Part 11

“He’s in rear,” said the sergeant-major. Now, strictly speaking, this was the exact truth. The captain was in rear--twelve or fifteen miles in rear! Nevertheless the sergeant-major felt an uncomfortable consciousness that his words conveyed to the mind of the general an impression that was not quite accurate. When the general inquired about the one other officer supposed to be on duty at that time, the sergeant-major replied: “He also is somewhere in rear at the moment.” You see the sergeant-major was getting used to this sort of thing.

The general replied; “Well, it’s no matter, you can take the orders and communicate them.”

Thereupon he gave instructions as to the disposition of the guns in case of a fight. After that he rode to the front. It was his habit to be at the front as his force approached an enemy.

An hour or two later our returning cavalry reported that the enemy had returned to his island camp. Our long night march had gone for nothing. We were a little bit disappointed, but as we had marched during all the hours of darkness, and as the gray was beginning to split the eastern sky, we were not very reluctant to turn back towards camp and breakfast.

But when, soon after the return march began, the sergeant-major saw the general riding up, he felt a trifle uneasy. You see he was not yet an artist in prevarication. His life-long habit of telling the truth sat heavily upon him. Nevertheless, when the general asked for the captain and lieutenant, the sergeant-major said, with as much of nonchalance as he could assume: “They’re somewhere in _front_, I think, general,” and the general rode away satisfied. When the battery reached camp, the officers had just returned from the dance at Tuckers. They were frantic with apprehension and rage at finding their command gone to fight the enemy and they not with it. They were minutely questioning the camp servants as to the movement. And when the sergeant-major rode up at the head of the column of guns, they assailed him with a volley of questions, which, if they had been shells, would have struck the enemy off any field: the sergeant-major rather enjoyed this part of the proceeding.

“What kind of a time did you have at Tucker’s?” he asked.

“Oh, confound Tucker’s!” answered the captain. “Speak, can’t you, man, and tell us about this thing. Did the general ask after us, and what did you tell him?”

“Well,” answered the sergeant-major, “he did ask, and I told him the truth, but not the whole truth. My conscience is a little bit bruised and sore over it, and the next time you fellows go off to a dance without letting the general know, I’m going to tell him the whole truth. Is there anything to eat?”

TWO GENTLEMEN AT PETERSBURG

At that point where the great mine was blown up at Petersburg, the lines of the two armies were within fifty yards of each other.

In the fearful slaughter that ensued, the space between the rival breastworks was literally piled high with dead men, lying one on top of the other. Only in one other place, namely, at Cold Harbor, was there ever so much of slaughter within so small a space.

It was evident, apart from all considerations of decency, that for the comfort of both sides some arrangement must be made for the burial of these dead men. Neither side could have lived long in its works otherwise.

Accordingly, a cartel was arranged between General Grant and General Lee. It was stipulated that there should be a cessation of hostilities for a specified number of hours for the purpose of burying the dead.

It was arranged that two lines should be formed twelve feet apart in the middle of the space between the works; that one line should be composed of Federal sentinels, the other of Confederates; that the space between these two lines should be a neutral ground, accessible to both sides; but that no person from either side should cross the line established by the other side. It was agreed that the dead men who had fallen within the Confederate line should be dragged to the neutral ground by Confederate soldiers, and there delivered to Federal troops to be carried within their lines for burial.

There were no Confederate dead there, of course. All of our men who had been killed were killed within our own works. So every corpse on our side of the neutral ground was dragged by a rope to that common space and there delivered to its official friends.

It was specially stipulated in the cartel that no officer or soldier on either side should take advantage of the truce to appropriate property of any kind lying upon the field, whether upon the one or the other side of the neutral ground. Swords, pistols, sashes, everything of the kind must, by agreement, be left precisely where they were.

Many of us, of course, went out to the neutral ground to look over the situation. There was a certain gruesome delight even in standing upon ground, where for a month or more it had been impossible for a twig or a blade of grass to grow without instant decapitation, and where for months to come it would be equally impossible for anything having material substance to exist. The very turf itself had been literally skinned from the surface of the earth by a continuous scything of bullets. For a month it had been impossible for any soldier on either side even to shoot over the breastworks, for he who tried to do so was sure to be instantly destroyed. The fire on either side had to be through carefully sand-bag-guarded port holes. And even the port holes had to be protected by hanging blankets behind them to conceal the sky, lest their darkening by a human head should invite a hailstorm of alert and waiting bullets.

Of course every man who, during the truce, wandered over this perilous space for an hour, must have been impressed, if he had any imagination at all, with the historical interest of the occasion. Every one desired naturally to carry away some memento of the event. Only one man yielded to this impulse, and he did so thoughtlessly. He was a captain of Confederate infantry.

He saw lying on the ground a star that had been cut by a bullet from some officer’s coat collar.

It was a worthless bauble, valuable only as a souvenir. He picked it up and pocketed it. Instantly he was arrested by the Confederate guards and taken before the officer in command of the Confederate line.

That officer immediately and with great dignity went to the Federal commander and said: “I desire under the terms of the cartel to surrender this officer to you for such punishment as a court-martial of your army may see fit to inflict. He has violated the cartel.”

“What has he done?” asked the Federal officer.

“He has taken possession of property left upon the field, contrary to the terms of the truce.”

“Would you mind telling me,” asked the Federal officer, “the exact nature and extent of his offence?”

A little explanation followed, the Confederate commander remaining stern and uncompromising in his determination to deliver the man for punishment, asking no favors or mercies for him, and offering no apologies for that which he deemed a breach of honor.

When the Federal officer had learned the exact facts of the situation, he made the usual military salute and said to the Confederate commander: “I thank you. You have been very honorable and very punctilious, but the officer’s fault has been merely one of inadvertence. I beg to return him to you with the assurance that we have no desire to punish so brave a man as he must be, in order to hold his commission in your army, for an act that involved no intention of wrong.”

Here were two brave men--two gentlemen--met. Naturally they understood each other.

OLD JONES AND THE HUCKSTER

It is a fixed principle of military law that no person is allowed to sell supplies within the lines of a camp without permission of the commandant.

It is also a fixed principle of military law that he must sell only at prices approved by the commandant.

I shall never forget how I first learned of these military rules. We were at Camp Onward and old Jones had just become our colonel.

One day a farmer came to the camp with a heavily laden wagon. It was in the summer of 1861, when food in Northern Virginia was abundant, and when our money was as good as anybody’s.

Our farmer had among his supplies, dressed turkeys, suckling pigs, lamb, mutton, watermelons, cantaloupes, string beans, Lima beans, green peas, and in brief almost all those things that we read about on the bill of fare of a swagger hotel, kept on the “American Plan.”

He had butter also, and lard. He had eggplants and pumpkins, and a great many other things.

We were a rather hungry lot, and were strongly inclined to buy of him.

But this farmer had evidently made up his mind to get comfortably rich off that single wagon load of provisions. Two years later we should not have been surprised at his prices, but at that time we were appalled. Nevertheless, some of us were buying with the recklessness of men who do not know at what hour a bullet may draw a red line below all accounts.

Just then old Jones came out in his yellow coat and his pot hat, looking greatly more like a farmer than the wagon man did. Speaking through his nose, and with that extraordinary deliberation which always made his conversation a caricature of human speech, he asked: “What are you chargin’ for turkeys? What are you chargin’ for butter?” And so on through the list, receiving a reply to each query, and carefully noting it in his thoroughly organized mind.

Then he turned to one of the men and said: “Send the regimental commissary to me.”

When the commissary came he said to him: “Take these supplies, and distribute them equitably among the different messes according to their numbers.”

By this time the farmer had become alarmed. He said: “Who’s goin’ to pay for all this?”

“I am,” said old Jones. “In my own way.”

“Well, hold on,” said the farmer.

“No, I reckon we won’t hold on,” said old Jones.

“But I’ll send for the colonel of the regiment,” said the farmer.

Then old Jones replied with a relish: “I am the colonel of this regiment. And I have ordered these food supplies distributed to the men in the messes. The regimental commissary will obey my orders. And as soon as your wagon is emptied, you will get out of this camp in a considerable of a hurry,”--perhaps he used a shorter word than “considerable,”--“or I’ll hang you in front of headquarters. There’s no court of appeals in this camp. Now git!” as the last of the supplies were taken out of the wagon by the regimental commissary.

We were all a little bit sorry that the poor farmer should lose his entire load. And yet we sympathized with old Jones’s remark as he walked away.

“I’ll teach these thieves that they can’t loot a camp that I’m a runnin’.”

A DEAD MAN’S MESSAGE

Dick Fulcher was the best natured man in the battery, and he was nothing else.

He was entirely ignorant and entirely content to be so. He could neither read nor write, and we could never persuade him to try to learn. He had nothing resembling pride in his composition apparently, nothing that it would do to call a character.

One morning the alarm came that the enemy had landed below, and we were ordered hurriedly forward. Fulcher had just taken post as stable-guard, and was, therefore, under no obligation of duty to go. He quietly threw down the musket he was carrying, and, going up to the sergeant-major, said: “Major, can’t I be taken off guard? I want to go with the battery into the fight.”

His request was granted, of course. He was number four at Joe’s gun; number four is the man who pulls the lanyard, or string, that fires the gun. When we unlimbered to the front on Yemassee Creek, within pistol-shot range of the advancing enemy, Fulcher was laughing as usual, and apparently as indifferent to the work he was doing as he had been to everything else, since we had first known him.

I remember wondering, as I watched him, why a man who felt so little interest in the dangerous business had gone out of his way as he had done to engage in it.

The fire of the enemy was terrific in its destructiveness from the first. Within the first three minutes we had lost ten men and a score of horses. Among the men was Fulcher. He had fallen, shot through the body, just as the command was given to him to “fire.”

Lying there upon the ground, with his life ebbing away, he made a feeble effort to pull the lanyard; but his strength was too far gone, and Joe, being short of men, took his place. He had to stand astride the poor dying fellow, in order to do his work, for Fulcher’s wound was beyond the possibility of a surgeon’s help.

After two or three more shots of the gun, Joe heard Fulcher feebly calling to him: “Joe--Joe.” Inclining his ear, Joe received this last message: “I’m done for, sergeant. But won’t you just write to my father and tell him I died like a man? I’d like him to know that about his only boy.”

Joe wrote the letter and it was blotted with tears.

After all, it is hard to guess what a man is made of till you know his motives.

A WOMAN’S LAST WORD

The city of Richmond was in flames.

We were beginning that last terrible retreat which ended the war. Fire had been set to the arsenal as a military possession, which must on no account fall into the enemy’s hands.

As the flames spread, because of a turn of the wind, other buildings caught. The whole business part of the city was on fire. To make things worse, some idiot had ordered that all the liquor in the city should be poured into the gutters.

The rivers of alcohol had been ignited from the burning buildings, and in their turn had set fire to other buildings. It was a time and a scene of unutterable terror.

As we marched up the fire-lined street, with the flames scorching the very hair off our horses, George Goodsmith--the best cannoneer that ever wielded a rammer--came up to the headquarters squad, and said: “Captain, my wife’s in Richmond. We’ve been married less than a year. She is soon to become a mother. I beg permission to bid her good-by. I’ll join the battery later.”

The permission was granted readily, and George Goodsmith put spurs to his horse. He had just been made a sergeant, and was therefore mounted.

It was in the gray of the morning that he hurriedly met his wife. With caresses of the tenderest kind, he bade her farewell. Realizing for a moment the utter hopelessness of our making another stand on the Roanoke, or any other line, he said in bitterness of soul: “Why shouldn’t I stay here and take care of you?”

The woman straightened herself and replied: “I would rather be the widow of a brave man than the wife of a coward.”

That was their parting, for the time was very short. Mayo’s bridge across the James River was already in flames when Goodsmith perilously galloped across it.

Three or four days later, for I never could keep tab on time at that period of the war, we went into the battle at Farmville. Goodsmith was in his place in command of the piece.

Just before fire opened he beckoned to me and I rode up to hear what he had to say.

“I’m going to be killed, I think,” he said. “If I am, I want my wife to know that she is the widow of a--_brave man_. I want her to know that I did my duty to the last. And--and if you live long enough, and this thing don’t kill Mary--I want you to tell the _little one_ about his father.”

Goodsmith’s premonition of his death was one of many that were fulfilled during the war.

A moment later a fearful struggle began. At the first fire George Goodsmith’s wife became the “widow of a brave man.” His body was heavy with lead.

His son, then unborn, is now a successful broker in a great city. There is nothing particularly knightly or heroic about him, for this is not a knightly or heroic age. But he takes very tender care of his mother--that “widow of a brave man.”

AN INCOMPLETE STORY

When General Field came to Cairo, Illinois, after the war, I welcomed him with especial heartiness.

I was a little bit lonely, lacking comrades in sympathy with me.

General Field had been my drillmaster at Ashland, at the war’s beginning. Later, after he became a great general, I had many times been of his following in raids and scouts, and other military expeditions.

Like all the rest of us at the end of the war, General Field was very poor. He had come to Cairo to engage in business, and had not been able to bring his family with him. So he rented a bachelor room in the bank building in which my office was situated, and we two used to spend the evenings together in front of my office fire.

At that time General Don Carlos Buell was operating a coal mine in Kentucky, some distance up the Ohio River. He sold his coal through the commission house for which I was attorney.

When he came to Cairo, he, also, usually spent his evenings in my office.

One evening General Field was smoking a long pipe before my fire, and he and I were chatting about war times--we hadn’t yet got far enough away from the war to regard any other topic as worthy of intelligent conversation.

“The saddest part of it all, to us of the old army at least,” said General Field, “is the breaking up of old friendships. There’s Buell, now. He and I once tented together, messed together, slept under the same blankets together, and, without any blankets at all, under the same frozen sky; marched together, fought together, suffered together, and endured together. Once we thought of each other as brothers might. Now, if we should meet, he would refuse even to shake my hand. He would regard me as a rebel--to him _anathema maranatha_.”

At this moment came a knock at the door. I opened it, and to my consternation there stood General Buell.

My first impulse was to say to him that I was overengaged that evening, and couldn’t see him. My second was to invite him to my bedroom for a special conference, for which I could profess to have been longing. My third was to fabricate the story of a telegram, which should call him immediately to the house of the head of the firm.

Feeling that none of these devices would answer the purpose, I thought of the coal-shed below; but I remembered that there was no gas-burner there, and the night was rather a dark one.

Meantime, General Buell was catching cold in the hall. So at last I invited him in, taking pains to call him only by his title, not mentioning his name. As he entered, Field, who was always scrupulous in attention to the little niceties of courtesy, arose to receive the stranger.

When the two gentlemen had bowed to each other,--for it was no part of my purpose to introduce them, if I could help it,--I turned to General Buell and said: “General, I’m afraid there is a little discrepancy in the measurement of those last coal barges. If you have your memorandum book with you, we’ll go to the outer office and straighten the thing up. The book-keepers are bothered about it.”

Alas! My little device came to nothing. Buell had caught sight of Field, and Field had looked upon Buell. Though years of hard campaigning had intervened since they had last met, each recognized the other instantly, and after a moment’s hesitation each threw himself into the other’s arms.

“Why, it’s Buell!”

“Why, it’s Field!”

I can’t tell the rest of this story, because I didn’t stay to see it. I don’t like to see two men hugging each other with tears in their eyes.

RANDOM FACTS

ILLUSTRATIVE OF SOUTHERN SOLDIER CONDITIONS

We soldiers of the Southern army lacked many things. Sometimes we lacked almost everything. We did not always have clothes, but when we had any, they were apt to be good ones; they were made of cadet gray cloth, imported from England through the blockade. And those Englishmen have a habit of making uncommonly good cloths.

We were often without shoes; but when we had shoes, they also came from England, and were thoroughly good, both in material and make.

But towards the end of the war, we lacked many essential things. We lacked medicines for one thing, and quinine, especially. I remember that one gentlewoman was deemed a peculiar patriot, because she got through the lines with one hundred and forty ounce bottles of quinine hung inside her hoop-skirt.

For lack of that and other drugs, our surgeons had to resort to many substitutions. Some of these were discoveries of permanent value. That is why the medical profession has studied with interest the records of our Southern surgeon-general’s department, now in possession of the war department at Washington.

These records, it is said, contribute more than any other like documents to the science of medicine.

Another thing that we terribly lacked was gunpowder--the one supreme agent of all warfare. Our fire was often compulsorily made as light as possible, in order to spare our cartridge boxes.

To supply this rudimentary need, the women of the country diligently dug up the earthen floors of all their smokehouses, and all their tobacco barns, and rendered out the nitre they contained. Some of them even destroyed their tobacco crops by boiling, in order to extract the precious salt necessary to the destruction of their enemy.

In the cities, our womenkind were requested to preserve and deliver to government collectors all those slops that contain nitre.

It was in this way alone that we got gunpowder enough to maintain resistance to the end. And we had equally to pinch in other ways in order that we might continue to be “fighting men.”

All the window-weights in all the houses, and all the other leaden things that could be melted down, were converted into bullets. Even then we ran dreadfully short towards the end of the war. At Petersburg, good soldiers felt it to be their duty to spend all their spare time in collecting the multitudinous bullets with which the ground was everywhere strewn. These battered missiles turned into the arsenals were remoulded and came back to us in the form of effective, fixed ammunition.

When we marched to meet Grant in the Wilderness, in the spring of 1864, we were about the most destitute army that ever marched to meet anybody, anywhere. We had nothing to transport, and we had no transportation.

At the beginning of every campaign it is customary for the commanding general to issue an order, setting forth the allotment of baggage wagons to officers and men. Just before we marched that spring some wag in the army had printed and circulated a mock order from General Lee, a copy of which now lies before me.

GENERAL ORDERS, NUMBER 1. HEADQUARTERS, ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA, April 20, 1864.

The allotment of baggage wagons to the officers and men of the Army of Northern Virginia during the coming campaign will be as follows:--

To every thirty officers.... No baggage wagon.

To every three hundred men.... Ditto.

(Signed) ROBERT E. LEE, General.

This order was a good-natured forgery, of course. Nevertheless it was carried out to the letter. The fact is that we had no baggage and no baggage wagons. The only baggage wagons I ever heard of in connection with that campaign were a few that General D. H. Hill summoned for a special occasion. His musicians put in a petition at the beginning of the summer’s work for wagons to carry their instruments. He assented instantly, and ordered the wagons brought up. As soon as the instruments were comfortably deposited within them, he turned to his quartermaster and said: “Send those wagons to Richmond.” Then turning to his adjutant he said: “Have muskets issued to these men immediately.”

General D. H. Hill was not a man from whose orders anybody under him was disposed to appeal.