Part 7

We next concluded to visit Fort Saunders, that General Longstreet had made up his mind to take a few mornings before we arrived in that vicinity. Of course we did not see the battle, and all I can give you is what we saw after several days had passed. I am not certain, but I should say that Fort Saunders stood northwesterly of the city, and a full mile out from the same. I do not know whether the fort was built by General Burnside or not, but I think it was built by him after he was sent to that department, as the moats and parapets seemed new. There must have been timber standing on the easterly and northerly sides at no very great time before, as the ground was covered with stumps, and they seemed new and strong, as though the timber had been recently cut. General Burnside's men, expecting the assault (as Fort Saunders seemed to be the key to General Burnside's position), had contrived a very ingenious way of defense. They procured a large quantity of telegraph wire, and stretched it from one stump to another about knee high, winding it around each stump a few times to make it secure. This they did with seemingly very great industry, for nearly all the approaches to the fort were a perfect network of wire. They also loaded a large number of shell with fuzes cut at about five seconds, and had them placed handy when the time came for the assault. This I have from one of the defenders of the fort.

Just as the dawn was breaking in the east General Longstreet's assaulting column drove in the pickets, and, with that yell that once heard is never forgotten, came dashing on toward the fort; but when they reached the wire they did some ground and lofty tumbling, mostly ground, and the fort opened a most terrible fire of musketry, shot and shell. But nothing daunted, though their formation was badly broken up, they came on and soon filled the ditches around the fort. Then the shells were lighted and thrown over the parapets into the ditches, making fearful havoc as they exploded among the swarming rebels. I suppose a more determined and bloody charge was never made during the war. The rebels even climbed up the embrasures of the fort, and the cannoneers cut them down with axes.

But the short range shells and the heroic resistance made by the defenders of the fort were too much for the unquestioned heroism of the assailants, and what remained of them straggled back, as best they could, to the main body of Longstreet's army.

I will not attempt to give a description of the scene in the ditches and around the fort. It beggars all the horrors that language can describe. When we visited the fort of course all the dead and wounded had been removed; but when we came to walk along the bottom of the moats that surrounded the fort, the evidences of the sanguinary conflict still remained. Here lay a tongue, there, an ear, and beyond, a jaw bone. I saw a hand lying opposite one of the embrasures of the fort that was cut off as smoothly as though severed with one blow from an ax; but though we rejoiced in a defense that saved General Burnside's army, we were glad to leave this scene of horror and return to camp where the Mice were resting their weary limbs after the terrible march that we had endured.

December 29th, 1863, we moved our camp to the north into a fine piece of woods, and remained there until the year 1863 had gone. What a year of marchings, battles, and sorrow. How many of those that left Camp Cleveland with us—just one year before—now "sleep the sleep that knows not breaking." What a change in our regiment. Our ranks have been thinned, but our effectiveness has been increased. We have been tried in all the sad experiences of war. Patriotism brought to our ranks very many never calculated, either physically or mentally, to make soldiers. Their intentions were high and noble, and they failed by no fault of theirs; their final discharge was a mercy to them, and a blessing to us. Many came home and abandoned army service forever. Many enlisted in other regiments, for shorter terms and less arduous duties; but, as a rule, _all did all they could_ to maintain the integrity of the Union.

January 1st, 1864, opened the most eventful year of the war. Each army had come to its full strength and vigor. "The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot" had long since retired, and we had a man as commander in chief of all the armies that had the correct notion of the way of putting down the rebellion. A man that realized that the theory of conquering rebel territory while the rebel armies remained intact was worse than useless. That if armies are to be destroyed, the quicker it can be accomplished, the more precious lives saved. Great and decisive battles, with all their untold horrors, are angels of mercy compared to the small battle, the skirmish, where a few are lost and nothing accomplished.

But I find myself digressing, by the thoughts that come crowding up, as I contemplate the _value_(?) of our east Tennessee campaign of 1864.

January 14th we struck tents, and crossing the river marched twenty-two miles to a position known as Strawberry Plains. I never knew why they called it by that name unless it was because it had no appearance of ever having grown any strawberries, or because the foothills of the Clinch mountains were too rough and irregular to be called plains. I guess the fellow that furnished the name had never been away from home.

On this march we saw the gallows where four citizens of east Tennessee were executed. The gallows stood hard by the side of the railroad track. These men were executed for a very heinous crime. It may be briefly stated: They loved their country and their country's flag too well to swear allegiance to the southern confederacy, and so they were put to death.

The next day we marched to Dandridge, a small village situated on the French Broad river, and camped in a beautiful pine woods.

Here we had orders from Colonel Pickands to fix up winter quarters, as we would probably stay _right here_ until the spring campaign opened, and the pine poles were just the material from which to construct winter quarters of the most commodious kind. For the benefit of the Sons of Veterans I will describe the process. You must remember at this time we were soldiers, and soldiers of the Uncle Billy pattern and kind. If we had any shelter, save the starry heavens, we had to carry that shelter on our backs, as well as our camp equipage. Now, at this time, you must also remember that our regiment was divided into messes, and that by the process of _natural selection_ four men would come together and call each other Pard. What there was that kept these messes together I never knew. I said they came together by _natural selection_ for the reason that when we find anything that we cannot explain we call it _natural_ and let it go. These messes of _four_ would sing, quarrel, fight, make- up and divide all they had with each other inside of twenty minutes. Each member of each mess would swear that there were not three as good foragers in the regiment as his three messmates. Somehow or other, a good forager was always held up as a patron saint in the 124th Regiment. Chaplain Hubbard, of the 103d O. V. I., was the "bright and morning star" in this business of all the members of the army of occupation of east Tennessee. I call it the army of occupation because, before I am done, you will see that is all we did. Well, to resume, each one of these four messmates would carry one piece, at least, of shelter tent. Sometimes more could be found, but usually, where more were found, _some others had less_. This _more_ or _less_ business was a common thing in the army.

Now in the first place the streets were laid out, which streets were the parade grounds of the several companies, where they were formed and marched to the regimental parade ground. The stumps, when we camped in the woods, were carefully dug out of these streets, and the same nicely graded and ditched. Then at the left-hand side looking toward the regimental parade ground the quarters of the messes were erected. This I know will seem very commonplace to the old comrade, but you will bear with me, as I am speaking to-day to many Sons of Veterans and others, that were too young to be with us in this experience. The poles were then cut long enough to cover with two pieces of shelter tent, then laid up, notched at the corners to bring them down quite close, laid up high enough so the soldier could stand upright comfortably. The ends or gables were cobbed up to the peak, or fixed up with the extra tents, poles were fastened on with bark or withes, and the tents make the roof. Then the cracks were stopped with mud. A stick or stone chimney is built in the back end. Two bunks are made, one on either side, with crotches driven into the ground, and small poles laid lengthwise and covered with pine boughs and the U. S. army blanket make the bed. Gun-racks are made above each bunk for two muskets and two sets of accouterments. An extra blanket is hung up for a door, and the house is furnished by the inventive genius of the mess. The bunks during the daytime furnish upholstered seats. This house answers for kitchen, dining room, and dormitory, and a healthier home does not stand in the city of Cleveland. One of the best features of the whole business is, they were not liable to sale under execution, or foreclosure, neither for delinquent taxes. This house I have described was one of a large city our division built at Dandridge. Please note how long they were suffered to enjoy the fruits of their ingenuity and industry.

If I were called upon to organize an army that should accomplish the greatest warlike good (if the word _good_ can be used in connection with the word _war_), I would start, in our experience as soldiers, where we left off. The government should never build quarters for soldiers, they should build their own. The government should never furnish any transportation for well soldiers, and instead of staying in camp, I would have them move from place to place, thereby avoiding the disease that camps breed. The sooner the soldier becomes self-sustaining, within a certain limit, the better for themselves and the service.

January 16th Colonel Pickands came to my quarters and said he had a soft snap for me; said that I had never had a detail, that I had stayed right with the regiment since we took the field, and he was only too glad to confer this favor. I thanked the genial commander, though I had no desire to leave the Mice in that way; and had but very little confidence in what he said he heard from headquarters, "that we would probably stay where we were for three months." About ten o'clock a. m. the detail was ready, consisting of 149 men. The order was to march to New Market and guard the division stores. We went through a fairly good country, and along in the afternoon we met General Sheridan and staff. He was riding that same black horse that afterward "carried him into the fray from Winchester, twenty miles away." He asked a number of questions. The first was, if I had heard any firing in the direction of Dandridge? This question showed the true instinct of the great general; that he was always looking out for a battle, and had he been in command of the union forces in east Tennessee, the country would have been electrified by the news of a signal victory won, instead of a disastrous retreat from Dandridge, whereby so many of our poor boys were captured, and carried to Andersonville and death. Soon after we bade good-bye to Sheridan and staff one of the Mice, and he must have been one of the kind known as _ground mice_, found an apple-hole, and before I was aware of what was going on, the Mice were all busy digging out apples. The owner came out and protested; said he was a union man, had been from the start, and his property should be protected. I agreed in all he said, and by the time his protest was fully entered his apples had been transferred to the capacious haversacks of the Mice. Of course I was to blame. I should not have suffered the Mice to gnaw and destroy this good man's apples; but what, I ask you, could I do with 149 men that had not seen or tasted an apple since the fall of 1862? I offered to give him a voucher for the apples, and told him if he was as good a union man as he claimed to be the commissary department at Knoxville would pay him. But he seemed to know what the voucher was worth better than I and declined the same; we marched on to New Market, arriving there after dark, having marched twenty-three miles since ten o'clock.

I soon found nice quarters for my men in the abandoned houses of the village, and my mess arrangements having been broken up, I engaged boarding with an old lady that had two sons in the union army. This was one of the worst battered towns I had seen in the south. The sentiment was about equally divided between union and rebel, and the town had been badly plundered by both sides. The stores were at the station on the railroad, and after relieving the men on duty with a detail of my men, had supper, and being very tired, the old lady showed me a room, and I went to bed between nice white sheets, the first time in more than twelve months. Visions of feather beds, soft bread, pies and cakes, no marching, no picket guard, haunted me until 3 o'clock the next morning, when I was awakened by a loud rapping at my door; on getting out I saw the yellow stripes of a cavalry orderly. He very politely handed me an order directing me to march my detail back to Strawberry Plains, as the army was falling back from Dandridge. I got out to the quarters of the men as soon as I could, aroused the orderly sergeant and the men, called in the guards at the station, and started back on the railway track for the point to which we had been ordered. And that ended the "_soft snap_."

The winter quarters the Mice had built, the city one day old, was abandoned, and the brigade, wearied out by marching in the deepest mud I ever saw, slept that night under the stars at Strawberry Plains. What became of the stores at New Market I never knew, and why we were ordered back I never knew. All I know about the matter is that Uncle Billy had gone north to meet Grant at Cincinnati, and General Sheridan was not in command.

We lost more men on the retreat from Dandridge than would have been lost in a battle with Longstreet, and we had men enough to have whipped him and driven him out of the state. But "the grand army of occupation" was permitted to do no fighting, and so we wallowed around in the mud of east Tennessee.

In a few days we marched down to Knoxville and below to a place named in honor of one of America's greatest poets, I guess; in any event, it had the poetical name of Lenore, and if not _loved_, it certainly seemed _lost_. It may have been found since the war, but it was certainly _lost Lenore_ when we were there.

I suppose no part of the south suffered so much in the way of partisan warfare as east Tennessee. This part of the state owned very few slaves, and the inhabitants were largely true to the union cause. Of course, the wealthy portion of the people were slaveholders, and they were rebels to a man, and middle Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia, and some portions of North Carolina were intensely rebel, and thus you will understand that east Tennessee was surrounded by a disloyal population. Then, again, the Tennessee valley was the principal gateway from Richmond to the southwest and, until the occupation of Knoxville by General Burnside, this valley was continually being overrun by rebel troops of all sorts, from infantry to mounted bushwhackers. The disloyal, when the rebel army was present, informed on their loyal neighbors, and the old men, the women, and the children had to seek safety in the woods, ravines, and caves of the mountains, only to see their dear old homes in flames behind them. Even the learned and respected Judge Baxter, afterwards appointed judge of the United States circuit court, who, before the war, had a fine residence and lucrative practice in the city of Knoxville, was compelled to "lie out in the bush," as they call it, for three months at one time, to save his life; and yet with most remarkable magnanimity, through Judge Baxter's influence, not an acre of rebel land or a rebel home was confiscated in the whole of east Tennessee. While we were in one of the many camps about Knoxville, the two regiments commanded by the Brownlow brothers, James and John, veteranized, and under the order of the government were granted thirty days' leave of absence. I happened to be present at the time they disbanded. One of these brothers made a speech to the two regiments. I don't remember which one, but I never can forget one thing he said: "Take your arms with you; you will not be wanted here for thirty days. Go home and avenge the death of your fathers and brothers." This speech was received by these hardy mountaineers as a license, as it was intended to be, for murder and the desolating torch. Not a night from that time on for thirty days but the heavens were aglare with the flames of rebel homes, and the number of murders committed will never be known "until the sea gives up its dead." But never did the horrors of Indian massacre compare with east Tennessee for deeds of murder and fiendish, remorseless cruelty from 1861 to 1865.

Then on the 17th moved back in the rain and mud, and went into camp; and then on the 23d moved forward again, found no enemy and then back to camp, having marched that day in the rain and mud twenty-eight miles. Then on the 24th we struck tents and marched twelve miles beyond Knoxville to Strawberry Plains again. Then we were up and off to New Market. Then the next day marched to Morristown, eighteen miles from New Market, and occupied the abandoned quarters built by Longstreet's men. Stayed in this camp until March 2d, 1864, and then marched back to New Market. This marching and counter marching is of no particular interest of itself, but I give it to you to show how we put in the time. Of all the campaigning we ever did this of east Tennessee was the most purposeless, seemingly profitless, and dismal. The most of the time we were hard up for rations, and were compelled to forage on a people as friendly as any in Ohio, and that had been robbed by both armies. I never can forget the time we lay at Clinch Mountain Gap, when it was so cold that we had to build log-heaps in front of our tents to keep from freezing, that Colonel Pickands sent Lieutenant Stedman with a file of men and a wagon to try and find something to eat. I was at headquarters when he returned at night. The colonel, with that usual smile, said: "Lieutenant, what success to-day?" Stedman answered: "Nothing." "Why?" remarked the colonel. Stedman replied, with an oath so terrific that I am sure it was heard in Heaven (and which I hope the recording angel has blotted out, and I know he has if he has attended strictly to business), "that he would be —— —— before he would rob women and children." When the recording angel became acquainted with the noble Stedman, fresh from the bloody field of New Hope Church, I am sure the accounts were properly adjusted.

Well, this must end my recollections of the very celebrated march from Chattanooga to Knoxville and the winter campaign of east Tennessee.

General Longstreet finally went back to the army of northern Virginia, not that he was in any danger from us, but simply because he became tired of the scenery and wanted a change, I suppose.

Nothing in history is grander than the relief of Knoxville; nothing tamer and more devoid of sense than the balance of the campaign. Yet we can draw from it all this useful lesson, that those brave spirits, the noble men that endured the march and campaign, had a patriotism and endurance that nothing of storm, of cold, of hunger, of sickness, of bad management could dampen. And though many of that band sleep in southern graves, yet many lived to bring back the stars and stripes in triumph from the greatest conflict of modern times and to see the rebellious states restored to a peaceful and happy union.

THE ATLANTA CAMPAIGN.

The spring of 1864 opened with millions of anxious patriots looking in the direction of our armies.

General Grant had virtually been made commander in chief of all the union forces, with personal direction of the Army of the Potomac.

Every lover of his country had come to understand that the policy of conquering rebel territory and guarding rebel property would never crush out rebellion.

The military policy of General Grant, of making the objective point of campaigns _the rebel armies_, met the good sense and received the hearty approval of the patriotic people of the United States.

Some raised the cry of "butcher," but every thoughtful man that knew the desperate intentions, the bravery, the skill, and the strong defensive positions occupied by the rebel armies, knew that their destruction meant severe marches, terribly destructive battles, thousands of brave men killed, and vastly more wounded and maimed for life; but in the face of all these mighty sacrifices, that the poverty of language will not enable us to describe, the patriotic people of the north said, "We will sustain the army at all hazards," and the armies responded, "Let us set forward."

It is a well-known fact that in the winter of 1864, at the Burnett House in the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, the two greatest generals developed by the war, Grant and Sherman, met in counsel. Sherman, while a line officer in the regular army, had become most thoroughly acquainted with the topography of the state of Georgia, and it was at this consultation that the campaign from Chattanooga to Atlanta and the grand march "from Atlanta to the sea" were developed and determined upon. It was at this consultation that Sherman said, "The confederacy is a shell and I can march an army through it." It was at this consultation that Grant said, "If you undertake it, I will hold Lee and his armies, that they give you no trouble." At the end of this meeting each of the great commanders repaired to his respective scene of action to carry forward the purposes determined on thereat.

The first of May, 1864, found assembled in the vicinity of Chattanooga, and as far south as Ringgold, Ga., the forces with which General Sherman proposed to crush the shell of the rebellion. It consisted of the Army of the Cumberland, General George H. Thomas in command; the Army of the Tennessee, under the especial command of General McPherson; the 23d Corps, commanded by General Schofield; the 20th Army Corps, still in command of the hero of Lookout mountain, "Fighting Joe Hooker," as he was often called in army circles, and also a brigade of regulars. Then as able lieutenants in command of corps and divisions, Sherman had Logan, Blair, Sickels, Stanley, Wood, Slocum, Osterhaus, and many others, _all fighting officers_. Sheridan, at that time, had been transferred to the Army of the Potomac by the especial order of General Grant, who witnessed General Sheridan's heroic conduct at Missionary Ridge.