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Reminiscences of the Civil War:
Electronic Edition.

John Brown Gordon, 1832-1904

Funding from the Library of Congress/Ameritech National Digital Library Competition supported the electronic publication of this title.

Text scanned (OCR) by Jennifer Kellerman
Images scanned by Jill Kuhn
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First edition, 1999
ca. 1MB
Academic Affairs Library, UNC-CH
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
1999.

        © This work is the property of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text.


Call number E470 .G66 1904c (Davis Library, UNC-CH)

Source Description:
Reminiscences of the Civil War
Gordon, John B.
New York
Charles Scribner's Sons
Atlanta
The Martin & Hoyt Co.
1904

        The electronic edition is a part of the UNC-CH digitization project, Documenting the American South, Beginnings to 1920.
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GENERAL JOHN B. GORDON
From a photograph taken at the close of the war, when he was thirty-three years of age.

        

Illustration

Memorial Edition

REMINISCENCES OF THE CIVIL WAR

BY

GENERAL JOHN B. GORDON
OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
GENERAL STEPHEN D. LEE
COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF THE UNITED
CONFEDERATE VETERANS MEMORIAL ACCOUNT BY
FRANCES GORDON SMITH

Illustrated

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
ATLANTA
THE MARTIN & HOYT CO.
1904

Page verso

Copyright, 1903. by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Published October, 1903

Page v

CONTENTS

Page xi

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Page xiii

INTRODUCTION TO THE MEMORIAL
EDITION

        GENERAL JOHN B. GORDON'S last work was the publishing of his "Reminiscences of the Civil War." This volume, written in his vigorous style and broad, patriotic spirit, has been most favorably received and read all over the country. Since his death this memorial edition is brought out; and it is appropriate that an additional introduction should accompany it, somewhat in the shape of a biographical sketch.

        General John Brown Gordon was an all-round great man--a valiant and distinguished soldier, an eminent statesman, a great orator, an author of merit, and a public-spirited and useful citizen. He was born in Upson County, Georgia, February 6, 1832. His father was the Rev. Zachary Herndon Gordon. The family was of Scotch extraction, and its members fought in the Revolutionary War. He received his education at the university of his native State, and by profession was a lawyer.

        At the breaking out of the war, in 1861, he enlisted as a private soldier, and was elected captain of his company. His career was perhaps as brilliant as that of any officer in the Confederate army. In rapid succession he filled every grade--that of

Page xiv

Major, Lieutenant-Colonel, Colonel, Brigadier-General, Major-General, and, near the end, was assigned to duty as Lieutenant-General (by authority of the Secretary of War), and while he never received the commission in regular form, he commanded, at the surrender at Appomattox, one half of the Army of Northern Virginia, under Robert E. Lee.

        At the close of the war he had earned the reputation of being perhaps the most conspicuous and personally valiant officer surviving, and the one generally regarded as most promising and competent for increased rank and larger command. His imposing and magnificent soldierly bearing, coupled with his splendid ringing voice and far-reaching oratory, made him the "White-plumed Knight of our Southland" and the "Chevalier Bayard of the Confederate Army." He had the God-given talent of getting in front of his troops and, in a few magnetic appeals, inspiring them almost to madness, and being able to lead them into the jaws of death. This was notably done at Fredericksburg, and again on the 12th of May, at the battle of Spottsylvania Court House. He greatly distinguished himself on many bloody fields. I mention now, as most prominent, the battles of Seven Pines, Sharpsburg or Antietam, the Wilderness, Spottsylvania Court House, Cedar Creek, Petersburg, and Appomattox. At Sharpsburg he was wounded five times, but would not leave his troops till the last shot laid him helpless and insensible on the field. A scholarly professor of history in one of our Southern universities recently stated that in his study of the great war on both sides he had found but one prominent

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general who, when he was in command, or when he led a charge, had never been defeated or repulsed, and that general was John B. Gordon. At Appomattox, just before the surrender, when Lee's army had "been fought to a frazzle" and was surrounded by the enemy, General Gordon, under the most discouraging conditions, led the last charge of the Army of Northern Virginia, and captured the intrenchments and several pieces of artillery in his front just before the surrender.

        He returned to his native State immediately after the surrender at Appomattox, and discovered that his war record had made him the most popular man before the people of his State. His soldiers idolized him, and his fame was a pleasant theme in almost every household. Almost under protest, he was elected governor in 1867, but reconstruction tactics counted him out. He was elected United States senator in 1872, when only forty years of age, over two of the greatest statesmen Georgia ever had, Alexander H. Stephens and Benjamin H. Hill. He served, first and last, about thirteen years in the Senate of the United States. His services in the national Congress were brilliant and statesmanlike, and placed the entire South under great obligations for his display of tact, fortitude, wisdom, and patience under great provocation at possibly the most delicate and threatening period in the history of the ex-Confederate States. His courage and eloquence, used always conservatively, with the aid of such men as Lamar of Mississippi, Hill of Georgia, Gibson of Louisiana, and others, brought his own State and Louisiana, South Carolina, Mississippi, and the

Page xvi

entire Southland under the control of their own people. He was chosen by the Democrats in Congress to draft an address to the people of the South, urging patience, endurance, and an appeal to a returning sense of justice as the cure for all wrongs. He was elected governor of Georgia twice, and the record shows that his messages were as able as any emanating from the long line of distinguished men who preceded or followed him. Able critics declared his first Inaugural "worthy of Thomas Jefferson."

        Of his last election as United States senator, a contemporary historian has written:

        It was a marvellous political victory. Unopposed until he antagonized the sub-treasury plan of the Farmers' Alliance, which had four fifths of the Legislature in its favor, he was elected after the most exciting contest of the times. In the wild enthusiasm succeeding his victory, he was borne by the multitude through the Capitol to the street, placed on a caisson, and drawn about the city amid shouts and rejoicing, while the whole State was ablaze with bonfires. His speech in the Senate in 1893, at the time of the Chicago riots, pledging the aid of the South in maintaining law and order, rang from one end of the country to the other.


        Declining a reëlection to the Senate in 1897, he devoted his latter years to the lecture platform. The one object nearest his heart was to wipe out as far as possible all bitterness between the people of the North and the South. His great lecture, "The Last Days of the Confederacy," was received with enthusiasm everywhere, and he really became

Page xvii

the great evangel of peace and good feeling; nor was his a new idea with him. At Appomattox, after the surrender of Lee's army, he gathered his weeping heroes around him, and his patriotism in that dark hour was prophetic and grand. He told his comrades "to bear their trial bravely, to go home in peace, obey the laws, rebuild the country, and work for the weal and harmony of the Republic." This text was his theme ever afterwards, and while stalwart in battling inch by inch in Congress for his beloved Southland, and devoted to the tender memories of the Confederacy, he yet set an example of true patriotism, by adding to this devotion an unwavering loyalty to our great reunited American Republic. No one could move the masses as he did, North and South, by appeals to patriotism, coupled with pride of section and country.

        The affectionate regard in which he was held was nowhere brought out so markedly as in the great fraternal gatherings of ex-Confederate Soldiers. Here he appeared greatest and most beloved. He was their only Commander from the organization of the United Confederate Veterans until his death. His magical leadership and personality and wise and conservative administration gave it shape and success. His hold on and influence over his comrades, when he appeared among them or rose to speak, was wonderful to behold. Even a motion of his hand brought silence, and the great gatherings hung on every word he spoke, and his advice decided everything. At the Reunion at Nashville, Tennessee, he attempted to lay down his commission as Commander. No one who witnessed that scene

Page xviii

will ever forget it. The great assemblage (some six thousand persons) rose spontaneously, and with wild acclamation, that would admit of no parleying or delay, commissioned him for life as leader and Commander. I doubt if any other man ever had a greater and more effective demonstration of love and confidence. A similar scene occurred at Louisville. Here he raised his voice, amid great excitement, in favor of conservative bearing toward the Veterans of the North, who, when they had their meeting in Fredericksburg, Virginia, had sent friendly greetings to the Veterans of the South.

        In his private life he was pure and spotless, and an example to every American citizen. His devotion to his wife and family was beautiful in the extreme. In early life he had married Miss Fanny Haralson, daughter of Hon. Hugh Anderson Haralson, who represented Georgia in Congress for many years, and her devotion to him equalled the great love he bore her. She was ever near him through-out the war, and, but for her tender and wifely nursing when supposed to be fatally wounded at Sharpsburg, he could never have recovered. Her war experience would make a beautiful romance to go down with that of her departed husband. He never failed to try and make her the partner of his triumphs and popularity. At many of the reunions the old veterans accorded her as great an ovation as they gave their Commander.

        No event since the great demonstration in New Orleans when Jefferson Davis died has brought out more strikingly the love of the Southern people for any one man than was shown when General

Page xix

Gordon was laid away in the beautiful cemetery in Atlanta, Georgia (January 14, 1904). Upwards of seventy-five thousand people viewed and took part in the ceremonies. Governors and distinguished citizens from almost every Southern State were present; and it was especially touching to witness the exhibition of love and affection of surviving Confederate soldiers, who attended in great numbers to show their esteem for the beloved dead. The people of the North also expressed sympathy, and the universal grief was reflected in telegrams from the President of the United States, the Secretary of War, the General of the army, in resolutions of State Legislatures in session, and in memorial meetings in many localities.

        He was a devout and humble Christian gentleman. I know of no man more beloved at the South, and he was probably the most popular Southern man among the people of the North.

STEPHEN D. LEE,
Commander-in-Chief United Confederate Veterans.

        

Illustration

Page xxi

MEMORIAL SKETCH OF THE LAST HOURS,
DEATH, AND FUNERAL OF GENERAL
JOHN B. GORDON

        ON Wednesday morning, January 6, 1904, General Gordon was stricken with his last illness. Less than three weeks before, he had come to his winter home on Biscayne Bay, in Florida, where the sunlight and balmy air, always a delight to him, had seemed to revive him and stir his enthusiasm to a degree unusual even in one of his energetic and joyous temperament.

        Those great qualities which set him high among men illumined with peculiar lustre these last weeks, making them an epitome of his whole life. Unconquerable energy, undying enthusiasm--above all, unselfish love--these were the traits which had borne him through the battles of war and the battles of peace, and through years of peerless civic service; these the traits which uplifted the work of his stalwart years and bore his spirit indomitable through years of physical frailty, and which at the very last shone through the mists of his dying hours with the glowing beauty of a setting sun. Only the day before his illness, he was tramping over the fields and through the orchards with his grandson, planning with the delight of a boy.

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"My son, this shall be a paradise for your grandmother and all of us some day."

        Before noon on Wednesday he was unconscious, and it seemed he would sink out of sight without a sign; but in forty-eight hours he rallied. On Saturday morning he looked out on the sunlit bay and at the great palms waving against a blue sky, and said in low and broken tones: "It seems a poor use of God's beautiful gifts to us to be ill on a day like this!" From then until the end he was conscious enough to be constantly solicitous of the comfort of those about him, and to give during every fleeting hour some tender thought to that one who had been the comrade of his soul for nearly fifty years--"his helpmeet in the loftiest sense, his comforter, his counsellor, his friend";1 and as his beautiful spirit was poised for its glorious flight, he gave to her the last look and smile and touch of recognition.

        At five minutes past ten o'clock on Saturday night, January 9, he passed into another life, as peacefully as a little child falls asleep. Within an hour the message had sped over the wires to the whole country; and the crowds around the bulletin boards in many Southern cities turned silently, and with tear-dimmed eyes scattered to their homes. Before midnight newsboys were crying the sad news up and down the residence streets; and on Sunday morning the heart of the whole South seemed to go out in one great throb of pain and sympathy. From every quarter of the country, as fast as the wires could carry them, came messages of sympathy

        1 From the Atlanta "News" of January 14, 1904.
Page xxiii

from those who loved the man, and from those who mourned the nation's loss.

        On Sunday evening, at the request of the people of Miami, Florida, the body was borne, with military escort, to the Presbyterian church in that little city on the bay, to lie there in state until the funeral train should leave for Atlanta. A detachment of Florida troops accompanied the remains to Atlanta, and at the State line this guard of honor was augmented by members of the staff of Georgia's governor. At every station beautiful flowers were brought to the funeral car, and, when time allowed, old Confederate veterans, with tears streaming down their rugged cheeks, filed by to look for the last time on the face of their beloved leader.

        "Hats off! Gordon comes home to-day." 1


        "He comes--not as he came, one sunny day in spring nearly twoscore years ago, wearing the crested cypress of defeat as gravely proud as some successful Caesar might wear the conqueror's coronal of bays; not as he came when he laid aside the cares of statesmanship, and loftily enshrined in love and gratitude for those victories of peace no less renowned than war, voluntarily retire from the highest parliament of the world; not as he came for so many successive years from the annual camp-fires where the broken battalions met to exchange their stirring stories of the valor of other days, and, above all, to sit once more under the magic spell of his inspiring tongue. He has come home as, in the course of nature, he needs must come at last, covered with the sable trappings of grief, heralded by the slow monody of muffled drums, followed by the measured march of a people dissolved in the unspeakable bitterness of tears." 2



        1 From Atlanta "Constitution" of January 13, 1904.

        2 Editorial in Atlanta "News" of January 13, 1904.
Page xxiv

        In the cold gray dawn of the January morning a great throng overflowed the station, and filled the streets outside, as the train rolled into Atlanta, bearing the body of General Gordon. The official escort awaiting the train was composed of the new commander-in-chief of the Confederate Veterans Association, and other ex-Confederate officers, members and commanders of four camps of Confederate Veterans, the Confederate Veterans on the Atlanta police force, mounted police, and State militia. Besides these, thousands stood with heads bared, and bowed in reverence, as the casket was removed and borne to the hearse by the grizzled heroes who had followed this leader in war, and learned of him the lessons of peace. As the pall-bearers moved toward the hearse, an old veteran approached the casket, hurriedly, removed his overcoat, handed it to a by-stander, and jerking off his worn and faded jacket, of Confederate gray, asked, in tremulous tones, "May I lay it on his coffin just one minute?" His request was granted; and, as he lifted the jacket tenderly and slipped it again over his bent shoulders, he said between sobs: "Now thousands could n't buy it from me!"

        The procession moved to the State Capitol, and there in the rotunda, on a catafalque covered with flowers, the casket was placed. Around the great circular room, at intervals, drooped the flag of his beloved Confederacy, for which he had given the first blood of his young manhood, and the flag of a reunited country, to which he had given the richest offerings of his mature years. Palm branches from Florida, floral tributes from all over the South and

Page xxv

from the North, garlanded four tall pillars, and hung in fragrant masses on the casket, on the walls, and on stands about the corridor. And thus "the first citizen of the South lay in state in Georgia's Capitol."1 Tens of thousands passed in double line to look upon the face of a man "who was loved as seldom man was ever loved on earth."2 The Capitol doors were kept open at night that the workingmen might see his face, and it was long after midnight before the special guard of veterans and militia was left alone with its precious charge.

        On Thursday morning, at ten o'clock, memorial exercises were held in the Georgia Hall of Representatives. While addresses were being made by men of distinction who had served with him in war and in peace, men, women, and children still passed, in unbroken line, by the casket in the rotunda. Immediately following these exercises, religious services were held in the Presbyterian church adjoining the Capitol. A way was opened through the throng, which packed the Capitol corridors and massed in the square and streets outside; and the casket was borne across by his old comrades. At Mrs. Gordon's request the veterans were given first place in the church after the family.

        "The thing that made Gordon great--that which bound him close to men and made him dear to them-- was his mighty heart, strong as the ramparts of the hills through which he led his columns, gentle and pure as the kind zephyrs of his own Southland . . . . Honest search after the source of Gordon's superb power cannot fail to show that the fountain of his strength was not merely in

        1 Atlanta "News," January 13, 1904.

        2 Atlanta "Journal"
Page xxvi

his right arm, nor in his keen and flashing blade, nor yet in his alertness of mind and vigor of intellect, but in the meeting of these qualities with a pure spirit--these sterling virtues fused behind the crystal of his soul, forming the true mirror of knighthood . . . . He was master of many because master of himself."1


        From the rich treasury of such a nature the ministers of Christ drew their lessons over the bier of this "prince of Christian chivalry."2

        During the hours of the funeral, public and private schools and places of business were closed. All flags hung at half-mast, and in some cities remained so for thirty days. Seventeen guns were fired at intervals of half an hour during the day. Throughout Georgia and the entire South, memorial services were held at this hour, and from morning till night bells tolled out the grief of the people.

        The staff of the Department of the Gulf, United States Army, the Atlanta Camp, G. A. R., the Sixth Regiment United States infantry, stationed near Atlanta, asked for place in the line of the funeral procession. They wished to join with others of the North in paying tribute to the man "who had done most to make them forget the animosities of war-- and whose course since that time had marked him with the attributes of true greatness."3

        It was a "sweet and solemn pageant," that funeral procession, which moved to muffled drumbeats through the city streets, all filled with a silent throng and hushed in reverent sorrow: veterans

        1 Editorial Atlanta "Journal," January 14, 1904.

        2 Atlanta "News."

        3 "Free Press," Detroit, Michigan, and other Northern papers.
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of the Blue and of the Gray; men of America's army to-day, regulars and militia; corps of cadets from Southern military schools; patriotic organizations; drum corps and bugle corps; and a host of private citizens: and when the hearse stopped at the lot selected by the Ladies' Confederate Memorial Association, the end of the procession was still down in the city streets.

        And now

        "The mortal remains of General John B. Gordon--soldier and statesman--lie in Oakland Cemetery . . . . The muffled drum has beat the funeral march, and grief has found voice in the piercing minor of the fifes. But from over the whole South to-day there rises a strange music which blends in one large requiem--not the dirge of unavailing sorrow, but rather a paean of heroic triumph reciting the valorous deeds of him whom the people mourn." 1


        1 Atlanta "Journal," January 14, 1904.



        And those who knew him and loved him best, whose lives are most enriched by the matchless loveliness of his life, are lifted up in his death, and, in the midst of their grief, open their hearts to the countless thousands who mourn his loss, because "he had kept the whiteness of his soul." "His name becomes the heritage of his people, and his fame the glory of a nation."2

        FRANCES GORDON SMITH.


        2 Atlanta "Constitution," January 14, 1904.

Page xxix

INTRODUCTION

        FOR many years I have been urged to place on record my reminiscences of the war between the States. In undertaking the task now, it is not my purpose to attempt a comprehensive description of that great struggle, nor an elaborate analysis of the momentous interests and issues involved. The time may not have arrived for a full and fair history of that most interesting period in the Republic's life. The man capable of writing it with entire justice to both sides is perhaps yet unborn. He may appear, however, at a future day, fully equipped for the great work. If endowed with the requisite breadth and clearness of view, with inflexible mental integrity and absolute freedom from all bias, he will produce the most instructive and thrilling record in the world's deathless annals, and cannot fail to make a contribution of measureless value to the American people and to the cause of free government throughout the world.

        Conscious of my own inability to meet the demands of so great an undertaking, I have not attempted it, but with an earnest desire to contribute

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something toward such future history these reminiscences have been written. I have endeavored to make my review of that most heroic era so condensed as to claim the attention of busy people, and so impartial as to command the confidence of the fair-minded in all sections. It has been my fixed purpose to make a brief but dispassionate and judicially fair analysis of the divergent opinions and ceaseless controversies which for half a century produced an ever-widening alienation between the sections, and which finally plunged into the fiercest and bloodiest of fratricidal wars a great and enlightened people who were of the same race, supporters of the same Constitution, and joint heirs of the same freedom. I have endeavored to demonstrate that the courage displayed and the ratio of losses sustained were unprecedented in modern warfare. I have also recorded in this volume a large number of those characteristic and thrilling incidents which illustrate a unique and hitherto unwritten phase of the war, the story of which should not be lost, because it is luminous with the noblest lessons. Many of these incidents came under my own observation. They marked every step of the war's progress, were often witnessed by both armies, and were of almost daily occurrence in the camps, on the marches, and between the lines; increasing in frequency and pathos as the war progressed, and illustrating the

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distinguishing magnanimity and lofty manhood of the American soldier.

        It will be found, I trust, that no injustice has been done to either section, to any army, or to any of the great leaders, but that the substance and spirit of the following pages will tend rather to lift to a higher plane the estimate placed by victors and vanquished upon their countrymen of the opposing section, and thus strengthen the sentiment of intersectional fraternity which is essential to complete national unity.

J. B. GORDON.

Page 1

REMINISCENCES OF THE
CIVIL WAR

Page 3

CHAPTER I

MY FIRST COMMAND AND THE OUTBREAK OF THE WAR

        A company of mountaineers--Joe Brown's pikes--The Raccoon Roughs--The first Rebel yell--A flag presented to the company--Arrival at Montgomery, Alabama--Analysis of the causes of the war--Slavery's part in it--Liberty in the Union of the States, and liberty in the independence of the States.

        THE outbreak of war found me in the mountains of Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama, engaged in the development of coal-mines. This does not mean that I was a citizen of three States; but it does mean that I lived so near the lines that my mines were in Georgia, my house in Alabama, and my post-office in Tennessee. The first company of soldiers, therefore, with which I entered the service was composed of stalwart mountaineers from the three States. I had been educated for the bar and for a time practised law in Atlanta. In September, 1854, I had married Miss Fanny Haralson, third daughter of General Hugh A. Haralson, of La Grange, Georgia. The wedding occurred on her seventeenth birthday and when I was but twenty-two. We had two children, both boys. The struggle between devotion to my family on the one hand and duty to my country on the other was most trying to my sensibilities. My spirit had been caught up by the flaming enthusiasm that swept like a prairie-fire through the land, and I hastened to unite with the brave men of the mountains in organizing a company of volunteers. But what

Page 4

was I to do with the girl-wife and the two little boys? The wife and mother was no less taxed in her effort to settle this momentous question. But finally yielding to the promptings of her own heart and to her unerring sense of duty, she ended doubt as to what disposition was to be made of her by announcing that she intended to accompany me to the war, leaving her children with my mother and faithful "Mammy Mary." I rejoiced at her decision then, and had still greater reasons for rejoicing at it afterward, when I felt through every fiery ordeal the inspiration of her near presence, and had, at need, the infinite comfort of her tender nursing.

        The mountaineers did me the honor to elect me their captain. It was the first office I had ever held, and I verily believed it would be the last; for I expected to fight with these men till the war ended or until I should be killed. Our first decision was to mount and go as cavalry. We had not then learned, as we did later, the full meaning of that war-song, "If you want to have a good time, jine the cavalry"; but like most Southerners we were inured to horseback, and all preferred that great arm of the service.

        This company of mounted men was organized as soon as a conflict seemed probable and prior to any call for volunteers. They were doomed to a disappointment, "No cavalry now needed" was the laconic and stunning reply to the offer of our services. What was to be done, was the perplexing question. The proposition to wait until mounted men were needed was promptly negatived by the suggestion that we were so far from any point where a battle was likely to occur, and so hidden from view by the surrounding mountains, that we might be forgotten and the war might end before we had a chance.

        "Let us dismount and go at once as infantry." This proposition was carried with a shout and by an almost unanimous vote. My own vote and whatever influence

Page 5

I possessed were given in favor of the suggestion, although my desire for cavalry service had grown to a passion. Accustomed to horseback on my father's plantation from my early childhood, and with an untutored imagination picturing the wild sweep of my chargers upon belching batteries and broken lines of infantry, it was to me, as well as to my men, a sad descent from dashing cavalry to a commonplace company of slow, plodding foot-soldiers. Reluctantly, therefore, we abandoned our horses, and in order certainly to reach the point of action before the war was over, we resolved to go at once to the front as infantry, without waiting for orders, arms, or uniforms. Not a man in the company had the slightest military training, and the captain himself knew very little of military tactics.

        The new government that was to be formed had no standing army as a nucleus around which the volunteers could be brought into compact order, with a centre of disciplined and thoroughly drilled soldiery; and the States which were to form it had but few arms, and no artisans or factories to supply them. The old-fashioned squirrel rifles and double-barrelled shot-guns were called into requisition. Governor Joseph E. Brown, of Georgia, put shops in the State to work, making what were called "Joe Brown's pikes." They were a sort of rude bayonet, or steel lance, fastened, not to guns, but to long poles or handles, and were to be given to men who had no other arms. Of course, few if any of these pikemen ever had occasion to use these warlike implements, which were worthy of the Middle Ages, but those who bore them were as gallant knights as ever levelled a lance in close quarters. I may say that very few bayonets of any kind were actually used in battle, so far as my observation extended. The one line or the other usually gave way under the galling fire of small arms, grape, and canister, before the bayonet could be brought into

Page 6

requisition. The bristling points and the glitter of the bayonets were fearful to look upon as they were levelled in front of a charging line; but they were rarely reddened with blood. The day of the bayonet is passed except for use in hollow squares, or in resisting cavalry charges, or as an implement in constructing light and temporary fortifications. It may still serve a purpose in such emergencies or to impress the soldier's imagination, as the loud-sounding and ludicrous gongs are supposed to stiffen the backs and steady the nerves of the grotesque soldiers of China. Of course, Georgia's able war governor did not contemplate any very serious execution with these pikes; but the volunteers came in such numbers and were so eager for the fray that something had to be done; and this device served its purpose. It at least shows the desperate straits in securing arms to which the South was driven, even after seizing the United States arsenals within the Confederate territory.

        The irrepressible humor and ready rustic wit which afterward relieved the tedium of the march and broke the monotony of the camp, and which, like a star in the darkness, seemed to grow more brilliant as the gloom of war grew denser, had already begun to sparkle in the intercourse of the volunteers. A woodsman who was noted as a "crack shot" among his hunting companions felt sure that he was going, to win fame as a select rifleman in the army; for he said that in killing a squirrel he always put the bullet through the head, though the squirrel might be perched at the time on the topmost limb of the tallest tree. An Irishman who had seen service in the Mexican War, and was attentively listening to this young hunter's boast, fixed his twinkling eye upon the aspiring rifleman and said to him: "Yes; but Dan, me boy, ye must ricollict that the squirrel had no gon in his hand to shoot back at ye." The young huntsman had not thought about that; but he doubtless found

Illustration

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later on, as the marksmen of both armies did, that it made a vast difference in the accuracy of aim when those in front not only had "gons" in their hands, but were firing them with distracting rapidity. This rude Irish philosopher had explained in a sentence one cause of the wild and aimless firing which wasted more tons of lead in a battle than all its dead victims would weigh.

        There was at the outbreak of the war and just preceding it a class of men both North and South over whose inconsistencies the thoughtful, self-poised, and determined men who did the fighting made many jokes, as the situation grew more serious. It was that class of men in both sections who were most resolute in words and most prudent in acts; who urged the sections to the conflict and then did little to help them out of it; who, like the impatient war-horse, snuffed the battle from afar--very far: but who, when real war began to roll its crimson tide nearer and nearer to them, came to the conclusion that it was better for the country, as well as for themselves, to labor in other spheres; and that it was their duty, as America's great humorist put it, to sacrifice not themselves but their wives' relations on patriotism's altar. One of these furious leaders at the South declared that if we would secede from the Union there would be no war, and if there should be a war, we could "whip the Yankees with children's pop-guns." When, after the war, this same gentleman was addressing an audience, he was asked by an old maimed soldier: "Say, Judge, ain't you the same man that told us before the war that we could whip the Yankees with pop-guns?"

        "Yes," replied the witty speaker, "and we could, but, confound 'em they wouldn't fight us that way."

        My company, dismounted and ready for infantry service, did not wait for orders to move, but hastily bidding adieu to home and kindred, were off for Milledgeville,

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then capital of Georgia. At Atlanta a telegram from the governor met us, telling us to go back home, and stay there until our services were needed. Our discomfiture can be better imagined than described. In fact, there broke out at once in my ranks a new rebellion. These rugged mountaineers resolved that they would not go home; that they had a right to go to the war, had started to the war, and were not going to be trifled with by the governor or any one else. Finally, after much persuasion, and by the cautious exercise of the authority vested in me by my office of captain, I prevailed on them to get on board the home-bound train. As the engine-bell rang and the whistle blew for the train to start, the rebellion broke loose again with double fury. The men rushed to the front of the train, uncoupled the cars from the engine, and gravely informed me that they had reconsidered and were not going back; that they intended to go to the war, and that if Governor Brown would not accept them, some other governor would. Prophetic of future dash as this wild impetuosity might be, it did not give much promise of soldierly discipline; but I knew my men and did not despair. I was satisfied that the metal in them was the best of steel and only needed careful tempering.

        They disembarked and left the empty cars on the track, with the trainmen looking on in utter amazement. There was no course left me but to march them through the streets of Atlanta to a camp on the outskirts. The march, or rather straggle, through that city was a sight marvellous to behold and never to be forgotten. Totally undisciplined and undrilled, no two of these men marched abreast; no two kept the same step; no two wore the same colored coats or trousers. The only pretence at uniformity was the rough fur caps made of raccoon skins, with long, bushy, streaked raccoon tails hanging from behind them. The streets were packed with men,

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women, and children, eager to catch a glimpse of this grotesque company. Naturally we were the observed of all observers. Curiosity was on tip-toe, and from the crowded sidewalks there came to me the inquiry, "Are you the captain of that company, sir?" With a pride which I trust was pardonable, I indicated that I was. In a moment there came to me the second inquiry, "What company is that, sir?" Up to this time no name had been chosen-- at least, none had been announced to the men. I had myself, however, selected a name which I considered both poetic and appropriate, and I replied to the question, "This company is the Mountain Rifles." Instantly a tall mountaineer said in a tone not intended for his captain, but easily overheard by his companions and the bystanders: "Mountain hell! we are no Mountain Rifles; we are the Raccoon Roughs." It is scarcely necessary to say that my selected name was never heard of again. This towering Ajax had killed it by a single blow. The name he gave us clung to the company during all of its long and faithful service.

        Once in camp, we kept the wires hot with telegrams to governors of other States, imploring them to give us a chance. Governor Moore, of Alabama, finally responded, graciously consenting to incorporate the captain of the "Raccoon Roughs" and his coon-capped company into one of the regiments soon to be organized. The reading of this telegram evoked from my men the first wild Rebel yell it was my fortune to hear. Even then it was weird and thrilling. Through all the stages of my subsequent promotions, in all the battles in which I was engaged, this same exhilarating shout from these same trumpet-like throats rang in my ears, growing fainter and fainter as these heroic men became fewer and fewer at the end of each bloody day's work; and when the last hour of the war came, in the last desperate charge at Appomattox, the few and broken remnants of

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the Raccoon Roughs were still near their first captain's side, cheering him with the dying echoes of that first yell in the Atlanta camp.

        Alabama's governor had given us the coveted "chance," and with bounding hearts we joined the host of volunteers then rushing to Montgomery. The line of our travel was one unbroken scene of enthusiasm. Bonfires blazed from the hills at night, and torch-light processions, with drums and fifes, paraded the streets of the towns. In the absence of real cannon, blacksmiths' anvils were made to thunder our welcome. Vast throngs gathered at the depots, filling the air with their shoutings, and bearing banners with all conceivable devices, proclaiming Southern independence, and pledging the last dollar and man for the success of the cause. Staid matrons and gayly bedecked maidens rushed upon the cars, pinned upon our lapels the blue cockades, and cheered us by chanting in thrilling chorus:


                         In Dixie-land I take my stand
                         To live and die in Dixie.

        At other points they sang "The Bonnie Blue Flag," and the Raccoon Roughs, as they were thenceforward known, joined in the transporting chorus:


                         Hurrah, hurrah, for Southern rights hurrah!
                         Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star!

        The Hon. R. M. T. Hunter, of Virginia, who had been Speaker of the National House of Representatives, and United States senator, and who afterward became the Confederate Secretary of State and one of the Hampton Roads commissioners to meet President Lincoln and the Federal representatives, was travelling upon the same train that carried my company to Montgomery. This famous and venerable statesman, on his way to Alabama's capital to aid in organizing the new Government, made,

Illustration

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in answer to the popular demand, a number of speeches at the different stations. His remarks on these occasions were usually explanatory of the South's attitude in the threatened conflict. They were concise, clear, and forcible. The people did not need argument; but they applauded his every utterance, as he carefully described the South's position as one not of aggression but purely of defence; discussed the doctrine promulgated in the Declaration of the Fathers, that all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed; asserted the sovereignty of the States, and their right to peaceably assume that sovereignty, as evidenced by the declaration of New York, Rhode Island, and Virginia when they entered the Union; explained the protection given the South's peculiar property by the plain provisions of the Constitution and the laws; urged the necessity of separation both for Southern security and the permanent peace of the sections; and closed with the declaration that, while there was no trace of authority in the Constitution for the invasion and coercion of a sovereign State, yet it was the part of prudence and of patriotism to prepare for defence in case of necessity.

        Although I was a young man, yet, as the only captain on board, it fell to my lot also to respond to frequent calls. In the midst of this wild excitement and boundless enthusiasm, I was induced to make some promises which I afterward found inconvenient and even impossible to fulfil. A flag was presented bearing a most embarrassing motto. That motto consisted of two words: "No Retreat." I was compelled to accept it. There was, indeed, no retreat for me then; and in my speech accepting the flag I assured the fair donors that those coon-capped boys would make that motto ring with their cracking rifles on every battle-field; and in the ardor and inexperience of my young manhood, I related to these ladies and to the crowds at the depot the story of

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the little drummer-boy of Switzerland who, when captured and ordered to beat upon his drum a retreat, proudly replied, "Switzerland knows no such music!" Gathering additional inspiration from the shouts and applause which the story evoked, I exclaimed, "And these brave mountaineers and the young Confederacy, like glorious little Switzerland, will never know a retreat!" My men applauded and sanctioned this outburst of inconsiderate enthusiasm, but we learned better after a while. A little sober experience vastly modified and assuaged our youthful impetuosity. War is a wonderful developer, as well as destroyer, of men; and our four years of tuition in it equalled in both these particulars at least forty years of ordinary schooling. The first battle carried us through the rudimentary course of a military education; and several months before the four years' course was ended, the thoughtful ones began to realize that though the expense account had been great, it had at least reasonably well prepared us for final graduation, and for receiving the brief little diploma handed to us at Appomattox.

        If any apology be needed for my pledge to the patriotic women who presented the little flag with the big motto, "No Retreat," it must be found in the depth of the conviction that our cause was just. From great leaders and constitutional expounders, from schools and colleges, from debates in Congress, in the convention that adopted the Constitution, and from discussions on the hustings, we had learned the lesson of the sovereignty of the States. We had imbibed these political principles from our childhood. We were, therefore, prepared to defend them, ready to die for them, and it was impossible at the beginning for us to believe that they would be seriously and forcibly assailed.

        But I must return to our trip to Montgomery. We reached that city at night to find it in a hubbub over

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the arrival of enthusiastic, shouting volunteers. The hotels and homes were crowded with visiting statesmen and private citizens, gathered by a common impulse around the cradle of the new-born Confederacy. There was a determined look on every face, a fervid prayer on every lip, and a bounding hope in every heart. There was the rumbling of wagons distributing arms and ammunition at every camp, and the tramping of freshly enlisted men, on every street. There was a roar of cannon on the hills and around the Capitol booming welcome to the incoming patriots; and all nature seemed palpitating in sympathy with the intensity of popular excitement. It fell to the lot of the Raccoon Roughs to be assigned to the Sixth Alabama Regiment, and, contrary to my wishes and most unexpectedly to me, I was unanimously elected major.

        When my company of mountaineers reached Montgomery, the Provisional Government of the "Confederate States of America" had been organized. At first it was composed only of six States: South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The States of Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina were admitted into the Southern Union in the order, I believe, in which I have named them. Thus was launched the New Republic, with only eleven stars on its banner; but it took as its chart the same old American Constitution, or one so nearly like it that it contained the same limitations upon Federal power, the same guarantees of the rights of the States, the same muniments of public and personal liberty.

        The historian of the future, who attempts to chronicle the events of this period and analyze the thoughts and purposes of the people, will find far greater unanimity at the South than at the North. This division at the North did not last long; but it existed in a marked degree for some time after the secession movement began

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and after twenty or more United States forts, arsenals and barracks had been seized by State authorities, and even after the steamer Star of the West had been fired upon by State troops and driven back from the entrance of Charleston Harbor.

        At the South, the action of each State in withdrawing from the Union was the end, practically, of all division within the borders of such State; and the roar of the opening battle at Fort Sumter in South Carolina was the signal for practical unanimity at the North.

        Prior to actual secession there was even at the South more or less division of sentiment--not as to principle, but as to policy. Scarcely a man could be found in all the Southern States who doubted the constitutional right of a State to withdraw from the Union; but many of its foremost men thought that such movement was ill-advised or should be delayed. Among these were Robert E. Lee, who became the commander-in-chief of all the Confederate armies; Alexander Hamilton Stephens, who became the Confederate Vice-President; Benjamin H. Hill, who was a Confederate senator and one of the Confederate administration's most ardent and perhaps its most eloquent supporter; and even Jefferson Davis himself is said to have shed tears when, at his seat in the United States Senate, he received the telegram announcing that Mississippi had actually passed the ordinance of secession. The speech of Mr. Davis on taking leave of the Senate shows his loyal devotion to the Republic's flag, for which he had shed his blood in Mexico. In profoundly sincere and pathetic words he thus alludes to his unfeigned sorrow at the thought of parting with the Stars and Stripes. He said: "I shall be pardoned if I here express the deep sorrow which always overwhelms me when I think of taking a last leave of that object of early affection and proud association, feeling that henceforth

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it is not to be the banner which by day and by night I am ready to follow, to hail with the rising and bless with the setting sun."

        He agreed, however, with an overwhelming majority of the Southern people, in the opinion that both honor and security, as well as permanent peace, demanded separation. Referring to the denial of the right of Southerners to carry their property in slaves into the common Territories, he said: "Your votes refuse to recognize our domestic institutions, which preëxisted the formation of the Union--our property, which was guarded by the Constitution. You refuse us that equality without which we should be degraded if we remained in the Union. . . . Is there a senator on the other side who, to-day, will agree that we shall have equal enjoyment of the Territories of the United States? Is there one who will deny that we have equally paid in their purchases and equally bled in their acquisition in war? . . . Whose is the fault, then, if the Union be dissolved? . . . If you desire, at this last moment, to avert civil war, so be it; it is better so. If you will but allow us to separate from you peaceably, since we cannot live peaceably together, to leave with the rights we had before we were united, since we cannot enjoy them in the Union, then there are many relations, drawn from the associations of our (common) struggles from the Revolutionary period to the present day, which may be beneficial to you as well as to us."

        Abraham Lincoln, on the other hand, the newly elected President, was deeply imbued with the conviction that the future welfare of the Republic demanded that slavery should be prohibited forever in all the Territories. Indeed, upon such platform he had been nominated and elected. He, therefore, urged his friends not to yield on this point. His language was: "On the territorial question--that is, the question of extending slavery under national auspices--I am inflexible. I am for no compromise

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which assists or permits the extension of the institution on soil owned by the Nation." *

        Thus these two great leaders of antagonistic sectional thought were pitted against each other before they had actually taken in hand the reins of hostile governments. The South in her marvellous fecundity had given birth to both these illustrious Americans. Both were of Southern lineage and born under Southern skies. Indeed, they were born within a few months and miles of each other, and nurtured by Kentucky as their common mother. But they were destined in God's mysterious providence to find homes in different sections, to grow up under different institutions, to imbibe in youth and early manhood opposing theories of constitutional construction, to become the most conspicuous representatives of conflicting civilizations, and the respective Presidents of contending republics.

        After long, arduous, and distinguished services to their country and to liberty, both of these great sons of the South were doomed to end their brilliant careers in a manner shocking to the sentiment of enlightened Christendom. The one was to die disfranchised by the Government he had long and faithfully served and for the triumph of whose flag he had repeatedly pledged his life. The other was to meet his death by an assassin's bullet, at a period when his life, more than that of any other man, seemed essential to the speedy pacification of his country.

        As stated, there was less division of sentiment in the South at this period than at the North. It is a great mistake to suppose, as was believed by Northern people, that Southern politicians were "dragooning the masses," or beguiling them into secession. The literal truth is that the people were leading the leaders. The rush of volunteers was so great when we reached Montgomery

        * Letter to Seward, February 1.
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that my company, the Raccoon Roughs, felt that they were the favorites of fortune when they found the company enrolled among the "accepted." Hon. L. P. Walker, of Alabama, the first Secretary of War, was literally overwhelmed by the vast numbers wishing to enlist. The applicants in companies and regiments fatigued and bewildered him. The pressure was so great during his office hours that comparatively few of those who sought places in the fighting line could reach him. With a military ardor and patriotic enthusiasm rarely equalled in any age, the volunteers actually waylaid the War Secretary on the streets to urge him to accept at once their services. He stated that he found it necessary, when leaving his office for his hotel, to go by some unfrequented way, to avoid the persistent appeals of those who had commands ready to take the field. Before the Confederate Government left Montgomery for Richmond, about 360,000 men and boys, representing the best of Southern manhood, had offered their services, and were ready to pledge their fortunes and their lives to the cause of Southern independence. What was the meaning of this unparalleled spontaneity that pervaded all classes of the Southern people? The only answer is that it was the impulse of self-defence. One case will illustrate this unsolicited outburst of martial enthusiasm; this excess of patriotism above the supposed exigencies of the hour; this vast surplus of volunteers, beyond the power of the new Government to arm. Mr. W. C. Heyward, of South Carolina, was a gentleman of fortune and a West Pointer, graduating in the same class with President Davis. As soon as the Confederate Government was organized, Mr. Heyward went to Montgomery in person to tender his services with an entire regiment. He was unable for some time to obtain even an interview on the subject, and utterly failed to secure an acceptance of himself or his regiment. Returning to his home disappointed,

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this wealthy, thoroughly educated, and trained military man joined the Home Guards, and died doing duty as a private in the ranks.

        I know of nothing in all history that more brilliantly illustrates the lofty spirit, the high and holy impulse that sways a people aroused by the sentiment of self-defence, than this spontaneous uprising of Southern youth and manhood; than this readiness to stand for inherited convictions and constitutional rights, as they understood them; than the marvellous unanimity with which they rushed to the front with old flint and steel muskets, long-barrelled squirrel rifles, and double-barrelled shot-guns, in defence of their soil, their States, their homes, and, as they verily believed, in defence of imperilled liberty.

        There is no book in existence, I believe, in which the ordinary reader can find an analysis of the issues between the two sections, which fairly represents both the North and the South. Although it would require volumes to contain the great arguments, I shall attempt here to give a brief summary of the causes of our sectional controversy, and it will be my purpose to state the cases of the two sections so impartially that just-minded people on both sides will admit the statement to be judicially fair.

        The causes of the war will be found at the foundation of our political fabric, in our complex organism, in the fundamental law, in the Constitution itself, in the conflicting constructions which it invited, and in the institution of slavery which it recognized and was intended to protect. If asked what was the real issue involved in our unparalleled conflict, the average American citizen will reply, "The negro"; and it is fair to say that had there been no slavery there would have been no war. But there would have been no slavery if the South's protests could have availed when it was first introduced; and now that it is gone, although its sudden and violent

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abolition entailed upon the South directly and incidentally a series of woes which no pen can describe, yet it is true that in no section would its reëstablishment be more strongly and universally resisted. The South steadfastly maintains that responsibility for the presence of this political Pandora's box in this Western world cannot be laid at her door. When the Constitution was adopted and the Union formed, slavery existed in practically all the States; and it is claimed by the Southern people that its disappearance from the Northern and its development in the Southern States is due to climatic conditions and industrial exigencies rather than to the existence or absence of great moral ideas.

        Slavery was undoubtedly the immediate fomenting cause of the woful American conflict. It was the great political factor around which the passions of the sections had long been gathered--the tallest pine in the political forest around whose top the fiercest lightnings were to blaze and whose trunk was destined to be shivered in the earthquake shocks of war. But slavery was far from being the sole cause of the prolonged conflict. Neither its destruction on the one hand, nor its defence on the other, was the energizing force that held the contending armies to four years of bloody work. I apprehend that if all living Union soldiers were summoned to the witness-stand, every one of them would testify that it was the preservation of the American Union and not the destruction of Southern slavery that induced him to volunteer at the call of his country. As for the South, it is enough to say that perhaps eighty per cent. of her armies were neither slave-holders, nor had the remotest interest in the institution. No other proof, however, is needed than the undeniable fact that at any period of the war from its beginning to near its close the South could have saved slavery by simply laying down its arms and returning to the Union.

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        We must, therefore, look beyond the institution of slavery for the fundamental issues which dominated and inspired all classes of the contending sections. It is not difficult to find them. The "Old Man Eloquent," William E. Gladstone, who was perhaps England's foremost statesman of the century, believed that the Government formed by our fathers was the noblest political fabric ever devised by the brain of man. This undoubtedly is true; and yet before these inspired builders were dead, controversy arose as to the nature and powers of their free constitutional government. Indeed, in the very convention that framed the Constitution the clashing theories and bristling arguments of 1787 presaged the glistening bayonets of 1861. In the cabinet of the first President, the contests between Hamilton and Jefferson, representatives of conflicting constitutional constructions, were so persistent and fierce as to disturb the harmony of executive councils and tax the patience of Washington. The disciples of each of these political prophets numbered in their respective ranks the greatest statesmen and purest patriots. The followers of each continuously battled for these conflicting theories with a power and earnestness worthy of the founders of the Republic. Generation after generation, in Congress, on the hustings, and through the press, these irreconcilable doctrines were urged by constitutional expounders, until their arguments became ingrained into the very fibre of the brain and conscience of the sections. The long war of words between the leaders waxed at last into a war of guns between their followers.

        During the entire life of the Republic the respective rights and powers of the States and general government had furnished a question for endless controversy. In process of time this controversy assumed a somewhat sectional phase. The dominating thought of the North and of the South may be summarized in a few sentences.

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The South maintained with the depth of religious conviction that the Union formed under the Constitution was a Union of consent and not of force; that the original States were not the creatures but the creators of the Union; that these States had gained their independence, their freedom, and their sovereignty from the mother country, and had not surrendered these on entering the Union; that by the express terms of the Constitution all rights and powers not delegated were reserved to the States; and the South challenged the North to find one trace of authority in that Constitution for invading and coercing a sovereign State.

        The North, on the other hand, maintained with the utmost confidence in the correctness of her position that the Union formed under the Constitution was intended to be perpetual; that sovereignty was a unit and could not be divided; that whether or not there was any express power granted in the Constitution for invading a State, the right of self-preservation was inherent in all governments; that the life of the Union was essential to the life of liberty; or, in the words of Webster, "liberty and union are one and inseparable."

        To the charge of the North that secession was rebellion and treason, the South replied that the epithets of rebel and traitor did not deter her from the assertion of her independence, since these same epithets had been familiar to the ears of Washington and Hancock and Adams and Light Horse Harry Lee. In vindication of her right to secede, she appealed to the essential doctrine, "the right to govern rests on the consent of the governed," and to the right of independent action as among those reserved by the States. The South appealed to the acts and opinions of the Fathers and to the report of the Hartford Convention of New England States asserting the power of each State to decide as to the remedy for infraction of its rights; to the petitions

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presented and positions assumed by ex-President John Quincy Adams; to the contemporaneous declaration of the 8th of January assemblage in Ohio indicating that 200,000 Democrats in that State alone were ready to stand guard on the banks of the border river and resist invasion of Southern territory; and to the repeated declarations of Horace Greeley and the admission of President Lincoln himself that there was difficulty on the question of force, since ours ought to be a fraternal Government.

        In answer to all these points, the North also cited the acts and opinions of the same Fathers, and urged that the purpose of those Fathers was to make a more perfect Union and a stronger government. The North offset the opinions of Greeley and others by the emphatic declaration of Stephen A. Douglas, the foremost of Western Democrats, and by the official opinion as to the power of the Government to collect revenues and enforce laws, given to President Buchanan by Jere Black, the able Democratic Attorney-General.

        Thus the opposing arguments drawn from current opinions and from the actions and opinions of the Fathers were piled mountain high on both sides. Thus the mighty athletes of debate wrestled in the political arena, each profoundly convinced of the righteousness of his position; hurling at each other their ponderous arguments, which reverberated like angry thunderbolts through legislative halls, until the whole political atmosphere resounded with the tumult. Long before a single gun was fired public sentiment North and South had been lashed into a foaming sea of passion; and every timber in the framework of the Government was ending and ready to break from "the heaving ground-swell of the tremendous agitation." Gradually and naturally in this furnace of sectional debate, sectional ballots were crystallized into sectional bullets; and both sides came

Illustration

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at last to the position formerly held by the great Troup of Georgia: "The argument is exhausted; we stand to our guns."

        I submit that this brief and incomplete summary is sufficient to satisfy those who live after us that these great leaders of conflicting thought, and their followers who continued the debate in battle and blood, while in some sense partisans, were in a far juster sense patriots.

        The opinions of Lee and Grant, from each of whom I briefly quote, will illustrate in a measure the convictions of their armies. Every Confederate appreciates the magnanimity exhibited by General Grant at Appomattox; and it has been my pleasure for nearly forty years to speak in public and private of his great qualities. In his personal memoirs, General Grant has left on record his estimate of the Southern cause. This estimate represents a strong phase of Northern sentiment, but it is a sentiment which it is extremely difficult for a Southern man to comprehend. In speaking of his feelings as "sad and depressed," as he rode to meet General Lee and receive the surrender of the Southern armies at Appomattox, General Grant says: "I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and who had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse." He adds: "I do not question, however, the sincerity of the great mass of those who were opposed to us."

        The words above quoted, showing General Grant's opinion of the Southern cause, are italicized by me and not by him. My object in emphasizing them is to invite special attention to their marked contrast with the opinions of General Robert E. Lee as to that same Southern cause. This peerless Confederate soldier and representative American, than whom no age or country

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ever produced a loftier spirit or more clear-sighted, conscientious Christian gentleman, in referring, two days before the surrender, to the apparent hopelessness of our cause, used these immortal words: "We had, I was satisfied, sacred principles to maintain and rights to defend for which we were in duty bound to do our best, even if we perished in the endeavor."

        There were those, a few years ago, who were especially devoted to the somewhat stereotyped phrase that in our Civil War one side (meaning the North) "was wholly and eternally right," while the other side (meaning the South) "was wholly and eternally wrong." I might cite those on the Southern side of the great controversy, equally sincere and fully as able, who would have been glad to persuade posterity that the North was "wholly and eternally wrong"; that her people waged war upon sister States who sought peacefully to set up a homogeneous government, and meditated no wrong or warfare upon the remaining sister States. These Southern leaders steadfastly maintained that the Southern people, in the exercise of the freedom and sovereign rights purchased by Revolutionary blood, were asserting a second independence according to the teachings and example of their fathers.

        But what good is to come to the country from partisan utterances on either side? My own well-considered and long-entertained opinion, my settled and profound conviction, the correctness of which the future will vindicate, is this: that the one thing which is "wholly and eternally wrong" is the effort of so-called statesmen to inject one-sided and jaundiced sentiments into the youth of the country in either section. Such sentiments are neither consistent with the truth of history, nor conducive to the future welfare and unity of the Republic. The assumption on either side of all the righteousness and all the truth would produce a belittling arrogance,

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and an offensive intolerance of the opposing section; or, if either section could be persuaded that it was "wholly and eternally wrong," it would inevitably destroy the self-respect and manhood of its people. A far broader, more truthful, and statesmanlike view was presented by the Hon. A. E. Stevenson, of Illinois, then Vice-President of the United States, in his opening remarks as presiding officer at the dedication of the National Park at Chickamauga. In perfect accord with the sentiment of the occasion and the spirit which led to the establishment of this park as a bond of national brotherhood, Mr. Stevenson said: "Here, in the dread tribunal of last resort, valor contended against valor. Here brave men struggled and died for the right as God gave them to see the right."

        Mr. Stevenson was right--"wholly and eternally right." Truth, justice, and patriotism unite in proclaiming that both sides fought and suffered for liberty as bequeathed by the Fathers--the one for liberty in the union of the States, the other for liberty in the independence of the States.

        While the object of these papers is to record my personal reminiscences and to perpetuate incidents illustrative of the character of the American soldier, whether he fought on the one side or the other, I am also moved to write by what I conceive to be a still higher aim; and that is to point out, if I can, the common ground on which all may stand; where justification of one section does not require or imply condemnation of the other--the broad, high, sunlit middle ground where fact meets fact, argument confronts argument, and truth is balanced against truth.

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CHAPTER II

THE TRIP FROM CORINTH

        The Raccoon Roughs made a part of the Sixth Alabama--The journey to Virginia--Families divided in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri--A father captured by a son in battle--The military spirit in Virginia--Andrew Johnson and Parson Brownlow Union leaders in Tennessee--Johnson's narrowness afterward exhibited as President.

        THE Raccoon Roughs made an imposing twelfth part of the Sixth Alabama, which was one of the largest regiments in the Confederate army. Governor Moore, in order to comply with his promise to incorporate my company into one of the first regiments to be organized, consented that the Sixth should contain twelve instead of the regulation number of ten companies. A movement had been started in Atlanta to uniform my mountaineers: but when the message was received from Governor Moore, inviting us to come to Montgomery, all thought of uniformity in dress was lost in the enthusiasm evoked by the knowledge that our services were accepted; and even after the hastily prepared uniforms were issued by the new Government my company clung tenaciously to "coonskin" head-dress, which made a striking contrast to the gray caps worn by the other companies.

        No regulation uniform had at this time been adopted for field officers, and in deference to the wishes and the somewhat quaint taste of Colonel Seibles, the regimental commander, the mounted officers of the Sixth wore double-breasted

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frock-coats made of green broadcloth, with the brass buttons of the United States army. These green coats--more suited to Irishmen than to Americans--were not discarded during the entire term of our first enlistment for twelve months, nor until we were enrolled as a part of the army that was to serve until Southern independence was won or lost. I do not know what became of my bottle-green coat, with the bullet-holes through it, which would now be an object of interest to my children. It is remarkable that during the war no care was taken of any of these battle-marked articles. All minds and hearts were absorbed in the one thought of defence. It was a long time before even the flags borne in battle became objects of special veneration, or gathered about them the sentiment which grew into a passion as the war neared its close. After one of the early battles one of my color-bearers had secured and fastened to the staff a beautiful new flag. When I asked him what he had done with the old one, he replied:

        "I threw it away, sir. It was so badly shot that it was not worth keeping."

        Our departure from Montgomery for Corinth, Mississippi, where we were to go into camp of instruction for an indefinite period, was amid the roar of cannon, the shouts of the multitude, the waving of flags and handkerchiefs, and the prayers and tears of mothers, wives, and sisters. The encampment at Corinth was brief and uneventful; but our trip thence to Virginia was intensely interesting, because of the danger and threat of conflict between my troops and the citizens in certain localities. The line of our travel was through East Tennessee, where, even at that early period, there were evidences of the radical conflict of opinion between neighbors which was destined to eventuate in many bloody feuds. At the depots crowds of men were gathered, some cheering, some jeering, my troops as they passed. From the tops

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of houses on one side of the street floated the Stars and Stripes; from those on the other were ensigns showing sympathy with the new-born Confederacy. The responsibility on my shoulders was not a light one, for it was my duty on every account to restrain the ardor of my own men and prevent the slightest imprudence of speech or action. No other locality approached East Tennessee in the extent of suffering from this peculiarly harassing sort of strife, unless possibly it was the State of Kentucky. In both public sentiment was divided. There was intense loyalty to the Union on the one hand, and to the Confederate cause on the other.

        War's visage is grim enough at best; and to the people of those localities which were constantly subjected to raids, first by one side and then by the other, its frowning face was rarely relieved by one gleam of alleviating tenderness. These divided communities were the fated grist which the demon of border war seemed determined to grind to dust between his upper and nether millstones.

        In East Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri, neighbors who had been lifelong friends became extremely embittered. Families were divided, brother against brother, and father against son. In Kentucky, it will be remembered, many of the most prominent families of the State, among them the Breckinridges, the Clays, and the Crittendens, were represented in both the Confederate and Union armies. John C. Breckinridge, who had just left the seat of Vice-President of the United States, and who had been the candidate of one wing of the Democratic party for President, cast his fortunes with the South, and made a brilliant record as a soldier and as the last Confederate Secretary of War. Other members of this distinguished family filled honorable positions in the opposing armies, and the distinguished and somewhat eccentric divine, the Rev. Robert J. Breckinridge,

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was one of the most eloquent and fervid--not to say bitter-- advocates of the Union cause. His trenchant pen and lashing tongue spared neither blood relatives nor ministers nor members of the church, not even those of the same faith with himself, provided he regarded them as untrue to the Union. The intensity of Dr. Breckinridge's antagonism showed itself even on his death-bed. He and the Rev. Dr. Stuart Robinson, of Kentucky, were both eminent ministers of the same church, Dr. Robinson being as intense a sympathizer with the South as Dr. Breckinridge was with the North. From devoted friends they became fierce antagonists and uncompromising foes. When Dr. Breckinridge lay on his death-bed, his family and some of his church-members were gathered around him. They were most anxious that he should be reconciled to all men, and especially to Dr. Robinson, before he died, and they asked him, "Brother Breckinridge, have you forgiven all your enemies?"

        "Oh, yes; certainly, certainly I have."

        "Well, Brother Breckinridge, have you forgiven our brother Dr. Stuart Robinson?"

        "Certainly I have. Didn't I just tell you that I had forgiven all my enemies?"

        "But, Brother Breckinridge, when you meet Brother Stuart Robinson in heaven, do you feel that you can greet him as all the redeemed ought to greet one another?"

        "Don't bother me with such questions. Stuart Robinson will never get there!"

        During the year 1895 I was honored with an invitation to address an audience in Maysville, Kentucky. I was deeply impressed by the fact conveyed to me that a large number of those who sat before me had the harmony and happiness of their homes destroyed for the four years of war by the inexpressibly horrid

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thought that sons of the same parents were pitted against each other in battle. I was personally presented to a number of these formerly divided brothers who had bravely fought from the beginning to the end in opposing lines, but were now reunited under the old family roof and in the common Republic. It was a Kentucky father, I believe, both of whose sons had been killed in battle, the one in the Confederate, the other in the Union army, who erected to the memory of both over their common grave the monument on which he had inscribed these five monosyllables: "God knows which was right."

        So much has been said and written of the peculiar trials and horrors experienced by the divided communities in Missouri, East Tennessee, and Kentucky that it is a privilege to record one of the incidents which at rare intervals sent rays of light through those unhappy localities. Major Edwards, of the Confederate army, who afterward became an editor of distinction in Missouri, had, at the beginning of the war, a neighbor and friend who was as intense a Unionist as the major was an enthusiastic Confederate. Each felt it his duty to go into the service, and when the war came they parted to take their places in opposing battle lines. Later on, Major Edwards captured this former neighbor and friend behind the Southern lines, and near their Missouri home. In reply to the question as to why he had taken such risk of being captured and sent to a Southern prison, the Union soldier explained that his wife was behind those lines and extremely ill--probably dying; that he had taken the risk of slipping at night, between the Confederate picket posts in order to receive her last blessing and embrace. This statement was enough for the knightly man in gray. The Union soldier was at once made a prisoner, but only in the bonds of brotherly tenderness. His house was carefully guarded by Major Edwards himself until the sad parting with his

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wife was over, and then he was safely conducted through the Confederate lines and sent with a Confederate's sympathy to his post of duty in the Union camps.

        At a recent reunion of the United Confederate Veterans, I was told of a thrilling incident which still further and more strikingly illustrates the tragedy of war in these divided States. At the beginning of the war Major M. H. Clift, of Tennessee, was a mere lad, and was attending school in another State. His father was an East Tennesseean and was devoted to the cause of the Union. Young Clift, however, was carried away by the storm of Southern enthusiasm and joined the Confederate army. The father soon yielded to his own sense of patriotic duty, and enlisted in one of the Union regiments formed in the neighborhood. In the fortunes of war, the two, father and son, were soon called to confront each other under hostile banners and in battle array. Neither had the remotest thought that the other stood in his front. In a furious charge by the Southern lines this young Confederate forced a Union soldier to surrender to him. Looking into the captured soldier's face, the young man recognized his own father. No pen could adequately depict his consternation when he realized that he had been on the point of killing his father, nor the joy which filled his heart that this dire calamity had been averted. Steps were at once taken to render it certain that no such contingency should again occur.

        But the horrors of family division were not confined to these States. There were conspicuous instances elsewhere of the disruption of the most sacred ties. The Virginia kindred of that able soldier General George H. Thomas, and of ex-President Harrison, were in the Confederate service, while those of Generals Lovell and Pemberton, who fought for the Southern cause, and of Mrs. General Longstreet, supported the flag of the Union.

        In my own State the wife of a Confederate officer saw

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her husband retreat from Savannah under the Confederate commander, while her own dearly loved kindred marched into the town under General W. T. Sherman. This wife was Nellie Kinsey, said to be the first white child born in Chicago. She grew to accomplished womanhood, and married William W. Gordon of Savannah, who made a brilliant record as a Confederate officer, and during our recent war with Spain was commissioned brigadier-general by President McKinley. Mrs. Gordon was intensely loyal to her husband and to the cause he loved, but her kindred--her only kindred--were in the Union army and conspicuous for their gallantry in almost every arm of the service. As she stood with her children watching the Federal troops march in triumphant array under the windows of her Southern home, a splendid brass band at the head of one of the divisions began playing that familiar old air, "When this Cruel War is Over." As soon as the notes struck the ears of her little daughter, this enthusiastic young Confederate exclaimed, "Mamma, just listen to the Yankees playing 'When this Cruel War is Over,' and they just doing it themselves!"

        When we reached Virginia the military spirit was in full flood-tide. The State had just passed the ordinance of secession, and almost every young and middle-aged man was volunteering for service. Even the servants were becoming interested in the military positions to which the aspiring young men of the household might be assigned. I recall an incident so strikingly characteristic that it seems due to a proper appreciation of these old-time loyal and faithful slaves that I give it in this connection.

        Old Simon was the trusted and devoted butler of a leading Virginia family, and was very proud of his young master, who had just enlisted as a private in the cavalry, and, dressed in his new uniform and mounted

Illustration

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upon his blooded horse, was drilling every day with his company. He was, in old Simon's estimation, the equal, if not the superior, of any soldier that was ever booted and spurred. The time came for the company to start to the front, and one of them rode up and asked old Simon:

        "Is Bob here, Simon, or has he gone to camp?"

        "Is you talking about my young marster, Colonel Robert?"

        "Yes; of course I am, Simon," replied the trooper. "But I should like to know how in the - - - Bob got to be a colonel?"

        "Lawd, sir, he 's des born a colonel!" said Simon; and his genuine and unaffected pride in this belief flashed in his old eyes and rang in his tones.

        No account of East Tennessee's condition and experiences at this period would be complete without a few words in reference to those impetuous East Tennessee Union leaders, Andrew Johnson, who afterward became President, and the redoubtable Parson Brownlow, whose fiery denunciations of the Southern cause filled the columns of his paper, "Brownlow's Whig." Lifelong political antagonists, the one a Democrat, the other a Whig, and both aggressive and unrelenting, they nevertheless, when civil war approached, buried the partisan tomahawk and wielded the Union battle-axe side by side. They became coadjutors and the most powerful civil supporters of the Union cause in the State, if not in the South. Andrew Johnson, as is well known, was a tailor when a young man, and, it is said, was taught to read by his faithful wife. He deserved and received immense credit for the laborious study and untiring perseverance which converted the scissors of his shop into the sceptre of Chief Executive of the world's greatest Republic; but he did not broaden in sentiment in proportion to the elevation he attained and the gravity of the responsibilities

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imposed. He was strong but narrow. He could not be a statesman in the highest sense of that term, because he was swayed by prejudice more than by lofty convictions. That he was impelled by motives intensely patriotic in adhering to the Union there can be no reasonable doubt; but his utter failure to rise to a full conception of the situation in which he found himself after President Lincoln's unfortunate death was painfully apparent to every thoughtful observer. His intolerant bigotry, and his failure to appreciate the obligations imposed upon him by General Grant's magnanimous and solemn compact with the Southern army at Appomattox, were manifested by his desire to arrest General Lee and other prominent prisoners of war who had protecting paroles. His blind prejudice against our best people was shown in his selection of classes for amnesty; and the low plane on which he planted his administration was evidenced by his inconsistencies, his vacillations, and his reversal of the wise, generous, and statesmanly policy of his great predecessor. But the narrowness of the man and the amazing absurdity of his prejudice are sufficiently exhibited in a circumstance trivial in itself, but which, perhaps on that account, more clearly indicates his calibre. A few months after the war was over, I was passing through Washington, and called to pay my respects to General Grant, who had shown me personally, at the close of hostilities, marked consideration and kindness, of which I shall make mention in another chapter. General Grant offered to introduce me to President Johnson, whom I had never met. We walked across to the Executive Mansion, and General Grant gave the usher a card on which was written, "General Grant, with General Gordon of Georgia," with instructions to the usher to hand it to the President. We were at once admitted to his presence, and I was introduced by General Grant as "General Gordon," with

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some complimentary reference to my rank and service in General Lee's army. The President met this introduction by these words, pronounced with peculiar emphasis, "How are you, Mr. Gordon?" especially accentuating the word Mister. I was neither angry nor indignant, but my contempt was sincere for the ineffable littleness of the man whose untimely ascendancy to power at that critical period I can but regard as the veriest mockery of fate.

        Contrast this foolish and abortive effort at insult with the conduct of President Grant, who succeeded him, or of General Grant as soldier, or with that of any other prominent soldier or high-minded citizen of the country. The conduct of General Hancock at General Grant's funeral in New York is perhaps in still greater contrast with that of President Johnson. Although the incident I am about to relate is chronologically out of place here, it is emphatically in place as illustrating the point I am making in reference to President Johnson.

        It will be remembered that General Hancock was commander of the Department of the East (United States army) at the time of General Grant's death, and was, by reason of his military rank, the chief marshal of that stupendous and most impressive pageant witnessed in New York at General Grant's obsequies. I was included among those ex-Confederate officers who had been specially invited to participate in the honors to be paid to the dead soldier and former President. General Hancock had requested that I should ride with him at the head of the mighty procession, and he had playfully said to the staff that each of us should take his place according to rank. Of course I had no thought of claiming any rank, and I took my place in the rear of the regular staff. General Hancock sent one after an other of his immediate staff to request me to ride up to the front, with the message that I must obey orders and

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report to him at once at the head of the column. When I reached the head of the column, General Hancock directed the staff to compare dates and ascertain the ranking officer who should ride on his right. My rank as a Confederate general was higher than that of any other member of his staff, and he ordered that I should take the place of honor. As I could not gracefully resist this assignment any longer, I accepted it, saying to the Union generals, who also served on General Hancock's staff, that they had overwhelmed me some twenty-odd years before, but that I had them down now. General Fitzhugh Lee was similarly honored.

        In closing this chapter, it is not necessary, I trust, for me to say that I would do no injustice to the memory of President Johnson, but it seems to me that the future manhood of our country can be ennobled by the contemplation of the marked and notable contrasts here presented, and by a realization of the truth that no station in life, however conspicuous, can conceal from view the weakness of its possessor. Certainly it can inflict no damage upon the character of our youth to let them understand that the gulf is both broad and deep which separates the highest type of courage from petty and ignoble spite, and that the line which divides true nobility of soul from narrowness of spirit was drawn by God's hand, and will become clearer to human apprehension as we approach nearer to Him in thought and action.

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CHAPTER III

BULL RUN OR MANASSAS

        The first great battle of the war--A series of surprises--Mishaps and mistakes of the Confederates--Beauregard's lost order--General Ewell's rage--The most eccentric officer in the Confederate army--Anecdotes of his career--The wild panic of the Union troops--Senseless frights that cannot be explained-- Illustrated at Cedar Creek.

        THE battle of Bull Run or Manassas was the first, and in many respects the most remarkable, battle of our Civil War. It was a series of surprises--the unexpected happening at almost every moment of its progress. Planned by the Union chieftain with consummate skill, executed for the most part with unquestioned ability, and fought by the Union troops for a time with magnificent courage, it ended at last in their disastrous rout and the official decapitation of their able commander. On the Confederate side it was a chapter of mishaps, miscarriages, and of some mistakes. It was also a chapter of superb fighting by the Southern army, and of final complete and overwhelming victory. The breaking down of the train bearing General Joseph E. Johnston's troops was an accident which almost defeated the consummation of that splendid piece of strategy by which he had eluded General Patterson in the Valley, and which had enabled him to hurry almost his entire force to the support of General Beauregard at Manassas. The mistakes are represented by the fact that the feint of General McDowell on the Confederate front was believed

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to be the real attack, until the Union general was hurling his army on Beauregard's flank. Finally, the most serious miscarriage was that the order from Beauregard to Ewell directing an assault on the Union left failed to reach that officer. This strange miscarriage prevented General Ewell from making a movement which it then seemed probable and now appears certain would have added materially to McDowell's disaster. I had already been instructed by him to make a reconnaissance in the direction of the anticipated assault, but I had been suddenly recalled just as my skirmishers were opening fire. I was recalled because General Ewell had not received the promised order. For me it was perhaps a most fortunate recall, for in my isolated position I should probably have been surrounded and my little command cut to pieces. On my return I found General Ewell in an agony of suspense. He was chafing like a caged lion, infuriated by the scent of blood. He would mount his horse one moment and dismount the next. He would walk rapidly to and fro, muttering to himself, "No orders, no orders." General Ewell, who afterward became a corps commander, had in many respects the most unique personality I have ever known. He was a compound of anomalies, the oddest, most eccentric genius in the Confederate army. He was my friend, and I was sincerely and deeply attached to him. No man had a better heart nor a worse manner of showing it. He was in truth as tender and sympathetic as a woman, but, even under slight provocation, he became externally as rough as a polar bear, and the needles with which he pricked sensibilities were more numerous and keener than porcupines' quills. His written orders were full, accurate, and lucid; but his verbal orders or directions, especially when under intense excitement, no man could comprehend. At such times his eyes would flash with a peculiar brilliancy, and his brain far outran his tongue.

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His thoughts would leap across great gaps which his words never touched, but which he expected his listener to fill up by intuition, and woe to the dull subordinate who failed to understand him!

        When he was first assigned to command at the beginning of the war, he had recently returned from fighting Indians on the Western frontier. He had been dealing only with the enlisted men of the standing army. His experience in that wild border life, away from churches, civilization, and the refining influences of woman's society, were not particularly conducive to the development of the softer and better side of his nature. He became a very pious man in his later years, but at this time he was not choice in the manner of expressing himself. He asked me to take a hasty breakfast with him just before he expected the order from Beauregard to ford Bull Run and rush upon McDowell's left. His verbal invitation was in these words: "Come and eat a cracker with me; we will breakfast together here and dine together in hell." To a young officer like myself, who had never been under fire except at long range, on scouting excursions, or on the skirmish-line, such an invitation was not inspiring or appetizing; but Ewell's spirits seemed to be in a flutter of exultation.

        An hour later, after I had been recalled from my perilous movement to "feel of the enemy," I found General Ewell, as I have said, almost frenzied with anxiety over the non-arrival of the anticipated order to move to the attack. He directed me to send to him at once a mounted man "with sense enough to go and find out what was the matter." I ordered a member of the governor's Horse Guard to report immediately to General Ewell. This troop represented some of the best blood of Virginia. Its privates were refined and accomplished gentlemen, many of them University graduates, who, at the first tocsin of war, had sprung into their saddles as volunteers.

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        The intelligent young trooper who was selected to ride upon this most important mission under the verbal direction of General Ewell himself, mounted his high-spirited horse, and, with high-top boots, polished spurs, and clanking sabre, galloped away to where the general was impatiently waiting at his temporary headquarters on the hill. Before this inexperienced but promising young soldier had time to lift his hat in respectful salutation, the general was slashing away with tongue and finger, delivering his directions with such rapidity and incompleteness that the young man's thoughts were dancing through his brain in inextricable confusion. The general, having thus delivered himself, quickly asked, "Do you understand, sir?" Of course the young man did not understand, and he began timidly to ask for a little more explicit information. The fiery old soldier cut short the interview with "Go away from here and send me a man who has some sense!"

        Later in the war, when I was commanding a division in Stonewall Jackson's old corps, then commanded by General Ewell, I had a very similar experience with this eccentric officer. It was in the midst of one of the battles between Lee and Grant in the Wilderness. As already explained, General Ewell's spirits, like the eagle's wings gathering additional power in the storm, seemed to mount higher and higher as the fury of the battle increased. My division of his corps was advancing under a galling fire. General Ewell rode at full speed to the point where I was intensely engaged directing the charge, and asked me to lend him one of my staff, his own all having been despatched with orders to different portions of the field. I indicated a staff-officer whom he might command, and he began, in his characteristic style under excitement, to tell this officer what to do. My staff-officer had learned to interpret the general fairly well, but

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to catch his meaning at one point stopped him and said: "Let me see if I understand you