Part 8

Early in November we left Chattanooga, and marched by the Sweet Water Valley and Loudon to Knoxville. One of General Longstreet’s most serious faults as a military commander was shown at this time. To his knowledge we were to cut loose from our communications, with no certainty that we should soon be able to re-establish them. It would indeed be easy enough to live upon the country, but we could not hope to find in the fields or the corn-cribs either small-arm or artillery ammunition. Nevertheless, he gave me no notice whatever that any extended movement was to be made, nor did he warn me that I must be prepared to supply the army with ammunition for the campaign. Not one word was said to me by him on the subject. I had an inkling, however, of what was going on, and obtained ample supplies. Had I not done so, we should have been in an awkward predicament by the time that we reached Knoxville. Had anything been lacking, it is certain that the blame would have been placed on me. It is evident that it was Longstreet’s duty, as a prudent commander, to confer with the chiefs of the several staff departments, ascertain from them what was the condition of their supplies, and inform them what was likely to be required. If he had not such confidence in them as would permit him to give them the necessary information, he should have removed them and put in their places officers whom he could trust. It is certain that he could have given the requisite instructions without divulging the details of the movement.

At Loudon we found that the enemy had destroyed the bridge across the Tennessee River and had smashed some locomotives and cars which had been left there. The process was very simple. The trains were made up, and when there was a full head of steam the throttles of the locomotives were opened, and they were allowed to whirl along the track until they reached the parapet of the bridge, whence they bounded into the river below.

Crossing the river on an unstable pontoon bridge, we found ourselves within striking distance of Burnside’s Corps at Lenoir Station. For two days there was sharp fighting with the enemy’s rear guard. Then our opportunity came. McLaws was ordered to press on to Campbell’s Station, while Hood’s Division, under Jenkins, took the road which follows the line of the railroad to Lenoir Station. Jenkins made a vigorous advance, and Burnside found it impracticable to move all his artillery and wagons. Some hundred of the latter, loaded with subsistence stores, ammunition and implements, were disabled and abandoned. The cannon powder lay on the ground four or five inches deep. It was a pleasant place where to smoke a quiet pipe, and several of my men indulged themselves in that way to my great discomfort. The expectation was that McLaws would reach the intersecting road in time to cut off Burnside, but McLaws was behind time, as usual, and we did not bag our game. General Sam Jones has just published an account of the Knoxville campaign, and I give here what he says about the failure to intercept Burnside:

The march on the 16th was a race for position, but a slow one, because of the condition of the roads. McLaws was ordered to march as rapidly as possible to the intersection of the road on which he was marching with that which Jenkins was following, in the hope of reaching it before the Federals. General Longstreet was eager to force his adversary to accept battle, and General Burnside just as eager to avoid it until he could reach Knoxville.

The distance from Lenoir to Campbell’s Station is about eleven miles. Jenkins’ instructions were to press the enemy vigorously and do his utmost to bring him to bay. The advance and rear guards were several times hotly engaged, the latter halting only long enough to cover the retreat and then following. About 11 o’clock Jenkins’ division reached the junction of the two roads about a mile from Campbell’s Station. McLaws’ Division had not arrived, and the Federals had passed it.

General McLaws’ orders were to move rapidly to Campbell’s Station and endeavor to reach that point before the Federals. His march during this day, the 16th, was as rapid as the condition of the roads would permit, and not materially retarded by the troops that General Hartranft had sent forward for the purpose, a small body of Colonel Hart’s cavalry keeping back the enemy’s skirmisher’s with but slight loss. By the time McLaws reached the vicinity of Campbell’s Station the Federals had been so closely pressed by Hood’s Division as to be obliged to face about and form line of battle, which they did about a mile from the station. When McLaws arrived he was ordered to deploy three of his brigades in front of the enemy and to put his other brigade (Humphrey’s) upon a ridge on his left, to threaten the enemy’s right, but not to show his division beyond the woods skirting the plain towards Campbell’s Station. Colonel Alexander placed his artillery in position and General Jenkins ordered three of his brigades, McLaws’ and Anderson’s, supported by Benning’s, around the enemy’s left flank, the movement being concealed by a wooded ridge, with instructions to attack vigorously. McLaws was to attack in front when he should hear Jenkins’ guns.

This flank movement, which did not escape the vigilance of the Federals, caused them to fall back, a rather difficult and hazardous move to make in the face or an enemy. McLaws’ Division advanced promptly and brought them to a stand in their second and stronger position, about a mile further towards Knoxville. The ground over which McLaws’ and Anderson’s Brigades had to move to strike the enemy’s left and rear was very rough; over steep hills covered with a thick growth of scrub oak, which necessarily delayed them, while they were exposed to the fire of the enemy’s artillery. Before McLaws’, Benning’s and Anderson’s Brigades reached the left of the enemy’s position that position had been abandoned for the second and stronger one.

General Longstreet earnestly desired a general engagement and did his utmost to compel his adversary to accept it before reaching Knoxville, rightly judging, it would seem, that to do so offered the best prospect for the success of his expedition. The opportunity was offered at Campbell’s Station. General Burnside was forced to halt there and form line of battle to cover his trains, which obstructed the road by which he was retreating. He held his position there six or seven hours, but before the Confederates could be placed in position night came on so dark and rainy that the attack could not be made. Ably seconded by his officers and the steadiness of his troops he skilfully extricated his command from a perilous position.

“If,” says General Longstreet, “General Jenkins could have made his attack during this movement (the withdrawal from the first to the second position) or if he could have made it after the enemy had taken his second position, we must have destroyed this force, recovered East Tennessee, and in all probability captured the greater part of the enemy’s forces.” When such an opportunity is lost in a campaign blame is generally attached to some one or more commanders; and this was not an exception to the general rule. But when the weather and the condition of the roads is considered it is not surprising that their movements were not as rapid as could have been wished. The weather was most unfavorable; frequent rains, especially on the 13th and 14th, had rendered the steep and rugged roads almost impassable for artillery and wagons.

XXIV.

Burnside fell back to Knoxville, and we went into camp around the town. The principal defensive work was Fort Sanders, which had walls twenty feet high, with a ditch ten feet deep. Efforts were made to guard the river, both below and above Knoxville, so as to prevent Burnside from receiving supplies or reinforcements, and the works were occasionally shelled. There was a good deal of delay, for one reason and another, and we were so near the town that we could hear the tunes played by the band at Fort Sanders. The favorite air then was: “When this Cruel War is Over.” Finally, an attack was ordered to be made on Fort Sanders, but, although our men fought with their usual gallantry, they were driven back. This was on the 29th of November. In front of the fort trees had been cut, so as to fall with their branches outward, and wires had been stretched from stump to stump to trip up any assailants. Our men struggled through the abattis under a deadly fire, and some of them crossed the ditch and climbed up the parapet, but they were hurled back by the defenders of the fort, and thrown into the ditch. Hand grenades were used by the garrison with great effect. A second assault was tried, but equally in vain. These attacks cost us about five hundred men.

In one of the attacks we made, Captain Winthrop, of the 44th Foot, in the English army, who was on leave of absence, and had been with us for some time, behaved with the most brilliant gallantry. We were taking a hasty lunch in the breastworks under fire as the assault began, and Winthrop rode off to see what was going on. Finding that the troops were advancing, he rode out in front of the line and right up to the enemy’s works, striking with his sword at the soldiers who held them. In less time than it takes to tell it he was lying on the ground with a big hole in his collar bone. It was a very painful wound, but he recovered.

The attack on Knoxville having failed utterly, and tidings having been received of the defeat of Bragg, at Missionary Ridge, Longstreet raised the siege, and retreated to Virginia. The rest of the winter we passed on the line of railroad between Knoxville and Bristol, my head-quarters being at Russellville. The men suffered frightfully. It is no exaggeration to say that on such marches as they were obliged to make in that bitter weather they left the bloody tracks of their feet on the sharp stones of the roads.

It was a bleak, desolate, inhospitable country, yet we managed to have a merry Christmas, although there was considerable difficulty in getting the requisite quantum of brandy to make egg-nog with. The medical staff had plenty of whiskey and brandy, for the sick and wounded, and a good deal of the stimulants went, I am sure, to those who did not require them. There were some stills in the neighborhood, and there was active demand for all the liquor these could supply. I have known our people to fill their canteens with the apple jack, as it dropped from the end of the worm, and drink it delightedly, as soon as by immersing the canteen in a branch they had cooled the liquor sufficiently to allow it to be gulped down. I sent Henry Tyler on Christmas Eve to a place ten or fifteen miles away to get a canteen of apple jack for our Christmas egg-nog. Morning came, and he did not return. We were very uneasy, as the woods were the favorite lurking place of bushwhackers. As one of my men explained, “there was a whacker in every bush.” In the middle of the day Tyler turned up. Overcome by the cold or fatigue, he had gone to sleep in the middle of the road, and when he awoke in the morning he found an empty canteen by his side, and his horse standing a few paces off. But it was a hard winter, in spite of egg-nog and apple jack.

Finding that there was no probability of an early move, I asked permission to go down to Richmond for a few days. Leave was given me, but I had to ride about sixty miles in intensely cold weather, on a fiendishly obstinate and perverse mule, to reach Bristol, where I took the cars for Richmond. By this time Confederate soldiers were treated with scant respect by the railroad officials. On our way to the Sweet Water Valley, I remember the conductor quietly stopped the train and told us that we should not go on, unless we cut a supply of wood for his engine. But it was worse on the train that was to take us to Lynchburg. There was no fire in the cars at night, and I really thought I should have frozen. The men in the cars stood it as long as they could, and, when they found that the conductor would do nothing for them, they deliberately broke up the blinds of the car, and with these made a fire which furnished sufficient warmth to keep us from freezing. Had the conductor resisted, I believe the indignant Confederates would have killed him; and in that case a jury of soldiers, at all events, would have returned a verdict of justifiable homicide.

While at Mr. Tyler’s, at Richmond, I found that I had been recommended very strongly for promotion to the rank of Captain; but was informed that it was necessary that I should stand an examination before the recommendation could be complied with. It seemed rather an absurd thing that I should be required to be examined, when General Longstreet and Colonel Baldwin, the Chief Ordnance officer of General Lee’s army, had shown by their recommendations that I was fully qualified for the duties that I had to discharge. So I went to Mr. Seddon, the Secretary of War, and told him what I thought of it. Kind old man as he was, he listened to me very patiently when I explained to him that I had been too long in the field to know as much as a youngster who had just been graduated from college, and that if my promotion depended upon my familiarity with Conic Sections and the Calculus, I should probably remain a Lieutenant all my life. Mr. Seddon said it was necessary to undergo an examination, but he would make an endorsement upon the papers that would put me in a proper position. The endorsement was this: “The Board, in examining Lieutenant Dawson for promotion, will make due allowance for any deficiency in theoretical knowledge which may have been caused by the engrossing nature of his duties in the field.”

When I returned to head-quarters, I found that Colonel Manning had recovered; and a Board, consisting of Manning and two Captains of Artillery, was appointed to examine me. The examination was both written and oral. I was to answer in writing certain questions which had been sent from Richmond, and was then to be examined by the members of the Board. The written examination was rather wide in its scope, as it ranged from questions so simple as: “What is the centre of gravity?” and “What is a logarithm?” to such a question as this: “With a gun of a given calibre and at a given elevation, and with a given charge of powder and a projectile of a given weight, what will be the velocity of the projectile as it passes the muzzle of the piece?” My answer to some such question as this was: “I don’t know.” The oral examination was very funny, as Colonel Manning insisted that the calibre of a 10-pound Parrott was three inches, although I assured him it was only two and nine-tenths. As may be imagined, taking Colonel Manning’s lack of familiarity with Ordnance duty into account and the suggestive endorsement of the Secretary of War, I passed my examination with flying colors.

Colonel Manning was taken ill and obliged to leave us for a time, and there was no event of importance, except a change in my head-quarters from Russellville to Abingdon, until April, 1864, when we were ordered to Gordonsville. On our way there I stopped to see Colonel Manning, who was being taken care of at a private house at Charlottesville, and to my great joy received from him my commission as Captain of Artillery, dated April 2d, 1864.

XXV.

On May 4th, Grant crossed the Rapidan, and the Wilderness Campaign began. General Lee put his troops in motion, and the next morning Ewell attacked Warren’s Corps. Grant immediately ordered Hancock to attack A. P. Hill, and the battle raged until night. The fight was renewed the next morning, when Hill was driven back in some confusion. It was a critical moment for our army. Longstreet arrived in time to change the tide of battle. Kershaw’s Division was in front, and the men were eager to show their old comrades that they had not become demoralized in the West. Without a pause, they formed in line of battle, arrested the enemy’s advance, and drove him rapidly back. General Lee put himself at the head of the troops to conduct the attack in person, but the men swarmed around him, telling him, with tears in their eyes, that he must go back, and that if he would go back they would make short work of the enemy. Everything went well with us for some time. General Longstreet ascertained that the left of the enemy’s line extended but a short distance beyond the Plank-road, and Lieutenant-Colonel Sorrell, the Adjutant-General of Longstreet’s Corps, was sent to conduct the brigades of Mahone, G. T. Anderson and Wofford around the enemy’s left, and attack him on his left and rear. They did this with perfect success, and the enemy fell back with heavy loss to a position about three-quarters of a mile from our front. It was the moment to make a bold stroke for victory. The whole of Longstreet’s Corps, with R. H. Anderson’s Division, was to be thrown _en masse_ against the staggering enemy. Longstreet, with Colonel Sorrel, Captain Manning, of the Signal Corps, and myself, with some couriers, rode down the Plank-road at the head of our column. Just then, General Jenkins, who commanded a South Carolina brigade in our corps, rode up, his face flushed with joy, and, shaking hands with Longstreet, congratulated him on the result of the fight. Turning then to his brigade, which was formed in the road, Jenkins said: “Why do you not cheer, men?” The men cheered lustily, and hardly had the sound died away when a withering fire was poured in upon us from the woods on our right. Jenkins, rising in his stirrups, shouted out: “Steady, men! For God’s sake, steady!” and fell mortally wounded from his saddle. Longstreet, who had stood there like a lion at bay, reeled as the blood poured down over his breast, and was evidently badly hurt. Two of General Jenkins’ staff were killed by the same volley. What others thought I know not. My own conviction was that we had ridden into the midst of the enemy, and that nothing remained but to sell our lives dearly. The firing ended as suddenly as it began, and we then learned that Longstreet had been wounded and Jenkins had been killed, as Jackson was, by the fire of our own men. It was but the work of a few minutes. We lifted Longstreet from the saddle, and laid him on the side of the road. It seemed that he had not many minutes to live. My next thought was to obtain a surgeon, and, hurriedly mentioning my purpose, I mounted my horse and rode in desperate haste to the nearest field hospital. Giving the sad news to the first surgeon I could find, I made him jump on my horse, and bade him, for Heaven’s sake, ride as rapidly as he could to the front where Longstreet was. I followed afoot. The flow of blood was speedily staunched, and Longstreet was placed in an ambulance. Poor Jenkins also received every attention, but remained insensible until he died.

The disaster which had befallen us arrested for a time the movement of the troops, for none but Longstreet knew what General Lee’s intentions were. Sadly riding back, surrounding the ambulance, we met General Lee, and I shall not soon forget the sadness in his face, and the almost despairing movement of his hands, when he was told that Longstreet had fallen. It was a few minutes after twelve o’clock when Longstreet was hit, and General C. W. Field, the ranking Division Commander, took command of the corps. It was four o’clock when the attack was made. By this time, the shattered lines in our front had been restored, and our movement was unsuccessful. It seemed a fatality that our onslaught should have been arrested at the moment when the promise of victory was brightest. So ended the Battle of the Wilderness, May 6, 1864.

The next day I ascertained how the sad accident had happened. The woods are very dense in the Wilderness, and the dust was so thick as to reduce every tree and shrub to one uniform shade of gray. Mahone’s Brigade, which had formed part of the flanking column, was drawn up parallel with the Plank-road, and about sixty yards from it. The 6th Virginia became detached from the regiments on its right or left, and lost its position in the woods. When the 6th Virginia, isolated as it was, heard the cheering in front, the men supposed that the enemy were upon them. Without orders one soldier discharged his piece, and a volley was then fired by the whole line, with the mournful result I have described.

General R. H. Anderson was now placed in command of the corps, and with him my relations were pleasant from the beginning. Indeed, we became close friends.

XXVI.

From the Wilderness the army moved parallel with Grant to Spotsylvania Court House, where we had some desperate fighting. My usual good luck followed me, and I came no nearer being hit than having a solid shot strike the place where my feet had been resting a moment before.

Baffling Grant completely at Cold Harbor, and forcing him to abandon the line on which he had promised to “fight it out if it took all summer,” we found ourselves, early in June, on our way to Petersburg, crossing the river at Drury’s Bluff. We had with us the divisions of Pickett and of Field, and were to move down the Turnpike towards Petersburg, to occupy the lines from which General Beauregard had withdrawn. This was on June 16th. It was a delightful day, and General Anderson and his staff rode on a considerable distance in advance of the troops. There was no more expectation of encountering the enemy than we should have of finding him in the streets of Charleston. When we neared Chester, however, a Major Smith, who was in haste to reach Petersburg, and had gone on ahead, came tearing back “bloody with spurring and fiery red with haste,” and without his hat. We were at a loss to understand what this meant, and he had not breath enough left to tell us at the moment. As soon as he could speak, he said that near the point where the railroad crossed the Turnpike he had seen the Yankees in the woods as thick as bees; and a party of them was then engaged in tearing up the line of railroad which formed the only means of communication between the Confederate capital and Petersburg. He was fired at, but his horse alone was hit; and it was a lucky escape for us. Had we jogged on very much farther we should have found ourselves in the hands of the enemy, who, it seems, had pushed up from Bermuda Hundreds, on finding that the lines in front of them had been vacated, and were about to make good their occupation of the railroad. We halted in the road until the leading regiment of our column came up, when it was deployed in the woods, and advanced until it struck the enemy. The next day an effort was made to recover our lost line; and on the 18th Pickett took it with a rush. Kershaw had gone on to Petersburg. There we had our head-quarters until near the end of June.

Petersburg had changed very much from the quiet, peaceful, drowsy looking city it was when I first knew it. But it was an agreeable place to be in, for one reason at least. During the Wilderness campaign our rations had been reduced to five ounces of bacon and twelve ounces of corn meal daily, and the country was so bare that no additions could be made to our scant fare. At Richmond and Petersburg there was little difficulty in obtaining provisions of every kind, the joke being, however, that housekeepers took their money to market in a basket and brought home in their pockets what they had bought for dinner.