I went out to the fire and read them to my comrades. A Lieutenant Rockwell happened to be present and asked permission to make a copy of the verses. He, with many others, slept on the ground under the hospital building. One had to crawl on his hands and knees to enter there. There was a most capable Glee Club among the officers, and they had by some means secured a flute, violins, and bass viol for accompaniments. They kept their instruments under the house, too, where they slept.
Every afternoon this Glee Club was permitted to sing and play on the little elevated porch of the hospital. The only condition was that Southern songs should be sung, not less than Northern songs. There was no trouble about that. The songs of our captors were better than no songs. Besides, these singers made music. All the crowd of prisoners, eight hundred now, often stood in front of the little porch to enjoy the singing. Almost hundreds of the Rebels, too, together with many ladies of Columbia, climbed up onto the walls, where the guards stood, and applauded the singers as much as any.
One drizzly afternoon I was standing by a little persimmon tree in the midst of the crowd listening to the songs, when Major Isett, leader of the GleeClub, said: "Now we will have a song about Sherman." To my astonishment, it was my "Sherman's March to the Sea."
It was received in a tremendous fashion. Everybody cheered and hurrahed. The news of Sherman's victories was fresh upon them. In five minutes' time the good fortune of my song was settled. The name of the author was loudly called for; someone saw me by the little tree, and I was quickly hauled to the front and up onto the platform. In a few moments an unknown officer among the many prisoners became a sort of prison hero.
Everybody wanted the song, everybody sang it; and clever penmen made a good thing making copies at twenty dollars apiece, Confederate money. As a little compliment to me the captain of the prison allowed me to sleep on the floor of the hospital room. To me that was important, as shall appear. Later in this narrative, too, will be seen how an exchanged prisoner, by the name of Tower, who had an artificial leg, carried the song in this wooden limb through the lines to our soldiers in the North, where it was sung everywhere and with demonstration. In a week it had given its name to the campaign, and a million copies of it soon passed into circulation.
Lieutenant Rockwell, who had asked my leave tocopy the verses that first morning, was a composer, and there in the dust under the old hospital he had, unknown to me, written the first music to which the song was ever sung. Later, it had many other settings, but that one, though difficult, remained the best. The song has often since been sung to the air of "The Red, White, and Blue." This is the history of the song, which I print here as a part of this narrative.
SHERMAN'S MARCH TO THE SEA
Our camp fires shone bright on the mountainsThat frowned on the river below,While we stood by our guns in the morningAnd eagerly watched for the foe—When a rider came out from the darknessThat hung over mountain and tree,And shouted, "Boys, up and be ready,For Sherman will march to the sea."Then cheer upon cheer for bold ShermanWent up from each valley and glen,And the bugles re-echoed the musicThat came from the lips of the men.For we knew that the stars in our bannerMore bright in their splendor would be,And that blessings from Northland would greet usWhen Sherman marched down to the sea.Then forward, boys, forward to battle,We marched on our wearisome way,And we stormed the wild hills of Resaca,—God bless those who fell on that day—Then Kenesaw, dark in its glory,Frowned down on the flag of the free,But the East and the West bore our standards,And Sherman marched on to the sea.Still onward we pressed, till our bannersSwept out from Atlanta's grim walls,And the blood of the patriot dampenedThe soil where the traitor flag falls;But we paused not to weep for the fallen,Who slept by each river and tree;Yet we twined them a wreath of the laurelAs Sherman marched down to the sea.O, proud was our army that morningThat stood where the pine darkly towers,When Sherman said: "Boys, you are weary,This day fair Savannah is ours."Then sang we a song for our chieftainThat echoed over river and lea,And the stars in our banner shown brighterWhen Sherman marched down to the sea.
Our camp fires shone bright on the mountainsThat frowned on the river below,While we stood by our guns in the morningAnd eagerly watched for the foe—When a rider came out from the darknessThat hung over mountain and tree,And shouted, "Boys, up and be ready,For Sherman will march to the sea."
Then cheer upon cheer for bold ShermanWent up from each valley and glen,And the bugles re-echoed the musicThat came from the lips of the men.For we knew that the stars in our bannerMore bright in their splendor would be,And that blessings from Northland would greet usWhen Sherman marched down to the sea.
Then forward, boys, forward to battle,We marched on our wearisome way,And we stormed the wild hills of Resaca,—God bless those who fell on that day—Then Kenesaw, dark in its glory,Frowned down on the flag of the free,But the East and the West bore our standards,And Sherman marched on to the sea.
Still onward we pressed, till our bannersSwept out from Atlanta's grim walls,And the blood of the patriot dampenedThe soil where the traitor flag falls;But we paused not to weep for the fallen,Who slept by each river and tree;Yet we twined them a wreath of the laurelAs Sherman marched down to the sea.
O, proud was our army that morningThat stood where the pine darkly towers,When Sherman said: "Boys, you are weary,This day fair Savannah is ours."Then sang we a song for our chieftainThat echoed over river and lea,And the stars in our banner shown brighterWhen Sherman marched down to the sea.
[Sherman's March to the Sea.—FromEggleston's Famous War Ballads.—General Sherman, in a recent conversation with the editor of this collection, declared that it was this poem with its phrase, "march to the sea," thatthrew a glamour of romance over the campaign which it celebrates. Said General Sherman: "The thing was nothing more or less than a change of base; an operation perfectly familiar to every military man, but a poet got hold of it, gave it the captivating label, 'The March to the Sea,' and the unmilitary public made a romance out of it." It may be remarked that the General's modesty overlooks the important fact that the romance lay really in his own deed of derring-do; the poet merely recorded it, or at most interpreted it to the popular intelligence. The glory of the great campaign was Sherman's and his army's; the joy of celebrating it was the poet's; the admiring memory of it is the people's.—Editor.]
[Sherman's March to the Sea.—FromEggleston's Famous War Ballads.—General Sherman, in a recent conversation with the editor of this collection, declared that it was this poem with its phrase, "march to the sea," thatthrew a glamour of romance over the campaign which it celebrates. Said General Sherman: "The thing was nothing more or less than a change of base; an operation perfectly familiar to every military man, but a poet got hold of it, gave it the captivating label, 'The March to the Sea,' and the unmilitary public made a romance out of it." It may be remarked that the General's modesty overlooks the important fact that the romance lay really in his own deed of derring-do; the poet merely recorded it, or at most interpreted it to the popular intelligence. The glory of the great campaign was Sherman's and his army's; the joy of celebrating it was the poet's; the admiring memory of it is the people's.—Editor.]
As stated, I slept nights now on the floor of the prison hospital. This added comfort, however, did not tempt me to stay in prison, if I could get away. Once more we heard that the prisoners were to be carted away to some safer place, out of the line of Sherman's army, now turned North and moving rapidly toward us. A night or two before this move of prisoners really commenced Lieutenant Devine of Philadelphia joined me in an effort to get away. The walls of the least used room of the hospital were made of joined boards. By the use of an old case knife, hacked into a saw, or auger, we managed to cut a hole sufficiently large to permit us to pull ourselves through and out into an attic above a little porch. We repaired the boards as best we could andcrept out into the dark hole. It was the attic of the same porch on which our Glee Club stood when they sang my song. It was a little cramped up place we were in, where we could neither sit erect nor lie at full length. There were no guards inside the prison hospital; the night was very dark; the sick prisoners seemed to be sleeping. A dim lamp hung from the ceiling. We were not detected. The next night at midnight, when the prisoners were being marched away, two of them were missing. What a night and day and part of another night that was for us, crooked and cramped as we were, in the top of that little porch.
At the next midnight, when every soul, prisoners, guards and all, seemed to be gone far away and dead silence was upon the place, Devine and I crept down from our hiding place. The big gate was closed and locked. By the aid of a scantling I managed to get up onto the high brick wall. My surprise was immense to see guards waiting for us outside, and to know that we were discovered. One of the guards rushed up to his post at the top of the wall, but he was too late to shoot; we were already in hiding among the empty board huts and barracks.[B]
In a moment the big gate opened and a hundred men rushed in, looking for the escaping Yankees. They howled, they cursed at us, they set the barracks on fire. Then amid the mêlée and excitement in the dark my comrade and myself pulled our gray blankets about us, picked up a water bucket each, and pushed up to the guard at the gate. We were "going for water," we said. "The lieutenant says the fire must be put out." Without waiting a reply we hurried out in the darkness. There were some vain shots after us.
Shortly we heard the tramp of horses coming toward us. A friendly culvert in the road into which we dodged afforded us protection while a whole company of Johnny Rebs rode over our heads. What would they have thought, that night, had they known it as they went skipping along with arms and jingling sabers, to confront Sherman's advance guards?
We were gone. After a while, in the outskirts of the city, we saw a light in a cabin and a negro walking up and down by the window. Every negro we knew to be a loyal friend. This one we called out among some rose bushes in the dooryard. Instantly, and without fear, we told him who we were and thatwe were in his power. There is not a question but he would have been well rewarded had he betrayed us to the Confederate soldiers in the city that night. Few words were spoken. That morning two escaped prisoners were secreted under some bean stalks in the garret of the negro's cabin. The negro's sick wife lay in the single room below. Had we been discovered now that negro would have been hanged from his own door lintel. And well he knew it.
Sherman's army was already pounding at the gates of the town. He was crossing the river and his shells reached to the capital. This much we knew from what we could hear in the yard below, for the negro's cabin stood at the edge of a green lawn where General Chestnut had his headquarters. We broke a little hole through the siding of the house, and now could see what the general and his staff were doing. We also could hear much that was said. Once we thought ourselves discovered, for we observed two or three of the general's negro servants standing in a group on the grass looking steadily toward the spot where our little improvised window was. What on earth were they looking at?
It was not much the old negro could give us to eat. A little dried beef and some cold corn bread; that was all, save that once he brought us a gallon of buttermilk. He had no cow, but he would nottell us where this, to us, heavenly nectar had come from.
There was much hurrying of officers back and forth at General Chestnut's headquarters, and plainly we could see there was great excitement. Our own negro was kept going back and forth into the town to pick up for us whatever news he could of the fight going on at the river. After awhile the cannonading grew louder, and it seemed to us the conflict must be right at the outskirts of the town. Then we saw General Chestnut hurriedly ride on to the headquarter's lawn, and we distinctly heard him say to an officer, "Sherman has got a bridge down. The game's up. We must evacuate." In a few minutes the sound of the guns increased, and then we saw General Chestnut call his slaves to him to bid them farewell. It was a touching scene, amid the dramatic surroundings. He seemed very kind, and some of them in their ignorance wept. "You will be free," he said. "Be good." I thought, he too was affected as he mounted his horse and, followed by his staff, rode away. He was hardly out of sight when our negro protector came running toward the cabin. He was tremendously excited. A tall, old cylinder hat he had picked up on the way was on his head, his eyes bulged out, his hands waved like windmills; he was celebrating. In a moment the black face and thecylinder hat shot up the ladder and through the hatch-way to where we were.
"God Almighty be thanked!" he cried in a loud voice. "Massa, the Stars and Stripes are waving above the capital of South Carolina. Praise to the God Almighty!"
Sure enough, Union troops, had entered, and a flag from my own State had been run up on the State House. Instantly we bade him hurry and bring some Union soldiers to us. In his absence Devine and I stood shaking each other's hands and thanking God for our deliverance. No slave who had his chains knocked off that day by the coming of the Union army felt more thankful than we, freed from the wretchedness and horrors of fifteen months of imprisonment. Now we could see the Confederate cavalry evacuating the town. Whole companies passed, each trooper having a sheaf of oats slung to his saddle bow. Shortly our black friend returned, and with him two Union soldiers. "It is time to drink, boys," they cried out, as they fairly forced us to partake of the whisky in their canteens. When we all went down into the yard I was sure we would be recaptured, for the Rebel rear-guard was passing close to our cabin. The flying troops, however, had fish of their own to fry, and were in too much haste to be looking after us. Now, too, we were surrounded by General Chestnut's black servants, who were hopping about, giving thanks for their freedom. I asked one of them what it was they had been looking at so attentively the day before, when I had seen them gazing right at our hiding-place. "Ha ha! massa! we just knowed you was up there all the time. Reckon you didn't like that ar buttermilk what we'uns sent you." Our negro friend then had made confidents of them, and we had been fed, without knowing it, on some of the good things from General Chestnut's kitchen. Should the general ever read this little book, I hope he will cease wondering what became of his buttermilk that day at Columbia.
Now, our two soldiers escorted us to a street where some of the army had halted and stacked arms. A Union flag hung over a stack of muskets, and no human being will ever know with what thankful heart-beatings and tears we gathered its silken folds into our arms. Now we knew that we were free. The terrible days were indeed over, and God's rainbow illumined our sky.
In half an hour the victorious veterans of Sherman's army, their great leader riding before, with bands playing and banners flying, entered the captured city. My comrade and I stood on a high door-step and saw them pass. Someone pointed us out to Sherman, and for a moment the whole moving armywas halted till he greeted the freed prisoners. We two comrades lived a month in that short seventeenth day of February, 1865, in Columbia. I think we shook hands with a thousand soldiers, even with many soldiers we had never seen before. It seemed to us that everybody must be as glad to see us as we were to see them.
That night Columbia was burned to the ground amid untold horrors. The conflagration had commenced from bales of cotton that the enemy had fired and left in the street to prevent falling into the Union hands. A big wind rose toward evening and the burning cotton flakes were flying all over the city. It was a terrible spectacle that night. My comrade and I walked about the streets till nearly morning. Whole squares and streets were crumbling to ashes and tall buildings tumbled down everywhere. Here and there, too, there was a terrific explosion. It was Moscow done over on a smaller scale. A division of Union troops, under Hazen, was sent into the town to fight the flames and to arrest every man discovered firing houses or walking around without a pass. So it happened that my comrade and myself, though but innocent spectators, were at midnight arrested and taken to provost headquarters. We very soon explained ourselves and were released and sent to comfortable quarters, where we slept till late thenext day. It was four nights since we had had any sleep at all.
But the sights of that awful night will never fade from my memory. Most of the citizens of Columbia had sons or relations in the Rebel army. Half of them were dead, the army itself was flying everywhere, and in the blackness of this terrible night their fortunes were all lost, their homes were all burning up. Many wandered about wringing their hands and crying; some sat stolid and speechless in the street watching everything that they had go to destruction. A few wandered around, wholly demented. Some of the invading soldiers tried earnestly to extinguish the flames; others broke into houses and added to the conflagration. Numbers of the Federal prisoners, who only a few weeks before had been marched through the streets like felons, had escaped, and what average human nature led them to do never will be known. There were fearful things going on everywhere. It was reported that an explosion occurred in one house and that twenty-four soldiers, carousing there, were lost in the ruins. Most of the people of Columbia would have been willing to have died that night, then and there. What had they left to live for?This, too, was war.
When the army entered in the afternoon, Lieutenant Devine and I, as related, stood on the high stepsof a mansion and watched it pass. Shortly after a very charming young woman, a Mrs. C——, seeing us, came down and invited us into her father's house and gave us food. It was the first real food we had had for many, many months. The lady's father was a rich jeweler, and, though a Southerner, was a Union man. Her own husband, however, was somewhere in the Southern army. My comrade and I spent an entertaining hour in the mansion, and then went and walked about the city.
At six o'clock the awful cry, "The town is burning up, the town is burning up!" was heard everywhere. Devine and I at once thought of Mrs. C—— and our friends of the afternoon, and hurried to their home to offer help. The flames were already across the street from there. Mrs. C——'s father was weeping in the drawing-room. Once he took me by the arm and led me to where we could see his own business establishment burning to the ground. "There goes the savings of a life," said he, in bitterness. "There is what the curse of secession has done for us; there is what Wade Hampton and the other political firebrands have done for South Carolina." My comrade and I at once began carrying some of the more valuable goods out of the house for them, doing everything possible to help them save some remnant from their beautiful and luxurious home. We ranup and down the mansion stairs until we were almost dead with exhaustion. Everything we could save we piled into a phaeton that stood by the yard. Once the lady cried that her child was still in the house, burning up. Her shrieks pierced even the noise of that fearful night. Her alarm was without cause, for I soon found the child safe in the arms of a faithful slave nurse. She had simply carried it out of danger.
When the walls of the house seemed about to fall, Devine and I took the loaded buggy, he pulling in the shafts, I pushing behind, and, followed by the weeping family on foot, we drew it for a mile or more to the outer edge of the town. Here we left them in safety by a little wood, yet not knowing if we would ever see them again. Many of our soldiers were burnt up that night.
The next day Sherman's army left the ruins of the city behind them and marched away. They had, however, left supplies of rations for their unfortunate enemies. A train of empty wagons was also furnished for those fugitives who wished to follow the army and work their way North. Hundreds, possibly thousands, left the smoking ruins of their homes and traveled along with us in every conceivable conveyance that was heard of. Black and white, slave and free, rich and poor, joined in the procession behind the army. Mrs. C—— and her father's family were among them.
I now tried to find my regiment. It was gone. Many battles and many marches had so decimated it that the little fragment left had been disbanded and transferred into a regiment of cavalry.
Colonel Silsby, of the Tenth Iowa, offered me a place with his mess. I accepted. The Colonel, as it happened, had charge of perhaps a hundred prisoners, captured on the march. Naturally, I was interested to go among them. I soon saw how much better they fared than I had done when in Southern hands. Two or three of them, as it happened, had been among the guards who had treated us so badly while we were in the prison known as "Camp Sorghum," outside of Columbia. They were perfectly terrified when they learned that I had been there under their charge. They seemed to fear instant and awful retaliation; but I thought of nothing of the kind. I was too glad just to be free to be thinking of any vengeance.
A curious incident now happened. This was the discovery, among these prisoners, of the husband of the young Mrs. C—— who had given us food in Columbia and whose belongings I and my comrade had tried to save. He was overjoyed to learn from me that his wife and child were at least alive. I instantly went to General Logan, and related to him how this man's family had been kind to me the day that I escaped. I had no trouble in securing his release. It was at Logan's headquarters, too, that I had secured money and an order for provisions to give to Edward Edwards, the black man who had been the means of my final rescue. His sick wife had kept him behind, else he would have followed the army. We left him in Columbia. Years later, as a sign of my gratitude toward this slave, I dedicated a little volume to him, in which I had described my prison life.
The army in the Carolinas—General Sherman sends for me—Gives me a place on his staff—Experiences at army headquarters—Sherman's life on the march—Music at headquarters—Logan's violin—The General's false friend—The army wades, swims, and fights through the Carolinas—I am sent as a despatch bearer to General Grant—A strange ride down the Cape Fear River in the night—General Terry—Learn that my song "The March to the Sea" is sung through the North, and has given the campaign its name—I bring the first news of Sherman's successes to the North—An interview with General Grant.
The army in the Carolinas—General Sherman sends for me—Gives me a place on his staff—Experiences at army headquarters—Sherman's life on the march—Music at headquarters—Logan's violin—The General's false friend—The army wades, swims, and fights through the Carolinas—I am sent as a despatch bearer to General Grant—A strange ride down the Cape Fear River in the night—General Terry—Learn that my song "The March to the Sea" is sung through the North, and has given the campaign its name—I bring the first news of Sherman's successes to the North—An interview with General Grant.
It was on this march in the Carolinas that General Sherman sent for me to come to army headquarters. We were two days away from Columbia. I was ashamed to go in my prison rags, so I waited. The next day the request was repeated, and Major Nichols of the staff came and said, "But you must go, it is an order." And I went. The General was sitting by a little rail fire in front of his tent, reading a newspaper, when we approached his bivouac in the woods. I was introduced. He at once told me how pleased he had been with my song, that I had written in prison about his army. Devine had given him acopy at that time when he halted his column to greet us by the door-step at Columbia. "Our boys shall all sing this song," he said; "and as for you, I shall give you a position on my staff. Tomorrow you will be furnished a horse and all that you need; and you must mess with me."
It would be very hard to express my feelings at this sudden transition from a prisoner in rags to a post at the headquarters of the great commander. I was almost overcome, but General Sherman's extreme kindness of manner and speech at last put me partly at my ease. Shortly a big colored man, in a green coat, announced dinner. "Come," said the General, pushing me ahead of him into a tent, where a number of handsomely uniformed staff officers stood around a table waiting his approach. I was still in my rags. I could not help noticing the curious glances of the fine gentlemen, who doubtless were wondering what General Sherman had picked up now.
My embarrassment was extreme. The commander however soon told them who I was, gave me the seat at his right hand, and almost his entire conversation at the table was directed to me. The officers of the staff quickly took the General's cue, and I was soon an object of interest, even to them.
He directed a hundred questions to me as to thegeneral treatment of war prisoners in the South, and he, as well as the staff, interested themselves in all the details of my escape. Telling the story very soon relieved me of my embarrassment as to my clothes. The horrible tales of Southern prison pens, however, was nothing new to General Sherman, for he related to me some of the awful things he had heard of Andersonville while his army was at Atlanta.
"At one time," said he, "I had great hopes of rescuing all of them at one quick blow. I gave General Stoneman a large body of cavalry, with directions to raid down about Macon. This raid was to go farther, and, by a quick, secret dash capture Andersonville and release every prisoner there. It was a chance to do the noblest deed of the war, but it all failed miserably. Stoneman had not fully obeyed orders, and, instead of releasing a whole army of suffering captives, he got captured himself, and, with him, a lot of my best cavalry."
It happened that I saw General Stoneman the very day he was brought to the prison. My narrative of how by desperately bold and violent cursing he denounced and defied his captors, and everything in Rebeldom, greatly amused Sherman and all at the table.
Stoneman's awful language and flashing eyesdid indeed fairly intimidate the officer in charge. Evidently he thought he had captured a tiger. It was a wonder Stoneman was not killed.
The conversation about the prisoners continued. Twenty-five thousand of them were starving and dying in Andersonville. "It is one of the awful fates of war," said the General. "It can't be helped; they would have been better off had all been killed on the battlefield; and one almost wishes they had been." After a pause, he continued. "At times, I am almost satisfied it would be just as well tokill all prisoners." The remark, to me, a prisoner just escaped, seemed shocking. I am sure he noticed it, for he soon added: "They would be spared these atrocities. Besides,the more awful you can make war the sooner it will be over."
It would, after all, be a mercy.
"War is hell, at the best," he went on, half in anger, and using an expression common to him.
For the moment I thought him heartless, but other remarks made to me, and to the staff, soon told us that whatever the cruelties imposed on him as a commander, they were executed with heart-pain and only as plain duty for the salvation of his own army. He even talked of how glad he would be to be out of the whole bloody business, once the Unionwere restored. But if the rebellion continued all his life, he would stay and fight it out.
When the dinner was over each looked about him to find some garment to give me. This one had an extra coat, that one a pair of trousers, and another one a hat. In short I was quickly attired in a rather respectable uniform.
This matter was just about ended when a beautiful woman was conducted to Sherman, to ask protection for her home, that was in his line of march. She was "true blue Union," despite her surroundings. In a moment the whole atmosphere about the tent was changed. The red-handed warrior, who a moment before was ready to kill even prisoners, suddenly became the most amiable, the most gallant and knightly looking man I ever saw. Beauty, that can draw a soldier with a single hair, had ensnared the great commander. He had become a gentle knight. The whole army if need be, would stand stock still to do her one little favor. I now recall how long after the war I noticed a hundred times this perfectly knightly gallantry of Sherman toward all women.
This one particular woman seemed a hundred times more beautiful, more fascinating, there in the green wood alone, with an army of a hundred thousand strangers about her, when, pointing her hand toward a great banner that swung in the wind between two tall pines, she smiled and cried: "General Sherman,THAT IS MY FLAG TOO." There was a clapping of hands from all of us, and any one of us would have been glad to be sent as the protector of her home.
The great army was now marching, or rather swimming and wading, in the direction of Fayetteville, N. C. There were heavy rains and the country, naturally swampy, was flooded everywhere. I soon learned from the staff where the army had already been. After the end of the march to the sea and the capture of Savannah, Sherman had started in with sixty thousand men, to treat South Carolina in the manner he had treated Georgia—march through it and desolate it. His proposed march northward from Savannah was regarded by the Southern generals as an impossibility. The obstacles were so great as to make it a hundred times as difficult as his march from Atlanta to the sea. But he led a great army of picked veterans, accustomed to everything, whose flags had almost never known defeat. Their confidence in their general and in themselves was simply absolute. So far, in their march from Savannah they had hesitated at nothing.
It was midwinter, and yet that army had often waded in swamps with the cold water waist deep, carrying their clothes and their muskets on their heads. Half the roads they followed had to be corduroyed, or their horses would all have been lost in the bottomless mire and swamps. Often their artillery was for miles pulled along by the men themselves, and that in the face of the enemy, hidden behind every stream, and ready to ambush them at every roadside. Over all these infamous wagon roads, across all these bridgeless rivers and endless swamps, our army now dragged with it a train of sixty-nine cannon, twenty-five hundred six-mule wagons, and six hundred ambulances. The tremendous obstacles they encountered before reaching Columbia they were again to encounter beyond. Not a bridge was left on any creek or river in the Carolinas. Roads were built of poles and logs through swamps ten miles wide. Sherman's army had few rations and no tents. The foragers brought in all the food they could pick up near the line of march. The little rubber blankets the soldiers carried were their sole protection from storm. They were almost shoeless. There were not a dozen full tents in the army. Officers used tent flies sometimes, but oftener simply rolled themselves up in their blankets, as their men did. At army headquarters we had but one largetent, used generally for dining under; so we usually slept in deserted cabins at the roadside.
I recall one fearfully stormy night when the General and his staff had all crept into a little church we found in the woods. The General would not accept the bit of carpet one of us had improvised into a bed for him on the pulpit platform. "No," he said, "keep that for some of you young fellows who are not well." He then stretched himself out on a wooden bench for the night. I think he never removed his uniform during the campaign. Day and night he was alert, and seemed never to be really asleep. We of the staff now had little to do save carrying orders occasionally to other commanders.
General Sherman did most of his own writing, and he wrote a rapid, beautiful hand. We had breakfast by the light of the campfire almost every morning, and were immediately in the saddle, floundering along through the mud, always near to, or quite at, the head of the army. At noon we always dismounted and ate a simple lunch at the roadside, sometimes washed down by a little whisky. Now and then some one of the army, recognizing the General riding past, would give a cheer that would be taken up by brigades and divisions a mile away. There seemed to be something peculiar about thisSherman cheer, for soldiers far off would cry out: "Listen to them cheering Billy Sherman."
On the 3d of March we took Cheraw, and twenty-four cannon, also nearly four thousand barrels of gunpowder. That day General Logan, General Howard, General Kilpatrick, General Hazen, and many other notables came to headquarters. There was a jolly time of rejoicing.
Here General Logan, who could play the violin, entertained them by singing my song of "Sherman's March to the Sea," accompanying his voice with the instrument. A dozen famous generals joined in the chorus. After the singing, Logan insisted that I should also recite the poem. I did so, meeting with great applause from the very men who had been the leaders in the great "March." Alas! save one or two, they are now all dead.
Among the captures that day had been eight wagonloads of fine, old wine. It was now distributed among the different headquarters of the Union army, and as a result some of the said headquarters were pretty nearly drunk. One of our staff, at dinner the next day, attempted to explain his condition of the day before. "Never mind explaining," said General Sherman crustily, and without looking up, "but only see that the like of that does not happen again; that is all." That staffofficer was a very sober man the rest of the campaign.
While we were lying there in Cheraw we heard an awful explosion; the very earth shook. I supposed it to be an earthquake until a messenger brought word that a lot of captured gunpowder had exploded and killed and wounded twenty soldiers.
As we were crossing on our pontoons over the Pedee River at Cheraw I noticed a singular way of punishing army thieves. An offender of this kind stood on the bridge, guarded by two sentinels. He was inside of a barrel that had the ends knocked out. On the barrel in big letters were the words: "I am a thief." The whole army corps passed close by him. An occasional man indulged in some joke at his expense, but the body of soldiers affected not to see him. The day we entered Cheraw General Sherman and his staff rode through the country alone for ten miles, going across from one column to another. It was a hazardous ride, as the whole country was full of guerrillas. But nothing of note happened to us.
On the 8th of March the headquarters staff was bivouacked in the woods near Laurel Hill. The army was absolutely cut off from everywhere. It had no base; it was weeks since Sherman had heard from the North or since the North had heard fromhim. Now he resolved to try to get a courier with a message through to Wilmington, at the seaside. An experienced spy by the name of Pike was selected to float down the Cape Fear River to ask the commander to try to send a tugboat up, to communicate with the army. I did not know then that the next one to run down Cape Fear River would be myself.
In four days we had taken Fayetteville and its wonderful arsenal, built years before by the American people, and where now half the war supplies of the Rebel army were made.
When the General and his staff first rode into Fayetteville headquarters were established in the arsenal. The General, wishing to look about the town for an hour or so, left me in charge. The other officers rode away with him. Very shortly a well-dressed, fine-looking old Southerner came to me and complained that his home was being disturbed by some of our soldiers. He was, he said, an old West Point friend of General Sherman's. While waiting the return of the commander, he regaled me with incidents of their early days together in the North and with his intimacies with one who would now doubtless be overwhelmed with joy at seeing him. He begged me to observe what would be his reception when the General should come. Impressed by his conversation, I at once sent a soldier or two to guard his home.
Shortly after General Sherman rode in through the arsenal portal and dismounted. The Southerner advanced with open arms, and for a moment there was a ray of pleasure illuminating Sherman's face. Then he went and leaned against a column, and, turning to the Southerner, said, "Yes, we were long together, weren't we?" "Yes," answered the Southerner, delighted. "You shared my friendship, shared my bread, even, didn't you?" continued Sherman. "Indeed, indeed!" the Southerner replied, with increasing warmth. The General gave the Southerner a long, steady, almost pathetic look, and answered, "You have betrayed it all; me, your friend, your country that educated you for its defense. You are here a traitor, and you ask me to be again your friend, to protect your property, to send you these brave men, some of whose comrades were murdered by your neighbors this very morning—fired on from hidden houses by you and yours as they entered the town. Turn your back to me forever. I will not punish you; only go your way. There is room in the world even for traitors." The Southerner turned ashy white and walked away from us in silence. Sherman sat down with the rest of us to our noonday lunch. We sat about the portal on stones, or barrels, or whatever happened to answer for seats. The General could scarcely eat. Never had I seen him under such emotion; thecorners of his mouth twitched as he continued talking to us of this false friend. The hand that held the bread trembled and for a moment tears were in his eyes. For a little while we all sat in silence, and we realized as never before what treason to the republic really meant. The General spoke as if he, nor we, might ever live through it all.
Very soon General Howard rode in to complain anew of the outrages committed on our troops by men firing from windows as they passed along the streets. Two or three soldiers had been killed. "Who did this outrage?" cried Sherman, in a loud and bitter voice, "Texans, I think," answered General Howard. "Then shoot some Texan prisoners in retaliation," said Sherman sternly. "We have no Texans," replied Howard, not inclined, apparently, to carry out the serious, but just order. "Then take other prisoners, take any prisoners," continued General Sherman. "I will not permit my soldiers to be murdered." He turned on his heel and walked away. Howard mounted and rode into the town. What happened, I do not know.
On Sunday morning General Sherman asked me to take a walk with him through the immense arsenal of Fayetteville before he should blow it up. We were gone an hour, and I was surprised at his great familiarity with all the machinery and works of theimmense establishment. He talked constantly and explained many things to me. Never more than at that time was I impressed with the universal knowledge, the extraordinary genius, of the man. There seemed to be nothing there he did not understand. On our way back to headquarters I heard him give the order to destroy everything, to burn the arsenal down, blow it up, to leave absolutely nothing, and he added the prayer that the American government might never again give North Carolina an arsenal and forts to betray. He was very angry now at those who had used the United States property in their desire to destroy the government itself. He had seen nothing in the war that seemed so treasonable, unless it was the base ingratitude of those who entered the service of the Rebellion after having been educated at West Point at the Government's expense.
Pretty soon he said to me: "If I can get any kind of a boat up here, I am going to have you try to reach Wilmington with dispatches." Almost at that minute a steam whistle sounded in the woods below us. "There it is," said the General joyfully. "Pike got through." Very soon someone came running to say a communication had come from the seashore; a little tug had run the Rebel gauntlet all the way from Wilmington.
We went in to lunch and the General announced to the staff his intention of sending me down the river, and off to General Grant with dispatches. This chance to get word of his movements and his successes to General Grant and the North was of vast importance, and it moved him greatly. He left his lunch half finished and commenced writing letters and reports to the commander-in-chief. That evening at twilight General Sherman walked with me down to the riverside where the little tug lay waiting. "When you reach the North," he said, putting his arm around me, "don't tell them we have been cutting any great swath in the Carolinas; simply tell them the plain facts; tell them that the army is not lost, but is well, and still marching." So careful was I as to his injunctions, that even the newspapers at Washington never knew how the great news from Sherman reached the North.
I did not know then, starting down the river with my message, that it was to be seven years before I was again to see the face of my beloved commander.
The Cape Fear River was flooded at this time, a mile wide, in places even more, and though its banks were lined with guerrillas there could not be great danger, if we could stay in the middle of the stream, unless our little boat should get wrecked in the darkness by floating trees or by running intoshallow places. The lights were all put out. The pilot house and the sides of the boat were covered by bales of cotton, to protect us against the Rebel bullets. My dispatches to General Grant were carefully sewed up inside my shirt, and were weighted, so that I could hastily sink them in the river should we be captured. A half dozen refugees from Columbia joined us. Among them was the Mrs. C——, whose property Devine and I had tried to save the night of the fire. It was a curious and dangerous voyage down that roaring, flooded river for a woman to be undertaking in the darkness, but this woman had now undertaken many dangers. Another of my companions on that strange voyage was Theodore Davis, a corresponding artist ofHarper's Weekly. We kept the boat in the channel as far as we could guess it, and, for the rest, simply floated in the darkness. We went through undiscovered; not a shot fired at us. Before daylight, so swift had been the current, we were in Wilmington.
General Terry had just taken Wilmington and was in command of the city. Some of my dispatches were for him. He was still in bed, in one of the fine residences of the place, but instantly arose and urged me to jump into bed and get some rest while he should arrange to get me immediate transportation to Grant. I slept till nine, and whenI came down to the drawing-room, now used as headquarters, General Terry asked if perhaps it were I who wrote the song about Sherman's March from Atlanta seaward. It had been sung at the theater the night before, he said. I was much gratified to have him tell me that the whole army had taken it up. "Tens of thousands of men," he said, "were singing it." I knew, as already told, that an exchanged prisoner had brought the song through the Rebel lines in an artificial leg he wore, but it was an agreeable surprise to now learn of its sudden and tremendous success.
General Terry impressed me as the handsomest soldier I had seen in the army—McPherson, the commander of my own corp, only excepted. He was, too, a refined and perfect gentleman. Looking at him I thought of the cavaliers of romance. Here was real knighthood, born and bred in the soil of the republic. The laurels for his heroic capture of Fort Fisher were fresh on his brow.
Before noon an ocean steamer, theEdward Everett, was ordered to take me at once to Fortress Monroe. Two of my army friends went along. The captain, leaving on so short notice, had provided his ship with insufficient ballast, and to me, a landsman, the vessel's lurchings were very astonishing. I had never seen the ocean before, and it was not long tillI wished I might never see it again. To add to my alarm, a fierce tempest sprang up as we passed around Cape Hatteras, and the danger was no longer imaginary, but very real. The few passengers on the boat might as well have been dead, so far as any self-help was to be thought of in case of disaster. Even the captain was very seasick, and, altogether, passengers and crew were badly scared. For many hours it was nothing but a fierce blow and a roll about on the mad waters. All things come to an end; so did this storm, and at last we reached Fortress Monroe, where I was hurriedly transferred by some sailors in a yawl over to a boat that had already started up the James toward Richmond. Our captain had signaled that he had a dispatch bearer from the Carolinas. We had not gone far until we passed the top of a ship's mast sticking a few feet above the water. It was the mast of theCumberland, that had gone down in her fight with theMerrimacwith as brave a crew as ever manned a war boat.
The steamer I was now on was crowded with officers in bright uniforms, apparently returning to their regiments. I wondered if all the Eastern army had been home on a furlough. I could not help contrasting to myself this ship full of sleek, brightly uniformed officers with the rough-cladsoldiers and officers of the army of Sherman. Sherman's foragers and veterans of the March to the Sea might have cut an awkward figure alongside these gay youths just from Washington.
In the afternoon the ship came to at City Point, and I climbed up the bank of the river bluff for perhaps a hundred feet, and was soon directed to the headquarters of the commander-in-chief of the United States armies.
When I reached the open door of Grant's famous little cabin a young officer asked me to come in, and was introducing me to the chief of staff, Rawlins, who stood there with some letters in his hands. That instant General Grant showed his face at the door in the back of the room. I knew who it was at once. He stepped forward to where General Rawlins was speaking with me, listened to the conversation a moment, and without any formal introduction, smiled, took me by the hand and led me into the back room of the cabin shutting the door behind us. He asked me to sit down, but I first proceeded to rip the dispatches out of my clothing, and with intense interest watched his features while he sat on a camp stool by the window, his legs crossed, and read Sherman's letter. I could see the glow of silent satisfaction as he glanced along the lines that told of his great lieutenant's successes inthe South. He glanced at another letter I held in my hand. "It is for the President," I said. "He will be here yet to-night," he answered. "His boat must now be coming up the bay."
Then General Grant questioned me as to all I knew about Sherman's army, the character of the opposition he had met, the condition of his soldiers, their clothing, the roads, the weather. He also asked me how I had reached him with the dispatches, coming all the way from the interior of North Carolina. He seemed to have thought for a moment that I had come across Virginia on foot. He wanted to know of me again about the terrible treatment of prisoners in the South. What I told him only "confirmed," he said, what he had heard from a hundred sources.
Very shortly he heard the voice of General Ord in the outer room.
"Come in here, Ord," he said, holding the door open. "Come in and hear the news from Sherman. Look at that, listen to this," and again he went through Sherman's letter, reading parts of it aloud. "Good! Good!" cried Ord, fairly dancing about the cabin, his spurs and saber jingling. "I was really getting afraid." "Not I, not I, not a bit," exclaimed Grant enthusiastically, as he rose to his feet. "I knew my man. I knew General Sherman."
I was astonished now at the simple and perfectly frank manner with which General Grant talked to me about the situation of the army. I had ventured to ask if there was any outlook for the immediate fall of Richmond or a battle.
"Very great," he answered. "I am only afraid Lee may slip out before we can get a great blow at him. Any hour this may happen." Just then there was cannonading. I wondered if a fight were commencing somewhere in the line already. General Grant did not change a muscle in his face. "Send out and see what the firing is," he said to an officer quietly, and then as quietly continued talking, asking me to tell him all I knew of a recent escapade of Kilpatrick and his cavalry. It happened that I knew all about it. Only a couple of weeks before Kilpatrick and his headquarters had been surprised in bed at a bivouac on the flank of Sherman's army, and were surrounded and some were captured. By a heroic struggle the cavalry leader had escaped his captors, had instantly rallied his troops there in the dark woods and given the bold Rebels a little drubbing. The next day I had been with Sherman at headquarters and listened to Kilpatrick's recital of his adventure. My own narration of the night's cavalry fight, reciting how the cavalrymen and his aids dashed about with nothing on but their shirts,made General Grant smile very audibly. "I had expected the whole thing to be about as you say," he exclaimed, in a grateful way, "but the Richmond newspapers which fell into my hands made a big thing of the so-called capture of Sherman's cavalry leader."
Once, as the General rose and stood directly in front of us, I was astonished to see how small he seemed. I had seen Grant before, but on horseback or in battle, and, somehow, I had always regarded him as a rather large, solidly built man. To-day in the little back room of his cabin, talking with him, I saw how mistaken I had been. General Grant, as I now saw him, was, in fact, a little man. Several times he rose and walked about the room. He was not more than five feet seven or eight inches high, and he could not have weighed more than one hundred and forty or fifty pounds. He wore a simple fatigue uniform, and his coat thrown open gave him the appearance of being larger chested than he really was. His brown hair was neither short nor long, and he wore a full beard, well trimmed. Had I not known to whom I was talking, or had I not seen the three stars on his shoulders, I would have supposed myself in the presence of some simple army captain. There was nothing whatever about him to announce the presence of genius or extraordinaryability of any kind. He was in no sense a striking-looking man. His manner and words to me were kind and earnest. There was an agreeable look about his mouth and eyes that made him seem very sincere. Indeed, if any one thing about him impressed me more than another, it was his apparent sincerity and earnestness. And he looked to me like a man of great common sense. Of vanity, pretence, or power there was not a single sign. He could not have looked very greatly different when he was hewing logs for his house at his father-in-law's farm ten years before, from what he looked just now, quietly directing a million soldiers in the greatest war of modern times.
Like General Sherman, he repeatedly expressed his interest concerning the terrible experiences I had undergone in Southern prisons.
"I suppose you will want to get home as quickly as possible, won't you?" he inquired, "or would you rather remain here awhile and look about the army?" A steamer was to leave for the North in an hour. Privately, I was fearing a sudden break-down of my health, and longed for a home that I had visited but eight days during four long years of war. Then I thought of my letter to Mr. Lincoln. The General seemed to anticipate my thought. "Leave the President's letter with me," he said, "if you choose,and I will give it to him, or stay over and give it to him yourself."
There was no man living I was so anxious to see as Abraham Lincoln. And this was my opportunity. But something like a premonition said, "Go home." When I expressed my feeling General Grant stepped to the door of the office room and directed General Rawlins to see that I be provided with leave of absence and transportation. That little order, signed by Rawlins, I still possess.
With an earnest handshake and good-by General Grant thanked me for bringing him the dispatches. I was not to see him again for many years.[C]
Washington City in the last days of the war—Look, the President!—The last man of the regiment.
Washington City in the last days of the war—Look, the President!—The last man of the regiment.
Leaving General Grant's headquarters at City Point was for me a final good-by to the army. The little steamerMartincarried me down the James River, up the Chesapeake Bay, and the Potomac, toward the North. I recall now the strange sensations I had in passing Washington's tomb at Mount Vernon. The green slopes and the oak wood in front of the old mansion were in full view. I could even see the front columns of the house, and someone on the steamer's deck pointed out to me the spot where stood the simple brick mausoleum where with folded arms slept the Father of his Country. I could not help reflecting that at that moment not a hundred miles away stood nearly all George Washington's State's descendants, with arms in their hands, striving to destroy the government that he had founded.
How I enjoyed that ship ride! Here there was no sandy prison pen with poor, starving, dying comrades lying around; no futile efforts at escape; no taunts and jeers that the American flag had gone down in disgrace; now all was free and beautiful, andmine. The hated rag of the Confederacy that had floated over my head and threatened me every day with death for fifteen long months was gone forever. At the mast of our little vessel waved the Stars and Stripes, conscious, it seemed to me, of the free air I was breathing. That was a happy day for me.
Some time in the following night the wheels of the boat stopped revolving—there was silence; and when I woke at daylight there was the land. The ship was fast in the slip at the wharf, and there, too, was the capital of the republic. I went ashore by myself and wandered into the city, my mind crowded every moment with the thoughts of what had taken place here in the last four years. Soldiers I saw everywhere, with arms and without arms. Negroes, now freedmen, by the ten thousand fairly darkened the population. With some friends I found a boarding place on the avenue above the National Hotel. If I wanted to see great men, notorious men, men making history, all kinds of men, I had only to step into the corridors of the National.
I had little or no ready money, nor could Iget any until the government settled my accounts. I waited in Washington for a week. General Sherman had given me papers that would insure my promotion in the regular army. I presented them; they were all-sufficient; I needed only to say the word. But I was sick and tired of war, and would not have exchanged a glimpse of my Western home for the commission of a brigadier.
But while I stayed in Washington what sights I saw! Our capital is now possibly the finest in the world. Then it was the most hateful; the most hateful in every way. Militarism, treason, political scoundrelism, and every other bad ism reigned in every hotel, on every street corner, in Congress, out of Congress—everywhere; reigned right at the elbows of loyalty and patriotism such as the world never saw. Society was one grand conglomeration of everything good and bad.
Washington City itself was a spectacle. It had no streets, save one or two—simply dirty unpaved roads. The dirty street cars, pulled by worn-out horses, were crowded inside and outside by a mass of struggling politicians, soldiers, gamblers, adventurers, and women. The city was also full of hospitals; everywhere there were lazarettos and graveyards. It looked as if half the Union army had dragged itself into the capital to die. Thegreat Capital building was uncompleted; its dome stood there covered with scaffoldings and windlasses. The plaza at the east end of the structure looked like a vast stone quarry. The Washington Monument had only gotten itself safe above high-water mark; and what there was of it was in danger of falling down. It stood in the middle of the flats, the mud and the malaria—the graveyard, in short, that formed the unsavory prospect from the White House windows.
Aside from the unfinished government buildings there was not a pretense of architecture in all Washington. There was nothing beautiful there. The very atmosphere seemed sickly; fever, malaria, were everywhere. It was the one city in all creation to get out of as soon as possible.
Once I tried to get a glimpse of the President. I failed. The White House gates were held by sentries. "Why do you want to see that old Ape?" said a man to me one day. I was shocked, and would like to have killed him. But he was not alone in his vileness. Thousands in Washington affected to despise Lincoln. I wondered then that it was regarded safe for him to appear in public. One day a carriage rolled rapidly up the avenue in front of the National. I heard some men cry, "Look, the President!" I glanced quickly. A tall, dark man,wearing a silk hat sat in the carriage; at his side a lady.
In a moment they were out of sight. There was not a cheer, not a hat touched, not a hand waved, and yetthat was Abraham Lincoln passing, soon to be the greatest man in history. A little wrangle and almost a fist-fight between some bystanders on the pavement followed; one party denouncing the President for freeing the "damned niggers"; another thanking God for the President's noble deed. Such scenes were going on everywhere all over the capital, pro and con. Approval and hatred. The best praised, the worst abused mortal in America was just entering on his second term at the White House. I never even had a glimpse of the kindly face again.
At last my accounts were ready. "But your regiment," said the Assistant War Secretary, "does not exist. What was left of them were all put into a cavalry troop long ago.You are the last man of the regiment." Across the face of my paper he wrote, "Discharged as a supernumerary officer." That paper lies before me while I write. I was paid off in shining greenbacks for all the time I had been in prison.
As to the eighty comrades who had been captured with me that 25th of November in the assault onMissionary Ridge, all but sixteen were dead. Nine of my old Company B of the Fifth Regiment were taken prisoners, and only one of them had survived the horrors of Andersonville. Poor Cartwright died not long after, and I alone of the little band was left to tell the story.