Part 7

There was considerable excitement in the city, in consequence of an order that the pleasure horses of the citizens should be impressed for the use of the artillery. To this there was a very decided objection, and every manner of device was resorted to save the pet animals. Some good people attempted to run off their horses into the country, but pickets had been stationed along the roads and the fugitives were easily captured. When the impressing officers went around to examine the horses in town, they found horses in the cellars and even in the dining-rooms. A carriage containing three ladies and drawn by a pair of fine bay horses was going down Sycamore Street when a guard ordered the driver to halt, and told the ladies that it was his unpleasant duty to impress the team. The ladies, who were young and pretty, declared that the horses should not be taken. They tried both entreaty and expostulation, but the guard was inexorable. The ladies then declared that if the horses were taken they must be taken too, and thought they had gained the victory. The guard did go away, but he quickly unhitched the traces, and took the horses with him, leaving the ladies in their carriage in all their glory. In some cases the impressment was useless, as delicate horses were taken which were of no use for service in the field.

The battle of Chancellorsville had been fought during our stay around Petersburg, and the command was then hurried back to the neighborhood of Fredericksburg. It was in May, 1863, I think, that I returned there. The Gettysburg campaign began, but before this I saw the review of the whole cavalry of the army at Brandy Station. The enemy came in upon us shortly afterwards, and, in the very beginning of the cavalry fighting, Colonel Sol. Williams, of the 1st North Carolina, was killed. He had been married to Miss Maggie Pegram, Captain Robert B. Pegram’s eldest daughter, only about two weeks before. The Adjutant of his regiment was John Pegram, Captain Pegram’s eldest son, who was killed at Petersburg in 1864.

The march from Culpepper Court House through Chester Gap, in the Blue Ridge, was very delightful to me, as the weather was fine and the scenery was beautiful. I was particularly struck with the scenery at Front Royal and Shenandoah. The Valley of Virginia then showed few signs of war.

This time we crossed the Potomac at Williamsport. It was a dreary day! The rain was falling in torrents. General Lee, General Longstreet and General Pickett were riding together, followed by their staffs. When we reached the Maryland shore we found several patriotic ladies with small feet and big umbrellas waiting to receive the Confederates who were coming a second time to deliver down-trodden Maryland. As General Lee rode out of the water, one of the ladies, with a face like a door-knocker, stepped forward and said: “This is General Lee, I presume?” General Lee gave an affirmative reply, and the lady continued: “General Lee, allow me to bid you welcome to Maryland, and allow me to present to you these ladies who were determined to give you this reception--Miss Brown, General Lee; Miss Jones, General Lee; Miss Smith, General Lee.” General Lee thanked them courteously for their attention, and introduced General Longstreet and General Pickett to Miss Brown, Miss Jones and Miss Smith. This was not the end of the affair, however, as one of the ladies had an enormous wreath which she was anxious to place on the neck of General Lee’s charger. The horse objected to it seriously, and the wreath was turned over to one of the couriers. The next morning we went into Hagerstown, where more ladies were in waiting. There were more presentations to General Lee and more introductions for Generals Longstreet and Pickett. One fair lady asked General Lee for a lock of his hair. General Lee said that he really had none to spare, and he was quite sure, besides, that they would prefer such a souvenir from one of his younger officers, and that he was confident that General Pickett would be pleased to give them one of his curls. General Pickett did not enjoy the joke, for he was known everywhere by his corkscrew ringlets, which were not particularly becoming when the rain made them lank in such weather as we then had. The ladies did not press the request. When we resumed our march more ladies came to be presented, but this time there were no petitions for a lock of Pickett’s hair.

It was some satisfaction for me to pass once more through Greencastle, where I had been bedeviled by both men and women when taken there by the cavalry who captured me the year before. Thence we went to Chambersburg, and I was amazed to find that hundreds of sturdy well-dressed citizens were still in the town. In Virginia there was hardly a white man to be found who was not in the Confederate service, excepting the sick and those who were too old or too infirm for any sort of military duty; and it gave us a realizing sense of the strength of the enemy to see that they could have so large armies in the field and leave so many lusty men in peace at home.

The army behaved superbly in Pennsylvania. The orders against straggling and looting were strict, and they were cheerfully obeyed. It was on the march in Pennsylvania that I saw General Lee, one morning, dismount from his horse and replace the rails of the fence of a wheat field which had been thrown down by some of our men. It was the best rebuke that he could have given to the offenders.

At Chambersburg I paid a visit to the jail in which I had been confined, and found a number of Yankee soldiers in the yard. Had I been so minded, I might have played upon them the malicious trick of which the Chambersburg boys made us the objects when we were there. Riding through the town, I recognized one of the citizens who had been peculiarly kind to me when I was a prisoner, and who had given me then an excellent dinner. I thought I would catechise him a little, and called out in a loud voice: “Halt, there!” He seemed rather nervous, and asked what I would have. “Do you live here?” I asked. He said that he did. “Did you live here last year?” He replied in the affirmative. “Were you here in September last, when a number of Confederate prisoners were brought in?” He said, “Yes, I was, but I did nothing against them.” Looking sternly at him I said, “Do you remember me?” He said that he did not. “Well, sir,” I continued, “I was one of those prisoners.” By this time he was badly frightened, and I hastened to relieve him by saying that my only object was to thank him for his kindness to me, and ascertain if there was anything I could do for him in return. He thanked me, but said that the town was so quiet that he needed no protection.

Late in the evening I rode out of the town, and it was dark before I came back. I was riding quite rapidly, and my horse, striking his foot against one of the stepping stones in the middle of the street, fell and threw me about ten feet over his head. As I went down I heard a woman exclaim: “Thank God, one of those wicked Rebels has broken his neck.” I was not hurt, and my horse was not much injured, so I remounted and, riding to the sidewalk, informed my unseen foe that the pleasure she anticipated was, at least, postponed.

The people generally were evidently greatly surprised at the devotion of our men to General Lee, and made some rough remarks about it. One old lady called out to an officer of ours as he strode by: “You are marching mighty proudly now, but you will come back faster than you went.” “Why so, old lady?” he asked. “Because you put your trust in General Lee and not in the Lord Almighty,” she replied.

I should mention here that the horse which I was riding was a fine black gelding, which I had bought on our way to the Valley of Virginia. A more thoroughly trustworthy animal I could not have had, and he stood fire splendidly. I had two other horses at this time, but always rode in action the black gelding I have just spoken of. I had intended to have given him some fancy name, but my boy Aleck dubbed him “Pete” the day I bought him, and by that name he went.

XXI.

On the march from Chambersburg we learned that General Meade had been placed in command of the Union Army, and we pushed on towards Gettysburg, where A. P. Hill’s Corps had been heavily engaged. This day I was prostrated by sickness, and rode in an ambulance until nearly night, when I managed to get on my horse and go down to the battle-field. Longstreet himself has described admirably the fighting the next day; and, careless as he generally was of himself under fire, he nowhere else exposed himself more recklessly. One charge he led in person, and some prisoners whom we captured, when they learned who it was that had ridden in front of our advancing line, said they might expect to get whipped when a Corps commander exposed himself in that way to show his men how to fight.

The following day, July 3, the ever-memorable battle of Gettysburg was fought. Every arrangement was made to shell the enemy’s position, on Cemetery Hill, and follow this up by an attack in force. The whole of the long range guns in the army were placed in battery along the low range of hills which we occupied, and at three o’clock the cannonading began. The enemy made prompt reply. Three or four hundred pieces of artillery were being fired as rapidly as the cannoneers could load them. Being in the centre of the front line, I had an excellent view of the fight. It was a hellish scene. The air was dotted with clouds of smoke where shells had burst, and the fragments of shell and the solid shot were screaming and shrieking in every direction. Through it all, General Longstreet was as unmoved as a statue, watching placidly the enemy’s lines. In the meanwhile Pickett’s Division had been formed in readiness for the charge. Three of his brigades were present; those of Kemper, Armistead and Garnett, composed exclusively of Virginians. Prayers were offered up in front of Armistead’s brigade and Garnett’s brigade, before the advance began. Garnett remarked to Armistead: “This is a desperate thing to attempt.” Brave old Armistead replied: “It is; but the issue is with the Almighty, and we must leave it in his hands.” Just then a hare which had been lying in the bushes, sprang up and leaped rapidly to the rear. A gaunt Virginian, with an earnestness that struck a sympathetic chord in many a breast, yelled out: “Run old heah; if I were an old heah I would run too.” The artillery firing ceased, and the order to advance was given. Pickett was in the centre, with Wilcox’s Division on the right, and Pender’s, commanded by Pettigrew, on the left. The thin grey line of Virginians moved as steadily as on parade, the battle flags catching a deeper red from the sun. Well in front of their brigades were Kemper, and Garnett, and Armistead. The last named was bare-headed, his grey locks floating in the breeze. Waving his sabre and hat in hand, he cheered on his men. They did what men could do; but more had been expected of them than mortal men could accomplish. Armistead was mortally wounded inside the enemy’s works. Garnett was killed instantly. Kemper was severely wounded, and supposed to be dying. My recollection is that only one field officer in Pickett’s Division escaped unhurt.

The attack had been made and had failed. There was a terrible gap in our line, and the enemy threatened to advance. In the meanwhile the staff officers were busily engaged in rallying the men, who had made their way back from the front. I suppose that I was the first man to whom Pickett spoke when he reached the line. With tears in his eyes, he said to me: “Why did you not halt my men here? Great God, where, oh! where is my division?” I told him that he saw around him what there was left of it. General Lee, of course, took all the blame on himself. As was well said by a writer at this time: “General Lee was grand on the smoke-crowned hills of Petersburg, on the sanguinary field of Chancellorsville, and on the tragic plains of Manassas; but when at Gettysburg he told his men, ‘It is my fault’, he rose above his race, and communed with the angels of heaven.” That sad night not more than three hundred men remained to us of what had been one of the finest divisions in the service. The remnants of the companies were commanded by corporals and sergeants; regiments by lieutenants; and a brigade by a Major. Never had Virginia suffered a heavier blow. The division was composed of the flower of her children, and there was weeping and desolation in every part of the Old Dominion.

It was in every way an ugly time. There was always considerable difficulty in obtaining a sufficient supply of artillery ammunition. The first trouble was in making it, and the second was in finding transportation for it. At no time did we have so large a reserve as was necessary. What was true of the artillery was true in a less degree of the infantry. There was even some delay on our march into Pennsylvania in consequence of the detention of a train of ordnance wagons, which did not arrive when expected. A brigade of infantry with a battery of artillery, was sent as an escort; for had that train been captured it would have been risking too much to advance farther. The terrible cannonade on the third day at Gettysburg exhausted the whole of the artillery ammunition in reserve. My recollection is, that there was no long range ammunition left except what was in the caissons and limber chests. Under such circumstances, and having lost so heavily in the attack on Cemetery Hill, General Lee determined to retreat to Virginia; but we lay one day at least on the field awaiting the attack which Meade did not venture to make. The Union forces had suffered severely; but they could stand the loss of men better than we could; and they had a right to claim Gettysburg as a decisive victory, for we had failed utterly in what we had undertaken.

The march back to the Potomac was dreary and miserable indeed. The rain fell in torrents. The clothing of the men was worn and tattered, and too many of them were without shoes. It was a heart-breaking business, and gloom settled down upon the army. The enemy’s cavalry made an attempt to cut us off at Williamsport, where the river was too high for fording, and they would have succeeded but for the gallantry of the wagoners and “Company Q” (the stragglers, and the disabled men with the trains), who had a free fight with them, and drove them back. We crossed the river on a pontoon bridge, leaving the cavalry in the entrenchments at Williamsport, and plodded our way back towards Winchester. Just about this time we received the news of the fall of Vicksburg. It needed only this to intensify the feeling that the star of the Confederacy was setting.

Passing from grave to gay, I may mention here that a sad trick was played on me by Captain Innes Randolph, an Engineer officer at our head-quarters. While we were at Bunker Hill, on the way to Winchester, he invited me to dine with him, saying that his mess had a very fine ’possum, which would be a novelty to me if I had not tasted that succulent dish. It was finely served, and merited the encomiums that Randolph lavished upon it. He was careful, besides, to tell me that I should find, as I did, that it tasted very much like roast sucking pig. Two or three years afterwards Randolph told me that this famous dish was not ’possum after all, but a sucking pig which he had bagged in the neighborhood, and which he had dubbed ’possum in order to spare me the pain of banqueting on a dish that I knew to be ---- I was going to say “stolen,” but we called it “captured” in the army.

Resuming our march, we passed through Millwood and Chester Gap, where we had a slight skirmish with the enemy. One of our brigades charged across a field which was thick with blackberry bushes. The fruit was ripe, and as the men moved forward firing they would pick the blackberries and hastily eat them. No troops ever showed more indifference to danger, or took fighting more as a matter of course, than the veterans of the Army of Northern Virginia.

We went into camp at Culpepper Court House, and remained there a considerable time.

XXII.

The army rapidly recovered its tone, and we heard that one corps of the three was to be sent to Tennessee. The choice fell upon Longstreet, who took with him Hood’s and McLaws’ Divisions of Infantry and Alexander’s Battalion of Artillery. Pickett’s Division was left in Virginia to recruit. There was much for me to do preparing for the change of base, and I was permitted to remain a day or two in Richmond on the way to the West. I stayed in Richmond at the house of Mr. John H. Tyler, the father of Henry Tyler, who was one of the Ordnance Sergeants with us, and a most excellent fellow. From the first time that I went to Richmond after I made his acquaintance, Mr. and Mrs. Tyler made their house like a home to me; and until the end of the war, and long afterward, a chair was kept as regularly for me at their table as though I had been one of their sons. Their generous and unaffected kindness to me, year after year, was more than I could ever hope to repay. God bless them.

I was a day or two later than the corps in leaving Richmond; but the cars were crowded with our soldiers, and when we reached South Carolina we received attentions which had long ceased to be common in Virginia, where the passage of large bodies of troops was an every day occurrence. At Sumter, South Carolina, a number of ladies were waiting for us on the platform, armed with bouquets of flowers and with well filled baskets of cake, fruit and more substantial fare. There was an abundance, too, of lemonade for the dusty soldiers. But the good things were for the soldiers only. Some ladies in the car were evidently faint with long fasting, and a civilian who was with them asked a very pretty girl, who had a large dish of cake and sandwiches, to give him a piece of the cake for a lady in the car who really needed it. With the mercilessness which one woman usually shows to another, the fair young patriot told him jauntily that everything there was for the soldiers, and that ladies and civilians must look out for themselves. Our men were rather unaccustomed to so much kindness, in these days, but they enjoyed it thoroughly. At Augusta, and at Atlanta, also, we were most hospitably received.

I overtook the command and General Longstreet shortly after their arrival at Chickamauga Station, and we had the satisfaction of knowing that it was “the Virginia troops,” as they were called, to whom was mainly due the glory of the victory we won at Chickamauga. Our loss was severe, and Colonel Manning, my immediate superior, was slightly wounded and placed _hors de combat_. This left me in name, as in fact, in charge of the Ordnance Department of the corps.

I wish that I could remember precisely what took place the next day, when I went with Major Walton to find General McLaws, in the neighborhood of Chattanooga. We were exceedingly anxious that he should drive right on after the enemy, but he made the objection at once that the movement might not be successful, and would be sure to be attended with heavy loss. He said, however, that he would make the advance if we gave him an imperative order in General Longstreet’s name to do so. This order we declined to give, to my present regret, and General McLaws contented himself with asking General Longstreet to send him some more ambulances. When we reached General Longstreet late that night, and told him what General McLaws had said, his only remark was a wish that the ambulances were in a hotter place than Chattanooga. Longstreet did not love McLaws, and preferred charges against him afterwards for neglect of duty in the attack on Fort Sanders, at Knoxville.

The whole army came up, and the investment of Chattanooga began. Our head-quarters were in the low ground, which was always under water in winter, but we managed tolerably well as long as fine weather lasted. Soon the rain began to fall steadily, and it was a difficult matter so to arrange the ditches around our tents as to save ourselves from being washed away at night.

Frank Vizetelly, the artist and correspondent of the _Illustrated London Times_, joined us here; and with him was Captain Ross, of the Austrian service. Ross was of Scotch descent, but was born in Austria, and belonged to one of the crack light cavalry regiments. There was a good deal of merry-making, and it was no uncommon thing to see a half dozen officers, late at night, dancing the “The Perfect Cure,” which was one of the favorite songs of the day in the London music halls, and was introduced to our notice by Vizetelly.

There were sharp discussions occasionally as to what should take place when the war should be over and the independence of the Confederate States was assured. Major Walton I had always disliked heartily, and in one of our conversations he said that, when the Confederate States enjoyed their own government, they did not intend to have any “d--d foreigners” in the country. I asked him what he expected to become of men like myself, who had given up their own country in order to render aid to the Confederacy. He made a flippant reply, which I answered rather warmly, and he struck at me. I warded off the blow, and slapped his face. The next morning I sent him a challenge by Captain Ross. Walton, however, did not want a fight at this time, and offered to make an ample apology in writing. A day or two passed, and as no apology came I sent Ross to him again. Walton now took the position that he had been hasty in his action, and that if he had not promised to do it he would not make an apology at all. Ross told him very quietly, in his quaint way, that he must please consider everything blotted out that had taken place since he had borne the challenge, and that we would begin it again at that point and settle the affair in any way that Walton preferred. This brought Walton to terms, and he made the apology I required.

XXIII.

The position of the army in front of Chattanooga was not as strong as we supposed, and the enemy succeeded in reopening their communications and obtaining supplies. There was no longer any expectation that we should be able to starve them out, and it was determined to make a diversion in another direction. The plan was to detach Longstreet, who should pass down the Sweet Water Valley and capture Burnside’s forces which were in the neighborhood of Knoxville. Before going away, I was exceedingly anxious to complete the equipment of our corps, but Bragg’s Chief of Ordnance, Colonel Oladowski, was inordinately fond of red tape, and I should have been in bad plight but for a quantity of Enfield rifles I had prudently brought from Virginia with me. Oladowski could outcurse any man in the army I ever met, except Jubal Early and M. W. Gary. It was one of his boasts that he had “evacuate Murphreysboro with zee whole army and lose only one grindstone.” It disgusted him, too, that Colonel Manning should have been wounded. He said to me: “My friend! what for Colonel Manning he go into zee fight?” I told him it was the custom of our Ordnance officers to do so. “I tell you sar,” said Oladowski, “he not go into zee fight for love zee country. I know! I know! he go into zee fight to get promotion and zee little furlough. Vell! vell! vell! I wish I was in h--ll ten year before dis war begin!”

I learned afterwards that Oladowski was the Ordnance Sergeant at the Baton Rouge Arsenal at the time the war began, and, of course, not a man of education or position. He was a good-hearted fellow, but I fear that after the disastrous defeat of Bragg’s army at the battle of Missionary Ridge, after Longstreet’s departure, he could not well have congratulated himself on having lost “only one grindstone.”