CHAPTER II
ENTER THE SERVICE—TROUBLE ABOUT ARMS—CAUSE OF SECESSION
The company was drilled from time to time, but was not armed until it entered the service about the 1st of May, 1861, at Lynchburg, Va., enlisting for one year. It was mustered into service by (then) Col. Jubal A. Early, as one of the ten companies of the Twenty-eighth Regiment of Virginia Infantry, Col. Robt. T. Preston, commanding. At that time there were about eighty-five men in the company, made up of the young men from several miles around Pigeon Run. I had one brother, Geo. W., called "Coon"; a brother-in-law, Robt. M. Cocke, and many kinsmen and connections in the company; the young Joneses, the Hobsons, the Baileys, and others were relations of myself or wife. We were all friends and neighbors, and many were former schoolmates. Most of them young unmarried men, many in their teens. I had been married not quite five months when the war came on.
None of the officers or men had any military education, but little training in drilling and none in camp life, and were all, officers and men, quite green and inexperienced in military affairs generally. But we all knew how to handle guns and how to shoot straight.
These young men made as brave and faithful soldiers as any in the army; always ready to do their duty, to go wherever ordered; standing firm in action. But I think none of them liked to fight just for the fun of it; I did not for one, I well know. It was of this class of men that the army of Northern Virginia was made up.
That army was composed of the very pick and flower of the Southern youth, and made a name and fame that will live always.
At the beginning of the war, at Manassas, Gen. G. T. Beauregard issued a general order, in which he said that strict military rules of discipline would not be enforced, that the general commanding would depend upon the good breeding of the men, rather than harsh military discipline, to insure good order and efficiency in the army. This kind of discipline prevailed all through the war. General Grant soon after he met Lee in the Wilderness said in a dispatch to Washington that the Rebel army was very hard to drive, so well was it disciplined. It was not discipline that made this army so effective, but rather the courageous and patriotic spirit of the men who carried the guns.
TROUBLE ABOUT ARMS
As before said, the company had not been armed up to the time of enlistment. The company was organized as a rifle company; we expected to be armed with the "Mississippi Rifle."
Soon after we got to Lynchburg it was learned that rifles could not be procured, the only arms available being old flint-lock muskets changed to percussion. All guns in those days were muzzle-loaders; the breech-loaders had not been invented.
We were much disappointed, and many of the men very much disgruntled, at the prospects of going to war with those antiquated, cumbersome and inferior arms. Other companies were in the same predicament, and many of the men threatened to disband and go home. The companies had not yet been mustered into service. It was a very critical time in the military experience of all. The companies were formed in line and addressed by some of their officers. Captain Clement made a speech to his company, and I spoke briefly and earnestly to my comrades, telling them that the State of Virginia was doing the very best she could to arm and equip her soldiers, that they might go forth to meet the invaders of her sacred soil; that it was our duty to go to the front with the best arms available, even if armed with nothing but "rocks and sticks," and closed by calling on every man who was willing to go to war under the existing circumstances to follow. I marched out through the camp; the whole company following.
THE CAUSE OF SECESSION
I had fully determined if the company disbanded to join another immediately, as I knew it was the duty of every son of Virginia to enlist under her banner when called. I have never been of any other mind since, and if it were all to do over again I should act in the same manner. I never thought of deserting to the enemy during the war nor since. While I was not an original secessionist and voted for the Union candidates for the Convention, yet when the North determined to wage war on the South; when Lincoln called on Virginia for her quota of troops to coerce the seceding States, and when Virginia seceded, it did not take me two seconds to cast my lot with Virginia and the other Southern States. Here I took my stand then, now and forever, and will never give aid in any way to those who were enemies to my State and section, many of whom are still haters and traducers of the Southern people, the avowed purpose at the close of the war being to put the negro, the late slave, over the white people of the South, to rule and govern as brave and chivalrous a people as ever lived on God's green earth. To make the highest type of the Anglo-Saxon subject to the African! Ye gods! What a crime was attempted! And for a time the outrage was in force. This, if nothing else, justified the South in its attempt at separation from the North. The people of the South had gotten tired of the sectional and domineering, hectoring spirit of the North, especially the New England Yankees, manifested in many ways before the war, and determined to sever the bonds that bound them together; peacefully if they could, forcibly if they must. They did not want war, but the North forced the issue. The question of slavery in the Southern States was not an issue at the beginning of the war, as many believe.
In the presidential election of 1860, the right of the slaveholder to take his slaves—property recognized by the Constitution and laws of the land—into the territories, was an issue made by the Republican party, but no question as to slavery where it already existed, was involved. On the other hand, Lincoln, in his inaugural address on the 4th of March, 1861, expressly declared that he had no authority to interfere with slavery in the States, and no intention of doing so. And not until the promulgation of Lincoln's emancipation proclamation, which went into effect on the 1st of January, 1863, made without shadow of right or law, and in direct violation of his solemn declaration and oath of office, was this issue raised, as a war measure, to strengthen the Union cause, which was then on the wane, among the abolitionists at home and abroad. The New England Yankees, who first imported the negro to America, and who had sold their slaves to the Southern planters, because slave labor was unprofitable at the North, and who had engaged in the African slave trade until this was prohibited by law, at the instigation of the South and against the protest of New England shipping interests which was largely engaged in the African slave trade, and had become rabid abolitionists, now demanded emancipation as the price of their loyalty to the Union cause.
France had all the while been friendly inclined towards the South, and was urging England to join her in the recognition of the Southern Confederacy as an independent nation. England, who had years before abolished slavery in all her provinces, and was known to be a nation of abolitionists, was now appealed to, and urged to stand for emancipation in not recognizing the independence of the South. The cotton factories of England were closed, the Southern ports being blockaded, the operatives were clamoring for work or food; bread riots prevailed in the manufacturing cities, the people urging the recognition of the South, so that the ports could be opened and cotton, work, and food procured.
Henry Ward Beecher and other abolitionists went to England, faced and spoke to these howling mobs, appealing to them in behalf of the Union cause and the Southern slaves. Not so much, I opine, for the good of the slaves as for the success of the Union cause. They all knew if the Southern ports were opened the South would be victorious.
These are the true facts and the reasons for Lincoln's emancipation proclamation, as I verily believe, and well known at the time. New England was always jealous of the South, opposed everything that would extend the influence and power of the Southern States: fought bitterly the acquisition of the Louisiana territory and also the annexation of Texas, because it would tend to destroy the "balance of power," as they called it; and one of these states, Massachusetts, threatened to withdraw from the Union, boldly claiming the right so to do. As all know, New England was the manufacturing section of the country—the South, the agricultural section. New England wanted to control the policy of the government as to the tariff, and thereby protect their industries, and could not brook the extension of Southern influence and power against their protection policy. They still to this day maintain this policy, but now we are beginning to hear the rumblings of discontent in the West, and I am curious to know what will be the result. I know one thing—that the Yankees of New England will hold on to their pet policies, "like grim death to a dead nigger." What the great West will do, future events only can develop. The North has held the West in political slavery, by abusing and vilifying the South, and by waving the "bloody shirt"; but that old rag is about worn out. I repeat, I am curious to know the result, and want to live to see the end of it.
We remained in Lynchburg until about the 1st of June, 1861, doing camp duty and drilling. Several of the company, including my brother and myself, had negro cooks the first year, after which, few, if any, remained, except ours, who stayed until the last. Rations became too scarce to divide with cooks, so the men did their own cooking, forming messes of from four to six and eight men to a mess, cooking by turns when in camp. We also had two or three company cooks detailed from the company, who did much of the cooking when not in permanent camp, one of whom, Isaac Walthall, acted as company commissary, drawing the rations from the regimental commissary and distributed them to the messes, when in camp, or cooking them and distributing to men when in line of battle or near the enemy.
Our camp equipments, as far as cooking facilities were concerned, were very poor, and never much better.
At first, we had only sheet-iron pans and boilers, called camp kettles, which did very well for boiling beef, but the sheet-iron pans were very poor for baking bread and frying meat. No wonder the biscuits were called "sinkers," being burned on the outside, tough and clammy through and through. We afterwards got ovens and skillets, "spiders," as the Tar Heels called them, and had better bread. We were in camp in a grove west of College Hill, which was afterwards the fair grounds, and is now Miller Park.