corps followed the cavalry,
leaving Lieutenant-General Stephen D. Lee's corps confronting
the enemy at Columbia. The cavalry and the two infantry corps
moved in light marching order, the object being, by advancing
rapidly on roads parallel to the Columbia and Franklin turnpike
at or near Spring Hill, to cut off that portion of the foe at Co-
lumbia. The movement having been discovered after Hood's
forces had got well on the flank of the enemy, he began to retreat
along the turnpike toward Spring Hill. About noon of that
day the cavalry attacked his trains, but found them too strong-
ly guarded to be captured. The retreat was rapidly conducted
along the turnpike, with flankers thrown out to protect the
main column. Near Spring Hill Major-Gen eral Cheatham,
being in the advance, commenced to come in contact with the
retreating column about two miles from Spring Hill. He was
ordered to attack vigorously, and get possession of the turnpike.
This was so feebly executed that he failed to attain the object,
and the enemy passed on toward Spring Hill. Though the
golden opportunity had passed with daylight, Hood did not aban-
don the hope of effecting by a night movement the end he sought.
Accordingly, Lieutenant-General Stewart was furnished with a
guide, and ordered to move his corps beyond Cheatham's, and
place it across the road beyond Spring Hill. In the dark and
confusion, he did not succeed in getting the position desired.
About midnight, ascertaining that the enemy was moving in
disorder, with artillery, wagons, and troops intermixed, Hood

1864] ONE OF THE BLOODIEST BATTLES. 575

sent instructions to General Cheatham to advance a heavy line of
skirmishers, still further to impede the retreat. " This was not
accomplished. The enemy continued to move along the road
in hurry and confusion nearly all the night. Thus was lost a
great opportunity for striking him for which we had labored
so long — the greatest this campaign had offered, and one of
the greatest during the war. Lieutenant-General S. D. Lee,
left in front of the enemy at Columbia, was instructed to press
him the moment he abandoned his position at that point. He
did not abandon his works until dark, showing that his trains
obstructed the road for fifteen miles during the day and a great
part of the night." At daylight Hood pursued the enemy so
rapidly as to compel him to burn a number of his wagons. On
the hills about four miles south of Franklin, he made demon-
stration as if to give battle, but, when our forces deployed for
the attack, he retired to Franklin.

From dispatches captured at Spring Hill, Hood learned that
Schofield was instructed by Thomas to hold that position until
Franklin could be made secure, and thus knew that it was im-
portant to attack Schofield promptly, and concluded that, if he
should escape at Franklin, he would gain the fortifications about
Nashville. Hood reports that " the nature of the position was
such as to render it inexpedient to attempt any other flank
movement, and I therefore determined to attack him in front
and without delay."

As this was one of the bloodiest battles of the war, and its
results materially affected the future, before entering on an
account of it, I pause for some general reflections. It is
not quite easy to determine what my gallant friend Hood
meant by the expression, " the nature of the position." It may
have referred to the probability that the enemy, if he at-
tempted a flank movement, would retreat rapidly, as he had
done from Columbia, and it is now known that a part of his
troops and a large part of his train had already been sent across
the Harpeth River. Thomas's dispatch indicated a purpose to
hold Franklin ; and its relation to Murf reesboro, where a garrison
was maintained, would seem to render this a probable part of a
plan to maintain communication with Chattanooga. Franklin

576 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

had to us, as a mere military question, no other value than that
the road to Nashville led through it. Whether it would have
been possible to turn the position so promptly as to strike the
enemy's line of retreat is a question which no doubt General
Hood considered and decided in the negative, otherwise he
would surely have preferred to attack the enemy on the march
rather than in his intrenchments, especially as these were so near
to the town that Hood was restrained from using his artillery on
account of the women and children resident in it. The position
itself was favorable for defense ; the Harpeth River by a short
bend flows on two sides of the town, and the works in front had
the center so boldly salient, their flanks resting on the river, as
to inclose the town in something like a square, two sides being
river and two sides intrenchment. The exterior line of defense
had been recently and hastily constructed ; the interior line was
much stronger. Behind the town there were two bridges, one
on the main road leading through it, and the other a pontoon-
bridge a short distance above it. Hood had served with dis-
tinction under Lee and Jackson, and his tactics were of that
school. If he had, by an impetuous attack, crushed Schofield's
army, without too great a loss to his own, and Forrest could
have executed his orders to capture the trains when Schofield's
army was crushed, we should never have heard complaint
because Hood attacked at Franklin, and these were the hopes
with which he made his assault.

On the 30th of November he formed his line of battle. At 4
p. m. he gave the order to advance ; his troops moved gallantly
forward, carried the first line, and advanced against the interior
works ; here the engagement was close and fierce ; the combatants
occupied the opposite sides of the intrenchments, our men car-
rying them in some places, many being killed entirely inside
the enemy's works. Some of the Tennesseeans, after years of
absence, saw again their homes, and strove with desperation to
expel the invader from them ; the contest continued till near mid-
night, when the enemy abandoned his works and crossed the
river, leaving his dead and wounded behind him. We had won
a victory, but it was purchased at fearful cost. General Hood,
in his letter of December 11, 1864, written near Nashville,

1864] THICKLY LAY THE GALLANT MEN. 577

reported his entire loss at about four thousand five hundred, and
among them was Major-General Cleburne, Brigadier-Generals
Gist, John Adams, Strahl, and Granberry, all well known to
fame, and whose loss we could ill afford to bear. Around Cle-
burne thickly lay the gallant men who, in his desperate assault,
followed him with the implicit confidence that in another army
was given to Stonewall Jackson ; and in the one case, as in the
other, a vacancy was created, which could never be filled.
Hood reported that the number of dead left on the field by the
enemy indicated that his loss was equal to or near our own ; that
those of our men who were captured were inside the enemy's
works.

The next morning at daylight, the wounded being cared for
and the dead buried, Hood moved forward toward Nashville,
about eighteen miles distant, and Forrest with his cavalry
closely pursued the enemy. On the 2d of December our
army took position in front of Nashville about two miles from
the city, Lieutenant-General Lee's corps in the center resting
on the Franklin turnpike, Cheatham's on the right, Stewart's on
:the left, and the cavalry on each flank. Hood then commenced
ito construct detached works to cover the flanks, should offensive
i movements be attempted against our flank and rear. The
tenemy still held Murfreesboro with a garrison of about six thou-
sand, strongly fortified ; he also had small forces at Chattanooga
and Knoxville. It was supposed that he would soon have to
take the offensive to relieve his garrisons at those points, or
cause them to be evacuated, in which latter case Hood hoped
to capture the forces at Murfreesboro, and thus open communi-
bation with Georgia and Virginia ; and he thought, if attacked
In position, that he could defeat Thomas, gain possession of
Nashville with its abundant supplies, and thus get the control
)f Tennessee. The people of the country, in the mean time,
tvere able and willing to furnish our army with supplies, and
ve had captured rolling-stock to put the railroad to Pulaski in
successful operation.

Hood sent Major-General Forrest with the greater part of
is cavalry and a division of infantry against Murfreesboro.
Che infantry did not fulfill expectation, and it was withdrawn.
84

578 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

Mercer's and Palmer's brigades of infantry were sent to replace
the division. Nothing of importance occurred until the morn-
ing of the 15th, and the enemy, having been reenforced by about
fifteen thousand men from the trans-Mississippi, attacked simul-
taneously both flanks of our line. On our right he was re-
pulsed with heavy loss ; but on our left, toward evening, he car-
ried some of the partially completed redoubts. During the
night of the 15th our line was shortened and strengthened, the
left being thrown back and dispositions made to meet any re-
newed attack. The corps of Major-General Cheatham was trans-
ferred from our right to the left. Early on the 16th of Decem-
ber the enemy made a general attack on our lines, accompanied
by a heavy fire of artillery. All his assaults were repulsed with
heavy loss until 3.30 p. m., when a portion of our line to the left
of the center suddenly gave way. Up to this time no battle
ever progressed more favorably — the troops in excellent spirits,
waving their colors and bidding defiance to the enemy ; but the
position he then gained being such as to enfilade us, caused our
entire line to give way in a few moments and our troops to re-
treat in the direction of Franklin, most of them in great con-
fusion. Confidence in the ability to hold the line had caused
the artillery-horses to be sent to the rear for safety, and the
abandonment of the position was so unexpected and sudden
that it was not possible to bring forward the horses to remove
the guns which had been placed in position, and fifty-four <$f
them were consequently lost. Our loss in killed and wounded
was small. At Brentwood, about four miles from the field of
battle, the troops were partially rallied, and~ Lieutenant-General
S. D. Lee took command of the rear-guard and encamped for
the night. On leaving the field, Hood sent one of his staff-offi-
cers to inform General Forrest of our defeat, and to direct him
to rejoin the army with as little delay as possible, but heavy
rains had so swollen the creeks that he was unable to effect the
junction with his main force until it reached Columbia. During
the 17th the enemy's cavalry pressed boldly on the retreating
column, the open character of the country being favorable to
cavalry operations. Lieutenant-General Lee, commanding the
covering force, was severely wounded, but not until after he

1864] THE CONDITION OF HIS ARMY. 579

and the corps he commanded had rendered such service as to
receive the special commendation of the General commanding
the army.

Hood reports that when he left the field before Nashville
he had hoped to be able to remain in Tennessee, on the line of
Duck River ; but, after arriving at Columbia, he became con-
vinced that the condition of the army made it necessary to
recross the Tennessee without delay. On the 21st he re-
sumed his march for Pulaski, leaving Major-General Walthall,
with five infantry brigades, and General Forrest, with the main
body of his cavalry, at Columbia, to cover the movements of the
army. The retreat continued, and on the 25th, 26th, and 27th,
the army, including the rear-guard, crossed the Tennessee River
at Bainbridge. The enemy had followed the rear-guard with
all his cavalry and three corps of infantry to Pulaski, and
thence the cavalry continued the pursuit to the Tennessee
Eiver. After crossing the river, the army moved by easy
marches to Tupelo, Mississippi. General Hood reported his
losses in the Tennessee campaign to have been about ten thou-
sand men, including prisoners, and that when he arrived at
Tupelo he had 18,500 infantry and artillery, and 2,306 cavalry.
I again quote from General Hood's report :

" Here, finding so much dissatisfaction throughout the country,
as, in my judgment, greatly to impair, if not destroy, my useful-
ness, and counteract my exertions, and with no desire but to serve
my country, I asked to be relieved, with the hope that another
might be assigned to the command who might do more than I
could hope to accomplish. Accordingly, I was so relieved on the
23d of January, by authority of the President."

Though, as General Hood states in his book, page 273, I
was " averse to his going into Tennessee," he might well assume
that I "was not, as General Beauregard and himself, acquainted
with the true condition of the army" when they decided on the
'Tennessee campaign. Of the manner in which he conducted it,
Tsham G. Harris, the Governor of Tennessee, a man of whose
judgment, integrity, and manhood I had the highest opinion,
wrote to me, on the 25th of December, 1864 :

580 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

" . . . I have been with General Hood from the beginning of
this campaign, and beg to say, disastrous as it has ended, I am
not able to see anything that General Hood has done that he
should not, or neglected any thing that he should, have done, . . .
and regret to say that, if all had performed their parts as well as
he, the results would have been very different."

To this I will only add that General Hood was relieved at
his reiterated request, made from such creditable motives as are
expressed in the extract above, taken from his official report,
and that it was in no wise due to a want of confidence in him
on my part.

CHAPTEE XLIX.

Exchange of Prisoners. — Signification of the Word " loyal." — Who is the Sovereign?
— Words of President Lincoln. — The Issue for which we fought. — Position of
the United States Government. — Letters of Marque granted by us. — Officers and
Crew First Prisoners of the Enemy. — Convicted as "Pirates." — My Letter to
President Lincoln. — How received. — Act of Congress relating to Prisoners. —
Exchanges, how made. — Answer of General Grant. — Request of United States
Congress. — Result. — Commissioners sent. — Agreement. — Disputed Points. —
Exchange arranged. — Order to pillage issued. — General Pope's Order. — Pro-
ceedings.— Letter of General Lee relative to Barbarities. — Answer of General
Halleck. — Case of Mumford. — Effect of Threatened Retaliation. — Mission of
Vice-President Stephens. — A Failure. — Excess of Prisoners. — Paroled Men. —
Proposition made by us. — No Answer. — Another Arrangement. — Stopped by
General Grant. — His words, " Put the Matter offensively." — Exchange of Slaves.
— Proposition of Lee to Grant. — Reply of Grant. — Further Reply. — His Dis-
patch to General Butler. — Another Proposition made by us. — No Answer. — Prop-
osition relative to Sick and Wounded. — Some exchanged. — The Worst Cases
asked for to be photographed. — Proposition as to Medicines. — No Answer. —
A Final Effort. — Deputation of Prisoners sent to Washington. — A Failure. —
Correspondence between Ould and Butler. — Order of Grant. — Report of But-
ler.— Responsibility of Grant for Andersonville. — Barbarities of the United
States Government. — Treatment of our Men in Northern Prisons. — Deaths on
Each Side.

Perhaps there was no question in the treatment of which
the true character and intentions of the Government of the
United States was so clearly exposed as in the exchange of
prisoners. That we should dare to resort to arms for the pres-

1861] THIS PEOPLE ARE THE SOVEREIGN. 581

ervation of our rights, and " to secure the blessings of liberty
to ourselves and our posterity," was regarded by our enemies as
most improbable. Their aspirations for dominion and sover-
eignty, through the Government of the Union, had become so
deep-seated and apparently real as to cause that Government, at
its first step, to assume the haughtiness and imperiousness of an
absolute sovereign. "I appeal to all loyal citizens to favor,
facilitate, and aid this effort," said President Lincoln, in the
first proclamation, calling for seventy-five thousand men. The
term " loyal " has no signification except as applied to the sover-
eign of an empire or kingdom. In a republic the people are
the sovereign, and the term " loyal " or its opposite can have no
signification except in relation to the true sovereign. To say,
therefore, that the agent of the sovereign people, the represent-
ative of the system they have organized to conduct their com-
mon affairs, composed the real sovereign, and that loyalty or
disloyalty is of signification in relation to this sovereign alone,
is not only a perversion of language, but an error, that leads
straight to the subversion of all popular government and the
establishment of the monarchical or consolidated form. The
Government of the United States is now the sovereign here,
says President Lincoln in this proclamation, and loyalty consists
in the maintenance of that sovereignty against all its foes. The
sovereignty of the people and of the several and distinct States,
in his mind, was only a weakness and enthusiasm of the fathers.
The States and the people thereof had become consolidated into
a national Union. "I appeal," says President Lincoln, "to all
loyal citizens to favor, facilitate, and aid this effort to maintain
the honor, the integrity, and the existence of our national
Union."

The Confederate States refused thus " to favor, facilitate,
and aid this effort to maintain the honor, the integrity, and the
existence of a national Union." They not only refused to aid,
but they took up arms to defeat the consummation of such a
monstrous usurpation of popular rights and popular sovereignty.
It was evident that, if no efforts for a rescue were made, the
time would soon come when the rights of all the States might
be denied, and the hope of mankind in constitutional freedom

582 IUSE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

be for ever lost. This was the usurpation. This lay at the
foundation of the war. Every subsequent act of the Govern-
ment was another step in the same direction, all tending pal-
pably to supremacy for the Government of the United States,
the subjugation of the States, and the submission of the
people.

This was the adversary with whom we had to struggle, and
this was the issue for which we fought. That we dared to draw
our swords to vindicate the rights and the sovereignty of the
people, that we dared to resist and deny all sovereignty as in-
herently existing in the Government of the United States, was
adjudged an infamous crime, and we were denounced as " reb-
els." It was asserted that those of us "who were captured
should be hung as rebels taken in the act." Crushing the
corner-stone of the Union, the independence of the States, the
Federal Government assumed toward us a position of haughty
arrogance, refused to recognize us otherwise than as insurrec-
tionists and "rebels," who resisted and denied its usurped sov-
ereignty, and who were entitled to no amelioration from the
punishment of death, except such as might proceed only from
the promptings of mercy.

On April 17, 1861, 1 issued a proclamation in which I offered
to grant letters of marque and reprisal to seamen. On April
19th President Lincoln issued a counter-proclamation, declar-
ing that, " if any person, under the pretended authority of said
States, or under any other pretense, shall molest a vessel of the
United States, or the persons or cargo on board of her, such
person shall be held amenable to the laws of the United States
for the prevention and punishment of piracy," which was
death.

Some small vessels obtained these letters of marque and were
captured. Their officers and crew constituted the first prisoners
that fell into the hands of the enemy. They were immediately
imprisoned, and held for trial as pirates. The trial came on
later in the year. A report of it states that " the views of all
the judges seemed to center upon the one point, that these men
were taken in arms against the Government of the United
States, and that, inasmuch as the laws of that Government did

1861] SENT BY A SPECIAL MESSENGER. 583

not recognize the authority under which the men acted, there
was no course but to condemn them."

As soon as the treatment of these prisoners was known in
Richmond, before their trial and as early as July 6, 1861, I sent
by a special messenger a communication to President Lincoln,
in substance as follows :

" Having learned that the schooner Savannah, a private armed
vessel in the service and sailing under a commission issued by the
authority of the Confederate States of America, had been captured
by one of the vessels forming the blockading squadron off Charles-
ton Harbor, I directed a proposition to be made to the command-
ing officer of the squadron for an exchange of officers and crew of
the Savannah for prisoners of war held by this Government, * ac-
cording to number and rank.' To this proposition, made on the
19th ultimo, Captain Mercer, the officer in command of the block-
ading squadron, made answer, on the same day, that * the prison-
ers ' (referred to) ' are not on board any of the vessels under my
command.'

" It now appears, by statements made without contradiction in
newspapers published in New York, that the prisoners above men-
tioned were conveyed to that city, and have been treated not as
prisoners of war, but as criminals ; that they have been put in
irons, confined in jail, brought before courts of justice on charges
of piracy and treason ; and it is even rumored that they have been
convicted of the offenses charged, for no other reason than that
they bore arms in defense of the rights of this Government and
under the authority of its commission.

"I could not, without grave discourtesy, have made the news-
paper statements above referred to the subject of this communi-
cation, if the threat of treating as pirates the citizens of this Con-
federacy, armed for its service on the high-seas, had not been
contained in your proclamation of the 19th of April last. That
proclamation, however, seems to afford a sufficient justification
for considering these published statements as not devoid of proba-
bility.

" It is the desire of this Government so to conduct the war
now existing as to mitigate its horrors as far as may be possible,
and, with this intent, its treatment of the prisoners captured by
its forces has been marked by the greatest humanity and leniency

5 Si RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

consistent with public obligation. Some have been permitted to
return home on parole, others to remain at large, under similar
conditions, within this Confederacy, and all have been furnished
with rations for their subsistence, such as are allowed to our own
troops. It is only since the news has been received of the treat-
ment of the prisoners taken on the Savannah, that I have been
compelled to withdraw these indulgences, and to hold the prison-
ers taken by us in strict confinement.

"A just regard to humanity and to the honor of this Govern-
ment now requires me to state explicitly that, painful as will be the
necessity, this Government will deal out to the prisoners held by
it the same treatment and the same fate as shall be experienced
by those captured on the Savannah ; and, if driven to the terrible
necessity of retaliation by your execution of any of the officers or
crew of the Savannah, that retaliation will be extended so far as
shall be requisite to secure the abandonment of a practice un-
known to the warfare of civilized man, and so barbarous as to
disgrace the nation which shall be guilty of inaugurating it.

" With this view, and because it may not have reached you, I
now renew the proposition made to the commander of the block-
ading squadron, to exchange for the prisoners taken on the Savan-
nah an equal number of those now held by us according to rank."

This communication was taken by Colonel Thomas Taylor,
who was permitted to visit "Washington, but was refused an audi-
ence with President Lincoln. He was obliged to content himself
with a verbal reply from General Winfield Scott that the com-
munication had been delivered to President Lincoln, and that he
would reply in writing as soon as possible. No answer ever
came. We were compelled to select by lot from among the pris-
oners in our hands a number to whom we proposed to mete
out the same fate which might await the crew of the Savannah.
These measures of retaliation arrested the cruel and illegal pur-
poses of the enemy.

Meantime, as early as May 21, 1861, the Confederate Con
gress passed an act which provided that —

" All prisoners of war taken, whether on land or sea, during the
pending hostilities with the United States, shall be transferred by
the captors from time to time, and as often as convenient, to the

1861] THE PALTRY PRETENSE OF NOT KNOWING IT. 585

Department of War ; and it shall be the duty of the Secretary of
War, with the approval of the President, to issue such instructions
to the quartermaster-general and his subordinates as shall provide
for the safe custody and sustenance of prisoners of war, and the
rations furnished prisoners of war shall be the same in quantity
and quality as those furnished to enlisted men in the army of the
Confederacy."

This law of Congress was embodied in the orders issued from
the War Department and from the headquarters in the field,
and no order was ever issued in conflict with its humane pro-
visions.

Nevertheless, the Government of the United States, forget-
ful of the conduct of Great Britain toward her revolted colo-
nies, apparently refused all consideration of the question of
exchange of prisoners, as if impressed with the idea that it
would derogate from the dignity of its position to accept any
interchange of courtesy. An exchange was therefore occasion-
ally made by the various commanders of troops under flags of
truce, while the Federal Government made the paltry pretense
of not knowing it. We released numbers at different points
on parole, and the matter was compromised in various ways.
Fifty-seven wounded soldiers were unconditionally released at
Kichmond and sent home. In response, twenty of our soldiers,
mostly North Carolinians, were released from Bedloe's Island,
New York, and sent to Fortress Monroe, to be discharged on
condition of taking the oath, so called, of loyalty to the United
States Government. Thirty-seven confined in the military pris-
on at Washington were released on taking the oath. On Sep-
tember 3d an exchange was made between General Pillow and
Colonel Wallace, of the United States Army. Whereupon
General Polk proposed an exchange to General Grant, who
replied, on October 14th :

" I can, of my own accordance, make none. I recognize no
1 Southern Confederacy ' myself, but will communicate with higher
authorities for their views."

An exchange was made on October 23d between General
McClernand and General Polk. Subsequently, on November

586 MSB AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

8th, General Grant offered to surrender to General Polk cer-
tain wounded men and invalids unconditionally. To this prop-
osition General Polk replied :

" My own feelings would prompt me to waive again the un-
important affectation of declining to recognize these States as
belligerents in the interest of humanity ; but my Government
requires all prisoners to be placed at the disposal of the Secretary
of War."

On ^November 1st General Fremont made an agreement
with General Price, in Missouri, by which certain persons named
were authorized to negotiate for the exchange of any persons
who might be taken prisoners of war, upon a plan previously
arranged. General Hunter, who succeeded General Fremont,
on November 7th, repudiated this agreement. A proposition
made in the Confederate Congress to return the prisoners cap-
tured by us at first Manassas, without any formality whatever,
would doubtless have prevailed but for the difficulty in refer-
ence to the crew of the Savannah.

But this determination of the United States Government,
not to meet us on the equal footing consistent with the mod-
ern usages of war and exchange prisoners, thus far prevented
any general arrangement for that object. In consequence, how-
ever, of the clamors of the ^Northern people for the restoration
of their friends, both Houses of Congress united in a request to
President Lincoln to take immediate steps for a general exchange.
Instead of complying with this request, two respectable commis-
sioners were, however, appointed to visit the prisoners we held,
relieve their necessities, and provide for their comfort at the ex-
pense of the United States. It is impossible to conceive any
reason for such conduct, unless it was to exasperate and " fire
up the ^Northern heart," as it was expressed, and thus cause the
people to make greater efforts for our devastation. This action
on the part of the Government was at a later day known by the
expression " waving the bloody shirt."

The commissioners arrived at Norfolk, Virginia, but were
not allowed to proceed any farther. A readiness on our part
to negotiate for a general exchange was manifested, and agreed

1862] HAD CHANGED HIS INSTRUCTIONS. 587

to by them. This was subsequently approved at Washington.
Shortly afterward, on February 14, 1862, an arrangement was
made between General Howell Cobb on our part and General
Wool, the commander at Fortress Monroe, by the terms of which
the prisoners of war in the hands of each Government were to
be exchanged man for man, the officers being assimilated as to
rank ; our privateersmen were to be' exchanged on the footing
of prisoners of war ; any surplus remaining on either side was
to be released ; and during the continuance of hostilities prison-
ers taken on either side should be paroled. The exchange pro-
ceeded, and about three hundred in excess had been delivered,
when it was discovered that not one of our privateersmen had
been released, and that our men taken prisoners at Fort Donel-
son, instead of being paroled, had been sent into the interior.
Some of the hostages we held for our privateersmen had gone
forward, but the remainder were retained. Being informed of
this state of affairs, I recommended to Congress that all of our
men who had been paroled by the United States Government
should be released from the obligations of their parole so as to
bear arms in our defense, in consequence of this breach of good
faith on the part of that Government. It was subsequently said,
on behalf of the United States Government, that the detention
I of our privateersmen had been intended to be only temporary,
to make it certain that the hostages were coming forward.

It is further stated that the only unadjusted point between
Generals Cobb and Wool was, that the latter was unwilling that
each party should agree to pay the expenses of transporting their
prisoners to the frontier, and this he promised to refer to his
Government. At a second interview, on March 1, 1862, Gen-
eral Wool informed General Cobb that his Government would
:not consent to pay these expenses, and thereupon General Cobb
ipromptly receded from his demand, and agreed to the terms
iproposed by the other side. But General Wool, who had said
;at the beginning of the negotiation, " I am clothed with full
power for the purpose of arranging for the exchange of prison-
ers," was now under the necessity of stating that " his Govern-
ment had changed his instructions." And thus the negotiations
'were abruptly broken off, and the matter left where it was be-

588 RISE A^D FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

fore.* After these negotiations had begun, the capture of
Forts Henry and Donelson had given to the United States a
considerable preponderance in the number of prisoners held by
them, and they at once returned to their original purpose of un-
equal treatment.

A suspension of exchange for some months ensued. Finally,
a storm of indignation beginning to arise among the Northern
people at the conduct of their Government, it was forced to
yield its absurd pretensions, and, on July 22, 1862, a cartel for
the exchange of prisoners was executed, based on the cartel of
1812 between the United States and Great Britain. In accord-
ance with these terms an exchange commenced, and by the
middle of August most of the officers of rank on either side,
who had been for any long period in captivity, were released.

On the same day on which the cartel was signed, an order
was issued by the Secretary of "War, in Washington, under in-
structions from President Lincoln, empowering the military
commanders in Virginia and elsewhere " to seize and use any
property, real or personal, which may be necessary or conven-
ient for their several commands for supplies or for other mili-
tary purposes," and " to keep accounts sufficiently accurate and
in detail to show quantities and amounts and from whom it
shall come, as a basis upon which compensation can be made
in proper cases." This was simply a system of plunder, for no
compensation would be made to any person unless he could prove
his fidelity to the Government of the United States.

On the next day, Major-General Pope, in command of the
United States forces near Washmgton,f issued a general order
directing the murder of our peaceful inhabitants as spies, if
found quietly tilling the farms in his rear, even outside of his
lines ; and one of his brigadier-generals seized upon innocent
and peaceful inhabitants to be held as hostages, to the end that
they might be murdered in cold blood if any of his soldiers
were killed by some unknown persons, whom he designated as
" bushwhackers." Under this state of facts, I issued a general
order, recognizing General Pope and his commissioned officers
to be in the position which they had chosen for themselves —

* " Southern Historical Society Papers," March, 1876. f See chapter xxxir.

1862] WORSE THAN THAT OF THE SAYAGE. 589

that of robbers and murderers, and not that of public enemies,
entitled, if captured, to be considered as prisoners of war. Some
of the military authorities of the United States seemed to sup-
pose that better success would attend a savage war, in which no
quarter was to be given and no age or sex to be spared, than had
hitherto been secured by such hostilities as were alone recog-
nized to be lawful by civilized meu. We renounced our right
of retaliation on the innocent, and continued to treat the soldiers
of General Pope's army as prisoners of war, confining our re-
pressive measures to the punishment only of commissioned offi-
cers as were willing participants in such crimes. General Pope
was soon afterward removed from command.

In August a letter involving similar principles was addressed
by General R. E. Lee to the commanding General at Washing-
ton, General Halleck, making inquiries as to the truth of the
case of William B. Mumford, reported to have been murdered
at New Orleans by Major-General Benjamin F. Butler, and of
i Colonel John Owens, reported to have been murdered in Mis-
. souri by order of Major-General Pope. I had also been credi-
bly informed that numerous other officers of the army of the
| United States within the Confederacy had been guilty of felonies
i and capital offenses, which are punishable by all laws human
and divine. Inquiries were made by letter relative to a few of
the best-authenticated cases. It was announced that Major-
i General Hunter had armed slaves for the murder of their mas-
ters, and had thus done all in his power to inaugurate a servile
i war, which is worse than that of the savage, inasmuch as it super-
; adds other horrors to the indiscriminate slaughter of all ages,
sexes, and conditions.

In a letter, dated Port Royal, South Carolina, June 23, 1862,
General Hunter said :

" It is my hope to have organized by the end of next fall, and
to be able to present to the Government, from forty-eight to fifty
thousand of these hardy and devoted soldiers."

Brigadier-General Phelps was reported to have initiated at
New Orleans the example set by General Hunter in South Caro-
lina. Brigadier-General G. N. Fitch was stated in the public

590 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

journals to have murdered iu cold blood two peaceful citizens,
because one of his men, when invading our country, was killed
by some unknown person while defending his home. General
Lee was further directed by ms to say that, if a reply was not
received in fifteen days, it would be assumed that the alleged
facts were true, and were sanctioned by the Government of the
United States, and on that Government would rest the responsi-
bility of retaliatory measures. The reply of the commanding
General (Halleck) at Washington was in these words :

"As these papers are couched in language insulting to the
Government of the United States, I most respectfully decline to
receive them."

On August 20, 1862, I issued an order threatening retalia-
tion for the lives of peaceable citizens reported to have been
executed by Brigadier- General Fitch. That report was after-
ward ascertained to be untrue. On the next day I issued an-
other order, which, after reciting the principal facts, directed
that Major-General Hunter and Brigadier-General Phelps should
be no longer held and treated as public enemies of the Confed-
erate States, but as outlaws ; and that in the event of the cap-
ture of either of them, or that of any other commissioned officer
employed in drilling, organizing, or instructing slaves, with a
view to their armed service in this war, he should not be re-
garded as a prisoner of war, but held in close confinement for
execution as a felon, at such time and place as may be ordered.

In the case of "William B. Mumford, a letter was received
from General Halleck, dated August 7, 1862, stating sufficient
causes for a failure to make an earlier reply to the letter of July
6th ; asserting that " no authentic information had been re-
ceived in relation to the execution of Mumford, but measures
will be immediately taken to ascertain the facts of the alleged
execution," and promising that General Lee should be duly
informed thereof. Subsequently, on November 25, 1862, our
agent for the exchange of prisoners, Mr. Robert Ould, under
my instructions, addressed the agent of the United States, in-
forming him that the explanation promised on August 7th had
not been received ; and that, if no answer was sent within fifteen

1863] WITH THE USAGES OF WAR. 591

days, it would be considered that an answer was declined. On
December 3d our agent, Mr. Ould, was apprised by the agent of
the United States that his letter had been forwarded to the Sec-
retary of War at Washington, and no answer was returned, which
was regarded as a tacit admission of the charge. Besides, I had
received evidence fully establishing the fact that the said Mum-
ford, a citizen of the Confederacy, was actually and publicly
executed in cold blood by hanging after the occupation of Xew
Orleans by the forces under General Benjamin F. Butler, when
said Mumford was an unresisting and non-combatant captive,
and for no offenses even alleged to have been committed by
him subsequent to the date of the occupation of the city. It ap-
peared that the silence of the Government of the United States
and its maintenance of Butler in high office, under its author-
ity, afforded evidence too conclusive that it sanctioned his con-
duct, and was determined that he should remain unpunished for
these crimes. I therefore pronounced and declared the said
Butler a felon, deserving capital punishment, and ordered that
he be no longer considered and treated as a public enemy of the
Confederate States, but as an outlaw and common enemy of
mankind ; and that, in the event of his capture, the officer in
command should cause him to be immediately executed by
hanging.

These measures of retaliation were in conformity with the
usages of war, and were adapted to check and punish the cruel-
ties of our adversary.

At length, so many difficulties were raised and so many com-
plaints made in the execution of the cartel, that, for the sake of
the unfortunate prisoners, I resolved to seek an adjustment
through the authorities at Washington. For this purpose Yice-
j President Stephens offered his services as a commissioner. The
following papers will show the proposition we were prepared to
make, and illustrate the disposition with which our humane de-
. signs were regarded by the enemy :

" Richmond, July 2, 1863.
"Hon. Alexander H. Stephens, Richmond, Virginia.

" Sir : Having accepted your patriotic offer to proceed as a
military commissioner under flag of truce to Washington, you will

592 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

receive herewith your letter of authority to the Commander-in-
Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States. The letter is
signed by me, as Commander-in-Chief of the Confederate land
and naval forces.

" You will perceive from the terms of the letter that it is so
worded as to avoid any political difficulties in its reception. In-
tended exclusively as one of those communications between bel-
ligerents which public law recognizes as necessary and proper
between hostile forces, care has been taken to give no pretext for
refusing to receive it on the ground that it would involve a tacit
recognition of the independence of the Confederacy. Your mis-
sion is simply one of humanity, and has no political aspect.

"If objection is made to receiving your letter on the ground
that it is not addressed to Abraham Lincoln as President, instead
of Commander-in-Chief, etc., then you will present the duplicate
letter which is addressed to him as President and signed by me as
President. To this latter, objection may be made on the ground
that I am not recognized to be President of the Confederacy. In
this event you will decline any further attempt to confer on the
subject of your mission, as such conference is admissible only on
the footing of perfect equality.

" My recent interviews with you have put you so fully in pos-
session of my views, that it is scarcely necessary to give you any
detailed instructions, even were I at this moment well enough to
attempt it. My whole purpose is in one word to place this war
on the footing of such as are waged by civilized people in modern
times, and to divest it of the savage character which has been im-
pressed on it by our enemies, in spite of all our efforts and pro-
tests. War is full enough of unavoidable horrors under all its
aspects, to justify and even to demand of any Christian rulers who
may be unhappily engaged in carrying it on, to seek to restrict its
calamities and to divest it of all unnecessary severities. You will
endeavor to establish the cartel for the exchange of prisoners on
such a basis as to avoid the constant difficulties and complaints
which arise, and to prevent for the future what we deem the un-
fair conduct of our enemies in evading the delivery of the prison-
ers who fall into their hands ; in retarding it by sending them on
circuitous routes, and by detaining them sometimes for months in
camps and prisons ; and in persisting in taking captives non-com-
batants.

1863] JUST GROUNDS OF COMPLAINT. 593

"Your attention is also called to the unheard-of conduct of
Federal officers in driving from their homes entire communities of
women and children, as well as of men, whom they find in districts
occupied by their troops, for no other reason than because these
unfortunates are faithful to the allegiance due to their States, and
refuse to take an oath of fidelity to their enemies.

" The putting to death of unarmed prisoners has been a ground
of just complaint in more than one instance ; and the recent exe-
cution of officers of our army in Kentucky, for the sole cause that
they were engaged in recruiting service in a State which is claimed
as still one of the United States, but is also claimed by us as one
of the Confederate States, must be repressed by retaliation if not
unconditionally abandoned, because it would justify the like exe-
cution in every otber State of the Confederacy ; and the practice
is barbarous, uselessly cruel, and can only lead to the slaughter of
prisoners on both sides — a result too horrible to be contemplated
without making every effort to avoid it.

" On these and all kindred subjects you will consider your au-
thority full and ample to make such arrangements as will temper the
present cruel character of the contest, and full confidence is placed
in your judgment, patriotism, and discretion that, while carrying
out the objects of your mission, you will take care that the equal
rights of the Confederacy be always preserved."

" Headquarters, Richmond, July 2, 1S63.

" Sir : As Commander-in-Chief of the land and naval forces
now waging war against the United States, I have the honor to
address this communication to you, as Commander-in-Chief of
their land and naval forces.

"Numerous difficulties and disputes have arisen in relation to
the execution of the cartel of exchange heretofore agreed on by
the belligerents, and the commissioners for the exchange of pris-
oners have been unable to adjust their differences. Their action
on the subject of these differences is delayed and embarrassed by
the necessity of referring each subject as it arises to superior au-
thority for decision. I believe that I have just grounds of com-
plaint against the officers and forces under your command for
breach of the terms of the cartel, and, being myself ready to exe-
cute it at all times in good faith, I am not justified in doubting
the existence of the same disposition on your part.
85

594 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

" In addition to this matter, I have to complain of the conduct
of your officers and troops in many parts of the country, who vio-
late all the rules of war, by carrying on hostilities, not only
against armed foes, but against non-combatants, aged men, women,
and children ; while others not only seize such property as is re-
quired for the use of your forces, but destroy all private property
within their reach, even agricultural implements ; and openly
avow the purpose of seeking to subdue the population of the dis-
tricts where they are operating, by the starvation that must result
from the destruction of standing crops and agricultural tools.

" Still, again, others of your officers in different districts have
recently taken the lives of prisoners who fell into their power, and
justify their act by asserting a right to treat as spies the military
officers and enlisted men under my command, who may penetrate
for hostile purposes into States claimed by me to be engaged in
the warfare now waged against the United States, and claimed by
the latter as having refused to engage in such warfare.

" I have heretofore, on different occasions, been forced to make
complaint of these outrages, and to ask from you that you should
either avow or disclaim having authorized them, and have failed
to obtain such answer as the usages of civilized warfare require to
be given in such cases.

" These usages justify, and indeed require, redress by retalia-
tion, as the proper means of repressing such cruelties as are not
permitted in warfare between Christian peoples. I have, notwith-
standing, refrained from the exercise of such retaliation, because
of its obvious tendency to lead to a war of indiscriminate mas-
sacre on both sides, which would be a spectacle so shocking to
humanity and so disgraceful to the age in which we live and the
religion we profess, that I can not contemplate it without a feeling
of horror that I am disinclined to doubt you would share.

" With the view, then, of making one last solemn attempt to
avert such calamities, and to attest my earnest desire to prevent
them, if it be possible, I have selected the bearer of this letter,
the Hon. Alexander H. Stephens, as a military commissioner to
proceed to your headquarters under flag of truce, there to confer
and agree on the subjects above mentioned ; and I do hereby au-
thorize the said Alexander H. Stephens to arrange and settle all
differences and disputes which may have arisen or may arise in
the execution of the cartel for exchange of prisoners of war, here-

1863] THE REQUEST IS INADMISSIBLE. 595

tofore agreed on between our respective land and naval forces ; also
to agree to any just modification that may be found necessary to
prevent further misunderstandings as to the terms of said cartel ;
and finally to enter into such arrangement or understanding about
the mode of carrying on hostilities between the belligerents as shall
confine the severities of the war within such limits as are right-
fully imposed, not only by modern civilization, but by our common
Christianity. I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

"Jefferson Davis,
" Commander-in- Chief of the land and naval

forces of the Confederate States.
" To Abraham Lincoln,

" Commander-in- Chief of the land and naval forces of the United States."

On July 3, 1863, Mr. Stephens proceeded down the James
Eiver under a flag of truce, and when near Newport News his
further progress was arrested by the orders of the Admiral of
the enemy's fleet. The object of his mission, with a request for
permission to go to "Washington, was made known to that officer,
who, by telegraph, communicated with the Government at
"Washington. The reply of that Government was :

" The request is inadmissible. The customary agents and chan-
nels are adequate for all needful military communications and con-
ference between the United States forces and the insurgents."

This was all the notice ever taken of our humane proposi-
tions. We were stigmatized as insurgents, and the door was
shut in our faces. Does not this demonstrate an intent to sub-
jugate our States ?

From the correspondence of our exchange commissioner,
Judge Ould, it appears that, from the date of the cartel on July
22, 1862, until the summer of 1863, we had an excess of pris-
oners. During the interval deliveries wrere made as fast as the
enemy furnished transportation. Indeed, upon more than one
occasion they were urged to send increased means of transporta-
tion. It was never alleged that we failed or neglected to make
prompt deliveries of prisoners who were not held under charges
when they had the excess. On the other hand, the cartel was
openly and notoriously violated by the Washington authorities.

596 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

Officers and men were kept in confinement, sometimes in irons
or doomed to cells, without charge or trial. Many officers were
kept in confinement even after the notices published bj the
enemy had declared them to be exchanged.

In the summer of 1863 the authorities at Washington in-
sisted upon exchanges limited to such as were held in confine-
ment on either side. This was resisted as in violation of the car-
tel. Such a construction not only kept in confinement the excess
on either side, but ignored all paroles which were held by the
Confederate Government. These were very many, being the
paroles of officers and men who had been released on capture.
The authorities at Washington at that time held few or no pa-
roles. They had all, or nearly all, been surrendered. We gave
prisoners as an equivalent for them. As long as we had the
excess of prisoners, matters went on smoothly enough ; but, as
soon as the posture of affairs in that respect was changed, the
cartel could no longer be observed. So long as the United
States Government held the paroles of Confederate officers and
men, they were respected and made the basis of exchange ; but
when equivalents were obtained for them, and no more were in
hand, they would not recognize the paroles which were held
by us. In consequence of the position thus assumed by the
Government of the United States, the requirement of the cartel
that all prisoners should be delivered within ten days was prac-
tically nullified. The deliveries which were afterward made
were the results of special agreements.

The wish of the Confederate Government, which it was
hoped had been accomplished by the cartel, was the prompt
release of all prisoners on both sides, either by exchange or
parole. When, in 1864, the cartel was so disregarded by the
enemy as to indicate that prisoners would be held long in con-
finement, Andersonville, in Georgia, was selected for* the loca-
tion of a principal prison. The site was chosen because of its
supposed security from raids, together with its salubrity, the
abundance of water and timber, and the productive farming
country around it. General Howell Cobb, then commanding in
Georgia, employed a large number of negro laborers in the con-
struction of a stockade and temporary shelter for the number

1864] TOO BRAVE TO BE CRUEL. 597

of prisoners it was expected would be assembled there. The
number, however, rapidly increased, and, by the middle of
May, gangrene and scurvy made their appearance. General
John H. Winder, who had been stationed in Richmond in
charge of the police and local guards, as well as the general
control of prisoners, went to Andersonville in June, and found
disease prevailing to such an extent that, to abate the pestilence,
he immediately advised the removal of prisoners to other points.
As soon as arrangements could be made, he was instructed to
disperse them to Millen and elsewhere, as in his judgment
might be best for their health, comfort, and safety. In July
he made arrangements to procure vegetables, recommended
details of men to cultivate gardens, and that hospital accommo-
dations should be constructed outside of the prison ; all of which
recommendations were approved, and as far as practicable exe-
cuted. In September General Winder, with the main body of
the prisoners, removed first to Millen, Georgia, and then to
Florence, South Carolina.

Major Wirz thereafter remained in command at Anderson-
ville, and the testimony of Chief-Surgeon Stevenson, of the
hospital at Andersonville, bears testimony to the success with
which Wirz improved the post, and the good effect produced
upon the health of the prisoners. This unfortunate man — who,
under the severe temptation to which he was exposed before
his execution, exhibited honor and fidelity strongly in contrast
with his tempters and persecutors — it now appears, was the vic-
tim of men whom, in his kindness, he paroled to take care of
their sick comrades, and who, after having violated their parole,
appeared to testify against him.

In like manner has calumny pursued the memory of General
John H. Winder, a man too brave to be cruel to anything
within his power, too well bred and well born to be influ-
enced by low and sordid motives. I have referred only to a
few of the facts illustrative of his kindness to the prisoners
after he went to Georgia, and they were in keeping with his
conduct toward the prisoners at Richmond. This latter fact,
together with his sterling integrity and soldierly character, had
caused his selection for the chief control of Confederate prisons.

598 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

The Adjutant-General, Samuel Cooper, a man as pure in
heart as he was sound in judgment, was the classmate of Win-
der ; their lives had been passed in the army in frequent inter-
course; and General Cooper, in a letter of July 9, 1871, wrote
that " General Winder, who had the control of the Northern
prisoners, was an honest,- upright, and humane gentleman, and
as such I had known him for many years. He had the reputa-
tion, in the Confederacy, of treating the prisoners confided to
his general supervision with great kindness and consideration."

In January, 1864, and even earlier, it became manifest that,
in consequence of the complication in relation to exchanges, the
large mass of prisoners on both sides would remain in captivity
for many long and weary months, if not for the duration of the
war. In order to alleviate the hardships of confinement on
both sides, our commissioner, on January 24. 1863, addressed a
communication to General E. A. Hitchcock, United States com-
missioner of exchange, in which he proposed that all prisoners
on each side should be attended by a proper number of their
own surgeons, who, under rules to be established, should be per-
mitted to take charge of their health and comfort.

It was also proposed that these surgeons should act as com-
missaries, with power to receive and distribute such contribu-
tions of money, food, clothing, and medicines as might be for-
warded for the relief of the prisoners. It was further proposed
that these surgeons should be selected by their own Government,
and that they should have full liberty at any and all times,
through the agents of exchange, to make reports, not only of
their own acts, but of any matters relating to the welfare of the
prisoners.

To this communication no reply of any kind was ever made.

Again, Commissioner Ould, in a communication published
in August, 1868, further says :

"About the last of March, 1864, I had several conferences
with General B. F. Butler, then agent of exchange at Fortress
Monroe, in relation to the difficulties attending the exchange of
prisoners, and we reached what we both thought a tolerably satis-
factory basis. The day that I left there General Grant arrived.
General Butler says he communicated to him the state of the ne-

1864] PUT THE MATTER OFFENSIVELY. 599

gotiations, and 'most emphatic verbal directions were received
from the Lieutenant-General not to take any step by which an-
other able-bodied man should be exchanged until further orders
from him ' ; and that on April 30, 1864, he received a telegram
from General Grant ' to receive all the sick and wounded the Con-
federate authorities may send you, but send no more in exchange.'
Unless my recollection fails me, General Butler also, in an address
to his constituents, substantially declared that he was directed, in
his management of the question of exchange with the Confeder-
ate authorities, to put the matter offensively, for the purpose of
preventing an exchange."

The signification of the word " offensively," in the preceding
line, relates to the exchange of negro soldiers. The Govern-
ment of the United States contended that the slaves in their
ranks were such no longer; that it was bound to accord to them,
when made prisoners, the same protection that it gave all other
soldiers. We asserted the slaves to be property, under the Con-
stitution of the United States and that of the Confederate
States, and that property recaptured from the enemy in war re-
verts to its owner, if he can be found, or it may be disposed of
by its captor.

On October 1st, when the number of prisoners was large on
either side, General Lee addressed a note to General Grant,
saying :

" With a view of alleviating the sufferings of our soldiers, I
have the honor to propose an exchange of the prisoners of war
belonging to the armies operating in Virginia, man for man, or
upon the basis established by the cartel."

On the next day General Grant replied :

" I could not of a right accept your proposition further than
to exchange those prisoners captured within the last three days,
and who have not yet been delivered to the commanding General
of prisoners. Among those lost by the armies operating against
Richmond were a number of colored troops. Before further ne-
gotiations are had upon the subject, I would ask if you propose
delivering these men the same as white soldiers."

On the next day General Lee said, in rejoinder :

600 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

" In my proposition of the 1st inst., to exchange the prisoners
of war belonging to the armies operating in Virginia, I intended
to include all captured soldiers of the United States, of whatever
nation and color, under my control. Deserters from our service
and negroes belonging to our citizens are not considered subjects
of exchange, and were not included in my proposition. If there
are any such among those stated by you to have been captured
around Richmond, they can not be returned."

On October 20th General Grant finally answered, saying :

" I shall always regret the necessity of retaliating for wrong
done our soldiers, but regard it my duty to protect all persons re-
ceived into the army of the United States, regardless of color or
nationality; when acknowledged soldiers of the Government are
captured, they must be treated as prisoners of war, or such treat-
ment as they receive inflicted upon an equal number of prisoners
held by us."

This was " putting the matter offensively, for the purpose of
preventing an exchange," as recommended by General Grant
for the adoption of General Butler.

But let us return to the progress of negotiations. In a dis-
patch from General Grant to General Butler, dated City Point,
August 18, 1864, the former says :

" On the subject of exchange, however, I differ from General
Hitchcock. It is hard on our men held in Southern prisons not to
exchange them, but it is humanity to those left in the ranks to
fight our battles. Every man released on parole, or otherwise, be-
comes an active soldier against us at once, either directly or indi-
rectly. If we commence a system of exchange, which liberates all
prisoners taken, we will have to fight on until the whole South is
exterminated. If we hold those caught, they amount to no more
than dead men. At this particular time to release all rebel pris-
oners North would insure Sherman's defeat, and would compro-
mise our safety here." •

We now proposed to the Government of the United States
to exchange the prisoners respectively held, officer for officer
and man for man. We had previously declined this proposal,
and insisted on the terms of the cartel, which required the de-

1864] NO ANSWER WAS RECEIVED. 601

livery of the excess on either side on parole. At the same time
we sent a statement of the mortality prevailing among the pris-
oners at Andersonville.

As no answer had been received relative to this proposal, a
communication was sent, on August 22, 1864, to Major-General
E. A. Hitchcock, United States commissioner of exchange, con-
taining the same proposal which had been before delivered to
the assistant commissioner, and a request was made for its ac-
ceptance.

No answer was received to either of these letters, and on
August 31st the assistant commissioner stated that he had no
communication on the subject from the United States Govern-
ment, and that he was not authorized to make an answer.

This offer, which would have released every soldier of the
United States confined in our prisons, was not even noticed.
Indeed, the United States Government had, at that time, a
large excess of prisoners, and the effect of the proposal, if car-
ried out, would have been to release all the prisoners belonging
to it, while a large number of ours would have remained in
prison awaiting the chances of the capture of their equiv-
alents.

Thus, having ascertained that exchanges could not be made,
either on the basis of the cartel, or officer for officer and man for
man, we offered to the United States Government their sick and
wounded without requiring any equivalents. On these terms,
we agreed to deliver from ten to fifteen thousand at the mouth
of the Savannah River ; and we further added that, if the num-
ber for which transportation might be sent could not be readily
made up from sick and wounded, the difference should be sup-
plied with well men. Although the offer was made in the sum-
mer, the transportation did not arrive until November. And
as the sick and wounded were at points distant from Georgia,
and could not be brought to Savannah within a reasonable time,
five thousand well men were substituted. In return, some three
thousand sick and wounded were delivered to us at the same
place. The original rolls showed that some thirty-five hundred
had started from Northern prisons, and that death had reduced
the number during the passage to about three thousand.

C02 EISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

On two occasions we were specially asked to send the very
sick and desperately wounded prisoners, and a particular request
was made for men who were so seriously sick that it was doubt-
ful whether they would survive a removal a few miles down
James River. Accordingly, some of the worst cases, contrary
to the judgment of our surgeons, but in compliance with the
piteous appeals of the sick prisoners, were sent away, and after
being delivered they were taken to Annapolis, Maryland, and
there photographed as specimen prisoners. The photographs
at Annapolis were terrible indeed, but the misery they por-
trayed was surpassed by some of those we received in exchange
at Savannah. Why was there this delay between the summer
and November in sending vessels for the transportation of sick
and wounded, for whom no equivalents were asked? "Were
Federal prisoners left to suffer, and afterward photographed
" to aid in firing the popular heart of the North " ?

In the summer of 1864, in consequence of certain informa-
tion communicated to our commissioner, Mr. Ould, by the Sur-
geon-General of the Confederate States, as to the deficiency of
medicines, Mr. Ould offered to make purchases of medicines
from the United States authorities, to be used exclusively for
the relief of the Union prisoners. He offered to pay gold, cot-
ton, or tobacco for them, and even two or three prices if re-
quired. At the same time he gave assurances that the medi-
cines would be used exclusively for the treatment of Union
prisoners ; and moreover agreed, on behalf of the Confederate
States, if it were insisted on, that such medicines might be
brought into the Confederate lines by the -United States sur-
geons, and dispensed by them. Incredible as it may appear, it
is, nevertheless, strictly true that no reply was ever received to
this offer.

One final effort was now made to obtain an exchange. This
consisted in my sending a delegation from the prisoners at
Andersonville to plead their cause before the authorities at
Washington. It was of no avail. President Lincoln refused
to see them. They were made to understand that the interests
of the Government of the United States required that they
should return to prison and remain there. They carried back

1304] REFUSED TO MAKE A FAIR EXCHANGE. 603

the sad tidings that their Government held out no hope of their
release.

" We have a letter from the wife of the chairman of that del-
egation (now dead) in which she says that her husband always
said that he was more contemptuously treated by Secretary of
War Stanton than he ever was at Andersonville." *

Another prisoner, Henry M. Brennan, writes :

"I was at Andersonville when the delegation of prisoners
spoken of by Jefferson Davis left there to plead our cause with
the authorities at Washington ; and nobody can tell, unless it be
a shipwrecked and famished mariner, who sees a vessel approach-
ing and then passing on without rendering the required aid, what
fond hopes were raised, and how hope sickened into despair, wait-
ing for the answer that never came. In my opinion, and that of
a good many others, a good part of the responsibility for the hor-
rors of Andersonville rests with General U. S. Grant, who refused
to make a fair exchange of prisoners."

The following extracts are from the official report of Major-
, General Butler to " the Committee on the Conduct of the War,"
1 which was appointed by a joint resolution of Congress, during
the war :

" Mr. Ould left on the 31st of March, 1864, with the under-

; standing that I would get authority and information from my

Government, by which all disputed points could be adjusted, and

I would then confer with him further, either meeting him at City

Point or elsewhere for that purpose. In the mean time exchanges

of sick and wounded, and special exchanges, should go on.

" General Grant visited Fortress Monroe on April 1st, being the
first time I had ever met him. To him the state of the negotia-
tions as to exchangef was verbally communicated ; and most em-
phatic directions were received from the Lieutenant- General not

* Editor of Southern Historical Society Papers.

f The negotiations as to exchange, to which General Butler refers, were the
points of agreement between General Butler and myself, under which exchanges of
.all white and free black soldiers, man for man and officer for officer, were to go on,
leaving the question as to slaves to be disposed of by subsequent arrangement."—
(Letter of Mr. Ould, June, 1879.)

604 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

to take any step by which another able-bodied man should be ex-
changed, until further orders from him."

General Butler next gives the following from General Mul-
ford, United States assistant agent of exchange, addressed to
him :

" General : The Confederate authorities will exchange pris-
oners on the basis heretofore proposed by our Government — that
is, man for man. This proposition was proposed formally to me
after I saw you."

General Butler's report continues as follows :

" Accident prevented my meeting the rebel commissioner, so
that nothing was done ; but after conversation with General Grant,
in reply to the proposition of Mr. Ould to exchange all prisoners
of war on either side held, man for man, officer for officer, I wrote
an argument showing our right to our colored soldiers. This ar-
gument set forth our claims in the most offensive form possible,
consistently with ordinary courtesy of language, for the purpose
of carrying out the wishes of the Lieutenant-General that no
prisoners of war should be exchanged. This paper was published
so as to bring a public pressure by the owners of slaves upon the
rebel Government, in order to forbid their exchange."

The report continues :

" In case the Confederate authorities took the same view as
General Grant, believing that an exchange * would defeat Sherman
and imperil the safety of the Armies of the Potomac and the
James,' and therefore should yield to the argument, and formally
notify me that their former slaves captured in our uniform would
be exchanged as other soldiers were, and that they were ready to
return us all our prisoners at Andersonville and elsewhere in ex-
change for theirs, then I had determined, with the consent of the
Lieutenant-General, as a last resort to prevent exchange, to de-
mand that the outlawry against me should formally be reversed
and apologized for, before I would further negotiate the exchange
of prisoners. But the argument was enough, and the Confederates
never offered to me afterward to exchange the colored soldiers
who had been slaves, held in prison by them."

1864] WOULD HONESTLY MEET US. 605

Further on in the report General Butler gives the history
of some naval exchanges, in the course of which colored prison-
ers were delivered, and concludes his observations on that head
as follows :

" It will be observed that the rebels had exchanged all the
naval colored prisoners, so that the negro question no longer im-
peded the exchange of prisoners; in fact, if we had demanded the
exchange of all, man for man, officer for officer, they would have
done it."

The conclusion of the report is as follows :

" I have felt it my duty to give an account with this particular
carefulness of my participation in the business of exchange of
prisoners, the orders under which I acted, and the negotiations
attempted, which comprises a faithful narration of all that was
done, so that all may become a matter of history. The great im-
portance of the questions ; the fearful responsibility for the many
thousands of lives which, by the refusal to exchange, were sacri-
ficed by the most cruel forms of death, from cold, starvation, and
pestilence of the prison -pens of Raleigh and Anderson ville, being

i more than all the British soldiers killed in the wars of Napoleon ;
the anxiety of fathers, brothers, sisters, mothers, wives, to know
the exigency which caused this terrible, and perhaps, as it may
have seemed to them, useless and unnecessary, destruction of those
dear to them, by horrible deaths, each and all have compelled me

; to this exposition, so that it may be seen that those lives were
spent as a part of the system of attack upon the rebellion, devised
by the wisdom of the General-in-Chief of the armies, to destroy it
by depletion, depending upon our superior numbers to win the
victory at last. The loyal mourners will doubtless derive solace

'from this fact, and appreciate all the more highly the genius which

.conceived the plan, and the success won at so great a cost."

Sufficient facts have been presented to satisfy every intelli-
gent and candid mind of our entire readiness to surrender, for
exchange, all the prisoners in our possession, whenever the
Government of the United States would honestly meet us for
,that purpose. At any hour perfect arrangements could have
been made with us for the restoration to it of all its soldiers
held as prisoners by us, if its authorities at Washington had

606 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

consented so to do. On them rests the criminality for the
sufferings of these prisoners.

Further, the Government of the United States, in order to
effect onr subjugation, devastated our fields, destroyed our
crops, broke up our railroads, and thus interrupted our means of
transportation, and reduced our people, our armies, and conse-
quently their soldiers, who were our prisoners, all alike, to the
most straitened condition for food. Our medicines for the sick
were exhausted, and, contrary to the usage of civilized nations,
they were made, by our enemy, contraband of war. After
causing these and other distressing events — of which Atlanta,
where the women and children were driven into the fields and
their houses burned, and Columbia, with its smoking and plun-
dered ruins, were prominent examples — after every effort to
excite our slaves to servile war — this Government of the United
States turned to the Northern people, and, charging us with
atrocious cruelties to their sons, who were our prisoners, ap-
pealed to them again and again to recruit the armies and take
vengeance upon us by our abject subjugation or entire extermi-
nation. It was the last effort of the usurper to save himself.

But there is another scene to be added to these cruelties.
During all this time, Northern prisons were full of our brave
and heroic soldiers, of whom there were about sixty thousand.
The privations which they suffered, the cruelties inspired by
the malignant spirit of the Government, which were inflicted
upon them, surpass any records of modern history : yet we have
had no occasion to seek out a Wirz for public trial before an
illegal court, that we might conceal behind him our own
neglect and cruel sacrifice of them. That we might clothe
our brave men in the prisons of the United States Govern-
ment, I made an application for permission to send cotton
to Liverpool, and therewith purchase the supplies which were
necessary. The request was granted, but only on condition
that the cotton should be sent to New York and the supplies
bought there. This was done by our agent, General Beale.
The suffering of our men in Northern prisons caused the appli-
cation ; that it was granted, refutes the statement that our men
were comfortably maintained.

1865] TO OFFER TWO FACTS. 607

Finally, to the bold allegations of ill-treatment of prisoners
on our side, and humane treatment and adequate supplies on
that of our opponents, it is only necessary to offer two facts :
First, the report of the Secretary of War, E. M. Stanton, made
on July 19, 1866, shows that, of all the prisoners in our hands
during the war, only 22,576 died ; while, of the prisoners in
our opponents' hands, 26,216 died. Second, the official report
of Surgeon-General Barnes, an officer of the United States Gov-
ernment, states that, in round numbers, the number of Confed-
erate States prisoners in their hands amounted to 220,000, the
number of United States prisoners in our hands amounted to
270,000. Thus, out of the 270,000 in our hands, 22,000 died;
while of the 220,000 of our soldiers in their hands, 26,000 died.
Thus, more than twelve per cent, of the prisoners in our oppo-
nents' hands died, and less than nine per cent, of the prisoners
in our hands died.

When, in this connection, it is remembered how much our
resources were reduced, that our supply of medicines required
in summer diseases was exhausted, and that Northern men
when first residing at the South must undergo acclimation, and
that these conditions in the Northern States were the reverse in
each particular — the fact that greater mortality existed in
Northern than in Southern prisons can only be accounted for
by the kinder treatment received in the latter. To present the
case in a sentence — we did the best we could for those whom
the fortune of war had placed at our mercy ; and the enemy, in
i the midst of plenty, inflicted cruel, wanton deprivation on our
• soldiers who fell within his power.

In regard to the failure in the exchange of prisoners, Gen-
eral B. F. Butler has irrefutably fixed the responsibility on the
Government at Washington and on General Grant. The ob-
stacles thus thrown in the way were not only persistently inter-
posed, but artfully designed to be insurmountable.

On the other hand, the Confederate Government, through
Colonel Ould, its commissioner of exchanges, sought by all
practicable means to execute the obligations of the cartel, and
otherwise to relieve the suffering of prisoners kept in confine-
ment ; through a delegation of the Federal prisoners at Ander-

608 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

sonville, it sought to attract the notice of their Government to
their sufferings ; and, finally, confiding in the chivalry charac-
teristic of soldiers, sought, through General Lee, to make an
arrangement with General Grant for the exchange of all the
prisoners held in their respective commands, and as many more
as General Grant could add in response to all held by the Con-
federate Government.*

CHAPTEE L.

Subjugation the Object cf the Government of the United States. — The only Terms
of Peace offered to us. — Rejection of all Proposals. — Efforts of the Enemy.—
Appearance of Jacques and Gilmore at Richmond. — Proposals. — Answer. — Com-
missioners sent to Canada. — The Object. — Proceedings. — Note of President Lin-
coln.— Permission to visit Richmond granted to Francis P. Blair. — Statement
of my Interview with him. — My Letter to him. — Response of President Lincoln.
— Three Persons sent by me to an Informal Conference. — Their Report. — Re-
marks of Judge Campbell. — Oath of President Lincoln. — The Provision of the
Constitution and his Proclamation compared. — Reserved Powers spoken of in
the Constitution. — What are they, and where do they exist ? — Terms of Sur-
render offered to our Soldiers.

That it was the purpose of the Government of the United
States to subjugate the Southern States and the Southern
people, under the pretext of a restoration of the Union, is estab-
lished by the terms and conditions offered to us in all the con-
ferences relative to a settlement of differences. All were com-
prehended in one word, and that was subjugation. If the pur-
pose had been an honorable and fraternal- restoration of the
Union as was avowed, methods for the adjustment of difficul-
ties would have been presented and discussed ; propositions for
reconciliation with concessions and modifications for grievances
would have been kindly offered and treated ; and a way would
have been opened for a mutual and friendly intercourse. How
unlike this were all the propositions offered to us, will be seen
in the proceedings which took place in the conferences, and in

* For full and exact information, compiled from official records and other docu-
ments, the reader is referred to " Treatment of Prisoners," by J. William Jones,
D. D., and to " The Southern Side : or Andersonville Prison, compiled from Official
Documents," by R. Randolph Stevenson, M. D.

1861] "DISPERSE, YE REBELS!" 609

the terms of surrender offered to our soldiers. It should be re-
membered that mankind compose one uniform order of beings,
and thus the language of arbitrary power has the same signifi-
cation in all ages. When Major Pitcairn marched the British
soldiers upon the common, at Lexington, in Massachusetts, on
April 19, 1775, and, drawing his sword, rushed upon the little line
of Continentals, exclaiming : " Disperse, ye rebels ! throw down
your arms and disperse ! " he expressed the same conditions
which were offered to us in all our negotiations with the Presi-
dent of the United States and his generals. Does any one
doubt that Major Pitcairn meant subjugation, or that Great
Britain meant subjugation ? Let them as dispassionately con-
strue the Government of the United States in its declarations
to us.

Several efforts were made by us to communicate with the
authorities at Washington without success. Commissioners
were sent before hostilities were begun, and the Government of
| the United States refused to receive them, or hear what ihey
had to say. A second time I sent a military officer with a com-
munication addressed by myself to President Lincoln. The
letter was received by General Scott, who did not permit the
officer to see Mr. Lincoln, but promised that an answer would
be sent. No answer was ever received. The third time a
gentleman was sent whose position, character, and reputation
were such as to insure his reception, if the enemy had not been
determined to receive no proposals whatever from our Govern-
ment. Vice-President Stephens made a patriotic tender of his
services, in the hope of being able to promote the cause of hu-
manity ; and, although little belief was entertained of his suc-
cess, I cheerfully yielded to his suggestions, that the experiment
should be tried. The enemy refused to let him pass through
their lines or to hold any conference with him. He was stopped
before he reached Fortress Monroe.

If we would break up our Government, dissolve the Con-
federacy, disband our armies, emancipate our slaves, take an
oath of allegiance, binding ourselves to obedience to it and to
disloyalty to our own States, the Government of the United
States proposed to pardon us, and not to deprive us of anything
. S6

610 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

more than the property already robbed from us, and such slaves
as still remained. In order to render the proposals so insulting
as to secure their rejection, the President of the United States
joined to them a promise to support with his army one tenth of
the people of any State who would attempt to set up a govern-
ment over the other nine tenths ; thus seeking to sow discord
among the people of the several States, and to excite them to
civil war in furtherance of his ends.

The next movement relating to the accommodation of dif-
ferences occurred in July, 1864, and consisted in the appearance
at Richmond of Colonel James F. Jacques, of the Seventy-eighth
Illinois Infantry, and James R. Gilmore, of Massachusetts, solicit-
ing an interview with me. They stated that they had no official
character or authority, " but were fully possessed of the views of
the United States Government, relative to an adjustment of the
differences existing between the North and the South," and did
not doubt that a free interchange of views would open the way
to official negotiations, etc. They had crossed our lines through
a letter of General Grant to Colonel Ould, commissioner for the
exchange of prisoners. The Secretary of State, Mr. Benjamin,
to whom they were conducted, accompanied them to my office.
Colonel Jacques expressed the ardent desire he felt, in common
with the men of their army, for a restoration of peace, using
such emphatic terms as that the men would go home in double-
quick time if they could only see peace restored. Mr. Gilmore
addressed me, and in a few minutes conveyed the information
that the two gentlemen had come to Richmond impressed with
the idea that the Confederate Government would accept a peace
on the basis of a reconstruction of the Union, the abolition of
slavery, and the grant of an amnesty to the people of the States
as repentant criminals. In order to accomplish the abolition of
slavery, it was proposed that there should be a general vote of
all the people of both federations, in mass, and the majority of
the vote thus taken was to determine that as well as all other
disputed questions. These were stated to be Mr. Lincoln's-
views. The impudence of the remarks could only be extenu-
ated because of the ignorance displayed and the profuse avowal
of the kindest motives and intentions.

1864] THE VOTE OF A FOREIGN PEOPLE. 611

I answered that, as these proposals had been prefaced by the
remark that the people of the North were a majority, and that
a majority ought to govern, the offer was, in effect, a proposal
that the Confederate States should surrender at discretion, ad-
mit that they had been wrong from the beginning of the con-
test, submit to the mercy of their enemies, and avow themselves
to be in need of pardon for their crimes ; that extermination
was preferable to dishonor. I stated that, if they were them-
selves so unacquainted with the form of their own government
as to make such propositions, Mr. Lincoln ought to have known,
when giving them his views, that it was out of the power of
the Confederate Government to act on the subject of the domes-
tic institutions of the several States, each State having exclu-
sive jurisdiction on that point, still less to commit the decision
I of such a question to the vote of a foreign people. Having no
disposition to discuss questions of state with such persons, espe-
cially as they bore no credentials, I terminated the interview,
. and they withdrew with Mr. Benjamin.

The opening of the spring campaign of 1864 was deemed a
: favorable conjuncture for the employment of the resources of
; diplomacy. To approach the Government of the United States
i directly would have been in vain. Repeated efforts had already
; demonstrated its inflexible purpose — not to negotiate with the
Confederate authorities. Political developments at the North,
•however, favored the adoption of some action that might influ-
ence popular sentiment in the hostile section. The aspect of
the peace party was quite encouraging, and it seemed that the
real issue to be decided in the Presidential election of that year,
was the continuance or cessation of the war. A commission of
Ithree persons, eminent in position and intelligence, was accord-
ingly appointed to visit Canada, with a view to negotiation with
such persons in the North as might be relied upon to aid the attain-
ment of peace. The commission was designed to facilitate such
Ipreliminary conditions as might lead to formal negotiations be-
tween the two Governments, and they were expected to make
judicious use of any political opportunity that might be pre-
sented.

The commissioners — Messrs. Clay, of Alabama ; Holcombe, of

612 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

Virginia ; and Thompson, of Mississippi — established themselves
at Niagara Falls in July, and on the 12th commenced a corre-
spondence with Horace Greeley, of New York. Through him
they sought a safe-conduct to Washington. Mr. Lincoln at first
appeared to favor an interview, but finally refused on the ground
that the commissioners were not authorized to treat for peace.
His final, announcement to them was the following :

" Executive Mansion, Washington, D. C, July 18, I864.
" To whom it may concern :

" Any proposition which embraces the restoration of peace, the
integrity of the whole union, and the abandonment of slavery,
and which comes by and with an authority that can control the
armies now at war against the United States, will be received and
considered by the Executive Government of the United States,
and will be met by liberal terms on other substantial and collateral
points, and the bearer or bearers thereof shall have safe conduct
both ways. Abraham Lincoln."

This movement, like all others which had preceded it, was a
failure.

On December 30, 1864, 1 received a request from Mr. Fran-
cis P. Blair, a distinguished citizen of Montgomery County,
Maryland, for permission to visit Richmond for certain personal
objects, which was conceded to him. On January 12, 1865,
he visited me, and the following statement of our interview was
immediately afterward prepared :

" Richmond, Virginia, January 12, 1865.
"Memorandum of a confidential conversation held this day with
F. P. Blair, of Montgomery County \ Maryland.
"Mr. Blair stated that, not receiving an answer to his applica-
tion for permission to visit Richmond, which had been sent from
the headquarters of General Grants army, he returned to Wash-
ington and there received the reply which had been made to his
application, but by some means had been withheld from him and
been forwarded after having been opened ; that he had originally
obtained permission to visit Richmond from Mr. Lincoln, after stat-
ing to him that he (Mr. Blair) had for many years held friendly
relations with myself. Mr. Lincoln stopped him, though he after-

1864] THE DREAMS OF AN OLD MAN. 613

ward gave him permission to visit me. He stated, in explana-
tion of his position, that he, being a man of Southern blood, felt
very desirous to see the war between the States terminated, and
hoped by an interview with me to be able to effect something to
that end ; that, after receiving the pass which had been sent to
him by my direction, he sought before returning to have a con-
versation with Mr. Lincoln ; had two appointments for that pur-
pose, but on each occasion was disappointed, and, from the cir-
cumstances, concluded that Mr. Lincoln avoided the interview,
and therefore came not only without credentials but without such
instructions from Mr. Lincoln as enabled him to speak for him.
His views, therefore, were to be regarded merely as his own, and
said they were perhaps merely the dreams of an old man, etc.
He said, despairing of being able to see me, he had determined to
write to me, and had the rough draft of a letter which he had
prepared, and asked permission to read it. Soon after commenc-
ing to do so, he said (pleasantly) that he found his style was
marked by his old pursuit, and that the paper appeared too much
like an editorial. He omitted, therefore, portions of it, reading
what he considered the main points of his proposition. He had
recognized the difference of our positions as not entitling him to
a response from me to the arguments and suggestions which he
, desired to offer. I therefore allowed him to read without com-
■ ment on my part. When he had finished, I inquired as to his main
proposition, the cessation of hostilities and the union of the mili-
tary forces for the common purpose of maintaining the 'Monroe
doctrine ' — how that object was to be reached. He said that both
the political parties of the United States asserted the Monroe
doctrine as a cardinal point of their creed ; that there was a gen-
eral desire to apply it to the case of Mexico. For that purpose a
secret treaty might be made, etc. I called his attention to my
:past efforts for negotiation, and my inability to see — unless Mr.
^Lincoln's course in that regard should be changed — how we were
to take the first step. He expressed the belief that Mr. Lincoln
would now receive commissioners, but subsequently said he could
not give any assurance on that point, and proposed to return to
Washington to explain his project to Mr. Lincoln, and notify me,
if his hope proved well founded, that Mr. Lincoln would now agree
|to a conference for the purpose of entering into negotiations. He
affirmed that Mr. Lincoln did not sympathize with the radical men

614 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

who desired the devastation and subjugation of the Southern
States, but that he was unable to control the extreme party, which
now had great power in the Congress, and would at the next ses-
sion have still more ; referred to the existence of two parties in
the Cabinet, to the reluctant nomination of Mr. Chase to be Chief-
Justice, etc. For himself, he avowed an earnest desire to stop the
further effusion of blood, as one every drop of whose blood was
Southern. He expressed the hope that the pride, the power, and
the honor of the Southern States should suffer no shock ; looked
to the extension of Southern territory even to the Isthmus of Da-
rien, and hoped, if his views found favor, that his wishes would
be realized ; reiterated the idea of State sovereignty, with illus-
trations, and accepted the reference I made to explanation given
in the ' Globe,' when he edited it, of the proclamation of General
Jackson.

When his attention was called to the brutal atrocities of their
armies, especially the fiendish cruelty shown to helpless women
and children, as the cause of a deep-seated hostility on the part of
our people, and an insurmountable obstacle to an early restoration
of fraternal relations, he admitted the necessity for providing a
new channel for the bitter waters, and another bond than that of
former memories and interests. This was supposed to be con-
tained in the proposed common effort to maintain the "Monroe
doctrine " on the American Continent. It was evident that he
counted on the disintegration of the Confederate States if the war
continued, and that in any event he regarded the institution of
slavery as doomed to extinction. I thought any remark by me on
the first proposition would lead to intimations in connection with
public men which I preferred not more distinctly to hear than as
manifested in his general remarks ; on the latter point, for the rea-
son stated, the inequality of his responsibility and mine, I pre-
ferred to have no discussion. The only difficulty which he spoke
of as insurmountable was that of existing engagements between
European powers and the Confederate States. This point, when
referred to a second time as the dreaded obstacle to a secret treaty
which would terminate the war, was met by me with a statement
that we had now no such complication, were free to act as to us
should seem best, and desired to keep state policy and institutions
free from foreign control. Throughout the conference Mr. Blair
appeared to be animated by a sincere desire to promote a pacific

1864] THE SUBSTITUTION OF REASON FOR PASSION. CI 5

solution of the existing difficulty, but claimed no other power
than that of serving as a medium of communication between those
who had thus far had no intercourse, and were therefore with-
out the co-intelligence which might secure an adjustment of their
controversy. To his hopeful anticipation in regard to the restora-
tion of fraternal relations between the sections, by the means in-
dicated, I replied that a cessation of hostilities was the first step
toward the substitution of reason for passion, of sense of justice
for a desire to injure, and that, if the people were subsequently
engaged together to maintain a principle recognized by both, if
together they should bear sacrifices, share dangers, and gather
common renown, that new memories would take the place of
those now planted by the events of this war, and might, in the
course of time, restore the feelings which preexisted. But it was
for us to deal with the problems before us, and leave to posterity
questions which they might solve, though we could not ; that, in
the struggle for independence by our colonial fathers, had failure
instead of success attended their effort, Great Britain, instead of
a commerce which has largely contributed to her prosperity, would
have had the heavy expense of numerous garrisons, to hold in sub-
jection a people who deserved to be free and had resolved not to
be subject. Our conference ended with no other result than an
agreement that he would learn whether Mr. Lincoln would adopt
his (Mr. Blair's) project, and send or receive commissioners to
( negotiate for a peaceful solution of the questions at issue ; that he
would report to him my readiness to enter upon negotiations, and
that I knew of no insurmountable obstacle to such a treaty of
peace as would secure greater advantage to both parties than any

result which arms could achieve.

'''■January 14, 1865.
"The foregoing memorandum of conversation was this day
read to Mr. Blair, and altered in so far as he desired, in any re-
spect, to change the expressions employed.

"Jefferson" Davis."

The following letter was given by me to Mr. Blair :

14 Richmond, Virginia, January 12, 1865.
" F. P. Blair, Esq.

" Sir : I have deemed it proper and probably desirable to you

to give you in this form the substance of remarks made by me to

' be repeated by you to President Lincoln, etc., etc.

616 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

" I have no disposition to find obstacles in forms, and am will-
ing now, as heretofore, to enter into negotiations for the restora-
tion of peace, am ready to send a commission whenever I have
reason to suppose it will be received, or to receive a commission
if the United States Government shall choose to send one. That,
notwithstanding the rejection of our former offers, I would, if you
could promise that a commissioner, minister, or other agent would
be received, appoint one immediately, and renew the effort to enter
into conference with a view to secure peace to the two countries.
" Yours, etc., Jefferson Davis."

" Washington, January 18, 1865.
"F. P. Blair, Esq.

" Sir : You having shown me Mr. Davis's letter to you of the
12th instant, you may say to him that I have constantly been, am
now, and shall continue ready to receive any agent whom he or any
other influential person now resisting the national authority may
informally send to me with the view of securing peace to the peo-
ple of our one common country.

"Yours, etc., A. Lincoln."

When Mr. Blair returned and gave me this letter of Mr.
Lincoln of January 18th, it being a response to my note to
Mr. Blair of the 12th, be said it had been a fortunate thing
that I gave him that note, as it bad created greater confidence
in Mr. Lincoln regarding his efforts at Richmond. Further re-
flection, be said, bad modified the views be formerly presented
to me, and that be wanted to have my attention for a different
mode of procedure.

He bad, as be told Mr. Lincoln, beld friendly relations with
me for many years ; tbey began as far back as wben I was a
schoolboy at Lexington, Kentucky, and be a resident of that
place. In later years we bad belonged to tbe same political
party, and our views had generally coincided. There was
much, therefore, to facilitate our conference. He then un-
folded to me tbe embarrassment of Mr. Lincoln on account
of tbe extreme men in Congress and elsewhere, who wished
to drive him into harsher measures than be was inclined to
adopt ; whence it would not be feasible for him to enter into
any arrangement with us by tbe use of political agencies ; that,

1865] HOSTILITIES WOULD BE SUSPENDED. 617

if anything beneficial could be effected, it must be done with-
out the intervention of the politicians. He, therefore, suggested
that Generals Lee and Grant might enter into an arrangement
by which hostilities would be suspended, and a way paved for
the restoration of peace. I responded that I would willingly
intrust to General Lee such negotiation as was indicated.

The conference then ended, and, to report to Mr. Lincoln
the result of his visit, Mr. Blair returned to Washington. He
subsequently informed me that the idea of a military conven-
tion was not favorably received at Washington, so it only re-
mained for me to act upon the letter of Mr. Lincoln.

I determined to send, as commissioners or agents for the
informal conference, Messrs. Alexander H. Stephens, R. M. T.
Hunter, and John A. Campbell.

A letter of commission or certificate of appointment for each
was prepared by the Secretary of State in the following form :

" In compliance with the letter of Mr. Lincoln, of which the
foregoing is a copy, you are hereby requested to proceed to Wash-
ington City for conference with him upon the subject to which it
relates," etc.

This draft of a commission was, upon perusal, modified by
me so as to read as follows :

" Richmond, January 28, 1865.
" In conformity with the letter of Mr. Lincoln, of which the
foregoing is a copy, you are requested to proceed to Washington
City for an informal conference with him upon the issues involved
in the existing war, and for the purpose of securing peace to the
two countries."

Some objections were made to this commission by the United
States officials, because it authorized the commissioners to con-
fer for the purpose " of securing peace to the two countries " ;
whereas the letter of Mr. Lincoln, which was their passport,
spoke of " securing peace to the people of our one common
country." But these objections were finally waived.

The letter of Mr. Lincoln expressing a willingness to receive
any agent I might send to Washington City, a commission was
appointed to go there ; but it was not allowed to proceed far-

618 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

tlier than Hampton Roads, where Mr. Lincoln, accompanied by
Mr. Seward, met the commissioners. Seward craftily proposed
that the conference should be confidential, and the commission-
ers regarded this so binding on them as to prevent them from
including in their report the discussion which occurred. This
enabled Mr. Seward to give his own version of it in a dispatch
to the United States Minister to the French Government, which
was calculated to create distrust of, if not hostility to, the Con-
federacy on the part of the power in Europe most effectively
favoring our recognition.

"Why Mr. Lincoln changed his purpose, and, instead of re-
ceiving the commissioners at Washington, met them at Hamp-
ton Roads, I can not, of course, explain. Several causes may be
conjecturally assigned. The commissioners were well kruown
in Washington, had there held high positions, and, so far as
there was any peace party there, might have been expected to
have influence with its members ; but a more important inquiry
is : If Mr. Lincoln previously had determined to hear no propo-
sition for negotiation, and to accept nothing less than an uncon-
ditional surrender, why did he propose to receive informally our
agent % If there was nothing to discuss, the agent would have
been without functions.

I think the views of Mr. Lincoln had changed after he wrote
the letter to Mr. Blair of June 18th, and that the change was
mainly produced by the report which he made of wThat he saw
and heard at Richmond on the night he staid there. Mr. Blair
had many acquaintances among the members of the Confederate
Congress ; and all those of the class who, of old, fled to the cave
of Adullam, " gathered themselves unto him."

Mr. Hunter, in a published article on the peace commission,
referring to Mr. Blair's visit to Richmond, says : " He saw many
old friends and party associates. Here his representations were
not without effect upon his old confederates, who for so long
had been in the habit of taking counsel with him on public af-
fairs.' ' He then goes on to describe Mr. Blair as revealing dan-
gers of such overwhelming disaster as turned the thoughts of
many Confederates toward peace more seriously than ever before.
That Mr. Blair saw and noted this serious inclining of many to

1865] CONTINUED FOR SEVERAL HOURS. 619

thoughts of peace, scarcely admits of a doubt ; and, if lie be-
lieved the Congress to be infected by a cabal undermining the
Executive in his efforts successfully to prosecute the war, Mr.
Lincoln may be naturally supposed thence to have reached the
conclusion that he should accept nothing but an unconditional
surrender, and that he should not allow a commission from the
Confederacy to visit the United States capital.

The report of the commissioners, dated February 5, 1865,
was as follows :

" To the President of the Confederate States :

" Sir : Under your letter of appointment of the 28th ult. we
proceeded to seek ' an informal conference ' with Abraham Lin-
coln, President of the United States, upon the subject mentioned
in the letter. The conference was granted and took place on the
30th ult., on board of a steamer anchored in Hampton Roads,
where we met President Lincoln and the Hon. Mr. Seward, Secre-
tary of State of the United States. It continued for several hours,
and was both full and explicit. We learned from them that the
message of President Lincoln to the Congress of the United States,
in December last, explains clearly and distinctly his sentiments as
to the terms, conditions, and method of proceeding by which peace
can be secured to the people, and we were not informed that they
would be modified or altered to obtain that end. We understood
from him that no terms or proposals of any treaty, or agree-
ment looking to an ultimate settlement, would be entertained or
made by him with the authorities of the Confederate States, be-
cause that would be a recognition of their existence as a separate
power, which under no circumstances would be done ; and, for a
like reason, that no such terms would be entertained by him for
the States separately ; that no extended truce or armistice (as at
present advised) would be granted or allowed without a satisfac-
tory assurance in advance of the complete restoration of the au-
thority of the Constitution and laws of the United States over all
places within the States of the Confederacy ; that whatever con-
sequences may follow from the reestablishment of that authority
must be accepted ; but that individuals subject to pains and pen-
alties under the laws of the United States might rely upon a very
liberal use of the power confided to him to remit those pains and
penalties if peace be restored.

G20 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

" During the conference, the proposed amendment to the Con-
stitution of the United States adopted by Congress on the 31st
ultimo was brought to our notice.

" This amendment provides that neither slavery nor involun-
tary servitude, except for crime, should exist within the United
States, or any place within their jurisdiction, and that Congress
should have power to enforce this amendment by appropriate
legislation. Very respectfully, etc.,

" Alexander H. Stephens,
" R. M. T. Hunter,
" John A. Campbell."

Thus closed the conference, and all negotiations with the
Government of the United States for the establishment of
peace. Says Judge Campbell, in his memoranda :

" In conclusion, Mr. Hunter summed up what seemed to be the
result of the interview : that there could be no arrangements by
treaty between the Confederate States and the United States, or
any agreements between them ; that there was nothing left for
them but unconditional submission."

By reference to the message of President Lincoln of Decem-
ber 6, 1864, which is mentioned in the report, it appears that
the terms of peace therein stated were as follows :

" In presenting the abandonment of armed resistance to the
national authority on the part of the insurgents, as the only in-
dispensable condition to ending the war on the part of the Gov-
ernment, I retract nothing heretofore said as to slavery. I repeat
the declaration made a year ago, that l while I remain in my pres-
ent position I shall not attempt to retract or modify the emanci-
pation proclamation, nor shall I return to slavery any person who
is free by the terms of that proclamation, or by any act of Con-
gress.'

" If the people should, by whatever mode or means, make it
an executive duty to reenslave such persons, another, and not I,
must be their instrument to perform it."

On the 4th of March, 1861, President Lincoln appeared on
the western portico of the Capitol at "Washington, and in the pres-
ence of a great multitude of witnesses took the following oath :

1864] WHICH IS SOVEREIGN? 621

" I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office
of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my
ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the
United States."

The first section of the fourth article of the Constitution of
the United States is in these words :

" No person held to service or labor in one State, under the
laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any
law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or la-
bor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such
service or labor may be due."

The intelligent reader will observe that the words of this
section, "in consequence of any law or regulation therein,"
embrace a President's emancipation proclamation, as well as any
other regulation therein. Thus the Constitution itself nullified
Mr. Lincoln's proclamation, and made it of no force whatever.
Yet he assumed and maintained, with all the military force he
could command, that it set every slave free. Which is the
higher authority, Mr. Lincoln and his emancipation proclama-
tion or the Constitution ? If the former, then what are con-
stitutions worth for the protection of rights ?

Again he says :

" ISTor shall I return to slavery any person who is free by the
terms of that proclamation or by an act of Congress."

But the Constitution says he shall return them —

" but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such
service is due."

Who shall decide? Which is sovereign, Mr. Lincoln and
his proclamation or the Constitution ? The Constitution says :

" This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which
shall be made in pursuance thereof, shall be the supreme law of
the land."

Was it thus obeyed by Mr. Lincoln as the supreme law of
the land? It was not obeyed, but set aside, subverted, over-
turned by him. But he said in his oath :

622 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

" I do solemnly swear that I will, to the best of my ability, pre-
serve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Did he do it ? Is such treatment of the Constitution the
manner to preserve, protect, and defend it ? Of what value,
then, are paper constitutions and oaths binding officers to their
preservation, if there is not intelligence enough in the people to
discern the violations, and virtue enough to resist the violators ?

Again the report says :

" We understood from him that no terms or proposals of any
treaty or agreement looking to an ultimate settlement would be
entertained or made by him with the authorities of the Confeder-
ate States, because that would be a recognition of their existence
as a separate power, which under no circumstances would be
done ; and, for a like reason, that no such terms would be enter-
tained by him for the States separately."

Now the Constitution of the United States says, in Article X :

" The powers not delegated to the United States by the Con-
stitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the
States respectively, or to the people."

"Within the purview of this article of the Constitution the
States are independent, distinct, and sovereign bodies — that is,
in their reserved powers they are as sovereign, separate, and su-
preme as the Government of the United States in its delegated
powers. One of these reserved powers is the right of the people
to alter or abolish any form of government^ and to institute a
new one such as to them shall seem most likely to effect their
safety and happiness ; that power is neither " delegated to the
United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the
States." On the contrary, it is guaranteed to the States by the
Constitution itself in these words :

" The powers not delegated to the United States by the Con-
stitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the
States respectively, or to the people."

Mark the words, " are reserved to the States respectively, or
to the people." No one will venture to say that a sovereign

1788] REMAINS TO THE PEOPLE. 623

State, by the mere act of accession to the Constitution, delegated
the power of secession. The assertion would be of no validity
if it were made ; for the question is one of fact as to the powers
delegated or not delegated to the United States by the Con-
stitution. It is absurd to ask if the power of secession in a
State is delegated to the "United States by the Constitution, or
prohibited by it to the States. No trace of the delegation or
prohibition of this power is to be found in the Constitution.
It is, therefore, as the Constitution says, "reserved to the
States respectively, or to the people."

The Convention of the State of New York, which ratified
the Constitution of the United States on July 26, 1788, in its
resolution of ratification said :

" We do declare and make known . . . that the powers of
Government may be reassumed by the people, whensoever it shall
become necessary to their happiness ; that every power, jurisdic-
tion, and right, which is not by the said Constitution clearly dele-
gated to the Congress of the United States, or to the departments
of the Government thereof, remains to the people of the several
States, or to their respective State governments, to whom they
may have granted the same. . . . Under these impressions, and
declaring that the rights aforesaid can not be abridged or violated,"
etc., etc., " we, the said delegates, in the name and in behalf of the
people of the State of New York, do, by these presents, assent to
and ratify the said Constitution."

"With this and other conditions stated in the resolution of
ratification, it was accepted and approved by the other States,
and New York became a member of the Union. The resolu-
tion of Rhode Island asserts the same reservation in regard to
the reassumption of powers.

It is unnecessary to examine here whether this reserved power
exists in the States respectively or in the people ; for, when the
Confederate States seceded, it was done by the people, acting
through, or in conjunction wTith, the State, and by that power
which is expressly reserved to them in the Constitution of the
United States. When Mr. Lincoln, therefore, issued his procla-
. mation calling for seventy-five thousand men to subjugate cer-

62i RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

tain " combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordi-
nary course of judicial proceedings," he not only thereby denied
the validity of the Constitution, but sought to resist, by military
force, the exercise of a power clearly reserved in the Constitu-
tion, and reaffirmed in its tenth amendment, to the States re-
spectively or to the people for their exercise. But, in order to
justify his flagrant disregard of the Constitution, he contrived
the fiction of " combinations," and upon this basis commenced
the bloody war of subjugation with all its consequences. Thus,
any recognition of the Confederate States, or of either of them,
in his negotiations, would have exposed the groundlessness of his
fiction. But the Constitution required him to recognize each
of them, for they had simply exercised a power which it ex-
pressly reserved for their exercise. Thus it is seen wTho violated
the Constitution, and upon whom rests the responsibility of the
war.

It has been stated above that the conditions offered to our
soldiers whenever they proposed to capitulate, were only those
of subjugation. When General Buckner, on February 16, 1862,
asked of General Grant to appoint commissioners to agree upon
terms of capitulation, he replied :

"No terms, except unconditional and immediate surrender,
can be accepted."

"When General Lee asked the same question, on April 9,
1865, General Grant replied :

" The terms upon which peace can be had are well understood.
By the South laying down their arms, they will hasten that most
desirable event, save thousands of human lives and hundreds of
millions of property not yet destroyed."

When General Sherman made an agreement with General
Johnston for formal disbandment of the army of the latter, it
was at once disapproved by the Government of the United
States, and Sherman therefore wrote to Johnston :

" I demand the surrender of your army on the same terms as
were given to General Lee at Appomattox, on April 9th, purely
and simply."

1865] AND FOR NO OTHERS. 625

It remains to be stated that the Government which spurned
all these proposals for peace, and gave no terms but uncondi-
tional and immediate surrender, was instituted and organized
for the purposes and objects expressed in the following extract,
and for no others :

" "We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more
perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, pro-
vide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and
secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do
ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of
America."

CHAPTER LI.

General Sherman leaves Savannah. — His March impeded. — Difficulty in collecting
Troops to oppose him. — The Line of the Salkehatchie. — Route of the Enemy's
Advance. — Evacuation of Columbia. — Its Surrender by the Mayor. — Burning
the City. — Sherman responsible. — Evacuation of Charleston. — The Confederate
Forces in North Carolina. — General Johnston's Estimate. — General Johnston
assigned to the Command. — The Enemy's Advance from Columbia to Fayetteville,
North Carolina. — " Foraging Parties." — Sherman's Threat and Hampton's Reply.
— Description of Federal " Treasure-Seekers " by Sherman's Aide-de-Camp. —
Failure of Johnston's Projected Attack at Fayetteville. — Affair at Kinston. —
Cavalry Exploits. — General Johnston withdraws to Smithfield. — Encounter at
Averysboro. — Battles of Bentonville. — Union of Sherman's and Schofield's
Forces. — Johnston's Retreat to Raleigh.

After the evacuation of Savannah by General Hardee, it
■ soon became known that General Sherman was making prepara-
tions to march northward through the Carolinas with the sup-
posed purpose of uniting his forces with those of General Grant
before Richmond. General Hardee, having left detachments
at proper points to defend the approaches to Charleston and
Augusta, Georgia, withdrew the rest of his command to the
first-named city. General Wheeler's cavalry held all the roads
aorthward, and, by felling trees and burning bridges, obstructed
considerably the enemy's advance, which in the early part of
Tanuary was still further impeded by the heavy rains which had
wollen the rivers and creeks far beyond their usual width and
iepth.

626 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

The seriously impaired condition of our railroad communi-
cations in Georgia and Alabama, the effect of the winter rains
on the already poor and ill-constructed country roads, the diffi-
culty in collecting and transporting supplies, so impeded the
concentration of our available forces, that Generals Beauregard
and Hardee — the former at Columbia, South Carolina, and the
latter at Charleston — could only retard, not prevent, the onward
march of the enemy. At the outset of his movement the Sal-
kehatchie River presented a very strong line of defense. Its
swollen condition at that time, and the wide, deeply inundated
swamps on both sides, rendered it almost impossible to force or
outflank the position if adequately defended. It might have
been better if we had then abandoned the attempt to hold cities
of no strategic importance, and concentrated their garrisons at
this point, where the chances of successful resistance were
greater than at any subsequent period of the campaign. For,
even if our expectation had been disappointed, and had the su-
perior numerical force of the enemy compelled us to withdraw
from this line, the choice of several good positions was open to
us, any one of which, by moving upon converging lines, we could
reach sooner than was possible to Sherman, whose passage of
the river must have been much encumbered and delayed by
his trains. Of these defensive positions, Branchville and Or-
angeburg may be regarded as eligible : had Sherman headed
his columns toward Charleston, our forces would have been in
position to attack him in front and on the flank. Had his
objective point been Augusta, he would have had our army in
his rear ; and had, as proved to be the case, Columbia been the
place at which he aimed, our army would have been able to
reach there sooner than he could.

General Sherman left Savannah January 22, 1865, and reached
Pocotaligo on the 24th. On February 3d he crossed the Salke-
hatchie with slight resistance at River's and Beaufort bridges,
and thence pushed forward to the South Carolina Railroad at
Midway, Bamberg, and Graham's. After thoroughly destroy-
ing the railroad between these places, which occupied three or
four days, he advanced slowly along the line of the railroad,
threatening Branchville, the junction of the railroads from An-

1SG5] THE TRIBUTE VICE PAYS TO VIRTUE. 627

gusta to Columbia and Charleston. For a short time it was
doubtful whether he proposed to attack Augusta, Georgia, where
it was well known we had our principal powder-mill, inany im-
portant factories and shops, and large stores of army supplies ;
but on the 11th it was found that he was moving north to
Orangeburg, on the road from Branchville to Columbia, the
latter city being the objective point of his march. Early on the
morning of the 16th the head of his columns reached the Con-
garee opposite Columbia. The bridge over that stream had
been burned by our retreating troops, but a pontoon bridge,
built by the enemy under cover of strong detachments who had
crossed higher up at Saluda Factory, enabled the main body to
pass the river and enter the city on the morning of the 17th,
the Confederate troops having previously evacuated it. On the
same day the Mayor formally surrendered the city to Colonel
Stone, commanding a brigade of the Fifteenth Corps, and
claimed for its citizens the protection which the laws of civil-
ized war always accord to non-combatants. In infamous disre-
gard not only of the established rules of war, but of the com-
mon dictates of humanity, the defenseless city was burned to
the ground, after the dwelling-houses had been robbed of every-
thing of value, and their helpless inmates subjected to outrage
and insult of a character too base to be described.

Hypocrisy is the tribute which vice pays to virtue ; therefore
General Sherman has endeavored to escape the reproaches for
the burning of Columbia by attributing it to General Hamp-
ton's order to burn the cotton in the city, that it might not fall
into the hands of the enemy. General Hampton has proved
circumstantially that General Sherman's statement is untrue,
and, though in any controversy to which General Hampton
may be a party, no corroborative evidence is necessary to sub-
stantiate his assertion of a fact coming within his personal ob-
servation, hundreds of unimpeachable witnesses have testified
that the burning of Columbia was the deliberate act of the
Federal soldiery, and that it was certainly permitted, if not
ordered, by the commanding General. The following letter
of General Hampton will to those who know him be con-
clusive :

628 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

" Wild Woods, Mississippi, April 21, 1866.
" To Hon. Reverdy Johnson, United /States Senate.

" Sir : A few days ago I saw in the published proceedings of
Congress that a petition from Benjamin Kawles, of Columbia,
South Carolina, asking for compensation for the destruction of his
house by the Federal army, in February, 1865, had been presented
to the Senate, accompanied by a letter from Major-General Sher-
man. In this letter General Sherman uses the following language :
' The citizens of Columbia set fire to thousands of bales of cotton
rolled out into the streets, and which were burning before we
entered Columbia ; I, myself, was in the city as early as nine
o'clock, and I saw these fires, and knew that efforts were made to
extinguish them, but a high and strong wind prevented. I gave
no orders for the burning of your city, but, on the contrary, the
conflagration resulted from the great imprudence of cutting the
cotton bales, whereby the contents were spread to the wind, so
that it became an impossibility to arrest the fire. I saw in your
Columbia newspaper the printed order of General Wade Hampton,
that on the approach of the Yankee army all the cotton should
thus be burned, and, from what I saw myself, I have no hesitation
in saying that he was the cause of the destruction of your city.'

" This charge, made against me by General Sherman, having
been brought before the Senate of the United States, I am natu-
rally most solicitous to vindicate myself before the same tribunal.
But my State has no representative in that body. Those who
should be her constitutional representatives there are debarred
the right of entrance into those halls. There are none who have
the right to speak for the South ; none to participate in the legis-
lation which governs her ; none to impose the taxes she is called
upon to pay, and none to vindicate her sons from misrepresenta-
tion, injustice, or slander. Under these circumstances, I appeal to
you, in the confident hope you will use every effort to se'e that
justice is done in this matter.

" I deny, emphatically, that any cotton was fired in Columbia
by my order. I deny that the citizens * set fire to thousands of
bales rolled out into the streets.' I deny that any cotton was on
fire when the Federal troops entered the city. I most respectfully
ask of Congress to appoint a committee, charged with the duty of
ascertaining and reporting all the facts connected with the de-
struction of Columbia, and thus fixing upon the proper author of

1865] SMOKE ROSE WHEREVER THE ARMY WENT. 629

that enormous crime the infamy he richly deserves. I am willing
to submit the case to any honest tribunal. Before any such I
pledge myself to prove that I gave a positive order, by direction
of General Beauregard, that no cotton should be fired ; that not
one bale was on fire when General Sherman's troops took posses-
sion of the city ; that he promised protection to the city, and that,
in spite of his solemn promise, he burned the city to the ground,
deliberately, systematically, and atrociously. I, therefore, most
earnestly request that Congress may take prompt and efficient
measures to investigate this matter fully. Not only is this due to
themselves and to the reputation of the United States army, but
also to justice and to truth. Trusting that you will pardon me
for troubling you, I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

" Wade Hampton."

Were this the only instance of such barbarity perpetrated
by General Sherman's army, his effort to escape the responsi-
bility might be more successful, because more plausible ; but
when the eulogists of his exploits note exultingly that "wide-
spreading columns of smoke rose wherever the army went,"
when it is incontrovertibly true that the line of his march could
be traced by the burning dwelling-houses and by the wail of
women and children pitilessly left to die from starvation and
exposure in the depth of winter, his plea of " not guilty " in
the case of the city of Columbia can not free him from the
reprobation which outraged humanity must attach to an act of
cruelty which only finds a parallel in the barbarous excesses of
Wallenstein's army in the Thirty Years' War, and which, even
at that period of the world's civilization, sullied the fame of
that otherwise great soldier.

In consequence of General Sherman's movements, it was
considered advisable to evacuate Charleston (February 17th),
that General Hardee's command might become available for
service in the field ; and thus that noble city and its fortresses,
which the combined military and naval forces of the United
States, during an eighteen months' siege, had failed to reduce,
and which will stand for ever as imperishable monuments of the
skill and fortitude of their defenders, were, on February 21st,

630 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

■without resistance, occupied by the Federal forces under General
Q. A. Gillraore.

Fort Sumter, though it now presented the appearance of a
ruin, was really better proof against bombardment than when
first subjected to fire. The upper tier of masonry, from severe
battering, had fallen on the outer wall, and shot and shell
served only to solidify and add harder material to the mass.
Over its rampart the Confederate flag defiantly floated until the
city of Charleston was evacuated.

Every effort that our circumstances permitted was imme-
diately and thenceforward made to collect troops for the de-
fense of Korth Carolina. General Hood's army, the troops
under command of General D. H. Hill at Augusta, General
Hardee's force, a few thousand men under General Bragg, and
the cavalry commands of Generals Hampton and Wheeler, con-
stituted our entire available strength to oppose Sherman's ad-
vance. These were collected as rapidly as our broken com-
munications and the difficulty of gathering and transporting
supplies would permit.

After the fall of Columbia, General Beauregard, command-
ing the military department, retreated toward Korth Carolina.
The Army of Tennessee (Hood's) was moving from the west
to make a junction with the troops retiring from South Caro-
lina. The two forces, if united with Hardee's command, then
moving in the same direction, would, it was hoped, be able to
make effective resistance to Sherman's advance. In any event
it was needful that they should be kept in such relation to Lee's
army as to make a junction with it practicable. In this state of
affairs I was informed that General Beauregard, after his troops
had entered Korth Carolina, had decided to march to the eastern
part of that State. This would leave the road to Charlotte open
to Sherman's pursuing column, which, interposing, would pre-
vent the troops coming from the west from joining Beauregard,
enable him to destroy our force in detail by the joint action of
his own army and that of Schofield, commanding the district of
\Yilmington. The anxiety created by this condition of affairs
caused me, after full correspondence with General Lee, to sug-
gest to him to give his views to General Beauregard, and I sent

1865] AFTER HE TOOK COMMAND. 631

to General Beauregard's headquarters the chief-engineer, Gen-
eral J. F. Gilmer, he being possessed fully of my opinions
and wishes. General Beauregard modified his proposed move-
ments so as to keep his forces on the left of the enemy's line of
march until the troops coming from Hood's army could make
a junction. These were the veteran commands of Stevenson,
Cheatham, and Stewart. Lieutenant-General S. D. Lee, though
he had not entirely recovered from a wound received in the
Tennessee campaign, was at Augusta, Georgia, collecting the
fragments of Hood's army to follow the troops previously men-
tioned. They had not moved together, and the first-named di-
vision had reached Beauregard's army in South Carolina.

Though it contained an implied compliment, General Lee
was not a little disturbed by occasional applications made to
have troops detached from his army to reenforce others. The
last instance had been a call from General Beauregard for re-
enforcements from the Army of Virginia. He had always been
attentive, and ready as far as he could, to meet the wants of
other commands of our army, but at this time those who knew
his condition could not suppose he had any men to spare ; yet
the iact of thinking so was a compliment to his success in re-
sisting the large army which was assailing his small one. There
had always been entire co-intelligence and accord between Gen-
eral Lee and myself, but the Congress about this time thought
his power would be increased by giving him the nominal dig-
nity of general-in-chief, under which he resumed, as far as he
could, the general charge of armies from which, at his urgent
solicitation, I had relieved him after he took command, in the
field, of the Army of Northern Virginia.

A few days subsequent to the events in North Carolina to
which reference has been made, General Lee proposed to me
that General J. E. Johnston should be put in command of the
troops in North Carolina. He still had the confidence in that
officer which I had once felt, but which his campaigns in Mis-
sissippi and Georgia had impaired. With the understanding
that General Lee was himself to supervise and control the
operations, I assented to the assignment. General Johnston,
on the 23d of February, at Charlotte, North Carolina, relieved

032 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

General Beauregard and assumed command. General Lee's
first instructions to General Johnston were to " concentrate all
available forces and drive back Sherman." The first part of
the instructions was well executed ; the last part of it was more
desirable than practicable, though the brief recital made herein
of the events of the campaign claimed the credit due to a vig-
orous effort.

General Johnston's force, according to his estimate, when he
took command, amounted to about sixteen thousand infantry
and artillery, and four thousand cavalry ; if to this be added
the portion of the Army of Tennessee, about twenty-five hun-
dred men, under command of General Stephen D. Lee, which
afterward joined the army at Smithfield, North Carolina, and
that of General Bragg's command at Goldsboro, which amounted
to about eight thousand, the aggregate would be about thirty
thousand five hundred men of all arms.

After leaving Columbia, the course of the Federal army
through Winnsboro, across the Catawba at Rocky ITount, Hang-
ing Rock, and Peay's Ferry, and in the direction of Cheraw on
the Great Pedee, indicated that it would attempt to cross the
Cape Fear River at Fayetteville, North Carolina — a town sixty
miles south of Raleigh, and of special importance, as containing
an arsenal, several Government shops, and a large portion of the
machinery which had been removed from Harper's Ferry — and
effect a junction at that point. with General Schofi eld's com-
mand, then known to be at Wilmington. LTp to this time,
while no encounter of any magnitude had taken place, the
enemy's progress had been much impeded by the Confederate
cavalry, and the robbery of private citizens by gangs of armed
banditti, called "foraging parties," was in a large measure
prevented. The right of an army to forage as it advances
through an enemy's country is not questioned. But the right
to forage, to collect food for men and horses, does not mean the
right to rob household furniture, plate, trinkets, and every con-
ceivable species of private property, and to burn whatever could
not be carried away, together with the dwellings. General
Sherman complained that some of these " foragers," who were
caught in the commission of the above-named offenses, and

1865] IF THEY STRUCK A VEIN. 633

had added thereto the greater crime of assaulting women, had
been summarily dealt with by some of those whose wives and
daughters they had outraged, and whose homes they had made
desolate ; and he informed General Hampton that in retaliation
he had ordered a number of Confederate prisoners of war to
be put to death. To arrest this brutality General Hampton
promptly informed him that, " for every soldier of mine mur-
dered by you, I shall have executed at once two of yours,
giving in all cases preference to any officers who may be in
our hands," and adding, with a view to check the inhuman
system of burning the houses of those citizens whom they had
robbed, that he had ordered his men " to shoot down all of
your men who are caught burning houses." * This notice and
the knowledge that General Hampton would keep his word,
produced, it is believed, a very salutary effect, and thereafter
the fear of punishment wrought a reform which the dictates of
honor and humanity had been powerless to effect.

The historian of Sherman's "Great March," in his illus-
trated narrative of that expedition, describes both with pen and
pencil the manner in which " with untiring zeal the soldiers
hunted for concealed treasures. . . . Wherever the army halted,"
he writes, "almost every inch of ground in the vicinity. of the
dwellings was poked by ramrods, pierced with sabers, or up-
turned with spades," searching for " valuable personal effects,
plate, jewelry, and other rich goods, as well as articles of food,
such as hams, sugar, flour, etc. ... It was comical," adds the
chronicler, "to see a group of these red-bearded, barefooted,
ragged veterans punching the unoffending earth in an appar-
ently idiotic but certainly most energetic way. If they c struck
a vein,' a spade was instantly put into requisition, and the
coveted wealth was speedily unearthed. Nothing escaped the
observation of these sharp-witted soldiers. A woman standing
upon the porch of a house, apparently watching their proceed-
ings, instantly became an object of suspicion, and she was
watched until some movement betrayed a place of concealment.
The fresh earth recently thrown up, a bed of flowers just set
out, the slightest indication of a change in appearance or posi-

* General Hampton's letter to General Sherman, February 27, 1865.

634 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

tion, all attracted the gaze of these military agriculturists. It
was all fair spoil of war, and the search made one of the excite-
ments of the march." * The author of the work from which
the foregoing is an extract was an aide-de-camp on the staff of
General Sherman. The playful manner in which he describes
these habitual acts of plunder of " plate, jewelry, and other rich
goods" from private and undefended dwellings, shows that
not only was such conduct not forbidden by the military au-
thorities, but that it was permitted and applauded, that it was
practiced " wherever the army halted " under the eye of the
staff-officers of the General commanding, and was looked upon
as one of the pleasurable " excitements of the march." Indeed,
so agreeable was the impression made by these scenes of rob-
bery of women's " rich goods " that he has adorned his narra-
tive with a full-page illustration, exhibiting a plantation home
surrounded by soldiers engaged, as this staff-officer humorously
terms it, in " treasure-seeking," while the lady of the house — its
only apparent occupant — stands upon the veranda, with hands
uplifted, beseeching them not to steal the watch and chain which
they are taking out of a vessel which they have just dug up.
That the foreign mercenaries, of which the Federal army was
largely composed, should have been guilty of such disgraceful
conduct, when free from the observation of their officers, is
conceivable ; but it is difficult to imagine that, in the nineteenth
century, such acts as are described above could be committed
habitually, in view of the officer of highest rank in the army of :
a civilized country, and not merely pass unpunished or unre-
buked, but be recorded with conspicuous approval in the pages
of a military history.

The advance of the enemy's columns across the Catawba,
Lynch' s Creek, and the Pedee, at Cheraw, though retarded as
much as possible by the vigilant skill of our cavalry under Gen-
erals Hampton, Butler, and Wheeler, was steady and continuous.
General Johnston's hope that, from the enemy's order of mov-
ing by wings, sometimes a day's march from each other, he

* " The Story of the Great March, from the Diary of a Staff Officer." By Brevet
Major George Ward Nichols, Aide-de-Camp to General Sherman. New York:
Harper & Brothers, 1865, pp. 112, et seq.

1865] THEIR WONTED ENERGY AND DASH. 635

could find an opportunity to strike one of their columns in the
passage of the Cape Fear River, when the other was not in
supporting distance, was unhappily disappointed.

On March 6th, near Kinston, General Bragg with a rein-
forcement of less than two thousand men attacked and routed
three divisions of the enemy under Major-General Cox, captur-
ing fifteen hundred prisoners and three field-pieces, and inflict-
ing heavy loss in killed and wounded. This success, though
inspiring, was on too small a scale to produce important results.
During the march from the Catawba to the Cape Fear several
brilliant cavalry affairs took place, in which our troops displayed
their wonted energy and dash. Among these the most conspic-
uous were General Butler's at Mount Elon, where he defeated
a detachment sent to tear up the railroad at Florence ; General
"Wheeler's attack and repulse of the left flank of the enemy at
Hornesboro, March 4th ; a similar exploit by the same officer
at Rockingham on the 7th ; the attack and defeat by General
Hampton of a detachment on the 8th ; the surprise and capture
of General Kilpatrick's camp by General Hampton on the
morning of the 10th, driving the enemy into an adjoining
swamp, and taking possession of his artillery and wagon-train,
and the complete rout of a large Federal party by General
i Hampton with an inferior force at Fayetteville on the 11th.

As it was doubtful whether General Sherman's advance
from Fayetteville would be directed to Goldsboro or Raleigh,
i General Johnston took position with a portion of his command
;at Smithfield, which is nearly equidistant from each of those
: places, leaving General Hardee to follow the road from Fayette-
ville to Raleigh, which for several miles is also the direct road
:from Fayetteville to Smithfield, and posted one division of his
;cavalry on the Raleigh road, and another on that to Goldsboro.
On the 16th of March General Hardee was attacked by two
corps of the enemy, a few miles south of Averysboro, a place
•nearly half-way between Fayetteville and Raleigh. Falling
back a few hundred yards to a stronger position, he easily re-
pelled the repeated attacks of these two corps during the day,
md, learning in the evening that the enemy's corps were moving
to turn his left, he withdrew in the night toward Smithfield.

636 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

Early in the morning of the 18th General Johnston obtained
definite information that General Sherman was marching on
Goldsboro, the right wing of his army being about a day's
march distant from .the left. General Johnston took immedi-
ate steps to attack the head of the left wing on the morning of
the 19th, and ordered the troops at Smithfield and General Har-
dee's command to march at once to Bentonville and take posi-
tion between that village and the road on which the enemy was
advancing. An error as to the relative distance which our
troops and those of the enemy would have to move, exaggerat-
ing the distance between the roads on which the enemy was
advancing and diminishing the distance that our troops would
have to march, caused the failure to concentrate our troops
in time to attack the enemy's left wing while in column;
but, when General Hardee's troops reached Bentonville in the
morning, the attack was commenced. The battle lasted through
the greater part of the day, resulting in the enemy's being
driven from two lines of intrenchments, and his taking shelter
in a dense wood, where it was impracticable for our troops to
preserve their line of battle or to employ the combined strength
of the three arms. On the 20th the two wings of the Federal
army, numbering, as estimated by General Johnston, upward
of seventy thousand, came together and repeatedly attacked a
division of our force (Hoke's) which occupied an intrenched
position parallel to the road to Averysboro ; but every attack
was handsomely repulsed. On the next day (21st) an attempt
by the enemy to reach Bentonville in the rear of our center, and
thus cut off our only route of retreat, was gallantly defeated by
an impetuous and skillful attack, led by Generals Hardee and
Hampton, on the front and both flanks of the enemy's column,
by which he was compelled to retreat as rapidly as he had ad-
vanced. In this attack, General Hardee's only son, a noble boy,
charging gallantly with the Eighth Texas Cavalry, fell mortally
wounded. On the night of the 21st our troops were withdrawn
across Mill Creek, and in the evening of the 22d bivouacked
near Smithfield. On the 23d the forces of General Sherman
and those of General Schofield were united at Goldsboro, where
they remained inactive for upward of two weeks.

I860] DECIDED TO SEEK A NEW BASE. 637

On the 9th of April the Confederate forces took up the
line of march to Raleigh, and reached that city early in the
afternoon of the same day closely followed by the Federal
army.

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 Capitula-
tion.— 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 unsuccess-
ful 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

638 KISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

column would be sufficient to effect what General Butler's pre-
vious 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 re-
doubts and rifle-pits were carried, and the column advanced to-
ward 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 Gen-
eral 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 an-
other 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 re-
connaissance indicated to the enemy the propriety of postpon-
ing 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 for-
mer line had been evacuated, and a new one on more command-
ing ground had been constructed, the assault was postponed un-
til the afternoon ; then attacks were made by heavy columns on
various parts of our line, with some partial success, but the final

1865] RETREATED IN CONFUSION. 639

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 ex-
pected 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 Sec-
ond 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 cen-
ter, and driving them with disorder and with heavy loss. Sev-
eral entire regiments, a battery, and many standards were cap-
tured, when Hill, having checked the advance which was direct-
ed 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 com-
munications. 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 fight-
ing 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

640 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

were met by General Fitzhugh Lee's horsemen and a body of
infantry under General Mahone, and this force completed their
discomfiture. After a brief attempt to force their way, they
broke in disorder, leaving behind them twelve pieces of artil-
lery, 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 oppos-
ing 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, approach-
ing nearer and nearer to the railroads bringing the supplies for
our army and for Richmond. The line of General Lee con-
formed 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,

1865] UNIFORM FAILURE OF THE ASSAULTS. 641

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, cross-
ing that stream, extended around the city of Petersburg, gradu-
ally 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 seri-
atim j some of them, however, it is thought necessary to men-
tion. 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 in-
fantry was sent over to Deep Bottom to move against our pon-
toon-bridges near to Drury's Bluff, so as to prevent Lee from
sending reinforcements to the north side of the James, while
Sheridan with his cavalry moved to the north side of Bich-
mond 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 reinforcements, 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 cooperate in the grand assault which Grant was pre-
paring to make upon Lee's intrenchments. The uniform fail-
ure, 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 sug-
gestion 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
88

612 IUSE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

placed by pairs, situated equidistant from each other, and the end
of the galleries, thus :

<
o

Z
<

" I proposed to put in each of the eight magazines from twelve
to fourteen hundred pounds of powder, the magazines to be con-
nected 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.*
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 instruc-
tions 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 there-
fore seems to have been considered as the command from which

* Testimony of General Burnside, " Report of Committee on the Conduct of the
War," vol. i, pp. 16, 17, 1865.

1865] TIIUS DESCRIBES WHAT ENSUED. G43

the troops to constitute the storming column must be selected.
The explosion was destructive to our artillery and its small sup-
porting 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 * thus describes what ensued :

"The white division charged, reached the crater, stumbled
over the debris, were suddenly met by a merciless fire of artillery
enfilading them right and left and of infantry fusillading 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 dis-
ordered, 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 de-
bris 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,

* John Esten Cooke, " Life of General R. E. Lee."

Q4£ RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

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 Yaughan, Squirrel
Level, and other roads running southwestward from Peters-
burg, 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 reinforcements he had received, both be-
fore 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,

1865] AND VASTLY MORE EFFECTIVE. 645

to place a large amount of powder in a ship, and, having an-
chored 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 pro-
duced on the fort.* 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 hun-
dred 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 re em-
barked, and thus the expedition ended.

On January 15, 1S65, the attempt was renewed with a larger
number of troops, amounting, after the arrival of General Scho-
field, to twenty-odd thousand. Porter's fleet also received addi-
tional 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 Decem-
ber. The iron-clad vessels of the enemy approached nearer the
fort than on a former occasion, and the fine 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 an-
other approaching from the land-side, continuing the fight long

*" Report of Committee on the Conduct of the "War," 1865, vol. ii, pp.
106, 107.

64:6 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

after they had got into the fort. Finally, overwhelmed by num-
bers, and after the fort and its armament had been mainly de-
stroyed by a bombardment — I believe greater than ever before
concentrated upon a fort — the remnant of the garrison surren-
dered. 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 ser-
vice on other fields, had been ordered down to support the
garrison, and under the directions of General Bragg, command-
ing 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 destroy-
ing the public vessels and property, to prevent them from fall-
ing 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 an opportunity to at-
tack 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 val-
uable 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 evac-
uation of both Petersburg and Richmond. Had there been

1865] WITH A WELL-DESERVED CONFIDENCE. 647

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 numer-
ical superiority of Grant's army might well have induced him
to invite Lee to meet him in the open held. 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 with-
drawal, Longstreet's corps, which had been sent to oppose it,
remained for a long time on the north side of the James. Fi-
nally, 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, in-
creased 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 complimen-
tary 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 desert-
ers, 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

6±8 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

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 conclu-
sion 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 manufac-
ture and repair of arms as well as the preparation of ammuni-
tion. The importance of Richmond in this regard was, how-
ever, 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 condi-
tion, and that he would have to wait until they became firmer.
There naturallv 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 criti-
cism, 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

1865] IT THUS FELL OUT. 649

hope of defeating him before Grant could come to his relief.
Then the more southern States, freed from pressure and en-
couraged by this success, it was expected, would send large re-
enforcements 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 in-
vader. 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, Gen-
eral 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 en-
tirely 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 sea-
son 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, requir-
ing 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. Be-
fore daylight, on the morning of the 25th of March, Gordon

650 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

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 wTorks in the rear, the batteries of
wdiich, 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 over-
whelming power concentrated both artillery and infantry upon
Gordon's command. The supporting force wThich was to have
followed him, notwithstanding the notice which was given by
the victorious cheer of his men wrhen 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

1865] A LINE OF SHARPENED FENCE-RAILS. 651

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 suffi-
cient force to disorganize and destroy the left wing of his army
before he could recover and concentrate his forces, then lying be-
yond the James and Appomattox Rivers. .Fort Steadman was the
point at which the earthworks of General Grant most nearly ap-
proached 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 conversa-
tion 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. Gen-
eral Lee placed at my disposal, in addition to my own corps, a

052 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

portion of A. P. Hill's and a portion of Longstreet's, and a detach-
ment 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 flank 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 move-
ment 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 organ-
ized to move in advance of all the troops, armed with axes, with
which they were to cut down the obstruction of sharpened and
wrire-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 im-
mediately down General Grant's lines, toward his left, capturing
his troops, or forcing them to abandon their works and form un-
der 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 reinforcements from beyond the Ap-
pomattox. Next, my whole force was to swell the column of
attack. Then, as the front of our lines were cleared of the en-
emy's troops, our divisions were to change front and join in press-

1365] EVERYTHING WAS MOVING. 653

ing 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 hun-
dred 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 cap-
ture 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. Reinforcements were rapidly brought up, so that it be-

654 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

came too hazardous, as General Lee thought, to go forwarl 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 wTorks on its flanks. It was in the
effort to withdraw the troops that our principal loss occurred. A
raking lire 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 wound-
ed in making the same passage back to our works.

" As I said at the outset, this attack was regarded by both Gen-
eral 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 must
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, 21ississippi."

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 di-
vision of cavalry. It will be remembered that Lee had sent
Longstreet to the north side of the James as soon as he dis-
covered 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 wTas so secretly done as to conceal the fact from Gen-
eral Longstreet, and that both Hancock and Ord had joined
Grant, to swell his forces by two corps before our troops

1865] A PRESENT NECESSITY. 655

returned to join Lee. Grant, thus strengthened, made a more
determined movement to gain the right of Lee's position ; be-
fore, 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 ques-
tion of time was now solved.

Grant's massive columns, advancing on right, left, and cen-
ter, compelled our forces to retire to the inner line of de-
fense, 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 garri-
son 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 posi-
tions 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 Rich-
mond, the greatest difficulty of which was the withdrawal of the

656 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

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 Appomat-
tox, 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 pur-
suing 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 be-
fore, in language similar to that employed by Washington dur-
ing the Revolution, expressed to me the belief that in the
mountains of Virginia he could carry on the war for twenty

1865] THERE IS NOTHING LEFT ME. 657

years, and, in directing his march toward Lynchburg, it may
well be that as an alternative he hoped to reach those moun-
tains, 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 re-
opened 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 Yen-
able, 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 reenforce 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 Yenable, at early dawn,
had left Gordon with about five thousand infantry, and Fitz-
hugh Lee with about fifteen hundred cavalry, and Colonel

i 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 determina-
tion as to drive Sheridan for a considerable distance; and, if

J this had been the only obstacle, the road would have been opened
89

658 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

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 thou-
sand. To attack that force was, of course, hopeless, and Gor-
don 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 in-
sufficient supplies of clothing, f ood,* 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 Ap-
pomattox, where a suitable room was procured for their confer-
ence, and, the two Generals being seated at a small table, Gen-
eral 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 :

* 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.

1865] BRIEFLY STATED THE TERMS. 659

" 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 lie
would be willing to surrender. Grant expressed himself as sat-
isfied with them, and Lee requested that he would formally re-
duce the propositions to writing.

To present a full and satisfactory account of the circum-
stances and terms of the surrender, as well as the events imme-
diately preceding the evacuation of Petersburg, and the retreat
thence to Appomattox Court-House, I annex the subjoined let-
ters:

u 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 North-
ern 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 Stages until properly ex-
changed, 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 contain-
ing the terms of surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, as

660 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

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 compa-
nies, battalions, or regiments, to the War Department. After re-
ceiving 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 suit-
able 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 move-
ments 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 Sheri-
dan 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 re-
enforced by the Fifth Corps (United States Army), obliged Pick-
ett 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

1865] LITTLE TIME FOR PREPARATION. 661

to the city. I have directed the troops from the lines on Hatch-
er'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 BeviPs over which the troops above mentioned
could cross to the north side, and be made available to us ; other-
wise 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"

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 Sup-
plies 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 with-
I drawal of his troops that night. This left little time for prepa-
ration, especially in the matter of providing transportation for
the troops holding the eastern defenses of Richmond. To sup-
ply 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

0G2 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

possessed, or required by troops regarded as a stationary defense.
The consequence was, that their withdrawal had to be made un-
der 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 un-
known 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 post-
poned until the moon went down, which was at a late hour of
the night.

The circumstances attending the withdrawal of E well'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 hav-
ing 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 en-
camped on the night of the 3d. General Kershaw's division,
with dismounted men of Gary's cavalry brigade, crossed at Rich-
mond and moved on to the same encampment. Having ascer-
tained 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 pas-
sage 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 Bat-
talion, 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.

1865] SOOX REPELLED THE ATTACK. £63

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. AY. 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 num-
ber 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 ene-
my's cavalry and also infantry appeared in the rear, and com-
menced 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. Mean-
time an artillery-fire was opened on Kershaw's and Lee's divi-

QQ4: RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

sions ; they, having no artillery to reply, were subjected to the
severe trial of standing under a fire which they could not re-
turn. In their praise, it was said they unflinchingly bore the
test. Supposing probably that their artillery-fire had demoral-
ized our troops, the enemy's infantry advanced. They were
repulsed, and that portion which attacked G. TV". C. Lee's artil-
lery 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 Ander-
son's corps escaped, but EwelFs 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 thou-
sand. 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 hun-
dred 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 he says :

" The discipline preserved by General G. TV. 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 ^ or his promotion.
General Kershaw, who had only been a few days under my com-
mand, 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. TV". C. Lee, it is proper to state that the only
obstacle to be overcome was Lee's objection to receiving promo-
tion. "With refined delicacy he shrank from the idea of super-
seding 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

1865] WITH ALL YOUR FORCES. 665

yielded to his wishes ; but gave him additional rank to com-
mand the local troops for the defense of Richmond. His valu-
able services in that capacity, on various occasions, sustained my
high opinion of him as a soldier, and his conduct on that re-
treat, 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 trans-
port his sailors to Danville, the best mode known to him to
execute the order sent to him by the Secretaiy of the Navy,
" You will join General Lee in the field with all your forces." *
"When General Longstreet was withdrawn from the north side
of the James, Colonel Shipp, Commandant of the Virginia In-
stitute, 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 Com-
mander Tucker, which was organized as a regiment and armed

• "Memoirs of Service Afloat," Admiral Semmes, pp. 811-815.

066 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

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 in-
fantry, and the "reserves," or "local troops." Cooperating
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 Con-
federate States, exceptions being made as in the case of the ar-
senal, the burning of which would endanger the city. To pre-
vent 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, De-
cember 20, 1865, published in the " Historical Society Papers "
(vol. i, p. 101), satisfactorily establishes the fact that the con-
flagration 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 de-
stroyed 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.

1865] RESPONSIBLE FOR THAT CALAMITY. QQf

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 ac-
quired 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 with-
drawal from Petersburg, and the consequent necessity for evac-
uating Pichmond, was handed to me. I quietly rose and left
the church. The occurrence probably attracted attention, but
the people of Pichmond 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 mv 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 instruc-
tions for our removal that night, simultaneously with General
Lee's withdrawal from Petersburg. The event was not unfore-
seen, 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 re-
moval. This occupied myself and staff until late in the after-
noon. By this time the report that Pichmond was to be evac-
uated had spread through the town, and many who saw me
walking toward my residence left their houses to inquire wheth-
er 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

668 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

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 un-
just 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 im-
portant to hold Richmond, and this could best have been done
if there had been none there save those who could aid in its de-
fense. 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 noti-
fied 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 con-
cerned now to present the evidence which will overthrow this
baseless fabric.

General I. M. St. John, Commissary-General of the Confed-
erate 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 subse-

1865] TO MEET REQUISITIONS. 669

quently 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 sur-
render 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 pro-
ceeded 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 Vir-
ginia and North Carolina, this effort was attended with results ex-
ceeding expectation. . . . On or before March 15, 1865, the Com-
missary-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 Greens-
boro, 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 Greens-
boro, 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 re-
turns did not include the subsistence collections by the field-trains
of the Army of Northern Virginia, under orders from its own head-
quarters, nor the depot collections at Charlottesville, Staunton, and
other points upon the Virginia Central Railroad, to meet requisi-
tions from the Confederates operating in the Valley and western

670 RISE AXD FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

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-Gen-
eral (St. John). After a general discussion of the wants of the
army in clothing, forage, and subsistence, to an inquiry by Gen-
eral 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 rail-
roads and the deficiency of rolling-stock embarrassed transporta-
tion, 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 Gen-
eral 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

1865] ON TRAINS FOR IMMEDIATE USE. 671

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 offi-
cer 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 south-
ward). No calls, by letter or requisition, from the General com-
manding, or from any other source, official or unofficial, had been
received either by the Commissary-General or the Assistant Com-
missary-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 col-
lection of supplies at Amelia Court-House. Had any such requisi-
tion 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 assur-
edly so previous to General Longstreet's movement."

On the morning of the 3d the Commissary-General left Rich-
mond 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 Farm-
ville, were attacked by the enemy's cavalry and captured, or
burned to avoid capture. The surrender followed on the sub-

072 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

sequent day. The foregoing extracts, I think, prove unques-
tionably 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 com-
munication ; 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 acces-
sible 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 to 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 im-
possible to answer."

In a letter of the date of September, 1805, Lieutenant-Colo-
nel 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 evacua-
tion of Richmond was then actively progressing, it was impracti-
cable to move those supplies. ... In reply to your question with

13G5] IT WAS ENTIRELY CORRECT. 073

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 J. 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 cir-
cumstances, 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 De-
pot, Farmville, Danville, Saulsbury, and Charlotte. Major B.
P. JSoland, chief commissary for Yirginia, 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 Nor-
throp (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 Ame-
, lia Springs."

Lewis E. Harvie, a distinguished citizen of Yirginia, 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 follow-
ing extracts, referring to the condition of affairs in 1S65. He
writes :

"The difficulties of obtaining supplies were very great, particu-
larly when the roads under my charge were cut, and transporta-
90

67i RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

tion suspended on them, which was the case on one or two occasions
for several weeks. Engines and cars, and machinery generally,
on these roads were insufficient and inadequate from wear and tear
to accomplish the amount of transportation required for the Gov-
ernment. . . . The Richmond and Danville and Piedmont Rail-
roads 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 fur-
nish the supply wanted.

" No one who witnessed can ever forget the results. Contri-
bution 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 hear 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 Secre-
tary of War, and myself, from whom he learned that he might go

1865] NO KNOWLEDGE OF THE MATTER. 675

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 conversa-
tion with me on the cars, 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, cr 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 improb-
able 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

676 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

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 requisi-
tion 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 j 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 ob-
tained, and the different departments resumed their routine
labors. Nothing could have exceeded the kindness and hospi-
tality of the patriotic citizens. They cordially gave us 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 Caro-
lina, and make a combined attack upon Sherman ; if successful,
it was expected that reviving hope would bring reinforcements
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 seek-
ing to diminish the magnitude of our disaster nor to excite il-
lusory expectations, I issued, on the 5th, the following procla-

1865] A NEW PHASE OF THE STRUGGLE. 677

mation, 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 move-
ments 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 un-
worthy of us to allow our energies to falter and our efforts to be-
come 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 neces-
sity 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-de-
ception of those who have believed us less able to endure misfor-
tune 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

i 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 de-
fended, 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

I temporary withdrawal from her limits or those of any other bor-
der 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.

67S RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

" Let us, then, not despond, my countrymen, but, relying on
God, meet the foe with fresh defiance and with unconquered and
unconquerable hearts. Jeffeesox 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 Dan-
ville, and told me that, learning Lee's army was to be surren-
dered, 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 approach-
ing 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 subse-
quently learned, a very short time before the enemy's cavalry
reached and burned it. I had telegraphed to General John-
ston 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 head-
quarters, my object being to confer with both of them in re-
gard to our present condition and future operations.

CHAPTEE LIY. "

Invitation of General Johnston to a Conference. — Its Object. — Its Result. — Provi-
sions 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. K. Smith to his Soldiers. — Surrender. — Numbers
paroled. — The President overtakes his Family. — His Capture. — Taken to Hamp-
ton Roads, and imprisoned in Fortress Monroe.

The invitation to General Johnston for a conference, no-
ticed in a previous chapter, was as follows :

1865] WE STILL HAD EFFECTIVE ARMIES. 679

" 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 ex-
pected here this afternoon.

" As your situation may render best, I will go to your head-
quarters 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 Tip from Raleigh to Greensboro, and with General Beau-
regard 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 discour-
agement 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 disposi-
tion 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 commis-
sioners who met President Lincoln at Hampton Roads, con-
vinced 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

680 MSE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

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 expres-
sion 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 proposi-
tion 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 Govern-
ment 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 gener-
ally 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 Vir-
ginia 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 sur-
rounded by circumstances well calculated to depress and dis-
courage them, I had learned that they earnestly protested to

1865] DARE TO THE LAST EXTREMITY. 681

their officers against the surrender which rumor informed them
was then in contemplation. If any shall deem it a weak credu-
lity 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 Confed-
eracy, believing that, even if Sherman should agree to such a
proposition, his Government would not ratify it; but, after hav-
ing 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 in-
vited 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 Yirginia, General I. M. St. John, Commis-
sary-General Confederate States Army, writes :

682 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

" 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 de-
pots 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. John-
ston'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 commis-
saries 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 surren-
dered 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 sur-
rounded and his line of retreat blocked by a force much larger
than his own.

After it had been decided that General Johnston should at-
tempt negotiation with General Sherman, he left for his army
headquarters ; and I, expecting that he would soon take up his

1865] A GREAT MISFORTUNE TO THE SOUTH. 683

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 dis-
patch 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 cooperate 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 re-
ceived, at the moment of dismounting, a telegram from General
Breckinridge announcing, on information received from Gen-
eral 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 imagina-
tion, 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 nar-
row proportions, but the important consideration remained to so
conduct it that, if failing to secure our independence, we might

684 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

obtain a treaty or quasi-tre&ty 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 satisfac-
tion to increase them to five brigades. They had been on de-
tached service, and were much reduced in numbers. Among
the troopers who assembled there was the remnant of the com-
mand 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 Sher-
man 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 opera-
tions ; . . . 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.*

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
* " Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman," vol. ii, pp. 346, 347.

1865] TO STOP THE FURTHER SHEDDING OF BLOOD. 685

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 govern-
ments 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 Sher-
man, 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 ob-
tained on any terms."

Hence it appears that Sherman was authorized to say that
he wTas fully empowered to arrange for the suspension of hos-
tilities ; 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, Sher-
man states, in the same volume, page 353, that, while in consul-
tation 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 fur-
ther shedding of blood ; that of his successors, like Sherman's, to
extract all which it was possible to obtain. From the memo-
randa of the interview between Mr. Lincoln and Sherman it is

686 "RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

clearly to be inferred that, but for the untimely death of Mr.
Lincoln, the agreement between Generals Sherman and John-
ston 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, re-
ferring to a conversation between himself and General John-
ston 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, com-
manding the Confederate army, and Major-General TV". 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

1865] A MILITARY CONVENTION. 687

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 Su-
preme 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 dis-
tribution 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 nego-
tiate, was not even entertained ; that the agreement was, in fact,
a military convention, in which all reference to the civil authori-
ties was excluded, except by the admission that the negotiators

6S8 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

respectively had principals from whom they must obtain author-
ity, i. e., ratification of the agreement into which they had en-
tered. 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 gov-
ernment 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 gov-
ernments, guaranteed to the people of the States their political
rights and franchises, as well as their rights of person and prop-
erty 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 exer-
cise 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 &£, 1S65.
" 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 Gov-
ernment 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 arrange-
ment. 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

1865] THIS ORDER WAS DISOBEYED. 689

Government. The opinon 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 re-
garded as & 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 Gov-
ernment of the United States, and a notice from General Sher-
man 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 re-
ply, 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 inter-
view 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 surren-
dered, 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-Gen-
eral Davis, who had gone to see his family, residing in that sec-
tion, 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
91

690 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

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 gallantry
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 surren-
der, 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 40S 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, sub-
ject 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 Gov-
ernment 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 dis-
scribed he had received. He responded :

" I do not remember anything connected with the subject, ex-
cept that there was a payment of silver coin to the army at
Greensboro, and I have no papers which would afford informa-
tion."

1865] NO CONTROL OVER THE PUBLIC TREASURY. 691

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 treas-
ure in your possession, that he may give to it due protection as a
military chest to be moved with his army train. For further in-
structions 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 author-
ity 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, b}r 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 per-
sonally ! Yet this is what General Johnston claims to have re-
sisted, when without any lawful authority he distributed the
money himself. The second statement is :

" As there was reason to suppose that the Confederate Execu-
tive had a large sum in specie in its possession, I urged it ear-
nestly, 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 in-
quiry, but, though considerable time has elapsed, he has not
answered. It is quite possible that I might have met the gen-
tleman without recollecting it, but not at all probable that I
should have received such a letter and have forgotten it. Such

092 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

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 con-
tinue 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, pri-
vate 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 hun-
ger ; he had no reinforcements 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

1865] CONTINUED WAR WAS NOT THE GREATEST OF EVILS. 693

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 striv-
ing 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 exist-
ing 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 guar-
anteed 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 great-
est 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
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, For-
rest, and others, in Alabama and Georgia." Considering the
character of the authority cited, and the extraordinary propo-
sition to provide for a universal surrender by a district com-

694 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

mander, 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 respon-
sibility necessary for effective cooperation 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 be-
lieved to be sufficient for any probable exigency, if the reenf orce-
ments 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 regi-
ment 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 Yaughn, 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 Wash-
ington 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 Secre-
tary 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 Sec-
retary of the Navy, Mr. Mallory, left me temporarily to attend

1865] THE TRANSFER OF THE TREASURE. 695

to the needs of his family. The Secretary of War, Mr. Breckin-
ridge, had remained with the cavalry at the crossing of the Sa-
vannah River. During the night after my arrival in Washing-
ton, 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 infor-
mation of his surrender. Not receiving an immediate reply
to the note addressed to the Secretary of War, General Breck-
inridge, I spoke to Captain Campbell, of Kentucky, command-
ing 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 dol-
lars, 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.

696 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

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, wThen 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 re-
gard 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 re-
turning 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 se-
lected 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 be-
lieved, have been sufficient to vanquish any troops wThich 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 Mau-
ry, Forrest, and Taylor, in Alabama and Mississippi, have consti-
tuted 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 Depart-
ment, and there uniting with the armies of E. K. Smith and
Magruder to form an army, which in the portion of that coun-
try abounding in supplies, and deficient in rivers and railroads,
could have continued the war until our enemy, foiled in the pur-
pose 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-tre&ty, to guarantee security of person and
property. To this hope I persistently clung, and, if our hide-

1865] TO SUCH LIMITED MEASURE OF SUCCESS. 697

pendence 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 Chattahoo-
chie, 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 Gen-
eral 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 — main-
tain 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 tor-

698 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

pedoes 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 arms
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 sur-
render, 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 con-
vention 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 y 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 consid-
erable loss, sustaining very little injury to his command. This
was, I believe, the last armed conflict of the war, and, though

1865] WITH A CONFEDERATE VICTORY. 699

very small in comparison to its great battles, it deserves notice
as having closed the long struggle — as it opened — with a Con-
federate 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.* 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 Mis-
sissippi paroled by General Canby, under agreement with
General Richard Taylor, of the 8th of May, 1865, as reported,
was 42,293,f 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 re-
ported, was 17,686. J 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 re-
sulted 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 them-
selves without leave and continuing their character of belliger-
ents. 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 con-
sulted 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 ex-
ample 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. #

* " Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman," vol. ii, p. 370.
f "Annual Cyclopaedia," 1865, p. Tl. % Ibid.

700 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

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 Con-
federate cruiser Shenandoah, swept the ocean from Austra-
lia 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 ter-
minated; he therefore sailed for the coast of England, en-
tered 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 pur-
pose heretofore described, I overtook a commissary and quarter-
master'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 Washing-
ton, I heard that a band of marauders, supposed to be strag-
glers 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 pri-
vate 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 over-
take 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 th^y 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.

1865] MY HORSE REMAINED SADDLED. 701

After a short time I was hailed by a voice which I recognized
as that of my private secretary, who informed me that the ma-
rauders 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 prob-
ably instigated these marauders, as it subsequently stimulated
General J. H. Wilson, to send out a large cavalry force to cap-
ture 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 en-
campment 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 neigh-
boring 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 en-
campment. 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 im-
portunity. 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

702 R!SE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

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 dif-
ferent roads, and approached our camp from opposite directions ;
they encountered each other and commenced firing, both sup-
posing they had met our armed escort, and some casualties re-
sulted 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 Barn-
well, walked off unobserved. His daring exploits on the sea
had made him, on the part of the Federal Government, an ob-
ject of special hostility, and rendered it quite proper that he
should avail himself of every possible means of escape. Colo-
nel Pritchard went over to their battle-field, and I did not see
him for a long time, surely more than an hour after my cap-
ture. 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 re-

1865] PRESENTED ARMS. 703

f erred 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 apprehen-
sion as an accomplice in the assassination of the late President
A. Lincoln, Some troops by the wayside had the proclama-
tion, which was displayed with vociferous demonstrations of ex-
ultation 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 Wil-
son, asking whether he should wait upon me, or whether I would
call upon him. I rose and accompanied the messenger to Gen-
eral Wilson's presence. We had met at West Point when he
was a cadet, and I a commissioner sent by the Congress to in-
quire 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 indi-
cated 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 mani-
fested a courteous, obliging temper, and, either by the authority
with which he was invested or by obtaining it from a higher

704 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

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 doDe ;
but I have since learned that they were all deprived of their
horses, and some wTho were on parole, viz., Major Moran, Cap-
tain 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 Yice-
President Stephens ; Hon. C. C. Clay, who had voluntarily sur-
rendered 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 Wheel-
er, the distinguished cavalry officer, and his adjutant, General
Palls. 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 for-
tunes, as well from sentiment as the hope of being useful.
His fidelity was rewarded by a long and rigorous imprison-
ment. At Port Poyal we wTere transferred to a sea-going
vessel, which, instead of being sent to Washington City, was
brought to anchor at Hampton Poacls. One by one all my com-
panions 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 Poads. This was also denied ;
finally, I was informed that they must return to Savannah on

1865] THIS ALSO WAS REFUSED. 705

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 per-
sonal 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 inhuman-
ity. My daily experience as a prisoner shed no softer light on
the transaction, but only served to intensify my extreme solici-
tude. 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 sur-
rounded 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 dis-
tinct from my connection with the Confederacy.

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. — Cruel-
ties 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 R. Taylor
capitulated with the last of our forces east.

The number of men brought into the field by the Govern-
ment 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.
92

706 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

The rapidity with which calls for men were made by that
Government during the last eighteen months of the war, and
the number brought into the field, were as follows :

Men furnished.
Calls of October 1Y, 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*

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 Ten-
nessee, was as follows :

States. Men furnished.

Kentucky 75,760 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

u July 1, 1865 2,682,593,026 53

Increase in four years §2,591,725,197 85

* Reduced by excess on previous calls.

I860] A MORE CORRECT REPRESENTATION. 707

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, 1 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 charac-
ter 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 un-
armed 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 ap-
proved by their Executive. The moneyed obligations of the Con-
federate 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 Govern-
ment ; 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 Confeder-
acy, and which must stamp indelible infamy, not only on the per-
petrators, but on their superiors, who, having the power to check

08 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

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 pris-
oners 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 guilty 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 threaten-
ing 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 implant-
ed in the breasts of our fellow-men of all countries, to pass judg-
ment 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 encour-
aged 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 con-
quer 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

1865] THE CONSTANTLY RECURRING ATROCITIES. 709

property. In May, 1864, it was still characterized by the bar-
barism with which it had been previously conducted. Aged
men, helpless women and children appealed in vain to the hu-
manity which should be inspired by their condition, for immu-
nity from arrest, incarceration, or banishment from their homes.
Plunder and devastation of the property of non-combatants, de-
struction 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 un-
armed 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. Lieu-
tenant-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 chil-
dren 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 Wash-
ington stolen. The residence of ex-Governor Letcher at that place
had been burned by orders, and but a few minutes given Mrs. Letch-
er and her family to leave the house. In the county a most ex-
cellent 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." *

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

* " Memoir of the Last Year of the War," by Lieutenant-General Early.

710 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

to the march of Sherman's army through parts of the State is
here presented :

" When Sherman's army came sweeping through Carolina, leav-
ing 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 com-
mand, 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 plan-
tation, they inquired the names of the most faithful and trust-
worthy 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 erect-
ing 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 hang-
ing so long that they were taken down dead. Coolly and deliber-
ately these hardened men proceeded on their way, as if they had
perpetrated no crime, and as if the God of heaven would not pur-
sue 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 charac-
ter, pure and honorable and gray-headed, unconnected with the
military, were dragged from their fields or their beds, and sub-
jected to this process of threats, beating, and hanging. Along the

1865] CAME THE SECOND PARTY. 711

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 sacri-
ficed 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 des-
potism 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 ponteness,
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 or-
ders. If any did not treat the ladies with proper respect, I might
blow their brains out. ' But,' said I, c 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

712 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

were seized and filled with bacon and other plunder. The smoke-
houses 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' provi-
sions, 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 ne-
groes 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 shirt-sleeves, 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 con-
cealed. 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 mu-
tilations, 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 rav-
ishment 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,

1865] WERE BURNED TO TIIE GROUND. 713

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 suc-
ceeded 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 after-
ward 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 resi-
dents leave their homes for the second time. I heard them say-
ing, ' This is too large a house to be left standing, we must con-
trive 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 out-
buildings. 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 com-
municated 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

714 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

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 suf-
fered 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 mem-
bership, 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 dedi-
cating 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

1865] ASKED ME WHERE THE SILVER WAS. 715

vilely perpetrated it. General Sherman had his army under con-
trol. The burning was by his orders, and ceased when he gave
the command.

" I was now doomed to experience in person the effects of ava-
rice 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 be-
fore, * 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 an-
swered 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 re-
quested 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. Kol-

716 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

lock, 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 ; 1 1 don't believe
in a God, a heaven, nor a hell.' * Carry me,' said I, 'to your Gen-
eral.' 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 differ-
ent 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 cat-
tle and hogs bayoneted ; their mothers and sisters had been in-
sulted, and robbed of their watches, ear and wedding rings. Some
of their parents had been murdered in cold blood. The aged pas-
tor, 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, pro-

1865] SHOW US THE MEN". 717

vided 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 scab-
bard ? ' 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."

718 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

CIIAPTEK 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. — An-
other Step taken by Congress. — Military Commanders appointed over Confed-
erate 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 ana 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 Garrett 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 com-
pact of 1787 by these States, i. e., by the people thereof, to
central organization to promote their general welfare, had beei
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 indepen-
dence.

Nothing remained to be done but for the sovereigns, th(
people of each State, to assert their authority and restore order.
If the principle of the sovereignty of the people, the corner-
stone of all our institutions, had survived and was still in force,
it was necessary only that the people of each State should re-
consider their ordinances of secession, and again recognize th(
Constitution of the United States as the supreme law of th(
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 inten-

1S65] THE FIRST STEP. 719

tion 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 Govern-
ment 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 re-
construction 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- Yice-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 ex-
isting rebellion, except as hereinafter excepted, amnesty and par-
don, 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 per-
sons engaged in the rebellion have been instituted ; but on the
condition, nevertheless, that every such person shall take and sub-
scribe the following oath or affirmation, and thenceforward keep
and maintain said oath inviolate ; and which oath shall be regis-
tered for permanent preservation, and shall be of the tenor and
effect following, to wit :

" I, , do solemnly swear, or affirm, in presence of Al-
mighty 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."

720 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

The permission to take this oath was withheld from large
classes of citizens. It will be seen that there are two stipula-
tions in this oath, the first faithfully to support the Constitution
of the United States and the Union thereunder. This com-
prises obedience to the laws made in conformity to the Consti-
tution, and is all that is requisite in the simple oath of alle-
giance of an American citizen. The second stipulation is :

" To abide by and faithfully support all laws and proclama-
tions which have been made during the existing rebellion with
reference to the emancipation of slaves."

What need was there of this second stipulation ? Because
the laws were not enacted, nor the proclamation issued undei
any grant of power in the Constitution or under its authority.
Now, the exercise of a power by Government, for which it hi
no constitutional authority, is not only a usurpation, but it de-
stroys the sanction of all written instruments of government.
Also, what has become of the unalienable right of property,
wrhich all the State governments were created to protect anc
preserve ? "Where was the sovereignty of the people under these
proceedings ? Yet the Confederate citizen was required to bine
himself by an oath to abide by and faithfully support all these
usurpations ; the alternative being to resist the Government, oi
to aid and abet a violation of the Constitution.

Meanwhile, each of the late Confederate States was occupie<
by a military force of the Government of the United States,
and military orders were the supreme law ; and that Govern-
ment thereby proceeded to establish a State organization basec
on the principle of its own sovereignty. In the first place, the
President of the United States issued a proclamation in sucl
terms as to be applicable to each of the Confederate States
wherever its affairs were in such process of subjugation as t<
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 re
publican form of government, and protect each against invasion
and domestic violence. Second, the President is Commander-

1865] OF ALL CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 721

in-Chief of the Army and 2vavy, as well as chief civil executive
officer, and bound to take care that the laws be faithfully exe-
cuted. Third, the rebellion, in its revolutionary progress, de-
prived 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. There-
fore, 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 gov-
ernment 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 re-
publican 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 Confeder-
ate States was a foreign state or outside the Union by its seces-
sion. There was, therefore, neither in law nor in fact, any
foundation for the assertion that the so-called rebellion had de-
prived the people of each Confederate State of all civil govern-
ment.

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 or-
ganize, 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
93

722 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

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 pro-
cesses 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, lay-
ing 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." * 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 estab-
lished, 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

* Declaration of Independence.

1865] UNKNOWN IN THIS CASE. 723

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 com-
posed 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 Constitu-
tion 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 Con-
stitution " 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 en-
acted. 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 pro-
vided 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

724 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

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 author-
ized." The proclamation closed with instructions to the Secre-
tary 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 Vir-
ginia. 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 is-
sued an order declaring all the acts and proceedings of the polit-
ical, 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. ISo
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 vari-
ous acts of importance. The so-called Governor, in presenting
a summary of them, concluded by saying, " Thus, State sover-
eignty— the status of the African race — the armed resistance to
the Government of the United States — are disposed of." An

1835] NOT ALLOWED TO QUALIFY. 725

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 Legis-
lature 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 Consti-
tution 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 sub-
ject 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, imme-
diately 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 juris-
diction over all cases and questions concerning the free enjoy-

726 RISE AND FALL OF TIIE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

ment 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 hav-
ing examined the case, and reported that, in his opinion, the
military commission had not competent jurisdiction, the Presi-
dent 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 Alex-
andria, 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 testi-
mony 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 re-
member that, during the period in which these proceedings
took place in Yirginia, similar ones occurred in all the remain-
ing Confederate States. Not only in Yirginia, but in several
of the other States, some persons had been voted for as mem-
bers of Congress, but in no case had they been admitted to
seats. This was one of the measures taken by Congress to in-
dicate 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 Confeder-
ate States. The plan of the President left the negroes to the
care of the States alone after the establishment of their emanci-
pation. 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 Con-

1866] NO COMPROMISE BETWEEN THE TWO. 727

federate 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 reck-
less 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 Confeder-
ate States as members of the Union. Meantime the creden-
tials 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 estab-
lish a bureau for the relief of freedmen, refugees, and aban-
doned 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 enu-
merates 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

728 EISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

and votes of the negroes, who were expected to be the control-
ling 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 privi-
leges 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 Con-
gress, 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 en-
gaged 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

1866] THE BALLOT OF THE NEGROES. 729

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, ob-
ligations, 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 Con-
federate States to all the rights and privileges of States as co-
equal members of the Union, under the plan of President John-
son, received the approval of the executive and judicial branches
of the Government soon after the cessation of hostilities. Con-
gress, however, not only withheld its assent, but, during its ses-
sion in 1866, required as a condition precedent to a recognition
of any one of these States, and the admission of its Representa-
tives 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

730 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

of affairs remained unchanged during the proceedings of Con-
gress to construct its plan for subjugation.

After the vote of the States up to March, 1867, it was mani-
fest 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 entirely new sys-
tem 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 protec-
tion 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 neces-
sary that peace and good order should be enforced in said States,
until loyal and republican State governments can be legally estab-
lished : 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 ad-
mitted to representation to the Congress of the United States, all
civil governments that may exist therein shall be deemed provi-
sional only, and shall be in all respects subject to the paramount
authority of the United States, at any time to abolish, modify, con-
trol, 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 Con-
stitution, 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 hav-
ing only provisional political institutions. Congress then pro-
ceeded to declare, in the fifth section of the bill, the terms upon
which a late Confederate State could become a member of the
Union :

1866] THE BILL BECAME A LAW. 731

" Section 5. That, when the people of any one of said rebel
States shall have formed a Constitution of government in con-
formity 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 fel-
ony 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 sub-
mitted 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 repre-
sentation 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 de-
fined 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

732 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

also became a law, notwithstanding the objections of the Presi-
dent.

It will be seen that this act contemplated two distinct gov-
ernments 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 car-
ried 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 Caro-
lina, commander, Major-General Sickles; 3. Georgia, Florida,
and Alabama, commander, Major-General John Pope ; 4. Mis-
sissippi 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 2d and the sup-
plement 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 re-
move 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 opin-
ion 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 con-
fined to the preservation of the public peace, the administration
of criminal law, the registration of voters, and the superintend-
ence of elections ; but, ' in all respects,' is asserted to be para-
mount to the existing civil governments. It is impossible to con-
ceive any state of society more intolerable than this, and yet it is
to this condition that twelve millions of American citizens are re-
duced by the Congress of the United States. Over every foot of

1867] A WARNING WAS GIVEN. 733

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 f "

Congress having thus completed its plan of operations, the
crushing 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 se-
lecting 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 govern-
ment," 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 ef-
forts of your paper to foster enmity, create disorder, and lead to
violence, can no longer be tolerated." On the refusal of Hve
magistrates of the Corporation Council of Norfolk to receive
the testimony of a negro, they were arrested on a process issued
under the Civil Rights Bill, and held to bail to appear before

734 RISE AXD FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

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-dis-
tricts, and commanders appointed over the same. These officers
were empowered to exercise a general supervision over the mili-
tary 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 per-
sons 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 insurrec-
tion or rebellion ; and all who voted for the ordinance of seces-
sion, gave aid and comfort to the enemy. Also all who volun-
tarily 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 Con-
gress 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."

1866] UPON THAT BASIS. 735

Suffrage was granted to every male citizen twenty-one years
of age. All officers of the State were required to take the fol-
lowing oath :

" I, , do solemnly swear that I will support and main-
tain the Constitution and laws of the United States and the Con-
stitution 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 volun-
tary 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 obli-
gation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of eva-
sion ; 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 num-
ber 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.

736 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

But no appropriation was made for the expenses of the elec-
tion, and it was not held. Major-General Stoneman now suc-
ceeded 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. . Find-
ing 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 par-
ticipation in the late war, a movement was commenced for a
modification of these clauses or their entire omission. The sov-
ereignty of the people was extinct, so no relief could be secured
except through the action of the sovereign sitting in Washing-
ton. Congress, therefore, passed an act authorizing the Presi-
dent (Grant), at such time as he might deem best, to submit
the Constitution to the registered voters of Yirginia, 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 amend-
ments to the Constitution of the United States, as a condition
precedent " to the reaclmission 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 Lrnited States, or by any
State, on account of race, color, or previous condition of ser-
vitude.

" Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this
article by appropriate legislation."

On the passage of the amendment by the United States Sen-
ate, 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."

1869] IN THE IIANDS OF CARPET-BAGGERS. 737

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, 81,404; 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 re-
moved 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 as-
signed to that duty ; and another one of the judges of that
court was an officer of the Federal army, receiving his appoint-
ment 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,
P 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."

CHAPTER LVII.

Final Subjugation of the Confederate States continued. — Slaves declared free by Mili-
tary Commanders in North Carolina. — Provisional Governor. — Convention. —
Military Commander. — Governor-elect turned out. — His Protest. — Members of
Congress admitted. — Proceedings in South Carolina. — Arrest of Judge Aldrich.
— Military Reversal of Sentence of the Court. — Post Commanders. — Jurors. —
Proceedings in Georgia. — President's Plan. — Plan of Congress enforced. — Other
Events. — Proceedings in Florida. — Rival Conventions. — Plan of Congress en-
forced.— Proceedings in Alabama. — Suspension of Bishop Wilmer by the Mili
tary Commander. — Military Authority. — Action of Congress. — Proceedings in
Mississippi. — Constitutionality of the Act of Congress before the Supreme Court.
— Remarks of Chief-Justice Chase. — Military Arrests. — Removals. — The Chief-
Justice of the State resigns. — The So-called Constitution rejected. — Ames ap-
pointed Governor. — Proceedings in Louisiana. — Plan of Congress enforced. —
Other Measures. — Arkansas. — Texas. — Opinion of the United States Attorney-
General on Military Commanders. — Consequences that followed the Measures
94

738 RISE AND FALL OF TIIE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

of Congress. — Increase in State Debts. — Increase in Frauds and Crimes. — Ex-
amples.— Investigating Committees of Congress.— The Unalienable Rights of
Man. — The Sovereignty of the People and the Supremacy of Law gone.

In the preceding chapter the reader will find a narration
of the series of measures, adopted by the Government of the
United States, to complete the final subjugation of the State of
Virginia. The same series was applied, in the same order, to
each of the Confederate States. It is, therefore, unnecessary
to repeat the narration of these details in their application to
the other States. But there were some concurrent incidents and
some flagrant outrages in each one which should be stated, in
order to afford a full and comprehensive view of the universal
denial of unalienable personal rights, the destruction of civil in-
stitutions, the disregard of laws, and the cruel and ignominious
treatment, inflicted by the authority of the Government of the
United States upon individuals in every part of the Southern
country.

In North Carolina, immediately on the cessation of hostili-
ties, the Federal General issued an order, declaring that " all
persons heretofore held in the State as slaves are now free, and
that it is the duty of the army to maintain the freedom of such
persons." Another order was then issued, defining and regu-
lating the relations of the freedmen and whites. President
Johnson issued his proclamation on May 29th, appointing a
provisional Governor, W. W. Ilolden, as in the case of Vir-
ginia. On August 8th the Governor issued his proclamation
for an election of delegates to a State Constitutional Convention
on September 12th, and stated who would be permitted to vote,
and the manner of election. The election was held, and the so-
called Convention assembled on Octobetr 2, 1865. Its first act
declared the uninterrupted existence of the State in the Union,
and that the ordinance of secession was null and void. The
next prohibited slavery. The payment of the debt contracted
during the war, by any future Legislature, was forbidden. The
repeal of the secession ordinance and the prohibition of slavery
were ratified by the people. An election for State officers and
members of Congress was held in November, and those who had
taken the amnesty oath were the voters. The so-called Legis-

1867] MADE A SPIRITED PROTEST. 739

lature-elect held a session and ratified the amendment to the
United States Constitution prohibiting slavery. On December
23d the Governor-elect (Worth) was inaugurated, and the pro-
visional Governor retired, acknowledging Worth to be the legal
and u loyal " Governor. Thus the State was subjugated on the
plan of President Johnson.

The affairs of the State were thus conducted until the mili-
tary acts of Congress went into operation, and on March 23,
1867, Major-General Sickles issued his order assuming com-
mand. On April 11th he issued an order for the relief of
debtors, by prohibiting imprisonment for debt, and ordering
the stay of all proceedings for the collection of debts for twelve
months. Writs of execution issuing out of the United States
Circuit Court were not allowed to be served by the military
commander at Wilmington. The question was taken to the
Attorney-General at Washington, and General Sickles appeared
in his own defense. It was decided by the acting Attorney-
General to be " simply a case of a high misdemeanor, legally
contemplated." General Sickles was removed, and Major-Gen-
eral Canby succeeded. The State registration was completed
in October, and contained the names of 103,060 whites and
71,657 blacks. The so-called election for a Convention was
held in November, and the Convention assembled on February
14, 1868. The Bill of Rights adopted contained similar clauses
to the one adopted by the Virginia Convention. The Consti-
tution was ratified, and State officers, members of the Legisla-
ture, and representatives to Congress were elected on April 23dt
The vote for the Constitution was 93,118 ; against it, 74,109.
The so-called Republicans had a majority of seventy on joint
ballot in the Legislature.

The State officers elected under the plan of President John-
son had continued in the peaceful administration of their duties.
Therefore, on the day of the inauguration of the newly-elected
Governor (Holden) the existing Governor (Worth) made a spir-
ited protest, saying :

"I do not recognize the validity of the late election, under
which you and those cooperating with you claim to be invested
with the civil government of the State. You have no evidence of

740 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

your election, save the certificate of a major-general of the United
States Army. I regard all of you as, in effect, appointees of the
military power of the United States, and not as deriving your
powers from the consent of those you claim to govern. Know-
ing, however, that you are backed by military force here, which
I could not resist if I would, I do not deem it necessary to offer a
futile opposition, but vacate the office without the ceremony of
actual eviction, offering no further opposition than this, my pro-
test. I would submit to actual expulsion in order to bring before
the Supreme Court of the United States the question as to the
constitutionality of the legislation under which you claim to be
the rightful Governor of the State, if the past action of that tri-
bunal furnished any hope of a speedy trial. I surrender the office
to you under what I deem military duress, without stopping, as
the occasion would well justify, to comment on the singular coin-
cidence that the present State government is surrendered, as with-
out legality, to him whose own official sanction, but three years
ago, declared it valid.

" I am, very respectfully,

"Jonathan Worth,

" Governor of J¥orth Carolina"

The so-called Legislature assembled on the appointed day,
and the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United
States was at once ratified, and on July 11, 1868, the President
announced by proclamation that "North Carolina had complied
with the conditions prescribed by Congress for her restoration
to an equal place in the Union of States."

In South Carolina, proceedings were commenced on June
20, 1S65, when President Johnson issued a proclamation simi-
lar to the one in the case of Virginia, and appointed Benjamin
F. Perry as provisional Governor of the State. He continued
all persons in office on taking the amnesty oath, and all laws in
force prior to the secession of the State were maintained except
those conflicting with the proclamation ; delegates to a so-called
State Convention were elected on the first Monday of Septem-
ber, and the Convention assembled on the 13th to amend the
State Constitution. The ordinance of secession was repealed and
slavery abolished. Blacks were made witnesses in all cases

1865] OR IGNORANCE SUGGESTED. 741

where the rights or property of persons of that class were in-
volved. An election of State officers and a so-called Legisla-
ture were held. The latter convened on October 25th. The
thirteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States
prohibiting slavery was ratified. On November 29th the pro-
visional Governor retired, and the so-called Governor-elect (Orr)
was inaugurated. The work of the Legislature was very com-
plete. The courts were open to all persons, with equal civil
rights, without distinction of color, and Major-General Sickles,
commander of the Military Department of North Carolina and
South Carolina, ordered all civil and criminal cases to be tried
before them in which the parties were civilians. Previous to
this order, and after the cessation of hostilities, provost-marshals
and military courts were detailed for duty all over the State.
These officers knew only the law martial, and generally very
little of that ; and took jurisdiction of all cases both civil and
criminal, occasioning great annoyance, expense, and vexation,
deciding as their prejudice, caprice, or ignorance suggested.
After the completion of the so-called State government, how-
ever, the vacancies on the bench were filled, and the courts
opened throughout the State.

Still the people were made to feel that the military hand
was over all. A case occurred in the court in Charleston, before
Judge A. P. Aldrich, in which a white man was indicted for
petit larceny, tried, and found guilty. The punishment pre-
scribed by the law of the State for this offense was whipping.
To this punishment the offender was sentenced. On the next
day an armed soldier came to the court-house inquiring for the
Judge, who was absent. To an inquiry of the sheriff as to his
business, he replied that he was ordered to require the Judge
to report at General Bennet's headquarters, who was the mili-
tary commander of the district. On the next day another sol-
dier in full uniform came to the lodgings of the Judge with a
note from the General requesting the former to report at head-
quarters.

The reply of the Judge was : " As I have no business with
you, I decline to report. If you have business with me, it will
give me great pleasure to receive you."

742 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

On the next day an adjutant appeared saying : " The Gen-
eral is very much engaged, and asks you to come to his office.
I will wait your convenience."

" I see I am under arrest," replied the Judge. " I will go
now."

The adjutant, in full uniform, escorted him through the
most public parts of the city to headquarters, and, entering the
office, announced him. The General was sitting, with his cap
on, and writing. After some time, having finished, he looked
up and said, " Sit down," adding, " That was a curt note you
sent to me yesterday."

" No, sir," answered the Judge, " I intended it to be re-
spectful, but, as I had no business with you, I did not see why
I should be required to come to your office."

" Do you dispute the authority of the United States Gov-
ernment?" asked the General, tartly.

" No, sir ; I am here in obedience to that authority, but I
have always supposed that, as a mere matter of courtesy, when
one gentleman has business with another, "he calls on him. As
a matter of etiquette, I believe a Judge of the Superior Court
of a State is equal in rank to a brevet brigadier-general."

"We will not discuss the question of rank," replied the
General, " but General Sickles requests you to revoke your sen-
tence of the other day and impose some other penalty."

The Judge replied : "I do not impose the penalty ; it is
the law, and I have no discretion."

He then explained the law, and said there was no relief ex-
cept by a pardon of the Governor, or by taking the prisoner out
of the custody of the sheriif. A few days after, the prisoner
was taken from the custody of the Sheriff and discharged. The
proceeding was brought to the knowledge of the so-called Gov-
ernor, who applied to General Sickles to suspend his order, but
the latter declined ; whereupon the Judge, then at Columbia,
to hold the court of the circuit, declared that he would adjourn
the court and not proceed on his circuit ; that he would not go
through the farce of holding a court when judgments and sen-
tences could be arrested and prevented by military order. He
then adjourned the court, and passed an order refusing to hold

1867] TRIAL BY MILITARY COMMISSION. 743

courts while the military order was in force. General Sickles
also issued an order reversing a judgment of the Supreme Court.
The President about the same time countermanded a like order
of the General in North Carolina, and the Judge resumed his
duties.

Under the act of Congress of March 2, 18G7, the State was
divided into ten military districts, and a post commander ap-
pointed for each. All local officers, who were regularly elected
by the people, were to be appointed by these commanders.
Military orders were issued from time to time containing social
regulations, etc. One on the subject of criminal arrests and
trials required all sheriffs, marshals, and police officers to report
to the Provost-Marshal-General of the district, their names, resi-
dence, official station, salary, and the authority by which they
were appointed ; also to investigate and report all particulars of
any crime committed, to the Provost-Marshal-General, setting
forth name, residence, and description of the offender with the
nature of the offense, and steps taken to secure punishment.
Sheriffs were directed to make a full report of the condition of
all jails and prisons within their jurisdiction. All civil officers
in charge of any jail, prison, or workhouse, were required to
make full monthly reports of each inmate under their care. All
sheriffs, constables, and police officers were required " to obey
and execute the lawful orders of the Provost-Marshal-General,
to the same effect as they are required by law to obey and exe-
cute writs, warrants, or other process issued by civil magistrates,"
and any resistance or refusal to execute the same subjected the
offender to trial by military commission.

Details of the plan to be followed in making the registra-
tion were fully laid down, and the order then contained the
following instructions :

"Boards will take notice that, according to section 10 of the
act of July 19, 1867, they are not to be bound in their action by
any opinion of any civil officer of the United States.

"Boards are instructed that all the provisions of the,;several
acts of Congress cited are to be liberally construed, to the end that
all the intents thereof be fully and perfectly carried out.

" It is made the duty of the commanding General to remove

741 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

from office all persons who are disloyal to the Government of the
United States, or who use their official influence in any manner to
hinder, delay, prevent, or obstruct the due and perfect administra-
tion of the reconstruction acts."

On September 5, 1867, Major-General Canby took com-
mand. General Sickles, on announcing his retirement, said :

" The undersigned avails himself of the occasion to acknowl-
edge the fidelity and zeal with which the officers and troops under
his command have discharged their duties."

The question of the qualification of jurors now became
important. General Canby issued an order on September 13th,
which required the jurors to be drawn from the "qualified
voters," which included the newly emancipated slaves. The
Judges met, and sent a respectful request to the General to
change the order to conform to the law of the State. By the
jury law, as it then stood, no person was qualified to serve as a
juror unless he was a free white man, twenty-one years of age.
The Judges were sworn to enforce this law and the Constitution
of the State. No notice was taken of the application. At the
next court in Edgefield, Judge Aldrich, charging the grand
jury, brought to their notice the order, the law and the Consti-
tution, and the oath of office, and then declared " he could not
and would not obey the order." On going to open the court a
few days after, the adjutant of the post delivered to him a mili-
tary order suspending him from office. He proceeded and
opened the court, read the order and stated the circumstances,
and, laying aside his gown, directed the sheriff "to let the court
stand adjourned while justice is stifled." * The major-general
appointed another Judge to the vacancy.

* This incident in the conduct of the Judge recalls a like exhibition of judicial
purity and independence which occurred in the colonial history of South Carolina, and
which I present by extracts from the charge of Judge William Henry Drayton, deliv-
ered November, 1774. Referring to the nature of the civil liberties of the Carolina
colonists, he said: "This is the distinguishing character: English people can not be
taxed, nay, they can not be bound by any law unless by their consent, expressed by
themselves or their representatives of their own election. This colony was settled
by English subjects ; by a people from England herself — a people who brought over
with them, who planted in this colony, and who transmitted to posterity the in-

167] I CHARGE YOU TO DO YOUR DUTY. 745

The registration of voters was completed in the middle of
October, and amounted to 46,346 whites and 78,982 blacks.
The vote on a State Convention was taken on November 19th
and 20th, and resulted, for the Convention, 130 whites and 68,-
876 blacks ; against the Convention, 2,801 whites. The dele-
gates were 34 whites and 63 blacks. The Convention assembled
on January 14, 1868. The Bill of Rights contained provisions
similar to that of Virginia, and the Constitution was made to
conform to the will of Congress. The ratification of the Consti-
tution, and the election of State officers and a Legislature, took
place on April 14, 15, and 16, 1868. The vote for the Consti-
tution was 70,758 ; against it, 27,288 ; not voting, but registered,
35,551. The Legislature, with a majority of forty-eight blacks,
assembled on July 6th. The fourteenth constitutional amend-
ment was adopted, and the construction of the State by* Con-
gress was completed practically on July 13, 1868.

In Georgia, on the cessation of hostilities, the Governor
issued a proclamation calling a session of the Legislature. But
the commanding General issued an order declaring the procla-
mation to be null and void. Another military officer, in a letter

valuable rights of Englishmen — rights which no time, no contract, no climate can
diminish. ... By all the ties which mankind hold most dear and sacred; your
reverence to your ancestors ; your love to your own interests ; your tenderness to
your posterity ; by the lawful obligations of your oath, I charge you to do your duty ;
to maintain the laws, the rights, the Constitution of your country, even at the
hazard of your lives and fortunes.

"Some county judges style themselves the King's servants, a style which sounds
harshly in my ears, inasmuch as the being a servant implies obedience to the orders
of the master, and such judges might possibly think that, in the present situation
of American affairs, my charge is inconsistent with my duty to the King. But for
my part, in my judicial character, I know no master but the law ; I am a servant,
not to the King, but to the Constitution." ... In the course of his charge, he
quotes a " learned judge " as saying : " Every new tribunal erected for the decision
of facts, without the intervention of a jury, is a step toward aristocracy, the most
oppressive of absolute governments ; and it is therefore a duty which every man owes
to his country, his friends, his posterity, and himself, to maintain to the utmost of
his power this valuable Constitution in all its rights, to restore it to its ancient
dignity, if at all impaired ; to amend it wherever it is defective, and, above all, to
guard with the most jealous circumspection against the introduction of new and
arbitrary methods of trial, which, under a variety of plausible pretenses, may in
time perceptibly undermine this best preservative of English liberty." — (" American
Archives," Fourth Series, vol. i, pp. 959, 960.)

746 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

to the Governor, stated that he was instructed bv the President
to say to him, that " the persons who incited the war and car-
ried it on will not be allowed to assemble at the call of their ac-
complice to act again as the Legislature of the State, and again
usurp the authority and franchises. In calling the Legislature
together again, without the permission of the President, you
have perpetrated a fresh crime ; and, if any person presumes to
answer or acknowledge your call, he will be immediately ar-
rested." The military authorities of the United States then
took the control of affairs until the appointment of James John-
son, on June 17th, by the President, as provisional Governor of
the State, by a proclamation similar to the one issued in the case
of Virginia. On July 13th he issued a proclamation prescrib-
ing the regulations for a State Convention. Provost-marshals
had been stationed all over the State to regulate local affairs,
and the laws in force previous to 1861 were ordered to be en-
forced. Delegates were elected on October 4th, and the so-
called State Convention assembled on October 25th. The
ordinance of secession was repealed. The payment of the war
debt was prohibited. The emancipation of the slaves was ex-
pressly recognized, and a so-called election for State officers,
members of the Legislature and of Congress, was appointed to
be held on November 15th. The Legislature assembled on
December 4th, and unanimously adopted the thirteenth amend-
ment to the Federal Constitution, prohibiting the existence of
slavery. Charles J. Jenkins. Governor-elect, was inaugurated,
and on December 19, 1865, the provisional Governor relin-
quished the conduct of the State affairs to the constituted au-
thorities. The Freedmen's Bureau Act and the- Civil Eights Act
of Congress were enforced by the military authorities.

The State Legislature again assembled on November 1,
1866. The ratification of the fourteenth amendment to the
Constitution of the United States was repassed to a joint com-
mittee of each House, which reported a resolution to refuse to
ratify the same. In the Senate it was adopted unanimously,
and in the House by a vote of 132 to 2. On April 1, 1866,
Major-General John Pope assumed command in the third mili-
tary district, containing Georgia, Florida, and Alabama. An

1866] NOT CONFORM TO THE ORDER. 747

unsuccessful effort was made by the State at this time to bring
the question of the constitutionality of the "reconstruction"
acts of Congress before the Supreme Court. Governor Jenkins
took part in the application to the Supreme Court, and, while at
Washington, issued an address to the people of the State, urging
them to take no action under the laws. He was called upon to
make an explanation on his return by General Pope, as parts of
the address were declared in violation of the military order of
the latter. But as the so-called Governor had not seen the
order, his offense was excused. A mayor and aldermen for Au-
gusta were appointed by General Pope ; also the sheriff and
deputy for Bartow County, and other officers.

An order was issued that jurors should be selected from the
list of qualified voters. Judge Reese, of Ocmulgee District,
wrote to General Pope, declaring that, under his oath to sustain
the laws, he could not conform to the order. General Pope
replied with an attempt to show him that he owed allegiance,
first of all, to the authority of the United States, as rep-
resented by the military power in the State. The argument
was of no avail, and the Judge was prohibited from holding
court.

The registration of votes was completed early in September.
The number registered was 188,617, and the whites had a ma-
jority of about 2,000. The election of delegates to the State
Convention took place from October 29th to November 3d.
Of the delegates, 133 were whites and 33 blacks. The Con-
vention assembled on December 13th, and soon adjourned to
January 8, 1868. Meantime, Major-General Meade had re-
lieved General Pope as military commander. The Convention,
before this adjournment, ordered the Comptroller to levy a tax
to pay its expenses, and directed the State Treasurer to advance
forty thousand dollars for its pay and mileage. The ordinance
was sent to the Treasurer, endorsed with instructions from
General Pope to pay. The Treasurer refused to advance the
money, as he was prohibited by the Constitution to do so-, except
on the warrant of the Governor. General Meade requested the
Governor to issue the warrant. He replied that the Consti-
tution forbade any money to be drawn from the Treasury except

748 RISE AXD FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

on an appropriation, whereupon General Meade removed both
officers, and appointed others.

The provisions required by the acts of Congress were adopt-
ed in the so-called new Constitution. At the same time, certain
provisions were inserted, which were intended to afford relief
to the people. The Convention, therefore, by resolution, re-
quested General Meade to require the courts to enforce them
u until the State was restored to its regular relations with the
United States, and the State organization was in full force."
An order was, therefore, issued by the General requiring the
courts and officers of the State government to enforce the pro-
visions, in all respects, the same as if they had regularly taken
effect. One of the Judges, having refused to comply with this
order, was removed by General Meade.

The so-called election on the Constitution, and for State offi-
cers, and Legislature, and members of Congress, was held on
April 20th and following days. The State Constitution was
declared to be ratified ; Rufus W. Bullock, the so-called Repub-
lican candidate, was declared to be elected Governor by a ma-
jority of seven thousand votes. The Legislature assembled on
July 4, 1868, with three Senators and twenty-five Representa-
tives who were negroes. The fourteenth amendment to the
Federal Constitution was adopted, and all the conditions of
Congress were fulfilled; and on July 28, 1868, she was de-
clared to be restored to the Union. Subsequently it appeared
that the State Convention had made no provision which could
be construed as expressly giving the black man a right to hold
office, and all these members were expelled from the Legislature.
The matter was taken up by Congress, and the State was not
fully recognized as in the Union until 1870.

The proceedings in Florida commenced with the usual proc-
lamation of President Johnson. It was issued on July 13,
1865, and appointed William Marvin provisional Governor of
the State. On August 3d he issued a proclamation prescribing
such rules and regulations as were deemed necessary for the
choice of members of a so-called State Constitutional Conven-
tion, and appointed October 10th for the clay of election, and
October 25th as the day on which the delegates should meet.

1867] A DISGRACEFUL QUARREL. 749

They " annulled " the secession ordinance, passed an ordinance
prohibiting slavery, with a preamble in these words : " Whereas,
slavery has been destroyed in this State by the Government of
the United States ; therefore," etc. Another ordinance declared
void the liabilities contracted for the war. Freedmen were
made competent witnesses in any matter wherein a colored per-
son was concerned. An election of State officers, of the mem-
bers of the Legislature, and of Representatives in Congress, was
ordered to be held on November 29th, and the Legislature were
required to meet on December 18th. Governor David S. Walker
was inaugurated on December 21st, and on January 18, 1866,
the provisional Governor surrendered the conduct of the State
to the so-called constitutional authorities. At this session of the
Legislature, the Lower House unanimously refused to ratify
the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United
States. The military rule which had prevailed in local affairs
was relaxed on April 27, 1866, and all civilians under military
arrest were turned over to the civil authorities for trial.

On April 1, 1867, Major-General Pope assumed command
under the act of Congress of March 2d. On June 18th a su-
perintendent of registration was appointed, and the conditions
for the registration of voters were prescribed. The result of
the registration was 11,148 whites and 15,434 blacks. The
election of delegates to the so-called State Constitutional Con-
vention was held on November 14th, 15th and 16th, and on
January 20, 1868, the Convention assembled, and contained sev-
enteen blacks as members. A disgraceful quarrel arose in the
Convention, and twenty members absented themselves. The
twenty-one remaining claimed to be a quorum, and formed a
Constitution, and adjourned. The absentees then returned, and,
with three or four from the other side, organized and proceeded
to form a Constitution. The others appeared and claimed their
seats. Great disorder prevailed, but by the intervention of
Major-General Meade, and by putting in the chair his sub-com-
mander, some degree of order was restored, and such an arrange-
ment effected that the second Constitution was completed. All
the requisite measures under it were adopted, and on June 29th,
the surrender of the so-called government of the State by the

fTK

750 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

military power of the United States to the civil authority was
made. The political quarrel continued long afterward.

In Alabama the proclamation of President Johnson was
issued on June 21, 1865, by which Lewis C. Parsons was ap-
pointed provisional Governor and the usual proceedings pre-
scribed. On July 20th the Governor issued a proclamation,
which renewed the powers of the persons holding the township
offices in the State ; called a State Constitutional Convention to
assemble on September 10th, and reordained the civil and crimi-
nal laws, except those relating to slaves, as they existed previous
to 1861, and prescribed other regulations. A peaceful election
was held, and the delegates to the so-called Convention assem-
bled and took an oath to support the Constitution of the United
States and the Union thereof, and all proclamations relative to
the emancipation of slaves. Slavery was prohibited, the war
debt declared void, and the secession ordinance repealed. An
election for State officers, members of the Legislature, and Rep-
resentatives in Congress, was ordered on the first Monday of
November. The new Constitution was not submitted to a vote
of the people on account of the delay it would occasion. Robert
M. Patton was elected Governor, and the Legislature assem-
bled on November 20th. The amendment to the Constitu-
tion of the United States prohibiting the existence of slavery
was ratified, and on December 18, 1865, the provisional Govern-
or surrendered the conduct of the affairs of the State to the
Governor-elect.

During the existence of the Confederate Government, the
Protestant Episcopal Church South was established, and the
prayer for the President of the United States- and all in civil
authority, in the " Book of Common Prayer," was changed to
one for the Confederate authorities. Upon the restoration of
the authority of the United States, the prayer for the President
was omitted altogether, by the recommendation of Bishop Wil-
mer; whereupon Major-General \Yoods issued an order by
which the Bishop and all his clergy in the diocese of Alabama
" were suspended from their functions and forbidden to preach
or perform divine service." The order was subsequently set
aside by President Johnson.

1SG7] OTHERS APPOINTED BY THE COMMANDER. 751

At the session of the Legislature in November, 1866, the
fourteenth amendment to the United States Constitution was
rejected by an overwhelming majority.

On assuming command of the Third Military Division under
the act of Congress of March 2, 1867, Major-General Pope
assigned Major-General Swayne to the " administration of the
military reconstruction bill " in Alabama. On April 8th the
order directing the proceedings in the registration of voters
was issued. Special instructions were issued, as in all the other
States, to boards of registers which declared that clerks and re-
porters of the Supreme Court and inferior courts, and clerks to
ordinary county courts, treasurers, county surveyors, receivers
of tax-returns, tax-collectors, tax-receivers, sheriffs, justices of
the peace, coroners, mayors, recorders, aldermen, councilmen of
any incorporated city or town, who were ex-officers of the Con-
federacy, and who, previous to the war, occupied these offices
and afterward participated in the war, were all disqualified and
not entitled to registration. Meantime the municipal officers
were removed in several places, and in the city of Mobile the
police administration was suspended and the maintenance of
public order assumed by* the commander of the military force.
Finally, the chief officers and councilmen of the city were re-
moved, and others appointed by the district commander.

The registration was completed in August, and amounted to
72,748 whites and 88,243 blacks. The vote on the Convention
and for delegates was given on the first three days of October.
A hundred delegates were chosen, of whom ninety-six were
" radicals " — seventeen of them were blacks. On November 5th
the so-called Convention assembled and adopted all the amend-
ments required by the act of Congress. The election for the
ratification of the Constitution, for State officers, members of
the Legislature, and Representatives in Congress, was held on
February 4, 1868. A majority of all the registered vote was
required to ratify the Constitution, which was 85,000. The
vote cast was 75,000.

On June 20, 1868, Congress passed an act which declared
that each of the States of North Carolina, South Carolina, Geor-
gia, Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana, should be admitted to

>7K

752 RISE AND FALL OF TIIE CONFEDERATE GOYERXMEXT.

representation when its Legislature had ratified the fourteenth
amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and
further, " upon the fundamental condition that the Constitution
of neither of said States shall ever be so amended or changed
as to deprive any citizen, or class of citizens, of the United
States of the right to vote in said State, who are entitled to vote
by the Constitution thereof, herein recognized, except as a pun-
ishment for crime," etc.

The so-called State Legislature assembled on July 13th, and
Articles XIII and XIY as amendments to the Constitution
of the United States were ratified. The conduct of the affairs
of the State was now transferred by General Meade to the new
civil authorities.

Mississippi, immediately after the cessation of hostilities,
was occupied by a military force of the United States. Mean-
time the Governor called an extra session of the Legislature,
and made provision for a Constitutional Convention ; but these
measures were set aside by the proclamation of President John-
son, on June 13th, appointing William L. Sharkey provisional
Governor. The system of measures embraced in the plan of
the President for the restoration of the Confederate States to
the Union was immediately commenced and completed in the
election of Benjamin G. Humphreys for Governor, with the
other State officers, members of the Legislature, and Represent-
atives in Congress.

The fourteenth amendment of the Constitution was unani-
mously rejected by the Legislature in January, 1867.

Under the act of Congress of March 2, 1867, Major-General
Ord assumed command of the Fourth Military Division, consist-
ing of Mississippi and Arkansas. Governor Humphreys sought
immediately to bring the question of the constitutionality of
this act before the United States Supreme Court. Arguments
were heard upon it by the Court. The motion was to enjoin
and restrain President Johnson and Major-General Ord from
executing the act and supplements. It was denied, and Chief-
Justice Chase, on delivering the opinion, said :

"If the President refuses obedience, it is needless to observe
that the Court is without power to enforce its process. If, on the

1867] THE HANDS OF THE NEGROES. 753

other hand, the President complies with the order of the Court,
and refuses to execute the act of Congress, is it not clear that a
collision may occur between the executive and the legislative
departments of the Government ? May not the House of Repre-
sentatives impeach the President for such refusal ? "

Major-General Ord, immediately after assuming command,
proceeded to organize boards for the registration of voters and
prescribe their qualifications and disqualifications. The latter
were so numerous as to embrace, in all these States, every white
who had voluntarily done the most simple act to aid or favor
any person engaged in the Confederate service, or had incited,
by words, others to render such aid, while the entire class of
blacks were not disqualified by such acts, as it was assumed
that they were done by compulsion. Thus the aim and end
of registration, after this manner, in a State, were to throw the
entire political power into the hands of the negroes.

Orders were now issued directing the military to cooperate
with the civil officers to break up the crime of horse-stealing, to
secure to labor its share of the crops, and to protect debtor and
creditor from sacrifices by forced sales ; to suspend for a time cer-
tain sales under execution ; to prohibit interference with the legal
tenant ; to ascertain if distillers had paid their taxes ; to investi-
gate complaints made by citizens of persecution by civil author-
ities ; to notify State and municipal officers of the laws of Con-
gress for the organization of their governments on the basis of
suffrage without regard to color ; to subordinates of the Freed-
men's Bureau to investigate all charges against landholders ; to
require supervisors, inspectors, and boards of registration to
obtain the names of suitable persons, white or black, to act as
clerks and judges of elections; to close strictly all bar-rooms
and saloons for the day when political meetings were held ; to
remove the city marshal, three justices of the peace, and four
members of the City Council of Vicksburg ; to appoint other
persons to fill the vacancies, who were required to take the test
oath of Congress ; to forbid the assembling of bodies of citizens
under any pretense ; to transfer the papers to a military commis-
sion whenever a person who had been in the Federal service
95

trm

54 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

was indicted and apprehended an unfair trial ; to notify over-
seers of the poor that any neglect to provide for colored paupers
would be regarded as a neglect of duty, etc.

The registered names amounted to 46,636 whites and 60,167
blacks. The military appointment for delegates to the Conven-
tion was such as to give to thirty-two counties, having small col-
ored majorities, seventy of the representatives, and to twenty-
nine counties, having small white majorities, thirty representa-
tives. On November 5th the election was held, and the so-
called Convention assembled on January 8, 1868. The ordinance
of secession was declared null and void \ the existence of slavery
prohibited ; payment of the war debt forbidden ; universal suf-
frage established, excepting only criminals ; an election to ratify
the Constitution and for the election of State officers, a Legisla-
ture, and Representatives in Congress, was ordered to be held on
June 22d, and a large number of radical amendments adopted.
At the election the Constitution was rejected by a majority of
7,629. The opposition candidate was also elected Governor.

On October 1, 1867, the Chief-Justice of the State, A. H.
Handy, sent his resignation to the Governor. He said :

" It is apparent that the character and dignity of the Court can
not be maintained, and that its powers must be held and exercised
in subordination to the behests of a military commander."

On December 28, 1867, Major-General Ord was succeeded
by Major-General McDowell. On June 15th the latter issued
an order removing Governor Humphreys and appointing Major-
General A. Ames to the vacancy. Governor Humphreys de-
clined to vacate the office, saying that the attempt to remove him
was a " usurpation of the civil government of 'Mississippi, un-
warranted by and in violation of the Constitution of the United
States." A squadron of soldiers was sent by the military com-
mander of the post, which marched in and took possession of
the office. The house of the Governor was then demanded for
the new incumbent of the office. As Governor Humphreys re-
fused to vacate it, a file of soldiers came and ejected him.

After the rejection of the so-called new Constitution, its
friends applied to Congress, as the sovereign, to throw out the

1867] AID OF THIS WEAPON. 755

vote of several counties and declare the Constitution to be
adopted. This action was recommended on the ground, as
they said, that the election had not been fairly conducted, and
that violence and intimidation had, in many parts of the State,
prevented a full and just vote. The Constitution was defeated,
not, as thus alleged, by fraud and intimidation, but distinctly
for the reason that it was more vindictive in its spirit than the
people, white or black, would tolerate, and more proscriptive in
its provisions than the acts of Congress required.

In March, 1869, the provisional Governor of the State,
Major- General A. Ames, was made the military commander of
the Fourth Military District. At the same time a joint resolu-
tion was passed by Congress, which ordered that all persons
holding office in Mississippi, who could not take the test-oath
prescribed in 1862, should be removed from office. By the aid
of this weapon it was expected that General Ames would make
the State organization so-called Republican. Meanwhile Con-
gress passed an act which authorized the President to submit
the Constitution of the State to another election by the people,
with a separate vote on its objectionable section. Preparations
for this election were commenced by the issue of an order of
the military commander prescribing stringent regulations rela-
tive to the requisites of voters for registration. The election
was held on November 30 and December 1, 1869, and the
Constitution was ratified. The vote against disfranchising
citizens for serving under the Confederacy during the war was
almost unanimous. The so-called Legislature assembled on
January 11, 1870. The fourteenth and fifteenth amendments
of the United States Constitution were adopted, and on Feb-
ruary 12th an act of Congress was passed by which the State
was permitted to be represented in that body.

At the beginning of 1865 Louisiana was under the State
government constructed by General Banks, as has been stated
in previous pages. It occupied New Orleans, and extended its
control to the extremity of the military lines. Within this
limit it was treated practically as a restored portion of the
Union. The United States military draft was enforced. Much
disorder in civil affairs prevailed, and some serious disturbances

756 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

occurred up to the time when Congress undertook its plan of
restoration. There was, in fact, a military rule during all that
period. On March 19, 1867, Major-General Sheridan was as-
signed to the command of the Fifth Military District, embrac-
ing Louisiana and Texas, in accordance with the act of Con-
gress of March 2d. By this act the existing State government
was " declared to be only provisional, and subject to be abol-
ished, modified, controlled, or superseded." Major-General
Sheridan began his proceedings with the removal of certain
obnoxious officials who were, in his opinion, dangerous to the
peace of the community. The registration of voters was ordered
to commence on May 1st. To an application to General Grant,
the commander-in-chief, for more definite instructions, by Major-
General Sheridan, the former replied on June 28th :

" Enforce your own construction of the military bill, uDtil or-
dered to do otherwise."

The Legislature having appropriated four million dollars for
the repairs of levees, and appointed a board to discharge the
duties, Governor Wells became dissatisfied with their action,
and appointed another board. Disputes arising between the
two boards, Major-General Sheridan removed both, and ap-
pointed a third, and enforced its authority. In April, Major-
General Sheridan, writing to General Grant, said :

" I fear I shall be obliged to remove Governor Wells, of this
State, who is impeding me as much as he can."

General Grant replied :

" I would advise that no removals of Governors of States be
made at present. It is a question now under consideration whether
the power exists, under the law, to remove/except by special act
of Congress, or by trial under the sixth section of the act promul-
gated in Orders 33 (act of March 2d)."

On June 3d Major-General Sheridan issued an order, re-
moving the so-called Governor, saying that, " having made
himself an impediment to the faithful execution of the act of
Congress of March 2d, by directly and indirectly impeding the

1867] REMOVE THE FORMER INCUMBENTS. 757

General in command in the faithful execution of the law," etc.,
Benjamin F. Flanders was appointed to fill the vacancy.

The registration ceased on July 31st, with the names of
44,732 whites and 82,907 blacks. Extensive removals from
office were now made — among others, twenty-two members of
the City Council of New Orleans, also the city treasurer and
city surveyor, a justice of peace, sheriff, etc. On August 17th
Major-General Sheridan was relieved, and Major-General Han-
cock succeeded. " Impediments to reconstruction under the
laws of Congress " continued to be removed, and other persons
assigned to their places.

The election for delegates to the so-called Convention was
held on September 27th and 28th, and that body assembled on
November 23d. The measures required by the act of Congress
were adopted, and an election for its ratification and for State
officers, and a Legislature, was held on April 17th and 18th.
The Constitution was ratified, and the State officers and mem-
bers of the Legislature were elected. Meantime Major-General
Hancock was relieved, and succeeded by Major-General Bu-
chanan.

After the election, the registrars of the State proposed to
install the newly elected officers under the provisions of an
ordinance of the Convention. But they were notified by Major-
General Buchanan that it could not be done without permission.
To avoid any question as to the persons who should hold the
offices of so-called Governor and Lieutenant-Governor after the
meeting of the Legislature, the district commander was directed
by General Grant to remove the former incumbents by military
order and set up the individuals lately elected as their succes-
sors. This was done on June 27th, and on the 29th the so-called
Legislature assembled in pursuance of a notice from the com-
manding General. The fourteenth amendment to the United
States Constitution was adopted ; and, as by the act of Congress
of June 25th, Louisiana had been restored to representation in
that body, the commanding General on July 13, 1868, trans-
ferred the administration of civil affairs to the State officers.

I will not pursue these odious details further. Suffice it to
say that Texas and Arkansas, having passed through the same

758 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

military process as their sister Confederate States, were ad-
mitted to representation in Congress, the former in 1870 and
the latter in 1868.

It will be seen that the power usurped by Congress was
without a limitation, and extended to all the political, civil, and
social relations. Many of the military commanders seem to
have regarded their authority as equally comprehensive. The
Attorney- General of the United States, in his official opinion on
these acts of Congress, addressed to the President on June 12,
1867, says :

" It appears that some of the military commanders have under-
stood this grant of power as all-comprehensive, conferring on them
the power to remove the executive and judicial officers of the
State, and to appoint other officers in their places ; to suspend the
legislative power of the State ; to take under their control, by offi-
cers appointed by themselves, the collection and disbursement of
the revenues of the State ; to prohibit the execution of the laws of
the State by the agency of its appointed officers and agents ; to
change the existing laws in matters affecting purely civil and pri-
vate rights ; to suspend or enjoin the execution of the judgments
and decrees of the established State courts ; to interfere in the or-
dinary administration of justice in the State courts, by prescrib-
ing new qualifications for jurors ; and to change, upon the ground
of expediency, the existing relations of the parties to contracts,
giving protection to one party by violating the rights of the other
party."

Many instances are then related by the Attorney-General to
confirm his statements. Some of these are worthy of the at-
tention of the reader, although they may have been mentioned
on a preceding page. In one district the so-called Governor of
a State was deposed under a threat of military force, and an-
other person, called a Governor, appointed by the military com-
mander to fill the place — thus presenting the strange spectacle
of an official intrusted with chief power to execute the laws of
a State, whose authority was not recognized by the laws he was
called on to execute.

In the same district a Judge was, by military order, ejected
from his office, and a private citizen was appointed Judge in his

1867] SO, TOO, DID THE JUDGE. 759

place by military authority, and exercised criminal jurisdiction
" over all crimes, misdemeanors, and offenses " committed within
the territorial jurisdiction of the court. This military appointee
was certainly not authorized, as a member of a military tribunal,
to try any one for an offense ; and he had just as little author-
ity, as a Judge of a criminal court of the State, to try and pun-
ish any offender. This person was sole judge in a criminal
court' whose jurisdiction extended to the life of the accused.
In capital cases he might well change places with the criminal,
for, if the latter had unlawfully taken life, so too did the Judge.

In another district, a military order commanded the nominal
Governor of the State to forbid the assembling of the Legisla-
ture, and thus suspended the proper legislative power of the
State. In the same district an order was issued " to relieve the
Treasurer of the State from the duties, bond, books, papers, etc.,
appertaining to his office, and to put an " assistant quartermas-
ter of the United States Volunteers " in place of the removed
Treasurer. The duties of this quartermaster-treasurer were thus
summed up : He was to make to the headquarters of the dis-
trict " the same reports and returns required from the Treas-
urer, and a monthly statement of the receipts and expenditures ;
he will pay all warrants for salaries which may be or become
due, and legitimate expenditures for the support of the Peniten-
tiary, State Asylum, and the support of the provisional State
government; but no scrip or wan-ants for outstanding debts,
of other kind than those specified, will be paid without special
authority from these headquarters. He will deposit funds in
the same manner as though they were those of the United
States." These instances will suffice, although many more
might be related.

Illegal, unjust, and vindictive as were these gross usurpa-
tions of the Congress of the United States in their immediate
results, the consequences which followed were still more disas-
trous. When the late Confederate States were restored to rep-
resentation in Congress, a large portion of their white citizens
remained disfranchised, and the political power of each was in
the hands of the blacks and the remnant of the whites. Nor
was the military force withdrawn, but it was placed in conven-

760 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

ient localities, under the pretext of maintaining order, but in
reality to sustain the new rulers. It must be manifest that the
sovereignty of the people was now extinct, and those ruled who
had the bayonets on their side. With the disfranchised were the
intelligence, the virtue, and the political experience ; with the
voters were the ignorance, the lawless passions, and soon a body
of political adventurers from the Northern States, greedy for
power and plunder. These quickly won for themselves the dis-
tinctive epithet of " carpet-baggers." The governments under
the control of such popular sovereigns demonstrated the vin-
dictiveness rather than wisdom of Congress, and soon brought
forth their natural fruits of anarchy, fraud, and crime. One or
two examples must suffice in which to exhibit these results.

The debt of the ten Confederate States in 1874 was as fol-
lows :

Virginia, funded and unfunded $45,718,119 73

North Carolina 38,921,848 05

South Carolina 9,866,627 35

Florida 1,620,809 27

Georgia $8,105,500 funded

8,000,000 fraudulent 16,105,500 00

Alabama $10,452,593 30

15,051,000 00 railroad endorsement 15,503,593 30

Mississippi 3,558,629 24

Louisiana 23,933,407 90

Texas 4,012,421 00

Arkansas 9,561,000 00

$148,801,955 80

It is not claimed that all this amount of indebtedness had
been accumulated since the close of the war. Some of the
States had debts previous to the war, but a large proportion of
the amount had been contracted by the spendthrift governments
instituted by Congress, and very little could be found to offset
the expenditure.

Again, in Arkansas, on April 16th, Governor Brooks seized
and occupied the State-House with a body of armed men and
two cannon. On the same day, Governor Baxter proclaimed
martial law, and marched with a body of armed men from St.
John's College to the Anthony House, and established his head-

1875] I AM BUT A SOLDIER. 761

quarters there. Guards were placed along the principal streets,
and the State-House was completely surrounded by a cordon of
sentinels. Subsequently, he marched to attack the State-House,
but a body of troops belonging to the Government of the United
States appeared before it. Two so-called Republican Governors
of the State, with their troops, were about to fight for the ex-
ecutive office.

In Louisiana, on January 4, 1875, a body of troops of the
Government of the United States, on the order of Governor
"W. P. Kellogg, marched into the hall of the House of Repre-
sentatives of the State Legislature, while that body was in ses-
sion, and forcibly seized and took out five members as not en-
titled to seats. The General in command (De Trobriand) then
proceeded to eject the Clerk, and arrested the proceedings of the
House. When expostulated with by the Speaker, he replied :
" I am but a soldier. These are my orders." The members
then retired.

In Mississippi, on December 7, 1874, a serious conflict oc-
curred in Yicksburg between whites and blacks, which resulted
in great loss of life and caused a widely-spread alarm. It grew
out of frauds committed by public officers.

Again, during the exciting contest in Arkansas, the Con-
gress of the United States appointed a committee to investigate
the affairs in that State, and " whether said State had now a
government republican in form, the officers of which are duly
elected, and, as now organized, ought to be recognized by the
Government of the United States."

On December 24, 1874, the Congress of the United States
appointed a committee to proceed to New Orleans, and inves-
tigate the state of affairs in Louisiana. This committee re-
ported on January 14, 1875, that " they could not agree upon
any recommendation ; but, upon the situation in Louisiana, as it
appeared before us, we are all agreed."

The same Congress, before its adjournment, appointed a
committee to proceed to Mississippi and make an investigation
of the state of affairs there. Thus committees were kept quite
busy in traveling back and forth to these States, and much of
the time of Congress was occupied in discussing their affairs,

762 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

and in efforts to reconcile the quarreling factions of so-called
Republicans in them, to the great detriment of the public inter-
ests.

Where now were the unalienable rights of man, and the
sovereignty of the people, with their safeguards ; a Constitution
with limited powers, the reserved rights of the States, and the
supremacy of law equally over both rulers and ruled ? All were
gone.

It will be seen that, through all these proceedings, the Gov-
ernment of the United States controlled as the sovereign, and the
sovereignty of the people was extinct. The measures adopted
were those prescribed by the Government of the United States ;
and, subordinate to these and subject to the conditions of these,
such others were permitted as the necessities of the people re-
quired. Affairs were not in such disorder when the Constitu-
tion of the United Statep was adopted. The uppermost then
had come to be the undermost now, and that which was nothing
then had grown to be over all now. Will it always be thus ?
Was the inherent sovereignty of the people destroyed by shot
and shell ?

The intelligent reader must perceive that this invasion of
the natural and unalienable rights of man, the subjugation of
the sovereignty of the people, the monstrous usurpations of
powers not granted in the Constitution, the trampling under
foot of the reserved rights of the States, the disregard of the
supremacy of law, and the assumption of the sovereignty of the
Government of the United States as the corner-stone of our
future political edifice, is a revolution in our system of Govern-
ment, deep-seated, reaching to the foundations, and sending the
poisonous waters of despotism throughout all the branches fed
from this fountain. The Confederate States resisted it from
the beginning. They drew their swords for the sovereignty of
the people, and they fought for the maintenance of their State
governments in all their reserved rights and powers, as the only
true and natural guardians of the unalienable rights of their
citizens, among which the most sacred is, that only the consent
of the governed can give vitality and existence to any civil or
political institution.

1881] WILL IT STAND? 763

This overthrow of the rights of freemen and the establish-
ment of such new relations required a complete revolution in
the principle of the government of the United States, the sub-
version of the State governments, the subjugation of the people,
and the destruction of the fraternal Union. The work has been
done. Will it stand? Have the eternal principles of the Dec-
laration of Independence been hid from our sight for ever ?
Or, will they again come forth, "redeemed, disenthralled, re-
generated," and rally the reunited people to shout in thunder-
tones for sovereignty of the people and the unalienable rights
of man ?

It has been shown in previous pages that the State govern-
ments were instituted to be the special guardians of these
unalienable rights of man; but henceforth they must be the
sworn defenders of the Government of the United States, not of
the Constitution and laws enacted in pursuance thereof, but of
such interpolations and perversions of them as, in cases of
necessity, that Government should find it convenient to make.
Whenever it pleases, it can set them aside ; and, whenever
it wills, it can destroy them. Unalienable rights are unknown
to this war-begotten theory of the Constitution. The day has
come in which mankind behold this Government founding its
highest claims to greatness and glory upon deeds done in utter
violation of those rights which belonged to its own citizens
in every State, JSTorth and South. The palladium of the free-
man, the Bills of Rights, the limitations of power, the written
Constitutions, have all lost their sacred authority, and not a man
or a State dare, single-handed, gainsay the will of the agency
which, feeling power, has forgotten right. It has put its hand
on the ballot-box, and the declaration is made that it is not safe
to trust the people to vote, except under the inspection of
its authority, after the example set by the Roman emperors.
When the cause was lost, what cause was it ? Not that of the
South only, but the cause of constitutional government, of the
supremacy of law, of the natural rights of man.

764 RISE AND FALL OF THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT.

CONCLUSION.

My first object in this work was to prove, by historical
authority, that each of the States, as sovereign parties to the
compact of Union, had the reserved power to secede from it
whenever it should be found not to answer the ends for which
it was established. If this has been done, it follows that the
war was, on the part of the United States Government, one of
aggression and usurpation, and, on the part of the South, was
for the defense of an inherent, unalienable right.

My next purpose was to show, by the gallantry and devotion
of the Southern people, in their unequal struggle, how thorough
was their conviction of the justice of their cause ; that, by their
humanity to the wounded and captives, they proved themselves
the worthy descendants of chivalric sires, and fit to be free ; and
that, in every case, as when our army invaded Pennsylvania, by
their respect for private rights, their morality and observance
of the laws of civilized war, they are entitled to the confidence
and regard of mankind.

The want of space has compelled me to omit a notice of
many noble deeds, both of heroic men and women. The roll
of honor, merely, would fill more than the pages allotted to this
work. To others, who can say cuncta quorum vidi, I must leave
the pleasant task of paying the tribute due to their associate
patriots.

In asserting the right of secession, it has not been my wish
to incite to its exercise : I recognize the fact that the war showed
it to be impracticable, but this did not prove it to be wrong ; and,
now that it may not be again attempted, and that the Union may
promote the general welfare, it is needful that the truth, the
whole truth, should be known, so that crimination and recrimi-
nation may for ever cease, and then, on the basis of fraternity
and faithful regard for the rights of the States, there may be
written on the arch of the Union, Esto jperpetua.

Note. — The publishers are responsible for the orthography of
these volumes.

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OPERATIONS

NORTHERN VIRGINIA

Battle of
FREDERICKSBURG

SCALE OF MILES

SECOND ATTACK

upon

FORT FISHER

Showing theposition of the
vessels and lines of fire

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OPERATIONS
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GEORGIA

AND

SOUTH CAROLINA

INDEX TO YOL. II.

Abandonment of the Peninsula, recom-
mended by General J. E. Johnston, 86 ;
a defensive position nearer to Rich-
mond proposed, 86 ; the question dis-
cussed in a conference of officers, 87 ;
plan of General Johnston, 87 ; concen-
tration of all troops, 87 ; objections,
87 ; not adopted, 87 ; measures deter-
mined on, 87.

Adams, John Quincy, Secretary of State,
correspondence with the British Sec-
retary of State relative to the depor-
tation of slaves in war, 8, 9 ; on the
restoration of slaves captured in war,
163 ; says private property, including
slaves, can not be taken by the usages
of war, 170.

Agents of the State of JVeio York to take
the vote of her soldiers at the Presi-
dential election, 492 ; seized with the
votes and locked up in prison by the
orders of the Government of the United
States, 492 ; the description of the im-
prisonment, 493.

Aggressions, the authors of, having ac-
quired power, were eager for the spoils
of victory, 160 ; the series of, about to
be consummated, 182.

Alabama, the cruiser, her condition when
leaving Liverpool, 250.

Alarm at Washington, created by the
operations of Jackson in the Shenan-
doah Valley, 105.

Aldrich, Judge A. P., arrested, 741 ;
removed by a military officer, 744.

Anderson, General G. B., in command at
Sharpsburg, 336.

Anderson, General J. R., placed in ob-
servation before General McDowell be-
fore Fredericksburg, 101.

Anderson, General R. H., in command at
Sharpsburg, 336.

Andersonville, occasion for its selection
for the confinement of prisoners of
war, 596 ; its location, 596 ; prepara-
tions, 596; treatment, 597.

Anomaly among Governments, the Gov-
ernment of the United States, 453.

Arkansas, proceedings to institute a State
Government inaugurated by order of
President Lincoln, 302 ; his order, 303 ;
the State Constitution amended by as-
sumption, or by assuming it to be
amended, 303 ; movements in the
northern part of the State, 304 ; fur-
ther proceedings, 304 ; vote for Article
XIII of the United States Constitution,
304 ; fraud triumphant, 304.

Arkansas, The ram, fight at the mouth
of the Yazoo, 242 ; enters the Missis-
sippi and runs through the enemy's
fleet, 242 ; description of the vessel,
243 ; destined for attack on Baton
Rouge, 243 ; failure of her engines,
244.

Arms and munitions of ivar manufac-
tured in the United States for Turkey
in her late war with Russia, 276.

Army of Northern Virginia, changes of
position before Richmond, 101 ; re-
turns to the vicinity of Richmond after
McClellan reached Westover, 152.

Army of Tennessee under General A. S.
Johnston, its strength after fall of Don-
elson, 39 ; moves to Murfreesboro, 39 ;
its concentration, 39 ; joins Beauregard
at Corinth, 39.

Army of the United States, new generals
assigned to command, and new depart-
ments created, 18 ; under General
McClellan — its size when reported to
be crippled for want of reenf orcements,
106 ; size of our army, 106.

Army of Virginia, order of President
Lincoln creating, 135 ; the commander,
and the forces, 135.

Ashby, General Turner, commands rear-
guard, 112 ; attacked by Fremont's
cavalry, 112; killed, 112; remarks of
General Jackson, 112.

Assertion, An, often made during the
war, 451.

766

INDEX TO VOL. II.

Atlanta, The, a cruiser's name changed
to Tallahassee, 265 ; commanded by
Commander John Taylor Wood, 265 ;
her cruise along the New England coast,
265.

Atlanta evacuated by General Hood, 563 ;
surrendered by the Mayor to General
Sherman, with the promise that non-
combatants and private property should
be respected, 563 ; order of Sherman
directing all civilians, male and female,
living in Atlanta to leave the city within
five days from September 5th, 564 ;
vain appeals of the Mayor and corpo-
rate authorities for a modification of
the order, 564 ; reply of Sherman, 564.

Atrocities of the war: letter of the Presi-
dent to General Lee, 315 ; in the Shen-
andoah Yalley, 531 ; retaliation of
General Early, 531 ; Butler's proceed-
ings in New Orleans, 232 ; Pope's mili-
tary orders in Virginia, 313 ; Sherman's
expulsion of the inhabitants of Atlan-
ta, 564 ; march to Savannah, 570 ;
Sherman's burning of Columbia, 627 ;
the order of President Lincoln to mili-
tary commanders, 588 ; order of Gen-
eral Pope, 58S ; letter of General Lee
to General Halleck, 589 ; efforts of
General Hunter to inaugurate a servile
war, 589 ; proceedings of Brigadier-
General Phelps, 589 ; do. of General
Butler, 589 ; extracts from the official
report of Major-General Butler to the
Committee on the Conduct of the War
relative to the exchange of prisoners,
603 ; extract from the message to the
Confederate Congress, in August, 1862,
707 ; do. in January, 1863, 707 ; varied
stages of the war, 708 ; atrocities of
Major-General Hunter in the Shenan-
doah Yalley, 709 ; statement of Rev.
John Bachman of the devastations of
the enemy in South Carolina, 710-715.

Attrition, TJie policy of, can hardly be
regarded as generalship, or be offered
to military students as an example
worthy of imitation, 526.

Bachman, Rev. Dr. John, statement of
the devastations of the enemy in South
Carolina, 710-715.

Banks, Major-General N. P., exclamation
of relief on his escape from Jackson
across the Potomac, 106 ; succeeds
General Butler at New Orleans, 289 ;
expedition into the Bed River country,
541 ; his force, 543 ; battles at Mans-
field and Pleasant Hill, 543, 544 ; ob-

tains cotton in the Red River country,
545.

Barksdale, Brigadier-General William,
commands the force placed at Freder-
icksburg to resist the enemy's crossing,
353.

Barron, Captain Samuel, commands at
Hatteras Inlet, 77 ; is bombarded by
the enemy's fleet, and capitulates, 77.

Barry, Colonel William S., commander
of the burial party at Corinth, 390 ; his
reception by General Rosecrans, 390.

Baton Rouge, its importance, 243 ; occu-
pied by the enemy, 243 ; attacked, 244 ;
failure of entire success by the break-
down of the ram Arkansas, 244.

Battalion of cadets, their services at Rich-
mond, 665.

Beauregard, General P. G. T., takes
command in West Tennessee, 51 ;
moves to Corinth, 51 ; states cause of
delay of movements toward Shiloh, 55 ;
report of result of first day's battle of
Shiloh, 60 ; his force at Corinth, 73 ; his
estimate of the enemy, 73 ; retreats to
Tupelo, 74 ; declines to let Bragg go to
Mississippi, 74 ; his health, 74 ; certifi-
cates of his physicians, 74 ; transfers
the command to General Bragg and re-
tires to Bladen Springs, 75 ; statement
of the case, 75 ; in command near
Drury's Bluff, 511 ; interview with the
President, 511 ; position of the forces,
512; movements of the enemy, 513:
the affair at Drury's Bluff, 513 ; his
proposal for a campaign, 514; assigned
to the military division of the West,
566 ; retreats toward North Carolina,
630 ; decides to march to the eastern
part of the State, 630 ; effect of this
move, 630 ; modifies his proposed
movement, 631.

Beaver Dam, its naturally strong position
near Mechanicsville, 134; engagement
near, 134.

Belligerents — in no instance from the
opening to the close of the war did the
United States Government speak of us
as belligerents, 278 ; why was it ? 278 ;
the signification of the word, combined
with existing circumstances, expressed
something it was in no degree willing
to admit before the world, 278 ; its
war was against the people within the
limits of the Confederate States, and
were they a mob or organized political
communities ? 279 ; then it was a war
against the States which the world
could not justify, 279 ; opinion of Jus-

INDEX TO VOL. II.

767

tice Green, of the United States Su-
preme Court, 281 ; case of the Santis-
sima Trinidad, 281.

Benjamin, Jcdah P., Secretary, letter to
General A. S. Johnston, 40 ; report on
the proceedings of Generals Floyd and
Pillow requested, 40.

Berwick Bay, capture of the works of the
enemy at, 419 ; the spoils taken, 419.

Big Black River railroad-bridge, topo-
graphical features of the position, 409 ;
results of the retreat of Pemberton
from, 410.

Blair, Francis P., visits Richmond, 612 ;
conversation with the President, 612 ;
letter given to him, 615 ; answer of Mr.
Lincoln, 615 ; return of Mr. Blair, 616 ;
his statements, 616; further move-
ments, 617; his visit, 618.

Blockade, The, its effect upon English
manufactures, 344 ; intervention of the
Governments of France and England
to alleviate the distress, 344 ; the pas-
siveness of neutral Europe relative to,
373 ; other blockades compared, 373 ;
facts shown relative to our ports, 374;
Great Britain assumes to make a change
in the principles announced at Paris,

. 375 ; dispatch of the British Minister,
375 ; illustration of the importance of
this change, 375 ; other matters inju-
rious to us, 376 ; letters of the British
Government to United States, 379, 380 ;
marked encouragement given to per-
severe in the blockade, 380 ; statement
of the British Government as to the
blockade of the Southern ports, 381 ;
further facts, 381.

Bowen, General John S., detached from
Vicksburg to Grand Gulf, 397 ; retreats
toward Grand Gulf, 399 ; one of the
best soldiers of the Confederate ser-
vice, 416.

Bowli?ig Green, position of General A. S.
Johnston's center turned, 36 ; the con-
sequences, 36, 37 ; its evacuation, 37.

Bragg, General Braxton, commands a
division of Beauregard's forces in West
Tennessee, 51; sent from Pensacola, 54;
account of Johnston's efforts, 54 ; com-
mands a corps at battle of Shiloh, 55 ;
statement of affairs at battle of Shi-
loh, 59 ; ordered to command the de-

. partment under General Lovell, 74 ;
Beauregard declines to permit his
departure owing to ill health, 74 ;
receives the command from Beaure-
gard, 75 ; report of subsequent pro-
ceedings, 75 ; advances from Tupelo and

occupies Chattanooga, 382 ; marches
from Chattanooga and enters Kentucky,

383 ; passes to the rear of General
Buell in Middle Tennessee, 383 ; thus
relieves north Alabama and Middle
Tennessee from the presence of the
enemy, 383 ; issues an address to the
people of Kentucky, 383 ; gives battle
to the enemy at Perryville, 383 ; losses,

384 ; falls back before re enforcements
to the enemy, 384 ; takes position at
Murfreesboro, 384 ; begins the con-
flict at Murfreesboro, 385 ; its result,
385; falls back to Tullahoma, 385;
takes a position south of Chattanooga,
429 ; his movements, 429 ; concen-
trates at Chickamauga, 429 ; forms his
line of battle, 430; the conflict, 431-
433.

Brazil, Government of, demands the res-
toration of the cruiser Florida, 262 ;
letter of Mr. Seward, 262.

Breckinridge, Brigadier-General John
C, commands a corps at battle of Shi-
loh, 55 ; commands the attack at Ba-
ton Rouge,. 244 ; commands in south-
western Virginia, 527 ; his movements
and skirmishes, 528 ; ordered to Han-
over Junction, 528 ; returns, 529.

Brent, Major, attacks and captures the
gunboat Indianola, 241.

Brown, Commander, commands the ram
Arkansas, 242.

Brown, Major, report of the surrender
of Fort Donelson, 34.

Buchanan, Captain Franklin, commands
the Virginia, 196 ; fight at Hampton
Roads, 197; commands the ironclad
Tennessee in the conflict in Mobile
Bay, 206.

Buckner, General Simon, commands a
division at Fort Donelson, 29 ; in com-
mand at Knoxville, 426.

Buell, General D. C, assigned to com-
mand in Kentucky, 18 ; his threaten-
ing position, 38 ; his force after fall of
Donelson, 39 ; moves his array to join
Grant at Pittsburg Landing, 54; pro-
gress of his advance, 54 ; statement of
the condition of Grant's army after the
battle of Shiloh, 70 ; retreats from
Nashville to Louisville, fearing for the
safety of the latter city, 383.

Bullock, Captain James D., his integrity
and efficiency as naval agent at Liver-
pool, 248.

Burglary, the State government throws
its shield over the citizen for bis pro-
tection against, 452.

768

INDEX TO VOL. II.

Burnside, General Ambrose, commands
expedition against the coast of North
Carolina, 79 ; succeeds McClellan in
command of the army, 351 ; attempts
to throw bridges across the river be-
fore Fredericksburg, 352 ; finally cross-
es and lays his bridges, 353 ; attacks
our army, 354 ; is repulsed, 355 ; with-
draws, 356 ; losses, 356; the causes he
assigned for his failure, 356 ; subse-
quent inactivity of his army, 357 ; re-
moved from command, 357.

Butler, General B. F., commands expe-
dition against the coast of North Caro-
lina, 79 ; advances to New Orleans,
223 ; a reign of terror follows, 232 ;
lands at Bermuda Hundred, 507 ; makes
a raid to Chester, 508 ; compelled to
withdraw, 508; moves out again to
Port Walthal Junction, 511; repulsed
by troops of General Beauregard from
Charleston, 511 ; commissioner for the
exchange of prisoners, 598.

Captures on the high seas, the position
taken bv Washington and Jefferson in
1793, 270.

Campbell, John A., appointed to confer
with Mr. LincolD, 617.

Cause, The, that was lost. What cause
was it ? 763.

Cedar Creek, Early's battle with the ene-
my at, 538-540.

Cedar Hun, its location, 317; the battle at,
317, 319 ; the forces, 317 ; losses, 319.

Chamber sburg, Pennsylvania, retaliatory
measures inflicted on, 531, 532.

Chancellorsville, forces of the enemy con-
verge near, from the fords of the Rapi-
dan, 357 ; Anderson's rear-guard at-
tacked by cavalry, 357; Lee moves
toward, 358 ; turns the enemy's right,
358 ; a position of great natural
strength assumed by the enemy, 358 ;
his lines, 358, 359; effort to turn his
right flank and gain his rear, 359 ; to
be done by Jackson with three divi-
sions, 359 ; success of the movement,
359, 360 ; the attack in front, 360 ;
Jackson wounded, 360 ; battle renewed
next day, 361 ; the enemy retreats
toward the Rappahannock, 361 ;
strengthens his position, 361 ; attack
from Fredericksburg on Lee's rear, 362,
363 ; battle near Salem Church, 363 ;
attack renewed on Hooker, 364 ; enemy
recross the river, 364 ; losses, 364 ;
strength, 365 ; a brief and forcible ac-
count of the battle, 365, 366.

Change of plans, necessary after the fall
of Fort Donelson, 39.

" Change of base," by McClellan, expla-
nation of, by the Comte de Paris, 104.

Charge, against the Government of the
United States, 454.

Charleston Harbor, the Confederate naval
force in, 204 ; its strength and effi-
ciency, 204 ; exploit of the ironclads
Palmetto State and Chicora, 205 ;
number of torpedoes in the harbor,
208 ; evacuated by General Hardee,
629 ; occupied by the enemy's forces,
630 ; condition of Fort Sumter, 630.

Chattanooga, Grant arrives after the bat-
tle of Chickamauga and assumes com-
mand, 434 ; his description of the situ-
ation, 434 ; his operations, 435 ; move-
ments of General Hooker, 435 ; arrival
of Sherman, 435 ; attack made by the
whole force of the enemy's center, 436 ;
get possession of rifle-pits at the foot
of Missionary Ridge, and commence
the ascent of the mountain, 436 ; our
forces withdraw, 436 ; losses, 436 ; oc-
cupied by the enemy, 429.

Chickahominy River, its character and
course, 122 ; rising from heavy rains,
124; position of General Sumner, 124.

Chickamauga, Bragg concentrates at,
429 ; forms his line of battle, 430 ;
commencement of the contest, 430;
movements of the forces, 431 ; Con-
federate troops engaged, 431 ; Bragg
reorganizes his command, 432; strength
of the opposing forces, 432; Bragg's
order of battle, 432 ; movement of
troops, 433 ; enemy yields along the
whole line, 433 ; withdraws at night,
433 ; his losses, 433.

Chilton, Colonel R. H., remarks on the
talents of General Lee, displayed in
the preparation and command of his
army, 129.

Cincinnati, alarm at the approach of
General E. K. Smith, 382.

Citizens, Southern, confined in cells to
await the punishment of piracy, 2 ;
peaceful, an indiscriminate warfare
waged upon, 2.

Citizen's life, is it in danger ? the State
guarantees protection, 451 ; his per-
sonal liberty is guaranteed by the
State, 451 ; his property guaranteed
from unlawful seizure and destruction
by the State, 452.

Citizenship and the ballot is wholly within
the control of each State, 729 ; efforts
of Congress to wrest it from each

IXDEX TO VOL. II.

769

Confederate State to confer on the ne-
groes, 729.

Civil government in Maryland, over-
thrown by the military force of the
United States, 461.

Clarence, Tlie, fitted out as a tender to
the Florida, 261.

Cleburne, Major-General, killed at the
battle of Franklin, 577.

Coast defenses, the system adopted, 78 ;
topography of the coast, 78 ; descrip-
tion of the fortifications constructed,
79 ; several points captured by the
enemy, 79 ; state of affairs when Gen-
eral Lee assumed command of the De-
partment of the Carolinas and Florida,
80 ; his plans for coast defenses, 80 ;
the system he organized, 80 ; its suc-
cess, 81.

Cobb, General Howell, arranges a cartel
for the exchange of prisoners with
General Wool, 587.

Colburn, Colonel, captured at Spring Hill
by Generals Van Dorn and Forrest,
426.

Cold Harbor, fearful carnage of Grant's
soldiers, 524; they sullenly and silent-
ly decline to renew the assault, 524.

Columbia, South Carolina, approach of
General Sherman's army, 627 ; the
Mayor surrenders the city, 627 ; infa-
mous disregard of the established rule3
of war, 627 ; the city burned, 627 ; at-
tributed by Sherman to an order of
General Hampton to burn the cotton,
627 ; denied by General Hampton, 627 ;
his letter, 628 ; other atrocities of Sher-
man's army, 629.

Columbus, Kentucky., threatened by the
enemy, 18.

Combinations of insurrectionists, the
Southern people declared to be, by the
United States Government, 2.

Conciliatory terms offered by the Gov-
ernor of a State for the sake of peace,
rejected by the United States Govern-
ment, 2.

Confederate Government, early efforts to
buy ships, 245 ; the lawfulness of its
maritime acts demonstrated, 269; its
acts relative to cruisers sustained and
justified by international law, 274 ; by
the interpretations of American jurists,
274 ; by antecedent acts of the United
States Government, 274 ; instances,
275, 276.

Confederate States regarded by United
States Government as in the Union,
177; yet deprived of all the protec-

tions of the Constitution, 177; all
their conduct pertaining to the war
consisted in just efforts to preserve to
themselves and their posterity rights
and protections guaranteed in the Con-
stitution, 178 ; their sagacity vindicated
by President Lincoln's emancipation
proclamation, 190.
Confederate Slates, Tlie final subjugation
of: when the Confederate soldiers laid
down their arms and went home, all
hostilities against the power of the
United States Government ceased, 718 ;
the result of the contest, 718 ; a simple
process of restoration, 718 ; rejected by
the United States Government, 718; a
forced union, 719 ; the amnesty proc-
lamation of President Johnson, 719;
the oath required to be taken, 719;
large classes of citizens excluded, 720 ;
its stipulations, 720; the reason for
them, 720 ; the Government of the Unit-
ed States proceeds to establish State
organizations based on the principle of
its own sovereignty, 720 ; terms of the
next proclamation, 720 ; the argument
it contained examined, 721 ; the four
propositions, 721 ; a provisional Gov-
ernor appointed for each Confederate
State,723 ; his duties, 723 ; to secure a
convention to alter the State Constitu-
tion according to the views of the Gov-
ernment of the United States, 723 ; in-
structions to the military authorities,
724 ; the first movement in Virginia,
724; the so-called Governor, Francis
H. Pierpont, brought from Alexandria
and established at Richmond, 724 ; new
Legislature elected, 725; acts passed,
725; the amendment to the United
States Constitution, prohibiting the ex-
istence of slavery, 725; interference of
the military officers of the United States
Government with the administration of
civil affairs, 725 ; a case under the Civil
Rights Bill, 726 ; a storm brewing be-
tween the President and Congress, rel-
ative to affairs of Confederate States,
726; the plan of the President left
the negroes to the care of the States,
Congress desired them to be Ameri-
can citizens and voters, 726 ; Congress
refused to admit Senators and Repre-
sentatives elect from the Confederate
States to arrest the operation of the
President's plan and hold these States
in abeyance, 727 ; proceedings of Con-
gress, 727 ; a Committee of Fifteen ap-
pointed, 727; the Frcedmen's Bureau

770

INDEX TO VOL. II.

Act, 727; the Civil Rights Act, 727;
the fourteenth amendment to the
United States Constitution, 728 ;
the adoption of this amendment by a
State Legislature required before its
Senators and Representatives could
take seats in Congress, 729 ; the ques-
tion really involved in this amendment,
729 ; to force from the State citizen-
ship and the ballot for the negroes,
729 ; failure of the amendment to be
adopted, 729 ; rejected by Virginia,
729 ; a new system of measures now
adopted by Congress, 730 ; the fiction
upon which they were based, 730;
Confederate States divided into five
military districts, 730 ; the States held
as conquered territory, 730; possess-
ing no rights unless granted by the
will of the conqueror, 730 ; terms upon
which they could become members of
the Union, 731 ; supplement to this
act requiring registration of voters,
etc., 731 ; two distinct governments
in each State, one military, the other
civil, 732 ; the military commanders,
732 ; a second supplement, 732 ; words
of President Johnson on vetoing the
bill, 732; Major- General Schofield as-
sumes command in Richmond, 733 ;
a board of army officers appointed to
designate officers for the registration
of voters, 733 ; interference of the
military with civil and social affairs,
733 ; military officers appointed over
sub-districts, 734 ; military regulations
adopted, 734 ; the vote taken, 734 ; the
so-called Convention assembles, 734 ;
Bill of Rights adopted, 734; amend-
ments, 735 ; test-oath of Congress
adopted, 735 ; so stringent that in
some counties men could not be found
capable of filling the offices, 735 ; words
of General Schofield, 735 ; utter sub-
jugation of the people of Virginia
manifest, 736 ; President Grant au-
thorized to submit the stringent
amendments to a vote of the people
of the State, by Congress, 736 ; all
the amendments to the United States
Constitution passed by the so-called
Legislature, 736 ; the Senators and
Representatives allowed to take seats
in Congress, 737.

The same series of measures applied
in the same order to each Confederate
State, 738 ; in North Carolina the mil-
itary commander issues an order de-
claring all slaves to be free, 738 ; oth-

er orders, 738 ; Constitutional Conven-
tion, 738 ; secession ordinance declared
void, 738 ; payment of the war debt
prohibited, 738 ; Governor elected and
inaugurated, 739 ; the military com-
mander orders the stay of all proceed-
ings for the collection of debts, 739 ;
proceedings under the measures of
Congress, 739 ; so-called Constitution-
al Convention and election, 739 ; the
Governor surrenders his office because
he has not power strong enough to
keep it, 739; his protest, 740; Con-
stitutional amendments adopted, 740 ;
Senators and Representatives take
seats in Congress, 740.

Proceedings in South Carolina, 740 ;
provost-marshals and military courts
detailed for duty all over the State,
741 ; the officers knew only martial
law, 741 ; interference of the military
commander with the judges of the
State courts, 741 ; the arrest of Judge
A. P. Aldrich, 741 ; a criminal rescued
from the sentence of the law by mili-
tary force, 741 ; the Judge refuses to
hold his court, 742 ; the State divided
into ten military districts, 743 ; a post-
commander appointed to each, 743 ;
all local officers appointed by the com-
manders, 743 ; military orders issued,
743 ; details of registration, 743 ; qual-
ifications of jurors such as to include
newly emancipated slaves, 744 ; in
conflict with the jury law of the State,
744; proceedings of Judge Aldrich,
744 ; is suspended from office, 744 ;
opens his court, states the circum-
stances, and declares it adjourned so
long as justice was stifled, 744 ; a
similar instance in the colonial history
of South Carolina, 744 ; proceedings
under the acts of Congress, and the
results, 745.

In Georgia, the Governor, on the ces-
sation of hostilities, called a session of
the Legislature, 745 ; the commanding
General declares the proclamation null
and void, 745 ; message to the Gov-
ernor from the President of the United
States, 746 ; charged with committing
a fresh crime by his act, 746 ; pro-
ceedings under the provisional Gov-
ernor, 746 ; these set aside by the mil-
itary commander of Congress, 747 ; an
unsuccessful effort to test the consti-
tutionality of the acts of Congress,
747 ; the Governor took part in the
effort-, 747; called to an account by

INDEX TO VOL. II.

771

the military commander as violating
an order of the latter, 747 ; the matter
of jurors, 747 ; Judge Reese prohibited
from holding court, 747 ; proceedings
under the acts of Congress, 747 ; con-
flict of the Treasurer and Governor
with the military commander, 747 ;
both removed from office by the latter
and others appointed, 748 ; the so-
called Convention requests the com-
manding General to require the courts
to enforce certain of its regulations,
748 ; one of the Judges of the Supreme
Court refuses, and is removed, 748 ;
other proceedings completed, and the
State declared to be restored to the
Union, 748 ; it appeared some of the
measures were defective as to giving
the ballot to the negro, 748 ; members
of the Legislature expelled, 748 ; the
State held in abeyance by Congress,
748.

In Florida, the proceedings com-
menced and completed under President
Johnson's proclamation, 748, 749 ; all
set aside by the military commander un-
der the acts of Congress, 749; a so-called
Constitutional Convention assembles,
749 ; a disgraceful quarrel and split
ensue, 749 ; the majority form a Con-
stitution, 749 ; the minority, with some
members of the majority, form anoth-
er, 749 ; the commanding General puts
his sub-commander in the chair, and
the latter Constitution is adopted, 749;
all requisite measures adopted, 749 ;
the State restored to the Union, 750.

In Alabama, the proceedings under
President Johnson's proclamation were
completed, and State officers elected,
750; the commanding General sus-
pends the Protestant Episcopal bishop
and his clergy from their functions,
and forbids to preach or perform
divine service, 750; the fourteenth
amendment to the United States Con-
stitution rejected by an overwhelming
majority, 751 ; proceedings commenced
under the acts of Congress, 751 ; mili-
tary orders issued, 751 ; all civil officers
whatever, who were ex-officers of the
Confederacy, removed and disqualified
from registration, 751 ; municipal of-
ficers removed, 751 ; police adminis-
tration suspended in Mobile, 751 ;
registration completed, 751 ; Congress
declares the condition upon which
North Carolina, South Carolina, Geor-
gia, Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana

shall be admitted to the Union, 752 ;
amendments to the United States Con-
stitution adopted, 752 ; conduct of af-
fairs transferred to the civil authori-
ties, 752.

In Mississippi, the Governor calls an
extra session of the Legislature, 752 ;
set aside by a proclamation of President
Johnson, 752; the system of measures
under President Johnson's plan com-
pleted, 752 ; the military commander
assumes command, under the acts of
Congress, 752; the question of the
constitutionality of the acts brought
before the United States Supreme
Court, 752 ; the opinion of Chief -Jus-
tice Chase, 753 ; boards of registration
organized, 753 ; disqualifications of
voters most sweeping, 753 ; object to
throw the entire political power into
the hands of the negroes, 753 ; vast
number of military orders issued, 753 ;
public local officers removed, and oth-
ers appointed in their places, 753 ; the
Constitution rejected by a large ma-
jority, 754 ; the Chief -Justice resigns,
754; his reasons, 754; the Governor
removed, and another appointed by
the military commander, 754 ; the for-
mer refuses to retire, 754 ; a squad of
soldiers sent to dispossess him, 754;
ejected from his house by a file of sol-
diers, 754; cause of the rejection of
the Constitution, 755 ; Congress au-
thorizes the President of the United
States to submit the Constitution to
another election by the people, 755
sweeping disqualifications of voters or
dered, 755 ; Constitution ratified, 755
the constitutional amendments adopted
755 ; the State permitted to be repre
sented in Congress, 755.

Louisiana continues under the gov-
ernment set up by General Banks, 755 ;
the military commander under the acts
of Congress assumes command, 756 ;
the existing government declared to
be " only provisional and subject to be
abolished, modified, controlled, or su-
perseded," 75G ; officers removed, 756 ;
registration ordered, 756 ; the military
commander " fears he shall be obliged
to remove Governor Wells," 756 ; cor-
respondence with General Grant, 756 ;
the Governor removed and another ap-
pointed, 756 ; twenty-two members of
the City Councils of New Orleans re-
moved, 757 ; Sheriff, City Treasurer,
Surveyor, justice of peace removed,

772

INDEX TO VOL. II.

757 ; declared to be " impediments to
reconstruction," 757 ; newly elected
officers not allowed to be installed
without permission of the commanding
General, 757 ; the Governor and Lieu-
tenant-Governor by military order, now
removed, those newly elected set up by
the military commander, 757 ; all re-
quisitions complied with, 757.

Texas and Arkansas passed through
the same military process as their sister
Confederate States, 757.

Usurpations of the military com-
manders, 758 ; regarded their author-
ity as comprehensive as the usurpations
of Congress, 758 ; declaration of United
States Attorney-General, 758 ; instances
related, 758, 759 ; the disastrous con-
sequences that followed, 959 ; increase
of the debts of these States, 760 ; in
Arkansas two so-called Republican Gov-
ernors of the State with their troops
about to fight for the Executive office,
761 ; in Louisiana a body of troops
enter the Legislature in session and
take out five members, 761 ; in Missis-
sippi a bloody conflict between whites
and blacks, 761 ; a committee of Con-
gress sent to Arkansas to " inquire if
the State had a government repub-
lican in form," 761 ; a committee of
Congress sent to New Orleans to in-
vestigate the state of affairs, 761; a
like committee sent to Mississippi, 761 ;
where were the unalienable rights of
men and the sovereignty of the people
with their safeguards ? 762 ; when the
cause was lost, what cause was it ? 763.

Conference of Generals A. S. Johnston
and Beauregard after the loss of Forts
Henry and Donelson, 36 ; conclusions,
36.

Confiscation Act. of the United States Con-
gress, provisions of one of its most in-
dicative sections, 6 ; a forfeiture of all
claim to persons held to service, 6 ;
conceded that Congress had no power
over slavery, 6 ; one of the reserved
powers of the States, 7 ; a reservation
equally in time of war and in peace, 7 ;
forfeiture for treason does not touch
the case, 7 ; a conviction by trial must
precede forfeiture, 7 ; the forfeiture
can be only during life, 7 ; final free-
dom to slaves can not be thus obtained,
7 ; other limitations, 7 ; " due process
of law " not an act of Congress, 7 ;
words of Thaddeus Stevens, 8 ; who
pleads the Constitution against our ac-

tion ? 8 ; the object of, 164 ; adjudica-
tion, sale, etc., required for confisca-
tion by national law, 164 ; compared
with the act of Congress, 164 ; sections
of the act of August 6, 1861, 165 ;
do. of the act of July 17, 1862, 166;
amount of property subject to the pro-
visions of the act, 167 ; number of
persons liable to be affected by it, 167 ;
another feature of the confiscation act,
168 ; equally flagrant and criminal,
168; trial by jury excluded and for-
feiture of property made absolute, 168 ;
heavy fines imposed and the property
sold in fee, 168 ; treated as traitors and
enemies, 169 ; first object to be se-
cured by confiscation was emancipa-
tion, 169.

Conflict, the last armed, of the tear, like
the first, a Confederate victory, 698.

Congress, Provisional, its third session,
3 ; removal of departments of the Gov-
ernment to Richmond authorized, 3 ;
cause of removal stated in the Presi-
dent's message, 3 ; first efforts of the
enemy to be directed against Virginia,
3 ; acts at its third session, 6 ; pro-
ceedings relative to the removal of
General A. S. Johnston, 38.

Congress, TJie United States, conceded
that it had no power over slavery, 6 ;
a power reserved to the States, 7 ; this
reservation continued in time of war as
in peace, 7 ; the attempt to exercise a
power of confiscation was a mere usur-
pation, 7 ; forfeiture for treason does
not reach the case, 7 ; words of the
Constitution, 7 ; no forfeiture with con-
viction, and only during life, 7 ; fifth
article of first amendment to the Con-
stitution, 7 ; " due process of law "
not an act of Congress, 7 ; who pleads
the Constitution against our action?
8; in 1862, declares that the struggle
is for existence, and the Government
may resort to any measure that self-
defense would justify, 159 ; the self-de-
fense of the Government, how author-
ized by the Constitution, 159 ; slavery
declared to be the cause of all the trou-
bles, 159 ; inaugural of President Lin-
coln, 160; commences to legislate for
the abolition of slavery, 160 ; asserts
that it had the power to interfere with
the institution, 160; the plea of ne-
cessity, the source of the power, 161 ;
usurpations embraced in its system of
legislation, 161 ; the powers granted
in the Constitution, 162 ; to make

INDEX TO VOL. II.

773

foreign war, 162; confiscation, 162;
international law on the capture of
private property, 163; its conditions
compared with the act of Congress,
164 ; another alarming usurpation of,
170; the argument advanced for its
support, 170; the theory on which it
was based, 170; another step in the
usurpations for the destruction of
slavery, 172; emancipation in the Dis-
trict of Columbia, 172; prohibits that
which the Constitution commands — a
most flagrant usurpation, 175.

Constitutional liberty, vindicated by the
triumph of the Confederate States, 14 ;
the wound to the principles of, com-
mitted by the Government of the United
States, 279 ; the crashing blow to the
hopes that mankind had begun to re-
pose in this latest effort for self-gov-
ernment, 279 ; sought to palliate the
offense by asserting a fiction that its
immense fleets and armies were only a
police authority to put down insurrec-
tion, 280.

Constitution, TJie, every restraint of, bro-
ken through by the Government of the
United States, 2 ; this was declared by
the United States Government to be
for the preservation of, 6 ; the course
attempted to be pursued by it under
this pretext of preserving the Consti-
tution, 6 ; violations of, under the con-
fiscation act of Congress relative to
private property, 7 ; violations of, in
the treatment of seized and imprisoned
citizens, 14 ; its provisions afforded no
protection to the citizens, 15 ; the Unit-
ed States Government transformed in-
to a military despotism, 15 ; what cause
for such acts, 15 ; answer to the ques-
tion, 15 ; powers of, not changed by
circumstances, 161 ; or by peace or war,
161 ; do. of the United States, who
were really destroying? 170; theory
that it was suspended by actual hostil-
ities, 170 ; these gave to Congress sov-
ereign power, 170; new relations of
citizens and subject to extraordinary
penalties, 170; power of Congress thus
unlimited, 170.

Constitution of the United States, a fatal
subversion of, 293.

Constitutions, Paper, of what value are
they ? 622.

Constitution of Tennessee, was it amended
by the consent of the people of Ten-
nessee, the only sovereigns known un-
der our institutions, or by consent of

the Government of the United States,
the usurping sovereign ? 457.

Contest, The, is not over; it has only en-
tered on a new and enlarged arena,
294.

Conyngham, Captain Gustavcs, com-
mands a cruiser fitted out in France by
United States Government, 275 ; ap-
pointed by filling up a blank commis-
sion from John Hancock, 275 ; cap-
tured and ignominiously confined, 276 ;
retaliatory measures of United States
Congress, 276.

Cook, Colonel, stands, with Twenty-sev-
enth North Carolina regiment, boldly
in line at Sharpsburg without a car-
tridge, 336.

Cooper, Adjutant-General Samuel, testi-
mony relative to General Winder's hu-
mane treatment of prisoners of war,
598.

Corinth, our force concentrated at, before
the battle of Shiloh, 55 ; its position,
71 ; a strategic point of importance,
72 ; Hallock advances against it, 72 ;
his precautions, 72 ; report of Sher-
man, 72 ; intrenched approaches, 73 ;
further report of Sherman, 73 ; its po-
sition and importance, 387 ; attempt to
capture it by Generals Van Dorn and
Price, 389 ; battle mainly fought by
Price's division, 389 ; delay in the at-
tack, 389 ; course of the battle, 390 ;
fresh troops arrive to the enemy, 390 ;
our army retires to Chewalla, 390 ;
losses, 390.

Cotton, measures of the United States
Government to obtain our cotton, 343 ;
the necessity for it, 344 ; words of the
British Secretary of State, 344 ; efforts
of foreign governments to obtain in-
creased exportation, 344 ; letter of Min-
ister Adams, 344 ; letter of Mr. Seward,
344 ; military expeditions fitted out by
the United States Government to ob-
tain it, 345 ; act of the United States
Congress to "provide for the collec-
tion of duties, and for other purposes,"
345 ; sections of the act, 345 ; the
President authorized by proclamation
to forbid all commercial intercourse
with any of our States, 346 ; forfeiture
of all goods in transitu, and the ves-
sel, 346 ; authorized then to reopen the
trade for cotton and tobacco by licenses
to the most suitable persons for the
end in view, 347 ; no grant of power
in the Constitution to Congress to pass
such an act, or to the President to ap-

774

INDEX TO VOL. II.

prove, in violation of his oath, 347 ; a
power reserved to the States to regu-
late commercial intercourse between
their citizens, 347 ; a state of war did
not give the United States Government
such power, 347 ; the case of Carpen-
ter, who refused to obtain the required
permit, 348 ; decision of Chief- Justice
Taney, 348 ; a civil war or any other
war does not enlarge the powers of the
Federal Government over the States or
people beyond what the compact has
given to it, 348 ; issue of the Presi-
dent's proclamation, 349 ; military ex-
peditions fitted out to occupy our ports
where cotton and other valuable prod-
ucts were usually shipped, 349 ; col-
lectors appointed and licenses granted,
349; special agents appointed to re-
ceive and collect all abandoned or cap-
tured property, 349 ; views of General
Grant on the operation of this system,
350 ; our country divided into thirteen
districts from Wheeling to Natchez,
350 ; new regulations, 350 ; a vigorous
traffic, 350.

Crime of the Government of Great Britain,
in the eyes of the Government of the
United States, was the recognition of
the Confederate States as a belligerent,
272 ; letter of Secretary Seward, 277 ;
the unparalleled virtue of a Queen's
proclamation, 277 ; the effect of one
more, 277 ; a Mexican pronunciamiento,
277 ; irrationality of United States Gov-
ernment, 278.

Crimes and horrors, how easy for the
Northern people, by a simple obedience
to the provisions of the Constitution,
to have avoided the commission of all
these ! 181.

Crittenden, General George B., state-
ment of battle of Fishing Creek, 19 ;
takes command, 19; position of his
force, 19 ; advances to attack General
Thomas, 20; destitution of his men,
21 ; unsuccessful attack, 21 ; move-
ments afterward, 21, 22.

Cruisers, Confederate : the Sumter, her
career, 247 ; no secrecy in building the
Alabama, 250; she sails from Liver-
pool as a merchant-ship, 250 ; her
name, 250; description of her, 251;
changed to a man-of-war, 251 ; her ar-
mament, 252 ; her fight with the Hat-
teras, 253 ; capture of an Aspinwall
steamer, 253 ; her cruise, 254 ; arrival
at Cherbourg, 255 ; the Kearsarge, her
size and strength, 256 ; description of

the fight of the Alabama with the
Kearsarge, 256, 257 ; comparison of the
vessels, 258 ; the United States Gov-
ernment absurdly demands from the
English Government the rescued sail
ors, 256 ; reply of Lord John Russell
256 ; the Georgia, 262 ; her career
262 ; the Shenandoah, 263 ; her career
262; the Nashville, 263; her cruise
363 ; the Tallahassee, 364 ; the Chick
amauga, 364 ; the cruiser Florida, orig
inal name Oreto, 259 ; difficulty at Naa
sau, 259 ; her commander, Maffitt, 259
her size, 259; arrives at Green Kay
259 ; changed to a cruiser, 259 ; sick
ness and loss of crew, 259; arrives at
Havana, 260; arrives at Mobile, 260
repaired and equipped, 260 ; runs the
blockade, 261 ; her cruise, 261 ; seized
in the port of Bahia, 262 ; taken to
Hampton Roads, 262 ; sunk by artifice,
263 ; demand of Brazil, 262 ; letter of
Mr. Seward, 263 ; the circumstances
of their construction, 270; Minister
Adams's claim for damages, 2j 0 ; reply
of Earl Russell, 270 ; answer of Mr.
Seward to the declaration, 271 ; re-
sponse of Earl Russell, 271 ; the pro-
ceedings of the Confederate Govern-
ment relating to, justified by interna-
tional law, 274 ; the complaints of the
United States Government condemned
by the interpretations of American
jurists, 274 ; and by its own antece-
dent acts, 274 ; fitting out cruisers in
France during the Revolutionary War,

274 ; action of Dr. Franklin and Silas
Deane, 275 ; cruise of Captain Wickes,

275 ; do. Captain Conyngham, 275 ; ap-
pointed by filling up a blank commis-
sion from John Hancock, 275 ; retalia-
tory action of U. S. Congress, 276.

Cumberland Gap, its position and
strength, 427 ; commanded by Briga-
dier-General Frazier, 427 ; his force,
427 ; position of General Rosecrans,
427 ; General Burnside advances from
Kentucky, 427 ; General Buckner re-
tires, 427 ; Frazier, seeing the futility
of resistance, surrenders, 427 ; note in
explanation, 427 ; further movements
of the enemy, 428.

Ccster, General, marches on a raid, 504 ;
his object, 504 ; cooperation of Gen-
eral Kilpatrick and Colonel Dahlgren,
504 ; after a feeble demonstration on
some parked artillery, retreats, burn-
ing bridges where there was no one to
pursue, 507.

INDEX TO VOL. II.

775

Dahlgren, Colonel John, starts with Gen-
eral Kilpatrick, 505 ; proceeds to Han-
over Junction, thence to the canal West
of Richmond, 505 ; pillages, destroys
dwellings, out-buildings, mills, canal-
boats, grain and cattle, 505 ; encoun-
ters a body of armory men, citizens
and clerks of Richmond, and is routed,
506 ; retreats, 506 ; attacked by the
Home Guard of King's and Queen's
Counties and is killed and his force
put to flight, 506 ; papers found on his
body, showing his purposes, 506 ; his
burial, 507 ; a denial that his conduct
was authorized, 507.

Damages for personal injuries, obtained
from the offender by the State gov-
ernment, 452 ; claimed by the United
States Government against our cruisers,
283 ; transfer of ships to foreign owners,
284 ; increase in the foreign commerce
of the country, 284 ; decline in Ameri-
can tonnage, 284 ; in articles of export,
284; increase in rates of insurance, 284.

Danville, arrival of the President and
Cabinet, 676 ; routine work of the de-
partments resumed, 676 ; proclamation
of the President, 676, 677.

Davis, Brigadier-General J. R., move-
ments of his brigade at the Wilderness
struggle, 519.

Davis, Senator Garrett, remarks on the
confiscation act of the United States
Congress, 167.

Davis, Jefferson, message at the third
session of the Provisional Congress, 3 ;
the schooner, treatment of her crew
by the United States Government, 11 ;
letter to President Lincoln relative to
the crew of the Savannah, 1 1 ; instruc-
tions relative to retaliatory measures,
11 ; answer to members of Congress
that requested the removal of General
A. S. Johnston, 38 ; letter to General
A. S. Johnston on state of affairs, 41 ;
reply to A. S. Johnston's letter, 47 ;
orders Bragg to command in Mississip-
pi, 74 ; detained by Beauregard, 74 ;
command transferred to him by Beau-
regard, 74 ; statement of the case, 75 ;
letter to General J. E. Johnston on the
announcement of his intention to evac-
uate the Peninsula and Norfolk, 92 ;
sends General Randolph, Secretary of
War, and Mr. Mallory, Secretary of the
Navy, to arrange for the removal of
stores and machinery from Norfolk,
92 ; conversation with General J. E.
Johnston relative to his plans before

Richmond, 101 ; letter to General J.
E. Johnston, 103 ; goes to meet him,
and finds the whole army had fallen
back across the Chickahominy, 103 ;
the explanation given, 103 ; remarks
relative to the situation, 103 ; dissatis-
faction with military affairs around
Richmond, 120 ; conversation with
Lee, 120; had no doubts that John-
ston was fully in accord in the purpose
to defend Richmond until recently,
120 ; his remark to his volunteer aide,
120; plan of Johnston, 120; goes to
the expected battle-field, 121; proceed-
ings, 122 ; in danger of going into the
enemy's camp, 128 ; meets General G.
W. Smith, 129; announces the assign-
ment of Lee to the command, 129 ;
conversations with Lee, 131 ; plan for
the future, 131 ; conversation with Lee
relative to the movements of McClel-
lan, 132; do. with regard to that of
Jackson, 132 ; offensive-defensive pol-
icy inaugurated, 132; his address on
the defeat of McClellan's army, 311 ;
letter to General Lee on the action of
the military authorities of the United
States changing the character of the
war into a campaign of indiscrimi-
nate robbery and murder, 315, 316 ;
letter to General Lee in Maryland,
333 ; letter to Governor Pettus to get
every man into the field, 400 ; sends a
dispatch to General Bragg for aid for
Vicksburg, 411 ; reply, 412 ; response,
412 ; importance of Vicksburg and
Port Hudson, 422; anxiety of the Ad-
ministration to hold them, 422 ; visits
Hood's headquarters, 565 ; his views,
565 ; conference at Augusta with
Beauregard and others, 566 ; reply to
Hood's change of programme, 569 ;
letter to President Lincoln, relative
to prisoners captured in our privateers,
583 ; order relative to General Pope,
588 ; issues retaliatory orders relative
to Generals Hunter and Phelps, 590 ;
efforts to seek an adjustment of diffi-
culties relative to the exchange of
prisoners through the authorities at
Washington, 591 ; appoints Vice-Presi-
dent Stephens as a commissioner, 591 ;
letter of instructions, 591 ; letter to
President Lincoln, 593 ; the result,
595 ; conference with General Lee on
the state of affairs, 648 ; the pro-
gramme adopted, 648 ; receives a tele-
gram from General Lee, advising the
evacuation of Richmond, 661 ; unpre-

776

INDEX TO VOL. II.

pared state of transportation, 661
receives notice of General Lee's with
drawal, 667 ; arrangements, 667
starts for Danville, 667 ; arrival, and
resumption of routine labors, 676
issues a proclamation, 676, 677 ; pro
poses a conference with General J
E. Johnston, in North Carolina, 678
his letter, 678 ; they meet at Greens-
boro, 679 ; state of affairs, 679 ; object
of the conference, 680 ; proceedings at
the conference, 680 ; conference be-
tween Johnston and Sherman assented
to, 681 ; the route of retreat, 681 ; sup-
plies placed on the route, 682 ; letter
of General St. John, 682 ; do. of Ma-
jor Claiborne, 682 ; proceeds to Char-
lotte with his Cabinet, 683 ; news of
the assassination of President Lincoln,
683 ; remarks, 683 ; obtains an in-
creased cavalry force, 684 ; corre-
spondence between Generals Johnston
and Sherman, 6S4 ; Sherman's interview
with President Lincoln, 684 ; result of
the conference with Sherman, 685 ;
memorandum of agreement, 686 ; the
agreement, a military convention, 687 ;
approved, 687 ; letter to General John-
ston, 688 ; the basis of agreement
rejected by the United States Govern-
ment, 689 ; instruction to General
Johnston, 689 ; disobeyed, 689 ; pro-
ceeds from Charlotte, 690 ; statements
of General Johnston, 690; explana-
tion, 691 ; Johnston surrenders to
Sherman, 692 ; difference in the con-
dition of his army from Lee's, 692 ;
the former's line of retreat open, and
supplies on it, 692 ; importance of con-
tinued resistance, 693 ; statement of
General Taylor, 694; the Executive
should have been advised, 694; fur-
ther movements of the President, 694 ;
his companions, 694 ; first information
of Johnston's surrender, 695 ; a small
escort selected, 695 ; Secretary Reagan
transfers the money in the Confederate
Treasury to the financial agent who
had incurred liabilities, 695 ; Johnston
could not have been successfully pur-
sued by Sherman, 696 ; considerations,
696 ; thus foiled the enemy's purpose
of subjugation, 696 ; purpose of the
President, 697; forces in the trans-
Mississippi Department, 697 ; General
E. K. Smith's address to his soldiers,
697 ; the other forces of the Confed-
eracy, 698 ; surrenders east of the Mis-
sissippi, 698 ; the last armed conflict

of the war, 698 ; surrender of General
E. K. Smith, 698 ; the total number of
prisoners paroled at the close of the
war, 699 ; the Shenandoah the last to
float the Confederate flag, 700 ; fur-
ther movements of the President, 700 ;
turns aside to find his family, 700 ;
apprehensions of an attack of maraud-
ers, 701 ; preparations to leave, 701 ;
awaiting nightfall, 701 ; approach of
the enemy, 701 ; surprise and capture,
701 ; some of the escort escape, 702 ;
pillage and annoyances, 703 ; taken to
Macon, 703 ; proceed to Port Royal,
704; transferred to a steamer and
taken to Hampton Roads, 704; im-
prisoned in Fortress Monroe, 704.

Delegation from the prisoners sent from
•Andersonville to plead their cause be-
fore the authorities at Washington,
602 ; President Lincoln refuses to see
them, 602 ; the answer that the inter-
ests of the Government of the United
States required that they should return
to prison and remain there, 602 ; let-
ter from the wife of the chairman
of the delegation, 603 ; letter from a
prisoner, 603.

" Delightful excitement" exclamation of
Jackson in the hottest of the battle at
Port Republic, 115.

De Russy, Fort, taken possession of, by
the enemy, 542.

Destruction of our institutions, the pow-
ers of a common government, created
for the common and equal protection
to the interests of all, were to be ar-
rayed for, 182.

Distinction in its nature and objects be-
tween the Government of the United
States and the State governments, 454,
455.

District of Columbia, act of Congress of
United States to~ emancipate slaves in,
172; right of private property guar-
anteed in, by the Constitution, 173 ; its
words, 173 ; conditions on which such
property might be taken under the
Constitution, 173.

Disunion, bloodshed, and war, the con-
summation verbally of the original an-
tislavery purposes attended with, 188.

Dixon, Lieutenant, as an engineer exam-
ines and reports on the sites and con-
dition of Forts Henry and Donelson, 24.

Donaldsonville, a battery erected at, which
interrupts river navigation by the en-
emy, 420.

Donelson, Fort, reason for the selection

INDEX TO VOL. II.

777

of the site, 24 ; its position, 24 ; re-
port relative to the fort, 24 ; details of
the fort and its situation, 28 ; officers
in command, 29 ; strength of force,
29 ; the attack, 29 ; fire of a gunboat,
29 ; boat disabled, 29 ; attack of the
ironclads — all their advantages over-
come by our heavy guns, 30 ; scatter
destruction through fleet, 30 ; it retires
to Cairo for repairs, 30 ; their loss,
31 ; effect of their fire on our bat-
teries, 31 ; reinforcements to the en-
emy, 31 ; plan of the Confederate gen-
erals, 31; condition of things, 31; va-
cillation of our commanders, 32 ; the
first success and subsequent loss, 32 ;
consultation of the commands, 33 ;
condition of the troops, 33 ; the com-
mand transferred to General Buckner,

33 ; Generals Pillow and Floyd retire,

34 ; part of General Floyd's force left
behind, 34 ; advantages gained by the
enemy, 34 ; surrender, 34 ; effects, 36.

Donelson and Henry, the consequences
of their loss, 36 ; change of plans, 39.

Drury's Bluff, a defensive position on
the James River, 102 ; enemy's fleet
open fire on the fort, 102 ; injuries to
the fleet, 102 ; report of Lieutenant
Jeffers, 102 ; its position and works,
511 ; General Beauregard in command,
611 ; the battle with Butler's force,
512-514.

" Due diligence " ; on this foundation was
based the claim for damages by the
United States Government at the Ge-
neva Conference, 278.

" Due process of law " assumed by the
United States Government to mean an
act of Congress, 7.

Duncan, General, had command of the
coast defenses at New Orleans, 212;
his report of the passage of the forts
below New Orleans by the enemy's
fleet, 215 ; do. on their skillful and
gallant defense, 216 ; address to the
garrisons, 217.

Duration of the Government of Hie United
States, to have declared it perpetual
would have destroyed the sovereignty
of the people, which possesses the in-
herent right to alter or abolish their
Government when it ceases to answer
the ends for which it was instituted,
45.

Early, General Jubal E., remarks on the
line of defense constructed by General
Magruder at Warwick River, 86 ; re-

sists the enemy at Yorktown, 89 ; re-
port of his conflict before Williams-
burg with a force under General Han-
cock, 95 ; further statements, 96 ; bad-
ly wounded and obliged to retire, 96 ;
engaged at the battle of Cedar Run,
317; commands Ewell's division at
Sharpsburg, 336 ; resists the attacks of
the enemy on Fredericksburg, 362 ; re-
gains his former position, 3b3 ; with a
force drives Hunter out of the Valley,
and advances to the Potomac and
crosses, 529; sends a force to strike
the railroads from Baltimore to Har-
risburg, 529 ; puts to flight a body of
troops under Wallace, 529; approaches
Fort Stevens, near Washington, 530 ;
too strong to assault, 530; recrosses
the Potomac, 530 ; attacks the enemy
at Kernstown, 531 ; moves to Martins-
burg, 531 ; appearance of Sheridan
with a large force, 533 ; Early attacks
his force near Winchester, 533, 534 ;
retires to Newton, 535 ; escapes an-
nihilation by the incapacity of his ene-
my, 535 ; withdraws up the Valley, 536 ;
subsequently moves down the Valley
again, 536 ; the destruction caused by
Sheridan's orders, 536 ; Early reaches
Fisher's Hill, 536 ; attacks the enemy
at Cedar Creek, 537 ; his plan, 537 ;
the battle, 538 ; his success and sub-
sequent disaster, 540 ; his losses, 541 ;
subsequently confronts Sheridan's
force north of Cedar Creek, 541 ; other
attacks, 541.

Edith, The, a cruiser, name changed to
Chickamauga, 265 ; runs the blockade
under a full moon, 265 ; her cruise,
265.

Election, The, in 1861, officers of the
Provisional Government chosen for
the permanent Government, 17.

Elections in Maryland, interfered with
by an armed force of the United States
Government, 464, 465.

Elkhorn, or Pea Ridge, battle of, 50 ; its
object, 51 ; losses, 51.

Elliott, Colonel Stephen, Jr., refused to
be relieved at Fort Sumter, 204; sa-
lutes his flag on evacuation, 204.

Elon, Mount, General Butler defeats a
detachment of Sherman's force sent to
tear up the railroad at Florence, 635.

Emancipation, efforts of United States
Congress to effect emancipation of
slaves by confiscation, 7 ; violation of
the Constitution, 7 ; efforts to effect
by pillage and deportation, 8 ; by

778

INDEX TO VOL. II.

President Lincoln's order to military
commanders, 9 ; by Generals Fremont
and T. W. Sherman, 10 ; the first ob-
ject to be secured by the confiscation
act, 169 ; the cooperation of the United
States, recommended by President
Lincoln, 179 ; his reasons, 179 ; to be
consummated under the war -power,
179 ; an artful scheme to awaken con-
troversy in the Southern States, 179 ;
measure approved by Congress, 180 ;
the terms proposed, 180 ; expressly
forbidden by the Constitution, 180 ;
order of General Hunter counter-
manded as too soon, 181 ; the Presi-
dent claims the right to issue such a
one, 181 ; the proposition of emanci-
pation with compensation, 183 ; its
failure in Congress, 184 ; the prelim-
inary proclamation, 187 ; its terms,
186; the necessity for it examined,
187.

Enemies and traitors, the twofold relation
in which the United States Govern-
ment sought to place us, 169 ; its prac-
tical operation, 169.

Englishmen cheer the Virginia in Hamp-
ton Roads, 201.

Events, Review of that brought such un-
merited censure on General A. S.
Johnston, 48.

Evidence, Fabrication of, attempted by
some of the authorities of Washing-
ton in order to compass the death of
the President of the Confederate States,
498, 499 ; the investigation and report
before the United States Congress, 500.

Ewell, General, engaged at the battle of
Cedar Run, 317; unites with General
Jackson for operations in the Shenan-
doah Valley, 106 ; conflict with Fremont
near Harrisonburg, 113; serving as a
gunner, 116; repulses the enemy at
Bristoe Station, 323 ; commands the
Second Corps of Lee's army, 437;
storms "Winchester, and captures or
puts Milroy's army to flight, 439 ; en-
ters Maryland, 439 ; encamps near
Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, 440 ; oc-
cupies the left at Gettysburg, 443.

Facts on record, such as will make our
posterity blush, 167.

Farragut, Commodore, commands the
enemy's fleet at New Orleans, 214; its
strength and numbers, 214 ; report of
his passage of the forts, 216; sends a
aetachment to hoist the United States
flag on New Orleans Custom-House, 231.

Farrand, Commander, commands at
Drury's Bluff, 102.

Fayelieville, North Carolina, Sherman's
army approaches, 632 ; brutality of
his forces, 632, 633; description of
Sherman's march by his historian, 633 ;
"the pleasurable excitements of the
march," 634.

Ferguson, General, drives off the enemy
that seek to get to the Yazoo, 395.

" Fire up the Northern heart" what was
signified by the expression, 586.

Fisher, Fort, a movement by a force from
Grant's army with the fleet to attack
below Wilmington, 645 ; an attempt
to destroy . it by the explosion of a
powder -ship, 645; its failure, 645;
subsequently a renewed attempt, 645 ;
the attack, 645 ; surrender of the fort,
646.

Fishing Creek, the battle of, 19; state-
ment of General Crittenden, 19 ; the
battle a necessity, 21 ; the case con-
sidered, 22 ; causes of the ill success,
22 ; retreat of our force, 23 ; the ques-
tion of crossing to the right bank of
the Cumberland considered, 23.

Five Forks, a strong position on Lee's
, line assaulted and carried by the en-
emy, 655.

Five thousand million dollars, amount of
property subject to be acted on by the
provisions of the confiscation act of
the United States Congress, 167.

Fizer, Lieutenant-Colonel, his bold ex-
pedient to resist the crossing of the
enemy at Fredericksburg, 353.

Flag, The Confederate, the Shenandoah
the last to float it, 700.

Flagrant violation of the Constitution,
Another, the discharge of a fugitive
under the confiscation act, 176 ; words
of the act, 176.

Flanders, Messrs., citizens of New York,
482 ; incarcerated by the Government
of the United States in Fort Lafayette,
482 ; required to take an oath of alle-
giance before the Government permit-
ted their case to be investigated, 482 ;
the oath, 483 ; their refusal, 483 ; their
reasons, 483.

Fleet of the enemy, prepared for moving
down the Mississippi River, 75 ; its
progress, 76.

Floyd, General, commands at Fort Don-
elson, 29; retires from Fort Donelson,
34 ; correspondence relative to his con-
duct at Donelson, 40, 41.

Forces, The United States, number of

INDEX TO VOL. II.

779

men brought into the field bj the Gov-
ernment of the United States during
the war, 706.

Foreign powers, our States falsely repre-
sented in every court of Europe, 2 ;
adopt a position of neutrality, 12.

Foreign relations, recognized by leading
European Governments as a belliger-
ent, 368 ; principles upon which the
States were originally constituted and
upon which the Union was formed ex-
plained, 368 ; commissioners early sent
abroad by us, 368 ; previous commu-
nications of the Government of the
United States assuming the attitude
of a sovereign over the Confederate
States, and threatening Europe if it
acknowledged it as having an inde-
pendent existence, 369 ; error of Eu-
ropean nations, 369 ; answer of foreign
Governments in consequence, 369 ; re-
fuse to side with either party, 369 ;
the consequence — a prolongation of
hostilities, 3*70 ; other matters in which
less than justice was rendered to us by
" neutral " Europe, and undue advan-
tage given to the aggressors, 370 ; both
parties prohibited from bringing prizes
into their ports, 370 ; the value of the
weapon thus wrested from our grasp,
371 ; their policy in reference to the
blockade was so shaped as to cause
the greatest injury to the Confederacy,
371 ; declaration of principles of the
Paris Congress, 372 ; proposals that
the Confederacy should accede to it,
372 ; acceded to, with the exception of
privateering, 373 ; reasons for the ex-
ception, 373 ; the passiveness of "neu-
tral " Europe relative to its declaration,
373 ; the pretension of blockading
thousands of miles, 373 ; other block-
ades, 373 ; facts shown, 374 ; the me-
diation proposed by France to Great
Britain and Russia, 376 ; dispatch of
the French Minister, 376 ; reply of
Great Britain, 378; reply of Russia,
378 ; communication to the French
Minister at Washington by his Gov-
ernment, 378 ; the initiative of all
measures left by foreign powers to
the governments of France and Great
Britain, 379.

Forrest, Colonel N. B., at Fort Donel-
son, 34 ; interview with Major Brown,
34 ; his expedition from North Missis-
sippi to Paducah, Kentucky, 550; or-
dered to strike the railroad from Nash-
ville to Chattanooga, 566 ; his move-

ments with General Hood's army, 574 ;
sent to Murfreesboro, 577.

Forty-two regiments and two batteries sent
by the Government of the United States
into the State of New York to maintain
the subjugation of its sovereign people,
490.

France, her proposed mediation between
the belligerents, 376.

Franklin, General, his division disem-
barked before the evacuation of York-
town, 90; his force reembarks after
the evacuation of Yorktown, 97 ; lands
near West Point and threatens the
flank of our line of march, 98.

Frazier, Brigadier-General I. W., com-
mands at Cumberland Gap, 427 ; ap-
proach and strength of the enemy, 427 ;
seeing the inutility of resistance, sur-
renders on demand of General Burn-
side, 427 ; a note in explanation by the
author, 427.

Frazier's Farm, the battle at, one of the
most remarkable of the war, 146 ;
strength of forces, and losses, 147.

Fredericksburg, its situation, 352 ; the
enemy attempt to lay bridges and cross
the Rappahannock, 352 ; repulsed, 352 ;
our troops withdrawn and bridges laid,
352 ; attack and repulse of Burnside's
army, 354, 355 ; withdraws at night,
356 ; losses, 356 ; strength of opposing ■
forces, 356.

Free consent of the governed, the only
source of all " just powers " of govern-
ment, 452.
i Fremont, General John C, issues a proc-
lamation confiscating real and person-
al property in Missouri, 10 ; repulsed
at Strasburg with ease, 111 ; follows
and attacks General Ashby, 112.

Fugitives, their forfeiture ordered, 2 ;
military commanders forbidden to in-
terfere in their restoration, 2.

Galveston, summoned to surrender, 232 ;
the reply, 232 ; the state of affairs,
233 ; subsequent approach of the ene-
my, and occupation of the city, 233 ;
arrival of General Magrudcr, 233 ;
gathers a force to attack the enemy,
233 ; protects his steamboats with cot-
ton-bales, 234 ; attacks the fleet, 234 ;
captures the Harriet Lane, 234 ; de-
mands a surrender of the enemy's
fleet, 234 ; it escapes under cover of a
flag of truce, 235.

Gardner, Major-General, in command at
Port Hudson, 395 ; yields Port Hudson
to General Banks after the capitula-

780

INDEX TO VOL. II.

tion of Yicksburg, 420 ; his gallant
defense, 421.

Garfield, James A., commands in north-
eastern Kentucky, 18.

Geneva Conference, adjustment proposed
by Great Britain, 283 ; results in the
Geneva Conference, 283 ; the ground
of its action, 283.

Georgia, the campaign of 1864 ; General
J. E. Johnston ordered to the com-
mand of the Army of Tennessee at
Daiton, 547 ; total effective strength
of the army, 547 ; positions of the
enemy, 547 ; an onward movement de-
manded, 548 ; considerations relative
thereto, 548 ; do. presented to Gen-
eral Johnston, 548, 549 ; his approval
of an aggressive movement, 548 ; his
proposition, 549 ; prompt measures
taken to enable him to carry out his
proposition, 549 ; no movement at-
tempted, 550; Sherman advances
against him, 550 ; official returns of
the strength of the army, 550 ; efforts
of the Government to strengthen John-
ston, 551 ; his position, 551 ; hopes
of the country, 551 ; he withdraws
from Daiton and falls back to Resaca,
552 ; the position, 552 ; falls back
from Resaca to Adairsville, 552 ; his
reasons, 552 ; a further retreat to
Cassville, 553 ; a coming battle an-
nounced, 553 ; it did not take place,
553 ; another retreat beyond Etowah,
553 ; the position in rear of Cassville
held by Generals Polk and Hood, 553 ;
the next stand at Alatoona, 553 ; Ma-
rietta evacuated, 553 ; the state of the
country between Dallas and Marietta,
553 ; engagements at New Hope
Church, 554 ; the next stand made by
General Johnston between Acworth
and Marietta, 554 ; character of the
country, 554 ; death of Lieutenant-
General Polk, 554 ; brisk fighting for
some days, 555 ; the pressure on Gen-
eral G. W. Smith, 555 ; falling back
to the Chattahoochee, 555 ; losses of
mills, foundries, and military stores in
these retreats, 555 ; position of the
enemy, 555 ; questions upon which
there has been a decided conflict of
opinion, 556 ; the extreme popular
disappointment, 556 ; the possible
fall of the " Gate City " produced in-
tense anxiety, 556 ; the removal of
General Johnston demanded, 556 ; ap-
prehensive of disasters that might
result from it, 556; the clamors for

his removal, 557 ; Johnston relieved
and Hood appointed, 557 ; letter of
Hon. B. H. Hill, 557 ; Hood assumes
command, 561 ; his effective strength,
562 ; resolved to attack the enemy,
562 ; the movement fails, 562 ; attacks
McPherson's corps, 562 ; various suc-
cessful expeditions, 562 ; Sherman
moves to the south and southwest of
Atlanta, 562, 563 ; evacuation of At-
lanta a necessity, 563 ; Hood marches
westerly, 563 ; Atlanta surrendered to
Sherman, 563 ; inhabitants expelled by
Sherman and robbed by his soldiers,
564 ; the enemy inactive, 564 ; Hood's
report of the state of his army, 564 ;
visit of the President to his head-
quarters, 565 ; view of the situation,
.565; efforts to fill up the army, 565 ;
action of the Governor of Georgia, 565 ;
exemption of citizens from military
service, 566 ; Hood moves against the
enemy's communications, 566 ; Forrest
ordered to strike the Nashville road,
566 ; improvement in the condition of
Hood's army, 567 ; the plan of opera-
tions discussed, 567 ; opinion of Gen-
eral Hardee, 568 ; proceeding of Beau-
regard, 568 ; movements of Hood, 568 ;
withdraws toward Gadsden, 569 ; con-
ference with Beauregard, 569 ; decides
to march into Tennessee, 569 ; tele-
gram of General Beauregard, 569 ;
change of programme, 569 ; reply, 569 ;
Hood crosses the Tennessee, 570 ; the
movement ill advised, 570 ; Sherman's
destructive march, 570 ; moves from
Atlanta, 571 ; harassed by Wheeler's
cavalry, 571 ; Hardee at Savannah,
572; Sherman reaches Savannah, 572;
Port McAllister taken, 572 ; prepara-
tions of the enemy to bombard Savan-
nah, 572 ; Hardee evacuates, 573. (See
Hood, General J? B.)
Gettysburg, the enemy met in front of
Gettysburg and driven through the
town, 440 ; instructions given not to
bring on a general engagement, 440 ;
statement of General Pendleton, chief
of artillery, 441 ; preparations for a
general engagement delayed, 442 ; the
position at Gettysburg, 442 ; main pur-
pose of the movement across the Po-
tomac, 442 ; Lee decides to renew the
attack, 443 ; the position of our line,
443 ; the conflict of the second day,
443 ; Lee determines to continue the
assault, 443 ; general plan unchanged,
443 ; the continued conflict, 444 ; its

INDEX TO VOL. II.

781

results, 444 ; army retires, 444 ; pris-
oners and loss, 444 ; strength of forces,
446 ; the wisdom of the strategy justi-
fied the result, 44V ; the battle was un-
fortunate, 447 ; considerations, 447 ;
most eventful struggle of the war, 448.

Glassell, Com. W. T., attacks the New
Ironsides frigate with torpedoes, 208.

Gloucester Point, its position, 83 ; Mc-
Clellan urges an attack in rear, 85 ; a
detachment could have turned it, 90.

Gordon, General John B., selected to
command the sortie against Fort Stead-
man, in Grant's lines before Peters-
burg, 649 ; its result, 649 ; his letter
furnishing details, 650-654.

Government permanent, The, its inaugu-
ration welcomed, 1.

Government of the United States, rejected
adjustment by negotiation, and chose
to attempt subjugation, 5 ; the course
how pursued, 5 ; recognized the sepa-
rate existence of the Confederate States
by an interdictive embargo and block-
ade of all their commerce with United
States, 5 ; manner in which the war
was conducted, 5 ; not a government
resting on the consent of the governed,
6 ; tendency of its actions directly to
the emancipation of slaves, 9 ; caution
of General McClellan, 9 ; instructions
to General T. W. Sherman, in South
Carolina, to receive all persons, whether
slaves or not, 10; other orders, 10;
willing to accede to the terms of the
Treaty of Paris, 12; its offer declined
by foreign powers, 13 ; the terms upon
which the offer was made, 13 ; its ob-
ject, in 1862, to assail us with every
instrument of destruction that could
be devised, 158 ; all its efforts directed
to our subjugation or extermination,
159 ; the aid of Congress called in,
159 ; did acts which it was expressly
made in the Constitution its duty to
prevent, 176; words of the Constitu-
tion, 177 ; what all its acts consisted
in, 178; has no natural rights, 181;
insincerity of her complaints to Great
Britain for the construction of our
ships, 249; statement of Mr. Laird,
249 ; employed its war-vessels to catch
blockade-runners instead of capturing
our light cruisers on the ocean, 266 ;
action of its State Department, 266 ;
appeals to Great Britain to prevent the
so-called " pirates " from violating in-
ternational law, 267 ; a mortifying ex-
hibition of- deception and unmanliness,

267; reclamation sought for, 267;
what international law recognizes, 267 ;
effort of the United States Govern-
ment to contract in England for the
construction of iron-plated vessels,
268 ; other proceedings, 268 ; state-
ment of Lord Russell, 268 ; United
States Government profited most
by unjustifiable war practices, 268 ;
upon its interference, a State govern-
ment immediately ceases to be repub-
lican, 310; its acts of reconstruction
entirely unconstitutional, revolutionary,
subversive of the Constitution, and de-
structive of the Union, 310; what is
it ? 453 ; an organization of a few
years' duration, 453 ; it might cease to
exist, and the States and people con-
tinue prosperous, peaceful, and happy,
453 ; it sprang from certain circum-
stances in the course of human affairs,
453 ; has no warrant or authority but
the ratification of the sovereign States,
453 ; unlike the governments of the
States instituted for the protection of
the unalienable rights of man, it has
only its enumerated objects, 453 ; it
keeps no records of property, and guar-
antees no possession of an estate, 453 ;
marriage it can neither confirm nor
annul, 453 ; partakes of the nature
of an incorporation, 453 ; right of the
people to alter or abolish it, 453 ; its
duration, 454 ; objects, 454 ; distinct in
its nature and objects from the State
governments, 454; its true character
and intentions toward us exposed, 580 ;
aspirations for dominion and sovereign-
ty, 581 ; the term "loyal," its signifi-
cation, 581 ; meaning of President Lin-
coln's words, 581 ; hope of mankind in
constitutional freedom be for ever lost,
582 ; the foundation of the war, 582 ;
the issue for which we fought, 582 ;
why we were called rebels, 582.
Grant, General U. S., starts from Cairo
with a force to attack Fort Henry, 26 ;
strength of his force, 26 ; his move-
ments, 26 ; moves to invest Fort Don-
elson, 29 ; strength of his force, 29 ;
takes command at Pittsburg Landing,
52 ; condition of his army after the
battle of Shiloh, 70 ; masses a heavy
force along the Memphis and Charles-
ton Railroad, 391 ; moves south and
camps near Water Valley, 391 ; coun-
try teeming with forage, 391 ; his ob-
ject, 391 ; moves down the Mississippi
to Young's Point, 393 ; retreat to Mem-

782

INDEX TO VOL. II.

phis compelled by Van Dorn's de-
struction of supplies at Holly Springs,
393 ; attempt to pass to the rear of
Fort Pembcrton, 39-4 ; do. to enter the
Yazoo above Haines's Bluff, 395 ;
Grant's army, 395 ; attempts to cut a ca-
nal, 396 ; unsuccessful, 396 ; another at-
tempt to cut one near Milliken's Bend,
396 ; lands below Yicksburg, 398 ; ad-
vances into Mississippi to strike either
Jackson or Vicksburg, 399 ; his ex-
pectation of an attack in his rear by
General Johnston, 423 ; preparations
to resist it, 423 ; statement of an officer
of his army, 424 ; arrives at Chatta-
nooga and assumes command, 434 ; his
description of the situation, 434 ; his
first movement, 435 ; other operations,
436 ; his plan of campaign revealed,
510 ; to connect with the army of But-
ler on the south side of the James, 510 ;
appointed lieutenant-general, 515; as-
sumes command of armies of United
States, 515; his reinforcements, 515;
position of Lee's and Grant's forces,
515 ; movements open to the choice of
General Grant, 516; the movement
which was made, 516 ; Grant encoun-
tered in the Wilderness, 516; move-
ments of Grant to cross the Rapidan,
516; his contest in the Wilderness,
517-520 ; moves to Spottsylvania Court-
House, 520 ; the battle there, 520, 521 ;
heavily reenforced, 522 ; his blunder at
Hanover Junction, 523 ; crosses the
Pamunkey, 524 ; moves to Cold Harbor,
524 ; attempts to pierce or drive back
Lee's forces, 524 ; fearful carnage of
his soldiers, 524 ; his soldiers sullenly
and silently decline to renew the as-
sault, 524 ; his force before he crossed
the Rapidan, 525 ; his losses from the
Wilderness to Cold Harbor, 525 ; state-
ment of Swinton, 525 ; crosses the James
and concentrates at Petersburg, 525,
526; makes a campaign of a month
and sacrifices a hecatomb of men, 526 ;
his instructions to General Butler rela-
tive to the exchange of prisoners, 599 ;
replies to General Lee's letters, 599,
600 ; dispatch to General Butler, 600 ;
seeks a new base on the James River,
637; advances to Petersburg, 637; the
purpose of his campaign, 646 ; two
plans open for him in the attack on
Petersburg, 646 ; the campaign of
1865, 647. (See Petersburg.)
Great Britain, her treatment of private
property in wars with us, 8.

Greece, recognition of her independence
by the United States Government in
the war with Turkey, 276.

Green, Brigadier-General Martin, at-
tacks the enemy landing below Vicks-
burg, 398 ; one of the best soldiers in
the Confederate service, 416; died at
Vicksburg, 417.

Gregg, Brigadier-General, attacked by a
large body of the enemy near Vicks-
burg, 404.

Gregg, Battery, makes an obstinate de-
fense with a small force, 655.

Grierson, Colonel, his raid through Mis-
sissippi, 399.

Griffith, Brigadier-General Richard,
killed near Savage Station, 141.

Gunboats, efforts to construct, on the Ten-
nessee River, 25 ; the fleet prepared by
the United States Government, 25 ; of
the enemy disabled and defeated at
Fort Donelson, 30; the terror inspired
by them in the early period of the war,
240 ; successful contests with them by
river-boats impaired the estimate put
upon them, 240 ; the appearance of
the Indianola, 240; fight with the
Webb and Queen of the West, 241 ;
captured, 241 ; the ram Arkansas,
242 ; fight in the Yazoo, 242 ; on the
Mississippi, 242.

Haines's Bluff, attempt of General Sher-
man to reduce our work at, and gain
the rear of Vicksburg, 392 ; unsuc-
cessful, 393.

Halleck, Major-General H. W., assumes
command of the enemy's forces at Shi-
loh, 71 ; advances on Corinth, 71 ; as-
signed to command by enemy in the
West, 18; his threatening position, 18.

Hamilton, Alexander, statement re-
garding war between the States, 5.

Hampton, General- Wade, attacks Kilpat-
rick at night, and routs his force, 505 ;
letter relative to burning cotton, 628 ;
successes against the enemy at and
near Fayetteville, North Carolina, 635 ;
endeavors to obtain his cavalry, 689 ;
finds it surrendered with Johnston's
army, 689.

Hancock, General, commands an assault
at Williamsburg, 94 ; chivalric remark
respecting the Fifth North Carolina
and Twenty-fourth Virginia Regiments,
96.

Hanover Junction, the peril of Grant's
army near, 523.

Hardee, General W. G., commands a

INDEX TO VOL. II.

783

corps at the battle of Shiloh, 55 ; holds
Savannah, 571 ; conflict with the en-
emy at Bentonville, North Carolina,
636.

Harris, Governor Isham G., on the skill
of General Hood in his campaign, 580.

Harvie, Lewis E., efforts to increase the
capacity of the Danville Railroad after
the loss of the Weldon, 673.

Hatteras Inlet, its position and strength,
77 ; attacked by military and naval
expedition of the enemy, 77 ; it capit-
ulates, 77.

Hayes, General, " his regiment sadly cut
up," 116; explanation, 116.

Hecatomb of men sacrificed by General
Grant to reach a position to which Mc-
Clellan had already demonstrated there
was an easy and inexpensive route,
526.

Henry, Fort, its position, 24 ; report rela-
tive to, 24 ; its condition, 24 ; strength
of our force at, 26 ; attacked by the
enemy, 26 ; defended by seventy-five
men while our main body retire to Fort
Donelson, 26 ; cannonade of the iron-
clads, 26 ; response of the fort, 27 ;
damage to the enemy's fleet, 27 ; our
losses, 28 ; surrender of the fort, 28.

Heth, General, stubborn resistance made
by his division, 518.

Higgins, Colonel, in command at the
forts below New Orleans, 211; his
skill and gallantry in the defense, 218.

Highwayman, The, is he henceforth to be
the lord of the highway? 183.

Hill, General A. P., advances upon Me-
chanicsville, 134 ; forces the enemy to
take refuge on the left bank of Beaver
Dam, 134 ; reaches New Cold Harbor,
136; becomes hotly engaged, 137;
continues the pursuit to Frazier's Farm,
142 ; his gallant bearing at Frazier's
Farm, 146 ; engaged with his division
at the battle of Beaver Run, 319;
reaches Sharpsburg and reenforces
General Jones in the battle there, 337 ;
commands the rear-guard as the army
retires from Sharpsburg, 342 ; drives
the enemy into the Potomac, 342 ; his
report, 342; commands the Third
Corps of Lee's army, 437 ; occupies
the line in front of Fredericksburg,
438 ; leaves for the Valley, 439 ; crosses
the Potomac, 440 ; occupies the center
at Gettysburg, 443 ; penetrates an in-
terval of Grant's force at Petersburg
and inflicts great loss, 639 ; killed in
action, 655.

Hill, Hon. Benjamin H., his letter rela-
tive to interviews with General John-
ston and President Davis, 557-561.

Hill, General D. H., his services at Seven
Pines, 125 ; forms on the extreme left
of the line, 137; drives the enemy in
confusion toward the Chickahominy,
138; gallantly engages the enemy at
Malvern Hill, 168 ; crosses the Poto-
mac and encamps near Frederick, 330 ;
crosses South Mountain and moves to-
ward Boonesboro, 330 ; his position at
the battle of Sharpsburg, 335 ; sta-
tioned near Fredericksburg, 351.

Hoke, General, moves against the enemy
attacking Fort Fisher, 646 ; retires
with his small force, 646.

Hollins, Commander, aids with gunboats
to repulse Major-General Pope at New
Madrid, 76 ; commands our squadron
at New Orleans, 211 ; commands the
river fleet at New Orleans, 222.

Holly Springs, an immense depot of sup-
plies accumulated by General Grant
for his march on Vieksburg, 391 ; sur-
prised and captured by General Van
Dorn, 391 ; supplies destroyed, 391.

Holmes, General, his movement, 142; a
mistake, 142 ; ordered by General Lee,
142; remains under fire of enemy's
gunboats, 143; incorrect statements
made, 143 ; their correction, 143 ; the
fire upon his position, 143 ; withdraws,
144 ; importance of his position devel-
oped too late, 144 ; his character, 144.

Hoon, General J. B., at Sharpsburg battle,
335 ; account of the contest on the left at
Sharpsburg, 339 ; appointed to com-
mand the Army of Tennessee, 557 ; ar-
rives at Gadsden, 573 ; condition of his
army, 573 ; decides to cross the Ten-
nessee and move against Thomas, 573 ;
an unfortunate delay, 573 ; his move-
ments, 574 ; position of the enemy,
574 ; pursues him to Franklin, 575 ;
position at Franklin, 576 ; considera-
tions, 576 ; line of battle formed,

576 ; the battle, 576 ; moves toward
Franklin, 577 ; position of the enemy,

577 ; enemy reenforced, 578 ; Hood's
line retreats in confusion, 578 ; re-
tires pressed by the enemy, 578 ;
crosses the Tennessee, 579 ; losses,
579 ; relieved, 679 ; moves his forces
from the west to aid in the defense of
North Carolina, 630.

Hooker, Major-General Joseph, succeeds
General Burnside in the command of
the Federal army, 357 ; resumes active

784

INDEX TO VOL. II.

operations, 357; a feint before Fred-
ericksburg, 358 ; a considerable force
crosses the fords of the Rapidan, 357 ;
converged near Chancellorsville, 357 ;
attacked and repulsed by Lee, 359,
360 ; recrosses the Rappahannock,
364 ; arrival near Chattanooga, 435 ;
his movements, 435 ; scales the western
slope of Lookout Mountain, 436 ; po-
sition of his army at Fredericksburg in
the spring of 1863, 437 ; retires from
Fredericksburg along the Potomac
toward Washington, 439 ; crosses the
Potomac, 440 ; this menaces Lee's
communications, 440.

Hornesboro, left flank of the enemy under
Sherman repulsed by General Wheeler,
635.

Houses searched for arms by an armed
force of the United States Government
in Baltimore, 464.

Huger, General, delays the evacuation
of Norfolk, 99 ; halted at Petersburg,
100 ; moves to the north side of the
James River and joins General John-
ston, 100 ; his movements affected by
the rain, 125 ; statement of General
Rodes, 126; his line of march, 127;
the impediments, 127 ; expected by
Longstreet, 127; ordered to pursue the
enemy, 141 ; his route, 142 ; his prog-
ress, how delayed, 144; encounters a
battery of rifled guns, 144 ; it is driven
off, 145 ; probable effect of his non-
arrival in time, 146 ; gallant attack at
Malvern Hill, 148 ; placed at the Nor-
folk Navy- Yard for its protection, 202 ;
ordered to evacuate by General John-
ston, 202 ; order delayed by Secretary
of War, 202 ; the fruits of Huger's
system and energy, 202, 203.

Huger, Lieutenant Thomas B., commands
the McRae at New Orleans, 221.

Hunter, Major-General, issues an order
declaring the slaves in his department
for ever free, 181 ; countermanded as
too soon, 181.

Hunter, R. M. T., appointed to confer
with Mr. Lincoln, 617.

" Ihave no lawful right to do so" words of
President Lincoln relative to his inter-
ference with slavery, 160.

Imboden, General, makes a demonstra-
tion toward Romney, 438 ; joins Br eck-
inridge in the upper Valley, 527.

Indianola, 77ie, a gunboat on the Missis-
sippi, 240; her size and force, 240;
captured by our river-boats, 241.

Insane extravagances, an apology for
presenting such, to readers under a
constitutional Government of limited
powers, 171.

Intention, The, to violate our constitutional
right shown, 174.

Interference with " the just powers " of a
State causes a subversion and subjuga-
tion of them, 460.

International law, every restraint of,
broken through by the Government of
the United States, 2 ; violations of, by
the Government of the United States
in the pillage and deportation of pri-
vate property, 8.

Ironclads, the first conflict between, 201.

Island No. 10, its situation, 76 ; its bom-
bardment, 76 ; a portion of our force
retires and the remainder surrender,
76.

Issue, the sole, involved in the conflict of
the United States Government with the
Confederate States, 293 ; an illustra-
tion, 293 ; the question still lives, 294 ;
the strife not over until the tyrant's
plea is bound in chains strong as
adamant, 294 ; for which we fought,
582; the rights and sovereignty of the
people, 582.

Iuka, a force of the enemy encountered
by General Little, 387 ; a bloody con-
test, 387 ; enemy driven back with a
loss of nine guns, 387 ; Grant arrives
too late, 387.

Jackson, General T. J., rapid movements
in the Shenandoah Valley, 106 ; attacks
Port Royal, 106 ; arrives at Strasburg,
111 ; repulses Fremont, 111 ; marches
up the Valley, 111; reaches Harrisonburg
and turns toward Port Republic, 111 ;
reaches Port Republic, 112; battle
with General Shields near Port Re-
public, 114; description of him by
General Taylor, 115 ; material results
of this campaign in the Valley, 117;
motives which influenced Jackson, 118 ;
his object effected, 118 ; recruits his
forces, 118 ; reattacks the enemy, 118 ;
drives him across the Potomac, 119;
plan to bring his force from the Valley
to Richmond, 131 ; the design masked,
131 ; instructions to Jackson, 131 ; be-
fore reenforced, he routs the enemy
and then follows Lee's instructions,
132 ; directions to, under the order of
battle by Lee, 133 ; ordered to pursue
the enemy, 141 ; his route, 142 ; prob-
able effect of his non-arrival in time,

INDEX TO VOL. II.

785

146 ; arrives on the battle-field, 147 ;
forms his line, 147 ; his remark on
the retreating foe, 150; ordered with
his division to Gordonsville to resist
the advance of General Pope, 312 ;
fights the enemy at Cedar Run, 317 ;
reinforcements sent to, 320 ; his move-
ment round the right of General Pope,
322 ; attacks left flank of the enemy,
324 ; battle ensued, 324 ; enemy re-
tires, 324 ; subsequent battle of Ma-
nassas, 324 ; defeat of the enemy, 326,
327 ; advances to intercept the retreat,
327; battle at Ox Hill, 327; enemy
escapes, 327 ; moves to attack Harper's
Ferry, 330 ; reduces Harper's Ferry,
332 ; extent of the surrender, 333 ;
position at Sharpsburg battle, 335 ;
directed to advance toward Fredericks-
burg, 351 ; position of his corps at
Fredericksburg, 354 ; turns the enemy's
right at Chancellorsville, 360 ; wound-
ed by mistake in the darkness, 360.

Jackson, Mississippi^ held by General J.
E. Johnston, 425 ; assaulted by Sher-
man, 425 ; Johnston withdraws across
Pearl River, 425.

Jenkins, General, advances toward Win-
chester, 438 ; penetrates to Chambcrs-
burg, Pennsylvania, 439.

Johnston, General A. S., confronted by
new commanders, 18; his position
altered by the loss of Forts Henry and
Donelson, 36 ; his preparations for re-
treat, 37 ; his successful retreat, 37 ;
the enemy unaware, 37 ; reaches Nash-
ville, 38 ; public excitement, 38 ; pro-
ceedings in Congress, 38 ; his removal
asked, 38 ; answer of the President,
38 ; Johnston's letter to the Secretary
of War, 38; his plans and further
movements, 39 ; movements after the
fall of Donelson, 39 ; letter from the
Secretary of War, 40; do. from the
President, 41 ; his reply relative to
affairs, 42-47; review of the events
that brought such censure upon him,
48 ; his object to concentrate at Cor-
inth and fight the enemy in detail,
54; Grant first and Buell afterward,
54 ; forces sent to him, 54 ; Bragg's
account of Johnston's efforts, 54 ; or-
ders of battle at Shiloh, 55 ; the march,
55 ; its progress, 56 ; exclamation,
"This is not war," 56; delay and its
cause, 56 ; his purpose, 57 ; his tele-
gram to the President, 57 ; the answer,
57 ; importance of an early attack, 57 ;
conference with generals, 60 ; progress

of the battle, 58, 59 ; death of John-
ston, 66 ; circumstances, 66 ; case of
Turenne, 68 ; incident at liuena Vista,
68.

Johnson, Andrew. Lincoln, President,
appoints Andrew Johnson military Gov-
ernor of Tennessee, 285 ; his object,
285.

Johnson, Colonel Bradley T., harasses
the rear of General Judson Kilpatrick,
505.

Johnston, General Joseph E., ordered to
the Peninsula of Virginia, 84 ; directed
to proceed and examine the condition
of affairs, 86 ; recommends the aban-
donment of the Peninsula, 86 ; the
recommendation discussed, 87 ; antici-
pates that McClellan will soon advance
and attack Centreville, 87 ; his plan of
operation in the Peninsula, 87 ; writes
to Commander Tatnall to proceed with
the Virginia to York River, 90 ; an-
nounces his intention to evacuate York-
town, 92 ; policy before Richmond,
101 ; remark that he expected to give
up Richmond, 120; his plan for at-
tacking McClellan, 120 ; unexpected
firing, 122; assigned to the Southern
Department, 402 ; reply to General
Pemberton's request for cavalry, 402
orders to General Johnston, 403 ; tele
gram to the Secretary of War, 404
stops at Jackson and corresponds with
Pemberton, 405 ; dispatch to General
Pemberton, 405 ; reply, 405 ; further
dispatches, 408 ; telegrams to the
President and Secretary of War, 412 ;
communication to Pemberton, 413 ;
entertained quite different views from
General Pemberton, 422 ; efforts to
supply the army of the former, 423 ;
his message to General Pemberton,
423 ; reply to the suggestion of reliev-
ing Port Hudson, 423 ; another report,
423 ; falls back to Jackson after the
surrender, 424 ; appearance of the en-
emy, 424 ; extract from his report,
424 ; movements of Sherman, 424 ;
withdraws from Jackson, 425 ; direct-
ed to assume the command of the Army
of Tennessee, 547 ; total effective of
the army, 547 ; position of the enemy's
forces, 547 ; an onward movement de-
manded, 548 ; considerations presented
to General Johnston, 548 ; his ap-
proval of an aggressive movement,
548 ; his proposition, 549 ; his subse-
quent movements, 550-557 ; clamors
for his removal, 557; relieved, and

786

INDEX TO VOL. II.

Hood appointed, 557 ; put in command
of the troops in North Carolina, 631 ;
relieves General Beauregard, 631 ; in-
structions from General Lee, 632 ;
Johnston's force, 632 ; his movements,
632 ; his purposes, 634 ; takes posi-
tion at Smithfield, 635 ; failure to con-
centrate against the enemy's left wing,
636 ; moves to Raleigh, 637 ; confer-
ence with the President, 679-681 ; cor-
respondence with General Sherman,
684 ; the idea of a universal surren-
der, 699.

Jcjnville, Prince de, describes the ef-
fect produced by the refusal of Presi-
dent Lincoln to send McDowell's corps
to reenforce General McClellan, 90;
extract from his letter, 90.

Jones, Lieutenant Catesby Ap R., com-
mands the Virginia in the combat with
the Monitor, 200 ; signals the Monitor
to renew the combat without success,
201.

Jones, General J. K., at Sharpsburg bat-
tle, 335.

Jones, General Samuel, commanded in
southwest Virginia, 426.

Jones, General W. E., encounters Hunter
in the Valley, and is killed, 529.

Just poicers of government, only those
which are derived from the free and
unconstrained consent of the governed,
252 ; object and end for which they
are derived, 452.

Kearney, Major-General, left dead on
the field, 327.

Kelly's Fordy attack and surprise of the
enemy at, 449.

Kennon, Lieutenant Beverly, sinks the
Varuna at New Orleans, 221 ; his re-
port, 221.

Kent, Chancellor, on the rights of bel-
ligerents, 271.

Kentucky, the first step taken for the
subjugation of the State government
and the people consisted in an inter-
ference, by an armed force, of the
Government of the United States with
the voters at the State election, 468 ;
object to secure the rejection of as
many votes as possible antagonistic to
the emancipation measures of the Gov-
ernment of the United States, 468 ;
none allowed to be candidates but its
friends, 468 ; martial law declared by
General Burnside, commander of the
Department of Ohio, 468 ; orders regu-
lating the election issued by military

commanders in the State, 469 ; armed
soldiers stationed at the polls, 469 ;
the result, 469 ; statement of the Gov-
ernor, 469 ; its meaning, 470 ; negroes
enrolled as soldiers by the United
States Government, 470; verbal ar-
rangement effected at Washington by
the Governor, 470 ; his complaint of
its offensive violations, 470 ; arrest of
peaceful citizens by soldiers of the
United States Government, 470 ; out-
rages described by the Governor, 470 ;
declaration of martial law throughout
the State by President Lincoln, and the
suspension of the writ of habeas corpus,
471; a large number of eminent citi-
zens arrested by the military force of
the Government of the United States,
471 ; judges, merchants, and young
women banished from the State with-
out a trial or hearing, 471 ; at a State
election for Judge of the High Court
of Appeals, the commanding General
of the United States Government or-
ders that the name of the Chief-Justice
shall not be allowed to appear on the
poll-books as a candidate, 472 ; the
duties of the Governor relating to elec-
tions, 472 ; twenty thousand slaves en-
listed in the armies of the Government
of the United States, 472 ; United States
Congress passes an act declaring that
the wives and children of these soldiers
shall be free, 473 ; everything swept
away by the emancipation proclama-
tion, 473.

Kernstown, the enemy at, attacked by
Early, 531 ; routs him, 531.

Kershaw, General, moves his division
toward Amelia Court-House, 662.

Kilpatrick, General, marches to make
a dash on Richmond, 505 ; harassed
in his rear by Colonel Bradley T.
Johnson and sixty Marylanders, 505 ;
reaches the defenses of Richmond, 505 ;
an engagement, 505 ; retreats and is
attacked at night by General "Wade
Hampton, 505 ; enemy fled on a gal-
lop, 505.

Kingsbury, Lieutenant, remark relative
to the battle of Buena Vista, 68.

Kinston, North Carolina, a body of Sher-
man's force attacked and routed by
General Bragg, 635.

Laird, Mr., senior, applied to, to build
vessels for the Northern Government,
248 ; his statement in the British
House of Commons, 248 ; extracts

IXDEX TO VOL. II.

787

from letters, 248 ; statement of the
condition of the Alabama when she
sailed, 249 ; presents records of the
Custom-House on exports to Xorthern
States, 249.

Lamb, Colonel, seriously wounded in the
defense of Fort Fisher, 646.

Language of the Governor of Maryland,
on the interference by the United States
Government with the State elections,
465, 466.

Last fragments of the Constitution to be
thrown aside to secure our subjuga-
tion, 170.

Law, International, on the capture and
confiscation of private property in war,
163.

Lawton, General A. R., ordered to unite
with Jackson in the Valley, 133 ; at
Sharpsburg battle, 335 ; quartermaster
of the Confederate army, 647.

Lee, General Robert E., assumes com-
mand of the Carolinas and Florida, 80 ;
his plans for coast defense, 80; the
system he organized, 80 ; its success,
81 ; takes command of the army around
Richmond, 130; commences the con-
struction of earthworks, 130; plans for
the future, 131; answer to the President,
132 ; his order of battle in the attack
on General McClellan, 134; advances
against General Pope, 312; battle of
Cedar Run, 317 ; its success, 320 ;
enemy falls back, 320 ; moves up the
Rappahannock, 321 ; skirmishes along
the fords, 321 ; Jackson crosses the
river, but falls back owing to a storm,
321 ; Longstreet ordered to his sup-
port, 322 ; position of Jackson, 322 ;
position of the enemy, 322 ; forces
ordered from Richmond, 322; plan of
operations now determined on, 322 ;
movement of Jackson round the right
of Pope's army, 322 ; Manassas Junc-
tion depot captured at night, 323 ;
Ewell repulses the enemy at Bristoe
Station and joins Jackson, 323 ; posi-
tion of General Pope, 323 ; Taliaferro
halts at the Manassas battle-field, 324 ;
joined by Hill and Ewell, 324 ; attack
of Jackson on enemy's left flank, 324 ;
enemy retire, 324 ; battle of Manassas,
324 ; retreat of the enemy, 326 ; night
puts an end to the pursuit, 327 ; enemy
retreats to Washington, 327 ; strength
of forces, 328 ; losses, 328 ; marches
toward Leesburg, 328 ; decided to cross
the Potomac, 329 ; reasons for the de-
cision, 329 ; the plan, 330 ; movements

of the divisions, 330 ; slow advance of
the enemy, 331 ; order of General Lee
found by the enemy, 331 ; facts rela-
tive to the lost order, 331 ; action at
Boonsboro Gap, 332 ; retires to Sharps-
burg, 332 ; Harper's Ferry reduced by
General Jackson, 332 ; forces concen-
trated at Sharpsburg, 333 ; letter from
the President, 333 ; address to the
people of Marryland by General Lee,
333 ; concentrates at Sharpsburg, 334 ;
fights the battle at Sharpsburg, 335,
336 ; strength of Lee's army, 338 ;
position of his forces on the next day,
338 ; withdraws his army south of the
Potomac, 338; moves to Martinsburg
and then to the vicinity of Bunker Hill,
338 ; the contest on the left, 339 ;
strength of armies and losses, 342 ;
advances to Fredericksburg, 351 ; takes
a position to resist an advance of the
enemy after crossing the river, 352 ;
advance of Burnside to lay bridges,
352 ; repelled with great slaughter,
352, 353 ; Lee's forces in order and
position, 354 ; the attack by Burnside's
army, 354, 355 ; its repulse, 355 ; with-
drawn in the night, 356 ; a period of
inactivity ensues, 357 ; distribution of
his army, 357 ; some unimportant en-
gagements, 357 ; movements of the
enemy indicate the resumption of ac-
tive operations, 357 ; our dispositions
made with a view to resist a direct ad-
vance, 357 ; leaves sufficient to hold
the lines and moves the rest of his
force toward Chancellorsville, 358 ; his
successful attack upon Hooker, 359,
360; in full possession of the field,
361 ; enemy's successful attack before
Fredericksburg, 362 ; threatens our
communications, 362 ; re enforcements
sent to Salem Church, 362 ; enemy re-
pulsed and broke, 363 ; attack renewed
on Hooker, 364 ; enemy recrosses the
river and retires from Fredericksburg,
364 ; reorganizes his forces in the
spring of 1863, 437 ; decides by a bold
movement to attempt to transfer hos-
tilities to the north side of the Poto-
mac, 437 ; movement of his forces,
438 ; further movements, 439, 440 ;
concentrates at Gettysburg, 440 ; de-
cides to renew the attack of the first
day, 443 ; the conflict, 443 ; determines
to continue the conflict, 443 ; retires
toward the Potomac, 444 ; crosses, 445 ;
strength of his army at Gettysburg,
446 ; do. of Meade, 446 ; losses,

788

IXDEX TO VOL. II.

446 ; his report, 446 ; testimony of
General Meade, 44*7 ; moves to attack
the flank of the enemy, 449 ; result,
449; affair at Kelly Ford, 449;
puts his troops in motion soon as
Grant's movement was known, 517;
his troops encountered near Old Wil-
derness tavern, 517; the engagement,
517 ; further movements, 518 ; the
line of battle, 518 ; the struggle, 518 ;
the adversary completely foiled, 518 ;
the attack renewed, 519; Lee comes
on the field, 519 ; the assault checked,
519 ; attack on the left, 519 ; the foe
surprised and routed, 519; Longstreet
wounded by mistake, 520 ; on the next
day an attack on the right and left
flank, 520 ; Grant makes a rapid flank
movement to Spottsylvania Court-
House, 520; Lee's movement in ad-
vance, 520 ; on the next day the armies
swung round on their advance and con-
fronted each other in line of battle,
521 ; a proud scene for Mississippians,
521 ; the contest of the day, 521 ; cap-
ture of General E. Johnson and most
of his division, 522 ; divines Grant's
objective point and frustrates him, 523 ;
the peril of Grant's army, 523 ; reen-
forcements to Lee, 524 ; Grant's move-
ments to Cold Harbor, 524; fruitless
efforts of Grant to drive back Lee's
forces, 524 ; fearful carnage of the
enemy, 524 ; his force on the Rapidan
with which to meet Grant, 525 ; his
letter to General Halleck relative to
the execution of William B. Mumford,
590 ; letters to General Grant relative
to the exchange of prisoners, 599, 600 ;
crosses the James at Drury's Bluff,
637 ; occupies the intrenchments at
Petersburg, 638 ; his defense of, 640 ;
conference with the President on the
state of affairs, 648 ; the programme
adopted, 648 ; presents the idea of a
sortie, 649 ; adopted, 649 ; its failure,
650; his letter to the President stat-
ing final movements, 660.

Lee, General G. W. C., moves his division
from Chapin's Bluff to retreat from
Richmond, 662 ; his promotion, 664.

Lee, General W. H. F., watches the fords
of the Rappahannock with his cavalry,
352 ; repulses a cavalry expedition near
Ream's Station, 639.

Legislature of a State, some of its mem-
bers seized and confined in a distant
prison, 2.

Liberty, its fundamental principles de-

nied by the action of the Government
of the United States in Tennessee,
456; the people the source of all
power, 456.

Life, personal liberty, and property, their
protection to be found only in the State
governments, 451.

Lincoln, President, his message, 6 ; rec-
ommends the colonization of the ne-
groes at some places in a climate con-
genial to them, 6 ; refuses the repeated
requests of General McClellan for Mc-
Dowell's corps, 91; writes to McClel-
lan, 91 ; do. on the strength of his
forces, 91 ; relative to request for Par-
rott guns, 92 ; words of his inaugural
relative to the institution of slavery,
160 ; the principle thus announced,
160 ; message to Congress saying, "It
is startling to think that Congress can
free a slave within a State," 169; how
the deed should be attempted, 169 ; a
deceptive use of language, 170; mes-
sage to Congress approving the act to
emancipate slaves in the District of
Columbia, 172 ; extract, 172 ; previous
action of Congress, 172; a series
of usurpations by, 178; recommends
the adoption of a resolution that the
United States ought to cooperate
with any State which might adopt
the gradual abolition of slavery, 179 ;
his reasons for the measure, 179 ; ob-
jections, 179; his proclamation declar-
ing the emancipation proclamation of
General Hunter void, 181 ; extract,
181 ; his subsequent remarks, 181; re-
marks to border States Representa-
tives, 183 ; charges of remissness of
his abolition supporters, 185; demands
of Chicago Christians of, 186; answer
of Mr. Lincoln, 186 ; declaration of his
intentions in the proclamation of April
15, 1861, 189 ; his declaration under
oath, 189 ; his declarations to the Cabi-
nets of Great Britain and France, 190 ;
object of snch declarations, 190; his
boast of the effect of his emancipation
proclamation, 192 ; the facts presented,
192; his proclamation for making a
Union State out of a fragment of a
Confederate State, 297 ; his reliance on
the " war power " declared, 298 ; de-
clines to prevent the interference with
the elections in Maryland by an armed
force of the United States Government,
465 ; announcement of hi3 terms of
peace, 612; meets our commissioners
at Hampton Roads, 618; results, 619;

INDEX TO VOL. II.

789

statement in his message to Congress
on December 6, 1864, 620; the words
of his inauguration oath, 620; words
of the Constitution, 621 ; his words,
621 ; the Constitution the supreme law,
621; his oath, 621.

Little, General Henry, services at the
battle of Pea Ridge, 51 ; attacks Rose-
crans near Iuka, 387 ; a bloody contest,
387 ; he is killed, 387 ; remarks, 387.

Long, General A. L., description of our
coast defenses, 79.

Longstreet, General James, report on
battle at Seven Pines, 124 ; ordered to
attack, 127; explains the delay, 127;
made the attack successfully by aid of
Hill, 127; ordered to make a diversion
in favor of Hill, 137; the feint con-
verted into an attack, 137; continues
the pursuit to Frazier's Farm, 145 ;
manner in which he led his reserve to
the rescue at Frazier's Farm, 146 ; joins
Jackson at Manassas, 324 ; crosses
South Mountain and moves toward
Boonsboro, 330 ; his position at Sharps-
burg, 335; occupies the left at Fred-
ericksburg, 353 ; recalled from the
James River to Chancellorsville, 363 ;
commands the left wing at Chickamau-
ga, 432 ; besieges Burnside in Knox-
ville, 436 ; moves to Virginia and joins
Lee, 436 ; commands the First Corps
of Lee's army in the spring of 1863,
437 ; movement to draw Hooker far-
ther from his base, 439 ; crosses the
Potomac, 440; occupies the right at
Gettysburg, 443 ; drives the enemy back
at the "Wilderness struggle, 519; se-
verely wounded by mistake, 519; fur-
ther movements, 519.

Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, his
charge in England in the case of our
ship the Alexandra, 272 ; the rights of
belligerents, 272, 273.

Loring, General, joins General Bowen
near Grand Gulf, 402.

Louisiana, proceedings of General Butler
after the occupation of New Orleans,

287 ; martial law declared and a mili-
tary Governor appointed, 287 ; atroci-
ties committed upon the citizens, 287,

288 ; Order No. 28, 2S9 ; cold-blooded
execution of William B. Mumford,

289 ; local courts set up, 290 ; military
power attempts to administer civil af-
fairs, 290 ; order of President Lincoln
creating a State court, 290 ; words of
the Constitution, 292 : the court a mere
instrument of martial law, 292 ; assert-

ed his right to do so on the ground of
necessity, 292 ; the doctrine of neces-
sity considered, 293-295 ; election of
members of Congress on proclamation
of the military Governor, 296 ; what
the law required, 296 ; its violation
sustained by Congress, 296 ; proclama-
tion of President Lincoln to make a
State out of a fragment of a State, 297 ;
a so-called election for State officers
and members of a State Constitutional
Convention held, 301 ; so-called State
Convention, 302 ; attempts to amend
the State Constitution, 302 ; Louisiana
not a republican State, 302 ; not insti-
tuted by the consent of the governed,
302 ; attempt by the United States
Government to enforce a fiction, 302 ;
subversion of the State government,
458 ; registration of voters required by
the United States Government, 458 ;
the oath, 458 ; punishment of perjury
threatened, 458 ; proclamation order-
ing an election of State officers, 458 ;
further conditions, 458 ; effect of these
proceedings, 459 ; effect of these pro-
ceedings was to establish a number of
persons pledged to support the United
States Government as voters and State
government, 459; this work could be
done only by the sovereign people, 459.

Louisiana, an iron-clad, her capacity,
219 ; destroyed, 219 ; her incomplete
condition at the defense of New Or-
leans, 220.

Lovell, General, sent with a brigade to
Corinth, 54 ; expresses satisfaction
with the land defenses at New Orleans,
213 ; evacuates the city, 217 ; at New
Orleans after the fleet passed the forts,
222 ; withdraws his force, and public
property, 223.

" Loyal" the word, its signification, 581.

" Loyalty or disloyalty" the only dis-
tinction among citizens of the Northern
States, in their relation to the Govern-
ment of the United States, 488.

Madison, James, statement regarding war
between the States, 5.

Maffitt, Captain John N., takes com-
mand of the cruiser Florida, 259 ; de-
tained in Nassau by yellow fever, 259 ;
sails for Havana, 260 ; goes to Mobile
for equipment of his vessel, 260 ; ene-
my's fleet gather off the harbor to pre-
vent his escape, 260; runs the block-
ade and skillfully evades the enemy,
260 ; his cruises, 261 ; fits out the ten-

790

INDEX TO VOL. II.

der Clarence, 261 ; captures of the
Florida, 261 ; Maffit, through sickness,
relieved of the command, 261.

Magruder, General John B., in command
on the Virginia Peninsula, 88 ; con-
structs an intrenched line across the
Peninsula at Warwick River, 83 ; his
force, 83 ; the form and construction
of the line to resist McClellan's ad-
vance, 83 ; other means of defense,
84 ; a second line constructed near
Williamsburg, 84 ; his position on the
arrival of General McClellan, 84 ; its
advantages, 85 ; falls back to the line
of Warwick River, 85 ; his labor in
constructing and strengthening his de-
fenses, 86 ; statement of General Ear-
ly, 86 ; attempts to break his line, 88 ;
he orders sorties, 88 ; the enemy in
strong force, 89 ; compelled by illness
to leave his division, 94 ; deficiency of
land transportation on the withdrawal
from Yorktown, 94; constructed de-
fenses at Williamsburg, 94 ; ordered
to pursue the enemy, 141 ; attacks,
141 ; gallant attack at Malvern Hill,
148 ; assigned command of the De--
partment of Texas, 233 ; his conflict
in Galveston Harbor with the enemy's
fleet, 234; his success, 234; his re-
port, 235.

Magruder, Fort, the largest work at Wil-
liamsburg, 94.

Malvern Hill, its situation, 147 ; occupied
by McClellan's army, 147; its posi-
tion, 147; arrangement of our army,
147 ; use of artillery impracticable,

148 ; a general advance ordered, 148 ;
not simultaneous, 148 ; the attack on
the right, 148 ; approach of darkness,

149 ; nearness of the combatants after
the conflict closed, 149 ; an informal
truce established, 149 ; rain in the morn-
ing, and the enemy's position entirely
deserted, 149 ; evidence of precipitate
retreat, 149 ; the foe at Harrison's
Landing, 150.

Mallory, Secretary S. R., his efforts to
complete the construction of vessels
for the defense of New Orleans, 226,
227 ; inquiries relative to the raft be-
low New Orleans, 229.

Manassas, the second battle at, 324 ; re-
treat of the enemy, 326 ; night put an
end to the pursuit, 327.

Mann, Dudley, our representative in Bel-
gium, 368.

Mansfield, battle at, between the forces of
General Taylor and General Banks, 542.

Maritime war, the losses of, briefly stated,
282.

Marcy, William E., on the capture of
private property in war, 163.

Marque, letters of, issued by the Presi-
dent of the Confederate States, 582;
vessels captured, 582 ; treatment of
the prisoners, 582 ; opinion of United
States Court, 582.

Marshall, General Humphrey, opposed
to Colonel Garfield in Kentucky, 18 ;
strength of his force, 18; falls back
as Garfield advances, 18; takes posi-
tion at Middle Creek, 19 ; attacked by
Garfield, 19 ; report of Marshall, 19 ;
result, 19.

Marshall, Chief-Justice John, on the
capture and confiscation of private
property, 163.

Marshals, Provost- General and special,
appointed by the Government of the
United States in all the Northern States,
495 ; their duties, 495 ; civil officers
and soldiers made subject to their
orders, 495 ; a military control estab-
lished in every Northern State by the
Government of the United States,
496.

Maryland, a military force of United
States Government occupies Baltimore,
460 ; order of the commander declaring
martial law, 461 ; this force had no
constitutional permission to come into
Maryland, 461 ; the civil government
suspended, 461 ; where were the "just
powers " of the State government at
this time, 461 ; suspended by the com-
manding General, 461 ; invasion of
some of the unalienable rights of the
citizens, 461 ; provisions of the United
States Constitution, 462 ; instances of
the violations of personal liberty, 462 ;
case of John Merryman, 463 ; number
of personal arrests in one month, 464 ;
seizure of newspapers, 464; houses
searched for arms, 464; interference
with the State elections by armed force
of the United States Government, 464,
465 ; President declines to prevent it,
465; proclamation of the Governor,
465, 466 ; result, 466 ; Constitutional
Convention assembled, 467 ; objections
to the Constitution, 467 ; voters re-
quired to take an oath previous to
voting at an election where the adop-
tion or rejection of the oath was one
of the issues, 467 ; the so-called Con-
stitution declared adopted and the
slaves emancipated, 467 ; cautious and

INDEX TO VOL. II.

791

stealthy proceedings of the United
States Government, 468.

Mason, John M., our representative in
London, 368.

Maury, Captain W. L., commands the
cruiser Georgia, 263.

McAllister, Fort, taken by Sherman's
force, 572.

McClellan, General George B., cautions
the authorities at Washington against
their emancipation measures, 9 ; as-
signed to the chief command of army
of the United States, 18 ; presents an
argument to President Lincoln against
an advance by Centreville and Manas-
sas, but in favor of a movement down
the Chesapeake Bay into the Rappahan-
nock River, 82 ; his reconnaissance, 82 ;
its results stated by him in a letter,
82 ; the latter movement approved, 82 ;
reason for ordering his transports to
Washington, 83 ; concentrates at For-
tress Monroe, 83, 84 ; advances up the
Peninsula, 85 ; repulsed in several as-
saults at Yorktown, commences a siege
by regular approaches, 85 ; letter to
Secretary Stanton on the strength of
our forces, 85 ; reports the strength of
his own force, 86 ; his views at York-
town, 89 ; testimony before the Com-
mittee on the Conduct of the War, 89 ;
report on the affair between Hancock
and Early at Williamsburg, 94 ; state-
ment of General Early, 94 ; testimony
at the court-martial of McDowell, 105 ;
his position regarded as critical, 135 ;
reasons, 135; his failure apparently
anticipated by the United States Gov-
ernment, 135; reinforcements to, cut
off, 135 ; position behind Po white
Creek, 136; retreats from Frazier's
Farm to Malvern Hill, 147 ; its situa-
tion, 147 ; his position, 147 ; his letter
on the manner of conducting the war,
314 ; part of his forces leave West-
over, 320; report of his strength at
Sharpsburg, 342 ; moves his army
southward from Sharpsburg, 351 ; ap-
proaches Fredericksburg, 351 ; re-
moved from command, 351.

McCown, Brigadier-General J. P., as-
signed to command of Island No. 10,
52.

McCulloch, General Ben, killed in the
battle of Pea Ridge, 50.

McLaws, General, ordered to seize Mary-
land Heights, 330 ; embarrassed by the
presence of the enemy, 333 ; marches
to Sharpsburg, 333.

McRae, Colonel, succeeds to the com-
mand after General Early retires
wounded at Williamsburg, 96 ; report
of subsequent events, 96.

Meade, General George G., succeeds
General Hooker, 443 ; his position at
Gettysburg, 443 ', continues to strength-
en his line, 444; his opinion that an
attack on Lee would have resulted dis-
astrously, 445 ; his testimony, 447 ;
moves a force to Madison Court-House,
504; a feint to engage the attention
of Lee, 504 ; other plans for the sur-
prise and capture of Richmond, 504.

Medicines, proposal by our commissioner
to purchase medicines of the United
States authorities, to be used exclu-
sively for the relief of the Union pris-
oners, 602 ; no reply ever received,
602.

Memphis, advance of the enemy's fleet
toward, 77 ; encounters our fleet and
has one ram disabled, 77 ; our fleet
retires, 77 ; occupation of the town by
the enemy no longer disputed, 77.

Merryman, John, seized in his bed by an
armed force of the United States Gov-
ernment, 463 ; writ of habeas corpus
granted, 463 ; disobeyed, 463 ; deci-
sion of Chief- Justice Taney, 463.

Military commissions, two trials before,
filled the country with horror, 496 ;
specification in the first, 496 ; for the
assassination of the President, 496 ;
the sentence, 496 ; insertion of the
name of the President of the Confed-
erate States among those of the con-
spirators, an exhibition of the malig-
nancy of the Government of the United
States, 496 ; the case of Mrs. Surratt
awakened much sympathy, 497 ; efforts
to obtain a respite, 497 ; the trial of
Major Wirz, 497 ; proclamation of
President Johnson against the Presi-
dent of the Confederate States, 497 ;
the condemnation of Wirz, 498 ; efforts
to prevail upon him to implicate the
President of the Confederate States in
the great mortality of Northern soldiers
as prisoners, 498 ; declaration of Mr.
Louis Schade, of Washington, 498 ;
letter of Captain C. B. Winder, 499 ;
do. of Rev. F. E. Boyle, 499 ; order of
General Burnside in Ohio, 501 ; com-
ments of C. L. Vallandigham on the
order, 501, 502 ; his arrest, trial, and
sentence to imprisonment in Boston
Harbor, 502 ; letter of Governor Sey-
mour on the military usurpation, 502 ;

792

INDEX TO VOL. II.

similar proceedings in Indiana, Illinois,
Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and
Vermont, 502, 503.

Military power, its attempt to administer
civil affairs, 290 ; a subversion of fun-
damental principles, 290.

Mine Run, unsuccessful movement of
General Meade, 449 ; his loss, 450.

Mississippi, west of, active operations in
the beginning of 1862, 49.

Mississippi River surrendered by the
loss of Vicksburg and Port Hudson,
425.

Missouri, proposal of President Lincoln
to make an irrepealable compact with,
180; forbidden by the Constitution,
180; its words, 180; a proposal to the
State to surrender its sovereignty, 180 ;
most conciliatory propositions of the
Governor rejected by the Government
of the United States, 473; he calls
fifty thousand State militia into active
service for the purpose of repelling in-
vasion and for the protection of the
lives, liberty, and property of the
citizens, 473 ; his words, 473 ; order
from Washington to the commanding
General, 474 ; this order a pretext for
domestic violence, 474 ; terms of the
Constitution on which the Government
of the United States may interfere in
a State, 474 ; the bravery of the Gov-
ernor, 474 ; charged by the Govern-
ment of the United States with pur-
poses of treason, 474, 475 ; words of
the military commander, 475 ; troops
of United States Government poured
into the State, 475 ; proceedings of the
State Convention, 475 ; violations of
constitutional principles committed,
475 ; final proceedings, 476.

Mexico, our treatment of private prop-
erty in the war with, 8.

Mobile Harbor, its defenses, 205 ; torpe-
does also used, 205 ; combat with Ad-
miral Farragut's fleet, 206 ; quite cred-
itable to the Confederacy, 206 ; bom-
bardment of the forts, 207 ; torpedoes,
209.

Money in the Confederate Treasury, trans-
ferred to the financial agent of the
Government by Secretary Reagan, 695.

Monroe, John T., the Mayor of New Or-
leans, 231 ; reply to the demands of
Commodore Farragut, 231.

Monstrous crime, A, fearlessly charged
as committed by the Government of
the United States against Constitu-
tional liberty in the subversion and

subjugation of the State governments,
453.

Morgan, General, attacks a brigade of
the enemy at Hartsville, 384 ; the bri-
gade surrenders, 384 ; defeats the ef-
forts of the enemy in the Shenandoah
Valley, 527.

Morris, Captain C. M., commands the
cruiser Florida, 261 ; enters the har-
bor of Bahia, 262 ; ship seized by the
enemy, 262.

Mott, Colonel Christopher, killed at
Williamsburg, 99 ; a brave soldier in
the Mar with Mexico, 99.

Mumford, William B., his cold-blooded
execution by Major-General Butler at
New Orleans, 289 ; letter of General
Lee to General Halleck, relative to the
execution of, 590.

Murfreesboro, position of General Bragg
at, 384 ; his strength, 384 ; Rosecrans
advances to attack him, 384 ; Rose-
crans's strength, 384 ; position of our
line, 384 ; conflict begun by General
Bragg, 385 ; result of the series of en-
gagements, 385.

Murray, E. C, contracts for building the
Louisiana at New Orleans, 225; his
testimony, 225.

Muskets of obsolete patterns and shot-
guns used by our soldiers at Fishing
Creek, 22.

Nashville, effect of its evacuation by Gen-
eral A. S. Johnston, 40 ; demands for
his removal, 40 ; Congress takes the
matter in hand, 40.

Navy Department, TJie, its organization,
194; two classes of vessels, 194; dis-
cussions and experiments relative to
floating batteries, 194 ; agreement rel-
ative to Norfolk Navy-Yard, 195 ; dis-
regarded, 195 ; destruction of prop-
erty, 196; the Merrimac transformed
into the ironclad Virginia, 196; her
trial-trip, 196; her consorts, 196; fleet
of the enemy, 197 ; the Virginia makes
an attack, 197 ; destruction of the frig-
ate Cumberland, 197; destruction of
the frigate Congress, 198 ; Buchanan
wounded, 199 ; appearance of the Mon-
itor, 199; Virginia attacks and drives
her into shoal water, 200.

" Necessity" pleaded by Congress to jus-
tify its usurpations of power, 161 ; ex-
tent of this power from necessity, 179 ;
the existence of the necessity tested,
187; the doctrine of, incorporated as
an unwritten clause of the Constitu-

INDEX TO VOL. II.

793

tion of the United States, 293 ; what
is this necessity ? 293 ; a fundamental
maxim, 293 ; no man can be trusted
with the exercise of power and be the
judge of its limits, 293 ; the grants
of power in the Constitution limited,
293 ; limits all disregarded, and the
people accepted the plea of necessity,
293 ; a fatal subversion of the United
States Constitution, 293 ; the sole issue
of the war, 293 ; the question still
lives, 294 ; all nations and peoples
that adopt a confederated agent of
government will become champions of
our cause, 295.

Neutrality, Peaceful, of a State, all prop-
ositions for, refused by the Govern-
ment of the United States, 2.

Neutral nations, what is their duty under
international law with regard to the
construction and equipment of cruisers
for either belligerent, and the supply
of warlike stores, 269; proceedings
of the United States after the Revolu-
tionary War, 269 ; demands of the
British plenipotentiary, 269 ; reply of
Mr. Jefferson, 269 ; the admission of
Washington, 270; attempt of United
States Government to contract, if suc-
cessful, would have been a direct viola-
tion of international law, 270 ; circum-
stances of the construction of our
cruisers, 270 ; Minister Adams's claim
for damages, 270 ; Earl Russell's re-
ply, 270 ; Mr. Seward's answer to Earl
Russell, 271 ; the response of the lat-
ter, 271 ; views of Chancellor Kent,
271 ; views of President Pierce in a
message to Congress, 272 ; charge of
the Lord Chief Baron of the Exche-
quer, 272, 273.

New Ironsides, attacki on her with tor-
pedoes, 208.

New Madrid, assaulted by Major-General
Pope, 76 ; assault repulsed three
times, 76 ; the place evacuated, 76.

New Orleans, its importance, 210; nu-
merous approaches for an attacking
party, 210 ; an attack apprehended to
come from up the river, 210 ; the bar
at the mouth of the river, 211 ; means
of defense in preparation, 211; the
forts, 211 ; their armament, 211 ; their
condition stated by General Duncan,
212; the garrisons, 212; the construc-
tion of a raft, 212; repeated failures,
212; general plan of defense for the
city, 213 ; two lines of works, 213 ;
course of the exterior one, 213 ; course

of the interior one, and its location,
213 ; opinion of General Lovell, 213 ;
guns on the interior line of defense,
213 ; the ironclads, 214; the main re-
liance for defense on the forts, with
the obstructions, 214; force of the
enemy's fleet, 214 ; bombardment of
the forts, 214 ; preparations to pass
the forts, 214 ; movements of the fleet,
215 ; Duncan's report of its passage
of the forts, 215 ; further movements
of the fleet, 216 ; statement of General
Smith respecting the forts on the river,
216; do. of General Duncan, 216; the
effect of the darkness of the night,
216; surrender of the city demanded,
217 ; evacuated by General Lovell,

217 ; surrender of the forts demanded,
217; refused, 217; address of Gen-
eral Duncan to the garrisons, 217;
skill and gallantry of Colonel Higgins,

218 ; revolt of the garrison of Fort
Jackson, 218 ; forts surrendered, 219 ;
destruction of the Louisiana, 219;
state of the other defenses afloat, 220 ;
damage to the enemy's fleet, 221 ; loss
of the Varuna, 221 ; action of other
vessels, 221 ; confusion in the city
when the fleet arrived, 222 ; batteries
below the city, 222 ; the city saved
from bombardment, 223 ; General Lov-
ell retires with his force, 223; causes
assigned for the fall of, 224; their
consideration, 224 ; its fall a great dis-
aster, 225 ; attack on the naval con-
structors and Secretary of the Navy,
225; testimony, 226; efforts of the
Secretary, 226 ; number of guns sent to,
228 ; iron plates not to be procured,
228; laboratory at, 228; Commodore
Farragut demands the surrender of
the city, 231 ; request that the United
States flag shall be hoisted on public
buildings, 231 ; reply of the Mayor,
231 ; Farragut sends a detachment to
hoist and guard the flag, 231 ; arrival
of General Butler, 232 ; a reign of ter-
ror, pillage, and a long train of infa-
mies, 232 ; brief reference to the his-
tory of the city, 231.

Neio York, its subjugation, 477 ; unalien-
able right of the people left without
a protector, 477 ; ringing of a little
bell, 478 ; proceedings at the arrest
and imprisonment of an individual,
478 ; number arrested and imprisoned,
478 ; safeguards of the citizen for the
protection of his unalienable rights,
479 ; what they were in New York,

794

INDEX TO VOL. II.

479 ; worthless as the paper on which
they were printed, 479 ; further safe-
guards in the Constitution of the Unit-
ed States, 479 ; the writ of habeas
corpus and the only conditions on which
it can be suspended, 480 ; instances of
the violations of the safeguards of the
citizens in New York by the Govern-
ment of the United States, 481 ; Presi-
dent Lincoln adopts them as his act,
481 ; utter disregard of the writ of ha-
beas corpus in New York, 481 ; the
Constitution, the laws, the courts, the
Executive authority of the State, sub-
verted and turned from the end for
which they were instituted, 482 ; opin-
ion of Mr. Justice Nelson on the mili-
tary proceedings of the Government of
the United States, 482 ; prison of New
York Harbor overflows, 482 ; surplus
sent to Boston Harbor, or Washington,
or Baltimore prisons, 482 ; attempt to
relieve them by sending persons to
investigate the cases of those willing
to take an oath of allegiance to the
Government of the United States, 482 ;
made a condition precedent that the
prisoner should take the oath, 482 ;
the oath, 483 ; case of Messrs. Flan-
ders who refuse the oath, 483 ; words
of the Constitution declaring that the
accused shall have the right of coun-
sel, 484 ; Government of the United
States refuses to recognize the coun-
sel of prisoners, and looks with dis-
trust on all such applications, 484 ;
victims of this violence found in al-
most every Northern State, 484 ; result
of the elections causes an order for
the release of prisoners to be issued
by the Government of the United States,
484 ; the order, 485 ; another step for
the subjugation of the judiciary of the
State, 485 ; an act of Congress author-
izes the removal of all actions against
officers of the Government for tests in
arrests, for trial to the Circuit Court
of the Government itself, 485 ; its
command to the State courts, 485 ; the
obedience of the New York courts to
the command, 486 ; subjugation of
New York and the Northern States by
the suspension of the writ of habeas
corpus in their limits, 486 ; two facts
required to exist before Congress could
pass such an act, 486 ; Congress vio-
lates the Constitution, 487 ; what was
New York ? 488 ; the proclamation of
the President suspending the writ of ha-

beas corpus throughout all the Northern
States, 488 ; no autocrat ever issued
an edict more destructive of the nat-
ural right to personal liberty, 488 ;
the subversion of the governments of
the Northern States, 488; all those
liberties of conduct and action which
stamp the true freeman were gone,
488; another step in the subjugation
of the State of New York, 488 ; letter
of the commanding General of the
United States forces in New York to
the Governor of the State, 488 ; reply
of the Governor, 489 ; response of the
commanding General, 489; rejoinder
of the Governor, 489 ; the command-
ing General now states to the Governor
that the Government of the United
States has sent to him " a force ade-
quate to the object," 490; forty-two
regiments and two batteries sent to
New York, 490 ; another act manifest-
ing the subjugation of the government
of the State by the military power of
the Government of the United States,
490 ; seizure of newspaper offices in
New York by soldiers under the orders
of the Government of the United
States, 490 ; the Governor of the State
causes the commanding General to be
taken into custody, 491 ; the instruc-
tions sent by the Government of the
United States to the commanding Gen-
eral that " he must not be deprived of
his liberty to obey any order of a mili-
tary nature which the President directs
him to execute," 491 ; the authority of
New York was subjugated, 491 ; another
act of subjugation was the interference
of the Government of the United States
with the Presidential election in the
State, 491 ; a pretended necessity
worked up, 491 ; details of the prepa-
rations, 492 ; military force increased,
492 ; vote of the soldiers in the field
to be taken, 492 ; agents sent by the
State to take the vote seized by sol-
diers of the Government of the United
States and imprisoned, 492; the de-
scription of the imprisonment, 493 ;
demands of the State in behalf of their
agents, 493; refused by the Govern-
ment of the United States, 494 ; tried
before a military commission, 494 ;
terms upon which the State acceded to
the Union, 623.
Norfolk, its evacuation delayed for the
removal of property, 93 ; an expedi-
tion by the enemy against, contem-

INDEX TO VOL. II.

795

plated, 100; account of the Comte de
Paris, 100 ; its evacuation and occupa-
tion by the enemy, 100 ; detachments
previously sent to General Anderson,
near Fredericksburg and elsewhere,
101.

Norfolk Navy-Yard, destruction at, 195.

North Carolina, efforts to concentrate
our troops to resist the army of Gen-
eral Sherman, 630.

Northern people, amazing insensibility to
the crisis before them, 4 ; would not
realize the resistance that would be
made, 4 ; blind to palpable results, 4 ;
a league with the spirit of evil, 4 ; its
condition, 4 ; slow to comprehend the
reality of armed resistance, 5.

Northern States, provisions for the free-
dom of speech, of the press, and the
personal liberty of the citizen daily
violated in, 3 ; the events in them
similar to those in New York, 494 ;
sovereignty of the people entirely dis-
regarded by the Government of the
United States, 494 ; the operation of
the institutions established for the
protection of the rights of the people,
nullified by the military force of the
Government of the United States, 495 ;
a military domination established, 495 ;
general and special provost-marshals
appointed in every State, 495 ; their
duties, 495 ; the forces granted to aid
them, 495 ; military control established
in every Northern State, by the usur-
pation of the Government of the United
States, 496.

Oath, the voters in Maryland required to
take an oath previous to voting at an
election where, one of the questions
was the adoption or rejection of the
oath, 467.

Object of the war, the declaration of Con-
gress, 189.

Objects for which the Government of the
United States was instituted, stated in
the preamble of the Constitution, 454.

Obstinacy, extreme, observable in the ori-
ginal party of abolition, 4.

Offensive-defensive policy, how inaugurated
at Richmond, 132 ; its successful result,
132.

" Offensively," signification of the word
as used by General Grant relative to
the exchange of prisoners, 599.

Open brow and fearless tread of the
American citizen, all were gone in the
Northern States, 488.

Organization of " just powers," the ob-
ject for which it is done, 452.

Origin of the United States Government,
sprang from certain circumstances,
which existed in the course of human
affairs, 453 ; the articles of agreement
made by certain friendly States pro-
posing to form a society of States, 453.

" Other purposes," the signification of the
words explained in an act of the United
States Congress, 345.

Ould, Robert C, our commissioner for
the exchange of prisoners, 595 ; his
proposals to the United States com-
missioner, 598 ; no reply ever made,
598 ; his communication relative to
conferences with General Butler, the
United States commissioner of ex-
change, 598.

Outrages in Kentucky, by the soldiers of
the Government of the United States,
described by the Governor, 470.

Panic at Washington, its cause, 106 ;
movements of Jackson in the Shenan-
doah Valley, 106 ; pursues General
Banks across the Potomac, 106 ; ex-
citement with General Geary, 106 ;
alarm of the enemy at Catlett's Station,
107 ; retreat of Duryea to Centreville
and telegram to Washington for help,
107; telegrams of Secretary Stanton
to Northern Governors for militia to
defend Washington, 107; call of the
Governor of New York, 107; call of
the Governor of Pennsylvania, 107 ;
call of the Governor of Massachusetts,
108 ; call of the Governor of Ohio, 108 ;
order of Secretary Stanton taking mili-
tary possession of all the Northern rail-
roads, 109 ; order of President Lincoln
to General McDowell, 109.

Paris Congress, The, its declaration of
principles, 372.

Paul Jones, destroyed many of his prizes
281 ; all ports closed to us, 370.

Peace negotiations, our subjugation was
the purpose of the Government of the
United States, 608 ; established by the
terms and conditions offered to us, 608
Major Pitcairn's words, 609 ; commis
sioners sent before hostilities, 609
next a letter sent, 609 ; the third time
a commissioner sent, 609 ; not allowed
to pass, 609 ; the next movement was
the appearance of two persons from
Washington, 610; their propositions,
610; Mr. Lincoln's views, 610; they
depart, 611; three commissioners ap-

796

INDEX TO VOL. II.

pointed to visit Canada, 611 ; announce-
ment of Mr. Lincoln, 612 ; visit of Mr.
Francis P. Blair, 612 ; confidential con-
versation with the President, 612, 615 ;
letter given to Mr. Blair, 615 ; answer
of Mr. Lincoln, 616; return of Mr.
Blair, 616; his statements, 616; mili-
tary convention suggested, 617 ; com-
missioners appointed, 617; their com-
mission, 617; objections, 617; meet-
ing at Hampton Roads, 618; Mr. Sew-
ard's version, 618 ; change of Mr. Lin-
coln's views as to the place of meet-
ing, 618; Mr. Blair's visit, 618; state-
ment of Mr. Hunter, 618; remarks,
619 ; report of the commissioners, 619 ;
closing of negotiations, 620 ; statement
of Judge Campbell, 620 ; terms of peace
stated in Mr. Lincoln's message to Con-
gress on December 6, 1864, 620; his
actions compared with the Constitution,
621 ; reserved rights of the States, 622 ;
terms on which New York ratified the
Constitution, 623 ; who violated the
Constitution ? 624 ; who is responsible
for the war ? 624 ; terms of surrender
offered to our soldiers, 624.

Pegram, Commander R. B., sails the
Nashville, 264.

Pemberton, General J. C, holds a posi-
tion on the Tallahatchie and Yazoo
Rivers, 392 ; ingenious device to turn
it, 392 ; in command at Vicksburg,
395 ; sends General Bowen to Grand
Gulf, 397 ; assigns troops to respec-
tive positions after crossing the Big
Black River, 399 ; concentrates all
troops for the defense of Vicksburg,
in rear, 400 ; instructions to his offi-
cers, 401 ; dispatches to other com-
manders, 401 ; the policy manifested
of meeting the enemy in the hills east
of the point of debarkation, 402 ; his
want of cavalry, 402 ; letter to General
Johnston, 402 ; reply, 402 ; report on
the advance of the enemy from Bruins-
burg, 403 ; concentrates his forces to
check the invading array, 403 ; tele-
gram to General Johnston, 403 ; in-
structions to General Stevenson, 404 ;
dispatch from General Johnston, 405 ;
answer, 405 ; calls a council of officers,
405 ; dispatch to General Johnston,
406 ; moves his force, 406 ; appear-
ance of the enemy, 406 ; dispatch from
General Johnston, 406 ; reply and a
retrograde movement, 407 ; encounters
the enemy, 407 ; orders to General
Loring, 407 ; not obeyed, 407 ; the day

lost, 408 ; dispatches from General
Johnston, 408 ; considerations, 408 ;
concentrates at Vicksburg, 410 ; re-
marks on a communication from Gen-
eral Johnston, 413 ; a former corre-
spondence with the President, 413 ; his
confidence that the siege would be
raised, 413 ; his decision to hold Vicks-
burg, 413 ; progress of the siege, 413 ;
states the causes that led to the capit-
ulation, 415 ; resigns his rank, 526 ;
shells Grant's army as it crosses a
bridge of the James River, 526.

Pendleton, General W. N., strives to
bring long-range guns to bear on Mal-
vern Hill, 148; his statement of the
appearance at Gettysburg, 441; pre-
sents considerations to General J. E.
Johnston, 548.

Peninsula, The Virginia, all our dis-
posable forces ordered there, 83 ; its
topography and means of defense, 83,
84 ; movements, 85, 88 ; strengthen-
ing the defenses continued, 88 ; new
defenses constructed, 88 ; attempts to
break Magruder's line at Dam No. 1,
88 ; the enemy in strong force, 89 ;
our forces continue the retreat toward
Richmond, 98 ; flank of our line of
march threatened by General Franklin,
98 ; driven to the protection of his
gunboats, 98 ; army retreat to the Bal-
timore Cross-Roads and Long Bridge,
98.

Perryville, its location, 383 ; the battle
at, 383 ; its result, 384.

Persons seized in Baltimore by an armed
force of the United States Govern-
ment, 464.

Personal liberty, proclamation of Presi-
dent Lincoln suspending the writ of
habeas corpus in the Northern States,
488 ; no autocrat ever issued an edict
more destructive of the natural right
to personal liberty, 488 ; every'North-
ern State government subverted, 488.

Petersburg, an assault by the advance of
Grant's army, 638; repulsed, 638; an-
other assault with a large force, 638 ;
a failure everywhere, with an extraor-
dinary sacrifice of life, 639 ; repeated
attacks, with increased carnage, 639 ; a
heavy force advanced to our right, 639;
an interval of the enemy's force pen-
etrated by General A. P. Hill, and his
flanks doubled up with great loss, 639 ;
a cavalry expedition to the Weldon and
other railroads, 639 ; a fight near
Ream's station, 639 ; enemy retreat in

INDEX TO VOL. II.

797

confusion, 639 ; a method of slow ap-
proaches adopted by Grant, 640 ; his ob-
ject to obtain possession of the Weldon
and Southside Railroads, 640 ; Grant
menaces Richmond, 640 ; his line, 640 ;
General Lee's line, 640 ; movement to
attack the works at Richmond, 641 ;
defeated, 641 ; a mine run under one
of our forts, 641 ; a description, 642 ;
a question relative to negro troops,
642; results of the explosion, 643 ; re-
peated attacks on our lines made and
repulsed, 644 ; force of General Lee at
the opening of the campaign, 644 ; do.
of General Grant, 644 ; a movement
against Fort Fisher, 644 ; opening of
the campaign of 1865, 647; Grant ex-
tends his line to the left and gains the
Weldon Railroad, 647; the troops in
Richmond, 647 ; capacity of the Rich-
mond and Danville Railroad increased,
647; diminution of General Lee's
forces, 647 ; his conference with the
President, 648 ; general view of the
state of affairs, 648 ; a sortie against
Grant's lines determined on by General
Lee, 648 ; commanded by General John
B. Gordon, 649 ; its failure, 650 ; letter
of General Gordon, 650-654 ; an ex-
tensive attack by the enemy follows,
654 ; secret concentration of the ene-
my's forces, 654 ; more determined
effort to gain the right of Lee, 655 ;
the advance repulsed by General Lee,
655 ; our strong position at Five Forks
assaulted and carried by the enemy,
655 ; Battery Gregg makes an obsti-
nate defense, 655; Lieutenant-General
A. P. Hill killed, retreat became a ne-
cessity, 655 ; inner lines held during
the day, 655 ; army retires at night
toward Amelia Court-House, 656 ;
Grant's advantages of position, 656 ;
his movements, 656 ; Lee's subse-
quent conference with his officers,
657 ; their plan, 657 ; frustrated,
657 ; position of Lee's forces, 657 ;
movements of his advance and rear,
657, 658 ; condition of General Lee's
army and its weakness, 658 ; sends
a communication to General Grant,
658 ; a conference, 658; terms of sur-
render agreed upon, 659 ; the terms,
659; Lee's letter to the President,
660.

Pettus, Lieutenant-Colonel E. W., leads
volunteers to recover a redoubt at
Vicksburg, 415.

Pierce, President, remarks in his annual
98

message on the rights of belligerents,
272.

Pillow, Fort, its situation, 76 ; bombard-
ment by the enemy's fleet commenced,
76 ; it becomes untenable and is evac-
uated, 76 ; captured by General N. B.
Forrest, 545.

Pillow, General Gideon J., commands at
Fort Donelson, 29 ; retires from Fort
Donelson, 34 ; correspondence rela-
tive to his course at Donelson, 40,
41.

Pirate, A, who is one? 280; statement
of the Attorney-General of Great Brit-
ain, 280.

Pirates, some of the Southern people de-
nounced as, 2.

Pittsburg Landing, topographical descrip-
tion, 52, 53.

Plan, The, of President Lincoln to make
a Union State out of a fragment of a
Confederate State, 297 ; the war-power
his main reliance, 298 ; does not con-
tain a single feature to secure a repub-
lican form of government, nor a single
provision authorized by the Constitu-
tion of the United States, 298.

Pleasant Hill, General Banks routed by
the force of General Taylor, 544.

Plunder, A system of, the order of Presi-
dent Lincoln to military commanders,
588.

Policy and purposes of the United Stales
Government, their odious features re-
vealed, 3.

Polk, Major-General Leonidas, evacuates
Columbus, 51 ; his account of his move-
ment, 52; commands a corps at battle
of Shiloh, 55 ; commands the attack on
the enemy at Perry ville, 383 ; com-
mands the right wing at Chickamauga,
432 ; command of the Department of
Mississippi and East Louisiana trans-
ferred to him, 547 ; killed at an out-
post on Pine Mountain, 554 ; the great-
ness of his loss, 554.

Pope, Major-General John, assaults New
Madrid and is repulsed, 76 ; occupies
the place after evacuation, 76 ; assigned
to the command of the Army of Vir-
ginia, 135 ; commands the Army of
Virginia, 312; advances south from
Washington, 312 ; order to his army
to subsist on the country, 312 ; order
to dispense with supply or baggage
trains, 313; order to hold the inhabi-
tants responsible for all assaults, etc.,
313; order "to arrest all disloyal citi-
zens," etc., 314; thus announces a

798

INDEX TO YOL. II.

policy of pillage, outrage on unarmed
citizens, and arson, 314; letter of Gen-
eral McClellan, 314; his forces near
Culpeper Court-House, 317 ; defeated
at Cedar Run, 320; losses, 320; his
forces increased by Burnside's corps,
320 ; Jackson advances against him,
320; reinforcements sent to, 322; his
subsequent movements, 323, 327.

Port Hudson, its situation, 420 ; de-
fenses, 420 ; assaulted by General
Banks, 420 ; resort to regular ap-
proaches, 420 ; after the capitulation
of Vicksburg, its importance ceased,
420 ; surrendered by Major-General
Gardner, 420; losses, 420; the gal-
lantry of its defense, 421.

Port Republic, its position, 112;. battle
near, 212; defeat of the enemy, 117;
prisoners, 117; pursuit, 117.

Port Royal, a harbor of South Carolina,
77 ; its situation, 77 ; its defenses, 78 ;
strength of the enemy's fleet, 78 ; their
attack, 78 ; the forts abandoned, 78.

Porter, Admiral, statement of the effi-
ciency of torpedoes used by us for
naval defense, 207 ; relieves his fleet
by a dam above Alexandria on the
Red River, 544.

Ports, Southern, blockaded for the de-
struction of their commerce, 2.

Power, where found, for the United
States to cooperate with a State in
emancipation? 179.

Powhite Creek, the position of McClellan
behind, 136.

Price, Major-General Sterling, com-
mands in Missouri, 50 ; his move-
ments, 50 ; battle at Pea Ridge, 50 ;
commands in "West Tennessee, 386 ;
moves to Iuka, 386 ; enemy abandons
stores and retires, 386 ; letter from
General Ord, 387 ; reply, 387 ; unites
■with General Van Dorn, 387 ; the com-
bined force, 388 ; moves upon Corinth,
3S8; the battle fought at first mainly
by his division, 389 ; the enemy reen-
forced, 389 ; army retires, 390.

Prince de Joinville on the junction of
McDowell with McClellan, 105.

Prisoners, Exchange of, increase in their
numbers in 1861, 13; vacillating and
cruel conduct of the United States
Government, 13 ; their false theory of
combinations, 13; its obstacle, 13; if
the theory was true, hanging was the
legitimate punishment, 13 ; why were
not their prisoners hung? 13 ; tenacity
with which the enemy clung to the

theory, 13; the issues involved, 14;
further obstacles to exchange, 14 ;
moved by clamors of the people, Unit-
ed States Government shut its eyes,
14 ; some exchanged by military com-
manders, 14 ; condition of captured
soldiers at the close of 1861, 14; citi-
zens arrested and held as prisoners,
14 ; violations of the Constitution, 14 ;
object to clothe the Government with
absolute power, 15 ; efforts of the Gov-
ernment of the United States to impli-
cate the President Of the Confederate
States in the mortality of Northern
prisoners, 497 ; declarations of Ma-
jor-General Grant, 497 ; captures of, in
our privateers, 582 ; treatment, 582 ;
opinion of United States court, 582,

583 ; communication sent to President
Lincoln by special messenger, 583 ; the
communication, 583 ; no answer made,

584 ; act of Confederate Congress, 584 ;
United States Government refuses to
consider the question of exchange,
585 ; some exchanges made by offi-
cers, 585 ; exchange proposed to Gen-
eral Grant in 1861, 585; subsequent-
ly offers to surrender some, 586 ; re-
ply of General Polk, 586 ; agreement
of Fremont with General Price, 586 ;
repudiated by General Hunter, 586 ;
" fire up the Northern heart," 586 ;
commissioners sent from Washington
to Norfolk, 586 ; the result, 586 ; dif-
ficulties, 587 ; arrangement of Generals
Cobb and Wool, 587 ; abruptly broken
off, 587 ; suspension ensued, 588 ; in-
dignation at the North, 588 ; a cartel
executed, based on that of 1812, 588 ;
order of President Lincoln to military
commanders, issued on the same day,
to seize and use our property, 588 ; a
system of plunder, 588 ; order of Gen-
eral Pope to murder peaceful inhabi-
tants as spies, 588 ; letter of General
Lee to General Halleck, 589 ; answer,
590 ; proceedings of General Hunter,
5S9 ; of Brigadier-General Phelps,
589; retaliatory orders, 690; letter
of General Lee to General Halleck
relative to the execution of William
B. Mumford, 590 ; result, 590 ; efforts
to seek an adjustment of difficulties
through the authorities at Washing-
ton, 591 ; "V ice-President Stephens
sent as a commissioner, 591 ; instruc-
tions, 591 : letter to President Lincoln,
593 ; Stephens not allowed to pro-
ceed beyond Newport News, 595 ; cor-

INDEX TO VOL. II.

799

respondence of our exchange com-
missioners, 595; demands of the au-
thorities at Washington, 596 ; the
wish of the Confederate Government,
596 ; Andersonville, the occasion of
its selection, 596 ; advantages of its
location, 596 ; its preparation, 597 ;
diseases, 597 ; successful efforts of
Major Wirz for the benefit of the pris-
oners, 597 ; humane and kind treat-
ment by General Winder, 597 ; state-
ment of Adjutant-General Cooper, 598;
a proposal made to the United States
commissioner that all prisoners on each
side should be attended by a proper
number of their own surgeons, 598 ;
further proposals, 598 ; no reply ever
made, 598 ; statements of General But-
ler, 598 ; letters between Generals Lee
and Grant, 600; dispatch of General
Grant to General Butler, 600 ; another
proposal to the United States Govern-
ment, 600 ; no answer received, 601 ;
the offer would have released every
soldier of the United States in our
prisons, 601 ; other offers, 601 ; re-
quested to send the worst cases, 602 ;
photographs taken at Annapolis and
circulated, 602 ; worse cases received
by us, 602 ; proposal to purchase medi-
cines from the United States authori-
ties to be used exclusively for the relief
of the Union prisoners, 602 ; no reply
ever received, 602 ; a delegation of the
prisoners at Andersonville sent to
Washington to plead their cause, 602 ;
President Lincoln refuses to sec them,
602 ; their return and report, 602 ;
letter from the wife of the chairman,
603 ; letter from another prisoner,
603 ; extracts from the official report
of Major-General Butler to the Com-
mittee on the Conduct of the War,
603-605 ; our readiness to surrender
for exchange all the prisoners in our
possession, 605 ; Northern prisons full
of our soldiers, 608 ; cotton sent by us
to New York, and sold to purchase
clothing for our soldiers, 606 ; report
of Secretary Stanton, 607 ; number of
prisoners that died in our hands, 607 ;
number that died in the hands of the
United States Government, 607 ; re-
port of Surgeon-General Barnes, 607 ;
number of Confederate prisoners, 607 ;
number of United States prisoners,
607 ; further considerations, 607, 608 ;
the number paroled at the close of the
war, 699.

Private property, its pillage and destruc-
tion not permitted by the laws of war,
8; our war with Mexico, how con-
ducted, 8 ; action of Great Britain
around Point Comfort in 1781, 8; res-
toration stipulated in the Treaty of
Ghent in 1815, 8; correspondence of
John Quincy Adams with the British
Secretary of State, on the deportation
of, 8, 9 ; order of President Lincoln to
arrest all persons who arrested slaves
as fugitives, 9 ; language of General
McClellan, 9 ; action of Fremont in
Missouri, 10 ; of General T. W. Sher-
man in South Carolina, 10 ; do. of
others, 10 ; how made subject to con-
fiscation by United States Congress,
168 ; conditions upon which its invio-
lability might be broken under the
Constitution of the United States, 173.

Privateering not piracy, remarks of Earl
Derby, 12 ; do. of the Lord Chancellor
of England, 1 2.

Privateers, resorted to not for purposes
of gain, 10 ; a small fleet soon fitted
out, 10 ; their cruises, 10 ; proclama-
tion of President Lincoln, 10 ; another
violation of international law, 11 ;
its threat not executed, 1 1 ; the case
of the schooner Savannah, 1 1 ; retalia-
tion threatened, 1 1 ; the case of the
schooner Jefferson Davis, 11 ; remarks
of Earl Derby, 12 ; do. of the Lord
Chancellor of England, 12.

Prize court, the attempt to get our private
property into, to be tried by the laws
of war, 169.

Prizes, captured by foreign-built cruisers
of the United States during the Revolu-
tionary War, 276 ; more than six hun-
dred, 276 ; both belligerents forbidden
by European nations to bring prizes
into their ports, 370.

Queen's proclamation, The, the force as-
cribed to it by the United States Gov-
ernment, 277.

Rains, General G. R., inventor of sub-
terra shells, 97 ; describes their use in
the retreat from Williamsburg and its
effect, 97, 98 ; placed in charge of our
submarine defenses, 208.

Rains, Brigadier-General J. G., ordered
to report to General Johnston at Jack-
son, in connection with torpedoes and
sub-terra shells, 424.

Randolph, General, Secretary of War, his
testimony relative to affairs at Nor-
folk and the position of Yorktown, 93.

800

INDEX TO VOL. II.

Ransom, Major-General, summoned to
Richmond from Drury's Bluff to resist
an impending assault of General Sheri-
dan, 508 ; his movements and success,
508; his position and force, 510; re-
ports to General Beauregard at Drury's
Bluff, 512; his part in the action with
Butler's force, 514.

Read, Lieutenant C. W., commands the
tender Clarence, 261.

Reagan, Secretary John H., transfers
the money in the Confederate Treas-
ury, 695.

Reconnaissances, made by the enemy with
the design to take and keep control of
the seacoast of Georgia, 78.

Records of property, kept under the au-
thority of the State government, 452.

Republican government, the whole sci-
ence of, where found, 298 ; words of
the Declaration of Independence, 298 ;
civil and political sovereignty is in
the individual, 299 ; no human govern-
ment has any inherent, original sov-
ereignty, 299 ; derives its just powers
from the consent of the governed. 299 ;
all other powers than those thus de-
rived are not just powers, 299 ; a gov-
ernment exercising powers not just has
no right to survive, 299 ; who, then,
had a right to institute a government
for a State ? 299 ; only the people of
the State, 299 ; how could the Govern-
ment of the United States appear in a
State and attempt to institute a State
government ? 299 ; only as an invader
and a usurper, 299 ; how could an
invader institute a republican State
government, which can be done only
by the free consent of the people them-
selves ? 300 ; the absurdity of the pre-
tension, 300 ; President Lincoln's plan
of one tenth, 300 ; one tenth of the
voters can not establish a republican
State government, 300; an effort to
enforce a fiction, 300 ; who were the
voters ? 301 ; those whose consent had
been bound by the oath given by the
usurper, 301 ; such a Government de-
rives it powers from the consent of the
usurper, 301 ; an attempt to destroy
true republicanism, 301 ; a true, its
source, 452 ; how secured, 452.

Reserved powers of the Constitution, sov-
ereignty of the States therein, 622.

Revolutionists, who were the ? 1*70.

Richmond, removal of the Government
to, authorized, 3 ; detached works
around it perfected by Lee, 119 ; in- |

trenched line commenced by Lee, 130;
position of hostile forces, 130 ; con-
versations relative to its defense and
the defeat of the enemy, 131 ; offen-
sive-defensive policy adopted, 132;
preparations for the campaign after
Seven Pines battle, 133 ; reinforce-
ment sent to Jackson in the Valley,
133; noticed by the enemy, 133; his
unsuccessful attack on Williamsburg
road, 133; route of Jackson covered
by Stuart, 133 ; directions to Jackson
under the order of battle, 133 ; the
order of battle, 133; position of the
respective troops, 134 ; Hill forces the
enemy to take refuge on the left bank
of Beaver Dam, 134 ; a strong posi-
tion, 134; movement of other forces,
134 ; engagement closes at dark, 134 ;
critical position of McClellan, 135 ;
action of the United States Govern-
ment, 135 ; renewal of the battle at
dawn, 135 ; arrival of Jackson, 136 ;
enemy abandons his works, 136 ; ad-
vance of our forces resumed according
to the order, 136 ; destruction of muni-
tions by the retreating enemy, 136;
takes a position behind Powhite Creek,
136; A. P. Hill hotly engages, 137;
enemy north of the Chickahominy, 137 ;
fierce battle, 137 ; Longstreet ordered
to make a diversion, 137 ; strength of
the enemy's position, 137 ; Jackson's
right division forms on Longstrcet's
left, 137 ; position of D. H. Hill, 137;
completion of the lines, 138; a gen-
eral advance, 138; enemy back to the
woods on the bank of the Chickahom-
iny, 138 ; night put an end to pursuit,
138 ; in the morning none of the enemy
north of the Chickahominy, 139 ; York
River Railroad, 139; enemy in motion
south of the river, 139; the line aban-
doned, 139; position of the enemy,
139; topography of the country, 139;
on the next morning enemy's works
found to be evacuated, 140 ; movement
of our forces, 140; condition of the
enemy's works, 140 ; enemy's position,
141 ; Savage Station, 141 ; darkness,
141 ; enemy crosses White-Oak Swamp,
142 ; resist the rebuilding the bridge,
142 ; enemy at Frazicr's Farm, 142 ;
we had no maps of the country in
which we were operating, 142 ; conse-
quent mistakes, 142 ; battle at Fra-
zier's Farm, 145; nearly the entire
field in our possession at its close,
145 ; the siege of, raised, 152 ; McCIel-

INDEX TO VOL. II.

801

lan at Westover, and his expedition
frustrated, 153; prisoners captured in
the battles around Richmond, 153 ;
losses, 153 ; statement of the strength
of our army at different periods, 153,
154; suggestions on the delay of Lee,
155; other details . relative to the
strength of our army, 156, 157; effec-
tive force of General McClellan, 158 ;
the most effective way to relieve was
to reenforce Jackson and advance on
General Pope, 320 ; its evacuation ad-
vised by General Lee, 661 ; lack of
transportation, 661 ; movement of the
troops, 666; Ewell's corps, 662; G.
W. C. Lee's and Kershaw's, 662 ;
other forces, 662 ; the rear followed
by the enemy, 663 ; frequent combats,
663 ; Ewell captured, 664 ; G. W. C.
Lee's division captured, 664 ; engage-
ment at Sailor's Creek, 664 ; the naval
force, 665 ; their retreat to Danville,
665 ; troops in and around Richmond,
665 ; orders given to destroy certain
property of the Confederate States,
666 ; the conflagration did not result
from any act of the public authorities,
666 ; distinction from the case of Har-
per's Ferry, 666 ; the troops of neither
army considered responsible, 667 ; no-
tice of General Lee's withdrawal sent
to the President at church, 667 ; his
proceedings, 667 ; removal of families,
668 ; the President starts for Danville,
668; the supplies prepared for Lee's
army, 669 ; report of General St. John,
in charge of the commissary bureau,
669 ; extracts, 669 ; the daily delivery
by cars and canal-boats, 670 ; further
evidence to expose unfounded state-
ments, 671; rations on the line of re-
treat, 671; letter of General Breck-
inridge, 672; letter of the assistant
commissarv-general, 672 ; other letters,
673, 674. *

Richmond, Kentucky, enemy routed by
General E. K. Smith, 382.

Rights, unalienable, shall man no more
take up arms in defense of? 182.

Rights of belligerents, letter of Earl Rus-
sell, 271 ; views of Chancellor Kent,
271 ; of President Pierce, 272 ; charge
of the Lord Chief Baron of the Exche-
quer, 272, 273.

Rivers, the principal difficulty in the way
of a successful defense of, by us, 25 ;
preparations made for resistance, 25.

Roanoke River, torpedoes planted there,
209 ; effect on the enemy, 209.

Rodes, General, statement of the obsta-
cles to General Huger's movement at
Seven Pines, 126 ; in command at
Sharpsburg, 336 ; captures Martins-
burg, with stores, artillery, and a body
of the enemy, 439.

Rodgers, Colonel W. P., killed at Cor-
inth, 390 ; his character, 390.

Rosecrans, General, succeeds General
Buell, 384 ; advances upon the position
of General Bragg at Murfreesboro,
384 ; a battle ensues, 385 ; subsequent-
ly assigned to the command of the
force under General Grant in West
Tennessee, 385 ; his character, 389 ;
treatment of the dead and wounded
at Corinth, 390; occupies Chattanooga,
429 ; moves on the rear of General
Bragg, 429 ; concentrates before Gen-
eral Bragg, 432 ; concentrates in Chat-
tanooga, 433 ; reinforcements sent to
him, and Grant assigned to the com-
mand, 434.

Russell, Lord John, answer to the de-
mand of the Government of the United
States for the sailors rescued from the
sinking Alabama, 258 ; his letter stat-
ing that the United States Government
profited most by unjustifiable mari-
time practices, 26S ; on the principle
contended for by her Majesty's Gov-
ernment, 271.

Sabine Pass, its importance, 236 ; ap-
pearance of the enemy's fleet, 236 ;
only means of defense, 236 ; a report
of the engagement, 237 ; two gunboats
surrendered to forty-two men, 238;
the fleet retires, 238 ; names of the
defenders, 239 ; success in holding
their prisoners, 239 ; an unparalleled
feat, 239 ; mistaken reports of the en-
emy, 239.

Safeguards, for the protection of the
personal liberty of the citizen in New
York, 479 ; worthless as the paper on
which they were printed, 479.

Savage Station, numbers found in the
hospital, 141.

Savannah, Tlie, schooner, treatment of
her crew by the United States Govern-
ment, 11; its harbor defenses, 205;
their condition, 205.

Schopf, General, commands a force of
the enemy at Fishing Creek, 23.

Security, perfect and complete, duty of
the State government to give to all its
citizens, 452.

Seddox, James A., Secretary of War, re-

802

INDEX TO VOL. II.

plies to General Johnston as to the num-
bers of his army near Vicksburg, 412.

Self-defense of the Government, how au-
thorized by the Constitution, 159.

Semmes, Commander Raphael, resigns at
Washington, 246 ; enters Confederate
service, 240 ; obtains the Sumter for
a cruiser, 246 ; description of her and
her preparation, 246 ; runs the block-
ade, 247 ; career on the sea, 247 ; her
captures, 247 ; takes command of the
Alabama, 250 ; collects the old officers
of the Sumter, 250 ; sails for Ter-
ceira, 250 ; his first impressions on see-
ing his ship, 251 ; proceeds to sea and
reads his commission and enrolls his
men, 251 ; sails for Galveston, 252 ;
decoys out one of the blockading ships,
252 ; fights and sinks the Hatteras,
253 ; captures and bonds the steamer
Ariel, 254 ; a cruise in every sea, 254 ;
arrives at Cherbourg to repair his ship,
255 ; appearance of the Kearsarge, 255 ;
a notice to her captain, 255 ; defective
powder of the Alabama, 255 ; ques-
tions considered, 256 ; his report of the
engagement with the Kearsarge, 256 ;
Alabama sinks and crew rescued by an
English vessel, 257 ; narrow escape of
the Kearsarge, 257 ; clad in secret
armor, 258 ; the Government of the
United States demands the rescued
sailors, 258 ; answer .of Lord John
Russell, 258 ; his statement of closed
ports, 282 ; commands the naval force
at Richmond, 665 ; order to him from
the Secretary of the Navy, 665.

Seven Pines, position of the respective
forces, 121 ; movements of the enemy,
122 ; unexpected firing heard, 122 ;
the line of battle, 122, 123; General
Johnston wounded and removed, 123 ;
events on the left, 124 ; most serious
conflict on the right, 124; report of
Longstreet, 124; Huger's delay, 127;
Longstreet waits, 127; why did not
the left cooperate? 127; no way ap-
pears to have been practicable to put
the enemy to flight, 127; our losses,
127 ; that of the enemy, 128 ; evi-
dence of our success, 128 ; our aggre-
gate force, 128; that of the enemy,
128; cause of the withdrawal of our
forces on the day after the battle, 128 ;
position of the forces, 130.

Seward, Secretary, letter on the export
of cotton, 344.

Sharpsburg, General Hood's account of
the contest on the left, 339; an ac-

count by Colonel Taylor, 241 ; testi-
mony of General Sumner, 341 ; do. of
General McClellan, 342 ; strength of
the armies, 343 ; Lee concentrates his
forces at, 333 ; address to the people of
Maryland, 333 ; the battle at, 335-338.

Shenandoah Valley, operations by which
it was cleared of the enemy's forces,
439; enemy's losses, 439; movements
of the enemy to destroy the Virginia
and Tennessee Railroad, 527.

Sheridan, General, moves with a large
force around and to the rear of General
Lee's army, 508 ; pursued by Stuart,
509 ; strength of the respective forces,
509 ; Stuart places himself in front and
resists the advance of Sheridan, 509 ;
he retires, 509 ; appears in the Valley
with a large force, 535.

Sherman, General W. T., leads a divi-
sion up the Tennessee, 52; disem-
barks at Pittsburg Landing, 52 ; report
of advance on Corinth, 72 ; its evacua-
tion, 73 ; enters the Yazoo River to re-
duce Haines's Bluff and attack Vicks-
burg in the rear, 392 ; repulsed with
heavy loss, 392 ; reaches Chattanooga
with his force, 435 ; his movements,
436 ; prepares to march northward
through the Carolinas, 625 ; position
of our forces, 625, 626 ; leaves Savan-
nah, 626 ; his movements, 626 ; arrives
at Columbia, 627 ; the Mayor surren-
ders the city, 627 ; unites with General
Schofield at Goldsboro, 636.

Shields, General, advances toward Jack-
son's position at Port Republic, 113 ;
conflict at the bridge, 113; his posi-
tion, 114; attacked by Jackson, 114.

" Shields'1 s brave boys " preserve their or-
ganization to the last, 117; tough
work, if Shields had been on the field,
117.

Shiloh, description of the battle-field, 52,
53 ; the battle of — advance of our
forces, 56 ; delay, 56 ; cause, 56 ; im-
portance of attack at the earliest mo-
ment, 57 ; Buell's advance, 58 ; result
of an earlier or later attack, 59 ; pur-
pose of General Johnston, 59 ; his or-
der of attack, 59 ; monograph of Gen-
eral Bragg, 59 ; result of the first day,
60 ; one encampment of the enemy
not taken, 61 ; the disastrous conse-
quences, 61 ; causes of the failure,
61 ; statement of the author of the
" Life of General Johnston," 61 ; re-
port of General Chalmers on the fail-
ure, 62 ; report of Brigadier-General

INDEX TO VOL. II.

803

Jackson, 62 ; report of General Har-
dee, 63 ; report of Major-General Polk,
63 ; report of General Gilmer, chief
engineer, 63 ; statement of General
Bragg, 64 ; statement of Colonel Ged-
des, of the Eighth Iowa Volunteers,
65 ; report of General Beauregard, 66 ;
some remote causes of this failure,
66 ; death of General Johnston, 66 ;
its circumstances, 66 ; consequences to
be expected from Grant's defeat, 68 ;
instance of Marshal Turenne, 68 ; Bue-
na Vista, 68 ; fate of an army and
fortunes of a country hung on one
man, 69 ; confidence in his capacity,
69 ; at nightfall our vantage-ground
abandoned, 70 ; the enemy reoccupy,
70 ; statement of Buell as to the con-
dition of Grant's army, 70 ; reinforce-
ments of the enemy cross the river,
70 ; advance of the enemy in the morn-
ing, 71 ; our retreat was a necessity,
71; strength of our army, 71; casual-
ties, 71 ; effective force of General
Grant, 71 ; his casualties, 71 ; his ar-
my reorganized under General Halleck,
71 ; advance on Corinth, 71.

Ships of war, equipped and sent from
ports of the United States to Brazil in
her struggle with Spain for indepen-
dence, 276 ; do. sold to Russia in her
war with England and France, 276.

Six million people, the number of persons
subject to be acted upon by the con-
fiscation act of the United States Con-
gress, 167.

Slavery, declared by Congress to be the
cause of all the troubles, 159; wise
and patriotic statesmen might easily
have furnished relief, 159.

Slaves, unconstitutional measures taken
by Congress to effect the emancipation
of, 159 ; grounds upon which its pro-
ceedings were based, 159 ; their power
found in the plea of necessity, 161 ;
emancipation by confiscation, 162;
emancipation in the District of Colum-
bia, 172 ; prohibition of the extension
of slavery to the Territories, 174 ; pro-
hibiting the return of fugitives by mili-
tary or naval officers, 174 ; another in-
stance of the flagrant violation of the
Constitution, 175; declaration by Con-
gress of the objects for which the war
was waged, 189 ; unconstitutional meas-
ures taken by President Lincoln to ef-
fect the emancpation of, 179 ; message
recommending the cooperation of the
United States for the emancipation of,

in any State, 179 ; countermands the
order of General Hunter, and claims for
himself to issue one for emancipation,
181 ; conference with Senators and
Representatives of the border States
to effect emancipation, 183 ; an attempt
to effect emancipation by compen-
sation, 184; issues a preliminary proc-
lamation for emancipation, 187 ; the
final proclamation emancipation, 192;
his declaration in the proclamation call-
ing for seventy-five thousand men, 189.

Slidell, John, our representative in
Paris, 368.

Smith, General E. K., occupies Knox-
ville, East Tennessee, 382 ; advances
into Kentucky, 382 ; conflict at Rich-
mond, 382 ; advances to Frankfort,
383 ; great alarm in Cincinnati, 382 ;
unites his forces with those of General
Bragg, 3S3 ; orders to, for the relief
of Vicksburg, 417 ; his movement, 417 ;
his address to his soldiers, 697.

South, The, nature of the division of sen-
timent in, 5 ; a question of expedien-
cy, 5.

Southern people, their love and sacrifices
for the Union, 160.

Southern States, one of the causes of
their withdrawal from the Union, 181.

Sovereignty of the State government, the
representative and the constituted
agent of the inherent sovereignty of
the individual, 452.

Spanish provinces of South America,
their independence recognized by the
United States, 276.

" Spare neither men nor money,1'' orders
of the Secretary of the Navy to com-
plete ironclads at New Orleans, 227.

Spottsylvania Court-House, twelve days
of skirmish and battle at, between Lee
and Grant, 523.

State, A, rent asunder and a new one
formed of the fragment, 2.

State governments, the subjugation of,
450; a revolution unlike any other
that may be found in the history of
mankind, 451; an assertion often
made during the war, 451 ; objects for
which the State governments were in-
stituted, 451 ; where must the Ameri-
can citizen look for the security of the
rights with which he has been endowed
by his Creator? 451 ; to the State gov-
ernment, 451 ; the powers of the State
government are just powers, 451 ; is
the citizen's life in danger ? the State
guarantees his protection, 451 ; is the

804

INDEX TO VOL. II.

citizen's personal liberty in danger ?
the State guarantees it, 451 ; duty of
the State government to give its citi-
zens perfect and complete security,
452 ; necessarily sovereign within its
own domain, 452 ; its entire order
founded on the free consent of the
governed, 452 ; this consent gives just
powers, 452 ; all else are usurpations,
452 ; how these powers are organized,
452 ; its object, 452 ; subversion and
subjugation of a State government,
how accomplished, 452 ; the commis-
sion of such a subversion and subjuga-
tion fearlessly charged upon the Gov-
ernment of the United States as a mon-
strous crime against constitutional lib-
erty, 453 ; distinction in nature and ob-
jects between the Government of the
United States and the State govern-
ments, 453.

States, The, the principles upon which
they were originally constituted and
upon which the Union was formed ex-
plained, 368.

Stephens, A. H., sent as commissioner
relative to the exchange of prisoners
to Washington, 591 ; not allowed to
come to Washington, 595 ; appointed
to confer with Mr. Lincoln, 617.

Stevens, Tiiaddeus, his remark, u Who
pleads the Constitution against our
proposed action " of confiscation ? 8 ;
declaration in Congress on the admis-
sion of West Virginia, 308.

Stevens, Lieutenant, commands the Ar-
kansas at Baton Rouge, 244.

Stevenson, Major - General, resists the
force of the enemy near Vicksburg,
407 ; report of the conflict at the re-
doubt before Vicksburg, 415.

" Stop thief/" the old trick exemplified,
191.

Streight, Colonel, captured by General
Forrest, 426.

Stuart, General J. E. B., sent with cav-
alry to cover the approach of Jackson
from the enemy, 133 ; subsequent con-
fidential instructions from Lee, 133 ;
engaged with cavalry on detached ser-
vice, 150; his march down the enemy's
line of communication described, 150;
opens fire on the enemy with a light
howitzer, 151; effect on the enemy,
described by General Casey, 151 ; re-
mains east of the mountains to ob-
serve the enemy, 330; at Sharpsburg
battle, 335 ; attacked by the enemy at
Kelly's Ford, 438; encounters the

enemy's cavalry, 439 ; left to guard
the passes of the mountains, 440 ;
makes a circuit of the Federal army,
440 ; pursues Sheridan in a dash upon
Richmond, 509 ; places himself in
front of Sheridan and resists his ad-
vance, 509 ; is mortally wounded, 510;
his death and character, 510.

Subjugation of the Southern States, the
intention of the Government of the
United States, 3 ; established by the
course pursued by it, 3 ; evasion and
final rejection of every proposition for
a peaceful settlement, 3; its extreme
obstinacy, 4 ; observable in the origi-
nal party of abolition, 4 ; futile warn-
ings of its suicidal tendency, 4 ; not
contending for a principle, but su-
premacy, 4 ; no compromise, 4 ; of the
States by the Government of the
United States, 450; object of the State
governments, 451; how accomplished,
452 ; of the government of the State
of New York, by the domination over
it of the military power of the Govern-
ment of the United States, 488.

Sub-terra shells, effect produced on the
enemy by their use on the retreat from
Williamsburg, 97.

Subversion of a State government, how
accomplished, 454.

Sumter, Fort, its brave and invincible
defense, 204 ; the manner of its evacu-
ation, 204 ; salute and cheers, 204.

Sumter, rllie cruiser, her preparation and
career, 246, 247.

Supplies for. Lee's army at Petersburg,
a statement of facts,* 668-670 ; letter
of General Breckinridge, 672 ; do. of
the assistant commissary-general, 672;
another letter, 673 ; supplies on the
retreat, 673 ; letter of President Harvie,
of the Richmond and Danville Railroad,
673, 674 ; do. relative to sending sup-
plies to Amelia Court-House, 675.

Supremacy, when the contest is for, there
will be no concessions, 4.

Surratt, Mrs., her case awakening much
sympathy, 497 ; efforts to obtain a res-
pite, 497.

Taliaferro, General, commands Virginia
forces at Norfolk, 195 ; commands
Jackson's division at Cedar Run, 319.

Taney, Chief- Justice, decision in the
Carpenter case, 348 ; a civil war, or
any other war, does not enlarge the
powers of the Federal Government over
the States or the people beyond what

INDEX TO VOL. II.

805

the compact has given to it, 348 ; grants
the writ of habeas corpus in the case of
John Merryman, 463 ; disobeyed, 463 ;
decision of the Court, 463.

Tatnall, Commander Josiah, objections
to proceeding to York River with the
Virginia, 91 ; takes command of the
Virginia, 202 ; his statement respect-
ing the Virginia, 203 ; has charge of
the harbor defense of Savannah, 201.

Taylor, General Richard, his descrip-
tion of the dangerous moment of the
battle at Port Republic, 116 ; move-
ments agninst the enemy west of the
Mississippi, 418 ; proceeds to raise the
siege of Port Hudson by cutting the
communications of General Banks,
419 ; his movements after the capitu-
lation of Port Hudson, 422 ; commands
in the Red River country, 541 ; his
force and movements, 542 ; encounters
General Banks, 542 ; battle at Mans-
field, 542 ; defeat of Banks at Pleasant
Hill, 543, 544.

Taylor, Colonel Thomas, takes a letter
to President Lincoln relative to prison-
ers, 584.

Taylor, Brigadier-General, of New Jer-
sey, advances to recover the stores
captured at Manassas Junction^ 323 ;
routed, 323.

Tennessee, measures adopted to occupy
and fortify strong positions after her
secession, 24 ; Forts Henry and Donel-
son, 24; our forces in, 51 ; their con-
centration, 52 ; a military Governor
appointed, 285 ; public officers driven
from office, 285 ; newspaper offices
closed, 285 ; citizens arrested and im-
prisoned, 285 ; election of members of
Congress ordered, 286 ; a State organ-
ization attempted, 286 : qualifications
of voters determined and fixed by the
military officer of the Government of
the United States, 286 ; the oath, 286 ;
amendments to the regular State Con-
stitution attempted, 287; declared to
be adopted by a vote of twenty-five
thousand out of a hundred and forty-
five thousand citizens, 287 ; called
" guaranteeing a republican form of
government," as required by the
United States Constitution, 287 ; many
positions held by the enemy in, 385 ;
the aggregate force, S85; Rosecrans
assigned to command, 3S5 ; most im-
portant position at Corinth, 386 ; plan
of the enemy, 386 ; Vicksburg, the
point of attack, 386 ; Generals Price

and Van Dorn in command of our
forces, 386 ; the former moves from
Tupelo to Iuka, 386 ; the enemy re-
treats, abandoning stores, 386 ; unites
with General Van Dorn for an attack
on Corinth, 387 ; battle at Iuka, 387 ;
strength of Van Dorn, 387 ; do. of the
enemy, 388 ; attempt to surprise Cor-
inth before reinforcements were re-
ceived, 388 ; its secession proceedings
founded on true republican principles,
455 ; the proceedings of the Govern-
ment of the United States, 455 ; it
denies the fundamental principles of
liberty, 456 ; its proceedings founded
on the assumption of the sovereignty
of the Government of the United
States, not on the principle of the
sovereignty of the people, 456 ; in-
vasion of the rights of popular liberty,
456 ; efforts to erect a State govern-
ment subject to the United States Gov-
ernment, 456 ; limitation of the will
of the voter, 456 ; voter's right to cast
his ballot dependent on the permission
of the United States Government, 456 ;
further conditions required of the
voter, 457 ; who was the sovereign in
Tennessee ? 457 ; the Government of
the United States, 457 ; where was the
government of the State of Tennessee
and the sovereign people? 457; the
former was subverted and overthrown,
and the latter subjugated, 457 ; amend-
ments to the Constitution, 457 ; guar-
anteed to be a republican State, 458 ;
Hood's campaign in, 573.

Tennessee, an iron clad, 206 ; her combat
with the enemy's fleet in Mobile Har-
bor, 205.

Texas, recognition of her independence
by United States Government in the
war of the former with Mexico, 276.

Theory of combinations, of President
Lincoln, the issues involved, 14.

" The pressure is still upon me" words
of President Lincoln relative to forci-
ble emancipation, 181.

Thomas, General, commands the enemy's
forces at Fishing Creek, 20.

Tilghman, General Lloyd, commands at
Fort Henry, 26 ; his bravery, 28 ;
loses his life in battle near Vicksburg,
409.

Toombs, General Robert, defends the
bridge over the Antietam, 337.

Torpedoes, probably more effective than
any other means of naval defense,
207; statement of Admiral Porter as

806

INDEX TO VOL. II.

to their successful use by us, 20*7 ;
secret of our success was the sensitive
primer, 20S ; how the torpedoes were
made, 20S ; three essentials to success,
20S ; exploits with them in Charleston
Harbor. 208 ; their use at Roanoke Riv-
er, 209 ; successful use at Mobile, 209.

Trimble, General, volunteers to capture
the enemy's depot at Manassas Junc-
tion, 323.

Tubknhb, Marshal, of France, an exam-
ple, 68.

Umpire, IWio is the, on the question of
secession, 16; not the United Staxes
Government, as it has no inherent,
original sovereignty, 16 ; but the States
and their people, 16 ; the case of South
Carolina, 16.

United States, number of men furnished
during the war, 706 ; do. to the United
States Government by Maryland, Ken-
tucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, 706;
debt contracted by the United States
Government, 706.

Usurpations of the Government of the
United States during the year 1861,
2 ; the mother of all the, the unhal-
lowed attempt to establish the absolute
sovereignty of the Government of the
United States by the subjugation of the
States and their people, 16 ; embraced
in the system of legislation devised by
the United States Congress, 161 ; of
United States Congress, another alarm-
ing one brought out, 170; the argu-
ment by which it was supported, 170 ;
the war-power, 171 ; another step for
the destruction of slavery, 172 ; eman-
cipation in the District of Columbia,
172.
Usurpations of Congress, the next step in
usurpation, the passage of an act pro-
hibiting slavery in the Territories, 174 ;
words of the act, 174 ; an act making
an additional article of war passed,
174; all military and naval officers
prohibited from efforts to return fugi-
tives from labor, 174; the words of
the Constitution, 175 ; Congress di-
rectly forbids that which the Consti-
tution commands, 175; excuse of a
state of war groundless, 175 ; a series
of, committed by President Lincoln,
178 ; all exercises of power not derived
from the free consent of the governed,
452 ; in uhat it consisted, 582.

Usurper, TJie, the last effort to save him-
self, 606.

Van Dorn, General Earl, assigned to
command west of the Mississippi, 50;
his movements, 50 ; battle of Elkhorn,
or Pea Ridge, 50 ; his strength, 50 ;
his object, 51 ; losses, 51 ; moves to
join A. S. Johnston, 51 ; in command
in north Mississippi, 386; unites with
General Price, 387 ; his strength, 387 ;
the strength of the enemy, 388; char-
acter and conduct of, 388; moves to
surprise Corinth, 388 ; its result, 389 ;
his hazardous retreat, 390; surprises
and captures Holly Springs and de-
stroys its depot of supplies, 391.

Tenable, Colonel C. S., statement of the
attack of Mississippians under a prom-
ise to General Lee, 521.

Vessels destroyed by torpedoes in South-
ern waters, 210.

YicJcsbiirg, a combined movement
against, by land and by the Mississippi
River, planned by the enemy, 392 ; the
position of General Pemberton, 392 ;
an ingenious device to turn that posi-
tion, 392 ; attempt of Sherman to re-
duce Haines's Bluff, 392 ; Grant lands
his army at Young's Point, 393 ; at-
tempt to pass to the rear of Fort
Pemberton, 394 ; also to enter the
Yazoo above Haines's Bluff, 394 ; posi-
tion of Admiral Porter and his fleet in
Deer Creek, 394 ; position of Grant's
force, 395 ; Pemberton in command at,
395 ; unsuccessful attempt to cut a
canal across the peninsula, 396 ; do.
to connect the river with the bayou
at Milliken's Bend, 396 ; gunboats at-
tempt to run the batteries, 397; the
enemy commence ferrying troops from
the Louisiana to the Mississippi shore,
398 ; resistance by our troops, 398 ;
battle near Port Gibson, 398 ; attempt
of Grant to get in rear of General
Bowen, 398 ; he retreats toward Grand
Gulf, 399 ; joined by General Loring,
399 ; Grant advances into Mississippi,
399 ; concentration of General Pem-
berton at, 410 ; strength of the posi-
tion, 410 ; length of fortified line,
410; Pemberton's force, 410; efforts
to strengthen the relieving army, 411 ;
dispatches for aid to the relieving
army, 412; siege commenced, 413;
assault, 414 ; bombardment from the
mortar fleet, 414 ; position of, 414 ;
progress of the siege, 414; another
assault, 414 ; report of General Ste-
venson, 415 ; causes that led to the
capitulation, 415; the losses, 417;

INDEX TO VOL. II.

807

other efforts to relieve, 417 ; movement
of General E. K. Smith, 417.

Victors, Who ivere the, when the war
closed? 294; let the verdict of man-
kind decide, 295.

Virginia, first efforts of the enemy di-
rected against her, 3 ; greater perver-
sion of republican principles in, by the
Government of the United States, than
in any other State, 304 ; its seces-
sion, 304 ; opposition in northwestern
counties, 304; they hold a conven-
tion to reorganize the government
of Virginia, 305 ; assume to be the
State of Virginia, 305 ; consent to the
formation of a new State, 305 ; ac-
tion of United States Congress, 305 ;
these proceedings viewed in the light
of fundamental principles, 306 ; in-
volved insurrection, revolution, and se-
cession, 306 ; the United States Gov-
ernment the nursing-mother to the
whole thing, 306 ; words of the United
States Constitution, 307 ; the fraud
examined, 307 ; words of Thaddeus
Stevens, 308 ; so-called government
of Virginia migrptes from Wheeling
to Alexandria, 308 ; subsequent order
of President Johnson, 308 ; proceed-
ings under the order, 309 ; such a
State government not in the interest
of the people, but of the Government
of the United States, 309 ; voters re-
quired first to protect the Government
of the United States, 309.

Virginia, former frigate Merrimac, 196 ;
transformed into an ironclad, 196; her
armament, 196 ; and the Monitor, the
combat between, 200 ; the latter seeks
safety in shoal water, 200 ; refitted af-
ter her conflict, 201 ; invites the Mon-
itor to a new contest, 201 ; declined,

201 ; dashes upon the enemy's fleet,

202 ; abandoned and burned, 203 ; the
reasons, 203.

Voter in Tennessee, The, the limitation
of his will, 456 ; his right to cast his
ballot vested in the permission of the
Government of the United States as his
sovereign, 456.

Waddell, Lieutenant J. J., commands
the cruiser Shenandoah, 264.

Walker, General J. G., movement of his
troops at Sharpsburg, 336.

Walker, General W. H. T., commences
the attack at Chickamauga, 430 ; killed
in the attack on McPherson's corps,
562.

War, TJie, manner in which it was con-
ducted by the Government of the
United States, 5 ; how inappropriate
to preserve a voluntary Union, 6 ; en-
larged its proportions during the year
1861, 16; points possessed by the en-
emy, 17 ; his supply of men and re-
sources of war, 17 ; a succession of glo-
rious victories to us, 17 ; the founda-
tion of the, 582.

Ward, Colonel, his conduct at Yorktown,
88, 89 ; killed at Williamsburg, 99 ;
report of General Early on his gallant-
ry, 99.

Warley, Lieutenant, attacks the enemy's
vessels at New Orleans, 221.

" War-power, The, of the United States
Government," the theory on which it
was based, 171 ; its unlimited extent,
171 ; the specious argument for, 171 ;
words of the Constitution, 171 ; Presi-
dent Lincoln declares his main reliance
on it, 298.

Washington Artillery, organized in New
Orleans, 337 ; its frequent and honor-
able mention in the reports of battles,
337.

Washington threatened by General Early,
530.

Watchioord, The, " The abolition of sla-
very by the force of arms for the sake
of the Union," 186.

Wcstover reached by McClellan's army,
152 ; protection of the gunboats, 152 ;
his position, 152; inexpedient to at-
tack him, 152.

Wheaton, on the capture and confisca-
tion of private property, 163.

Wheeler, General, destroys supplies and
baggage in the rear of Rosccrans's army
advancing to Murfrcesboro, 384 ; move-
ments with his cavalry at Chickamau-
ga, 432.

Which is the higher authority, Mr. Lin-
coln's emancipation proclamation, or
the Constitution? 621.

White, Colonel, advances to the Susque-
hanna, 440.

Whiting, General, sent to reenforce
Jackson in the Valley, 133 ; he is
killed in the defense of Fort Fisher,
646.

Who is the criminal ? Let posterity an-
swer, 178.

Why were they not hung ? our soldiers
taken prisoners, as " rebels and trai-
tors," 13.

Wickes, Captain, commands a cruiser
fitted out in France by United States

808

IXDEX TO VOL. II.

Government in the Revolutionary War,
275.

Wilcox, General, stubborn resistance
made by his division, 518.

Wilderness, The, the nature of the coun-
try, 518; the battle at, 518-520.

Wilkinson, Commander John, commands
the Chickamauga, 265 ; her cruise, 265.

Williamsburg, its position on . the Vir-
ginia Peninsula, 94 ; line of defenses
constructed by General Magruder, 94;
attack of Hancock, 94 ; report of Gen-
eral Early on the attack, 95, 96 ; claim
of the enemy to have achieved a vic-
tory at, refuted, 97 ; strength of our
force, 97 ; McClellan's estimate, 97 ;
further retreat of our army, 97 ; our
strength in the principal action at, 98 ;
the position held as long as was neces-
sary, 98 ; losses, 99.

Wilmington, North Carolina, its defen-
sive works, 204.

Winder, Brigadier-General Charles S.,
attacks the position of General Shields,
114; critical condition, 115; killed at
the battle of Cedar Run, 318 ; report
of General Jackson, 318 ; his charac-
ter and an act of heroism, 318.

Winder, General John H., his kindness
to prisoners of war, 597.

Wirz, Major, his successful efforts for
the benefits of the prisoners, 597.

Wood, Captain John T., attacks armed
vessels in the Rappahannock in open
boats, 223.

Wood, Commander John Taylor, com-
mands the Tallahassee, 265 ; her cruise,
265.

Yazoo Pass, proposal to pass boats
through, 392.

Yorktoivn, strengthening the defenses
continued, 91 ; further improvements
on the works, 91 ; arrangements for
evacuation commenced, 92 ; army with-
drawn from the line of Warwick River,
93 ; evacuation made successfully, 93 ;
loss of property, 94 ; statement of
General Early, 94.

Zollicoffer, General, commands at Mill
Springs, 19; his position, 19; General
Thomas advances against him, 19;
Crittenden takes command and moves
to attack Thomas, 20; Zollicoffer killed,
21.

THE END OF VOL. II.

W rELLS BINDERY INC.
ALTHAM, MASS.
E 1958

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