Part 3

On February 10, 1865, we had our first serious infantry fight, as infantry. We were doing picket duty at this time on the lines near Grimball's causeway, with our right extending to Stono River. At about daylight that morning the Federals began to shell our lines from four gunboats and a mortar schooner, whose masts we could see over the trees; and soon after we could see a large force of their infantry assembling on Legare's plantation on the other side of the flat and marsh in front of our lines. Our entire force along this part of the lines consisted of 52 men of our company and 40 men of the Second South Carolina Artillery and about 20 cavalry, together with 7 officers--all told, 119 men. Just before the Federal infantry advanced, a section of artillery took position at about 600 yards in front of us, and shelled our line, but did no damage. The Federal infantry engaged, as I learned a few months afterwards from one of their officers, were the Fifty-fourth and One Hundred and Forty-fourth New York, white; and the Thirty-second, Thirty-third, and Fifty-fifth U. S. negro troops, altogether about 1,500 men, and one section of artillery. We were assaulted directly in front, but held our ground until the enemy were within 30 feet of our line; in fact, some of their men were actually into our trenches, and having hand-to-hand fights with our men. So close had they got that I had ceased firing, and had just fixed my bayonet, and braced myself for a hand-to-hand fight, when Major Manigault, who was standing only a few paces to my right in rear of the line, gave the order to retreat. To this moment not a man had flinched, but at the order to retreat we broke for the rear, a few of the men reloading, turning, and firing back as they retreated. We halted at a ditch about 300 yards in the rear, where we found the battalion of cadets of the South Carolina Military Academy, and a company of the Second Regiment South Carolina Artillery, altogether about 185 men. We who had come out of the affair, feeling strong with this support, were anxious to return and try to drive back the Federals, but we had no such orders. And probably it was well we did not do so; for about 700 of the enemy were white men, and, as I afterwards learned, more than half of them Irish; and for about 267 men to tackle in open fight nearly three times their number, of that class of men, was too serious an undertaking to be attempted. Of course as to the 800 negroes the odds would not have been counted.

In this affair, of the 119 Confederates engaged, we lost 2 officers, of whom one was the gallant Major Manigault, severely wounded, and 37 men. The Federals lost 88. Our loss, as is shown, was about 33 per cent, of our force engaged, and this large mortality shows the heavy fire to which we were subjected. General Schimmelpfennig was in general command of the affair, but the assault was led by Colonel Bennett, who, mounted upon a sorrel horse, was a mark for several shots from our wretched rifles, but escaped unhurt.

The point where I was, just about the center of our line, at the causeway, was assaulted by a regiment of negro troops; and as they got near to us I distinctly heard their officers cursing them. I heard one officer say, "Keep in line there, you damned scoundrels!" and another, "Go on, you damned rascals, or I'll chop you down!" I saw the line waver badly when it got to within fifty yards of us, and on this occasion at least it did not look to me as if the negroes had the spirit to "fight nobly." I know it is a catch phrase elsewhere that the colored troops fought nobly, but I testify to what I saw and heard.

As to these negro troops, there was a sequel, nearly a year later. When I was peaceably in my office in Charleston one of my family's former slaves, "Taffy" by name, came in to see me. In former times he had been a waiter "in the house," and was about my own age; but in 1860, in the settlement of an estate, he with his parents, aunt, and brother were sold to Mr. John Ashe, and put on his plantation near Port Royal. Of course, when the Federals overran that section they took in all these "contrabands," as they were called, and Taffy became a soldier, and was in one of the regiments that assaulted us. In reply to a question from me, he foolishly said he "liked it." I only replied, "Well, I'm sorry I didn't kill you as you deserved, that's all I have to say." He only grinned.

On February 17, James Island was evacuated by the Confederates. Captain Matthews's company, formerly artillery but now infantry, was added to our two, and the battalion known as Manigault's, or the Eighteenth South Carolina Battalion. Major Manigault being wounded, and a prisoner, Capt. B. C. Webb, of Company A, was in command. Our line of march was through St. Andrew's Parish, across the bridge at Bee's Ferry, and along the old State road past Otranto across Goose Creek bridge, which was burned as soon as the last troops had crossed. Our men had started on this march with as much baggage as they thought they could carry, but they soon threw aside their impedimenta, and each settled down to his one blanket and such clothes as he actually wore. This march across the Carolinas was a very hard one. Our feet soon became blistered and sore, and many of us had no shoes, but trudged along in the cold and mud bare-footed as best we could. As I have already said, this was a cold winter, and it seemed to us that it rained and froze constantly. Not a particle of shelter did we have day or night. We would march all day, often in more or less rain, and at nightfall halt, and bivouac in the bushes, with every particle of food or clothing saturated. Within a few minutes after a halt, even under a steady rain, fires would be burning and quickly extend through the bivouac. If a civilian should attempt to kindle a fire with soaked wood under a steady rain, he would find his patience sorely tried, but the soldiers seemed to have no trouble.

After the fires were kindled we had to wait for the arrival of the commissary wagons; and it was not uncommon for a detail of men to be sent back in the night to help push the wagons through the mud; weary, footsore, hungry, in the dark, up to the knees in mud, heaving on the wheels of a stalled wagon! It was often late at night before the wagons were got up and rations could be obtained.

The men, of course, had to take turns in the use of the two or three frying-pans carried for each company, and when worn down by marching from early dawn until dark it was disheartening to have to wait one's turn, which often did not come until eleven o'clock at night. Frequently the men, rather than wait for the frying-pan, would fry their scraps of bacon on the coals, and make the cornmeal into dough, which they would wrap around the ends of their ramrods and toast in the fire. When the rations were drawn they consisted of only seven ounces of bacon and one pint of cornmeal to the man per day; and on several occasions even these could not be had, and the men went to sleep supperless, and with nothing to eat during the next day. The commissary department of the corps seemed to be unequal to the occasion, but this fact is not surprising when the rapidity of the march and desolation of the country are considered. Nevertheless, on several occasions the writer's command passed forty hours without receiving any rations, and once fifty hours, so that we were glad of an opportunity to beg at any farm-house for an ear of corn with which to alleviate our hunger.

All along the line of march large numbers of men were constantly deserting. Nightly, under cover of darkness, many would sneak from their bivouacs and go off, not to the enemy, but to their homes. But those of our men who remained were in good spirits.

The most influential cause of desertions was the news that reached the men of the great suffering of their wives and children at home, caused by the devastations of Sherman's army. Wherever this army passed from Atlanta to Savannah, and from Savannah through Columbia, Camden, and Cheraw, into North Carolina, a tract of country 30 miles wide was devastated. Farm-houses, barns, mills, etc., were all burned. Farm animals, poultry, etc., were all ruthlessly killed, and the women and children left to starve. This was most especially the case in South Carolina, where Sherman burned every town in his path--Walterboro, Barnwell, Midway, Bamberg, Blackville, Williston, Orangeburg, Columbia, Camden, and Cheraw. His cavalry leader, General Kilpatrick, attempted to burn Aiken, but was quickly beaten off by General Wheeler. When the men learned of the suffering of their women at home, many of them not unnaturally deserted, and went to their aid.

This terrible strain on the integrity of the men was the cause of a pitiable execution that took place on the line of march one day. A sergeant in the First Regiment Regulars, upon being reproved by his lieutenant for justifying and advising the desertion of the men, in a fit of temper attempted to shoot this officer. The line was immediately halted, the man was carried before a drum-head court martial, tried, and condemned to be shot on the spot. He was led out, tied with his back against a tree, and shot to death. It was an awful sight. I recollect that while awaiting death, the chaplain spoke to him, and offered to pray with him. His only reply was, "Preacher, I never listened to you in Fort Sumter, and I won't listen to you now."

All of the Confederate troops in South Carolina were under the command of Lieut.-Gen. T. J. Hardee, one of the ablest corps commanders in the Confederate service. He was nicknamed by the men, "Old Reliable." Our battalion, known also as the Eighteenth, with Major Bonneau's Georgia battalion, the battalion of Citadel Cadets, and the Second Regiment South Carolina Heavy Artillery constituted Brig.-Gen. Stephen Elliott's brigade, which, with Col. Alfred Rhett's brigade, constituted Maj.-Gen. Taliaferro's division. About March 1 we reached Cheraw, which we left two days after. As we left the town Sherman's army pressed us closely, and my recollection is that there was a sharp cavalry skirmish at the bridge, which we burned as soon as our troops had got across. I think Gen. M. C. Butler was the last man to cross, and galloped across it while it was actually in flames. At the State line the Citadel Cadets left us, and returned to South Carolina.

The route of the army lay through Fayetteville, N. C., where we crossed the Cape Fear River about a week later. After our men had crossed the bridge I was detailed from my company as one of a number to guard it, until all the wagons, etc., and the last of the cavalry had got across and it was burned, and when the bridge had been burned, one of the cavalrymen let me ride a led horse until I caught up with my command some distance in front. I remember his telling me of a very remarkable scrimmage that had just occurred on the other side in Fayetteville. It seems that before all of our wagons had got across the bridge, and our own cavalry had come up, a troop of about 70 Federal cavalry rode into the town to cut our wagons, etc., off from the bridge. General Hampton, with two of his staff officers and four couriers, in all only seven men, instantly dashed themselves against the Federals, and in a hand-to-hand fight killed eleven of them, captured as many more, and ran the rest out of town, and all without the loss of a single man. A very remarkable affair. I also heard that Hampton had caught a spy, who would be hanged when the army halted. I never heard anything more about it, as I had other things much more personal to engage my attention, and presumed he was strung up according to military usage.

But it seems that the man was not hanged. Wells, in "Hampton and His Cavalry in '64," gives the particulars of this wonderful affair, and states that the spy's name was David Day, and that he was turned over to some junior reserves for safe keeping and escaped. And there was an interesting sequel.

Thirty-one years after this fight, Hampton then being United States Railway Commissioner, and in Denver, Colorado, a stranger called upon him and explained that he was the David Day, the spy captured in the affair, dressed in Confederate uniform. Hampton congratulated him and said he was "glad the hanging did not come off." "So am I," replied the other, laughing.

At Fayetteville a few of the men of our company, I among them, procured Enfield rifles in place of the old Belgians we had, and also got ammunition to suit. The Enfield was a muzzle loader, but really one of the best guns of the day of its kind, and fairly accurate at 600 yards. About half of the company, however, had only the worthless Belgians to the end.

We were now so closely pursued by Sherman that on March 16 General Hardee, having about 6,000 men, determined to make a stand near Averysboro, between the Cape Fear and Black Rivers, where at daylight Taliaferro's division was attacked full in front by the Fourteenth and Twentieth Corps of the Federal Army, and Kilpatrick's cavalry, altogether about 20,000 men, General Sherman being personally on the field. The fighting was stubborn, at very close quarters, along the entire line. Twenty men, of whom I was one, were detailed from Elliott's brigade and attached to the left of Colonel Butler's First Regular Infantry, of Rhett's brigade, and there I served through the fight. We held our position in the open woods without protection for about three hours, and repulsed repeated assaults, until the left of the line, resting on a swamp along the Black River, which had been thought to be impassable, was turned by a heavy force of Federals, which had made their way through the swamp. This force, I afterwards learned, was Colonel Jones's regiment of Indiana cavalry, fighting as infantry, and armed with Spencer magazine carbines. Our whole force then fell back about 400 yards to a line of breastworks manned by McLaws's skeleton division, and which the Federals later in the day unsuccessfully assaulted. The Confederate loss in this battle was 500, and the next day some of Kilpatrick's cavalrymen, who had just been captured, told me that the Federal loss had been about 2,500. The Confederate forces engaged in this fight were Rhett's and Elliott's brigades, two artillery companies, and McLaws's division; and it was not the intention of General Hardee that Taliaferro's division should make such a stubborn stand-up fight. It was the intention that they should engage only as skirmishers, bring on the fight, and then fall back gradually into the breastworks, where the real fighting was to have been done. But Elliott's and Rhett's men had previously done only garrison and artillery duty on the coast, and this was their first experience in infantry fighting in the open, and they knew no better than to stand up and fight it out. Sherman in his report to the U. S. War Department of this affair expressed his surprise at the tenacity with which our men held their ground.

It was on this occasion that Col. Alfred Rhett was captured. It seems that a Captain Theo. F. Northrop, of a regiment of New York cavalry, was scouting with a few men at early dawn on the morning of the battle, and just in front of our lines came unexpectedly upon Generals Hampton and Taliaferro, with a group of aids. He and his men promptly made themselves invisible, and withdrew, and a few moments after Colonel Rhett rode up on them. He put his pistol in Colonel Rhett's face and said, "You must come with me." Colonel Rhett replied, "Who the hell are you?" and drew his pistol to fight. Instantly the men with Captain Northrop put their carbines to Colonel Rhett's head, and he, seeing how the case stood, gave up, and was carried to General Slocum, who sent him to General Sherman's headquarters. Captain Northrop has stated to me that Colonel Rhett told him that when first accosted he thought he was dealing with one of General Wheeler's men, and he would have shot him for his insolence. And he was always satisfied that if Colonel Rhett had realized at the very first that they were the enemy he met, he would have fought and tried to get away, although he would have probably been killed in the attempt.

Captain Northrop took Colonel Rhett's sword and pistol. The sword was lost some years ago in a railway train, but he has the pistol still, with Colonel Rhett's name engraved on it.

The fight took place in a piece of pine forest, and there were many trees that afforded protection to the men on both sides. The lines were very close together, so close that I could at times clearly observe the faces of the Federal soldiers opposite. At one time I was protected by a good pine tree and felt quite comfortable as the bullets thwacked against the other side of it; but within a few feet, to my left, was an old stump-hole full of dry leaves, and the bullets striking in those leaves made a terrible racket. I stood the racket as long as I could, but finally could stand it no longer, and contrary to common sense abandoned my friendly tree and stepped a few paces to the right, away from that noisy stump-hole. There I stood unprotected in the open, but not many minutes before I was struck full in the middle of my body and knocked down to a sitting posture. My blanket was rolled in a tight roll, not over three inches thick, and being of course on my left shoulder, and across my body downwards to the right, had saved my life. The ball had passed through the roll, and striking a button on my jacket had stopped, and as I dropped it fell down, flattened out of all shape. I lay on the ground for a few moments, paralyzed by the blow, and I recollect hearing a comrade, who received a bullet through the brain only a few moments afterwards, call out, "Ford's killed." I gathered myself back into a sitting posture and replied, "No, I'm not. I think I'm all right." But the pain was intense, as every boy knows who in a boxing bout gets a lick in "the short wind." In a few moments I was back again on my feet, and resumed my place in line, although suffering considerable pain and nausea. For some time after I carried on my body a black and blue spot the size of a dollar.

I recollect noticing the conspicuous coolness of Maj. Thos. Huguenin, of the First Infantry. During the hardest of the fighting he walked slowly immediately behind the line in which I was, smoking his pipe as calmly as if he had been at home.

Here an incident occurred that showed how, under the most serious condition, with death and imminent danger all around, a soldier's mind is often diverted by the most trivial thing. It is a strange phase of the mind which I have heard old soldiers, who have seen much hard fighting, comment upon. During the sharpest of the fighting, a hog started from the swamp on my left and ran squealing and terrified directly down the front of our line, presenting quite a ludicrous spectacle, and I heard a number of men, as he passed along the line, whoop at him and call out, "Go it, piggy!" "Save your bacon, piggy!" etc. But piggy had not got more than a hundred feet past me when he turned a somersault, kicked a moment or two, and lay still. He had evidently stopped a bullet.

An incident showing the same phase of mind was told me by a member of the Fourteenth South Carolina Volunteers, as occurring during the great battle of Gettysburg. As Kershaw's brigade, on the second day, was advancing to the assault of Little Round Top, a company of the Fourteenth was among those thrown forward as skirmishers, and as they advanced across the field toward the Federals, they came to a large patch of ripe blackberries. The men with one accord immediately turned their attention to the ripe fruit which was in great abundance on every side, and, stooping down, kept picking, and eating berries, as they went slowly forward, actually into action. And so much was their attention distracted by the blackberries that they were actually within 50 yards of the enemy's advanced line before they realized their position, when they rushed forward with a yell, and got possession of a slightly elevated roadway, which they held until the main line came up.

During the assault on the breastworks, Capt. S. Porcher Smith, who was standing just behind me, was shot through the face and fell. The litter-bearers picked him up, and as they were carrying him to the rear, one of them was shot and fell, and Captain Smith rolled headlong out of the litter. I well remember this incident.

We held our position until about midnight, when we fell back to a place called Elevation. This night's march was a very trying one. The road was terribly cut up by the wagons and artillery, and as the rains had been frequent it seemed as if the clay mud was knee deep. We floundered along for about six hours, and at daylight on the 17th halted and were given some rations. Most of us had not had a morsel of food since the night of the 15th. It happened in this way. On the night of the 15th we cooked our cornmeal and bacon and ate our supper, saving half for the next day. At the early break of day on the 16th, as I was warming my bacon and corn pone in a frying-pan before eating some of it, the Federals attacked us, and we had to fall into line instantly. So I had to leave the frying-pan with all my food as it was on the fire and go through that day's hardship, and until the next day at Elevation, without any food whatever. It had been General Hardee's intention to give us two or three days' rest at Elevation, but it having been ascertained that the Federal army was pushing toward Goldsboro, Gen. Jos. E. Johnston, then only recently put in command of the Confederate troops in North Carolina, ordered General Hardee to hurry forward and intercept Sherman near Bentonville. So about 3 o'clock on the morning of the 19th we were aroused and hurried on toward Bentonville, where we arrived a little before three in the afternoon, having made the 20 miles in rather less than 12 hours.

It was on the march this day that an amusing incident occurred. I had not owned a pair of socks since I left James Island a month before, and my shoes were in such tattered condition that I could keep uppers and soles together only by tying them with several leather strings, but most of my toes stuck out very conspicuously. I had read of the importance that great generals attached to the good condition of infantry soldiers' feet, and hence the aphorism, "A marching man is no stronger than his feet," and I determined to keep mine in good condition if possible. I knew that frequent bathing prevented blistering; therefore, every night before going to sleep, and often on the march during the day I would bathe my feet, so that they were never blistered, and I kept well up with my company in marching. On this day as we crossed a little stream, according to my custom I stepped aside, and pulling off my shoes soaked my feet in the running water. General Hardee and his staff rode by at the moment. He checked his horse and called sternly to me, "You there, sir! What are you doing straggling from your command? I suppose you are one of those men who behaved so badly at Averysboro." (A few men had been guilty of misconduct there.) I sprang to my feet, and saluting him said, "Excuse me, General, but you are speaking to the wrong man, sir. I have never misbehaved, and never straggled. I am only bathing my feet to prevent them from blistering. There is my company right ahead there, sir, and I always keep up with it." My injured tone and evident sincerity struck the old man, and he saluted me with the words, "I beg your pardon, sir," and rode on. He was a courtly and knightly soldier, and a great favorite with the men.