Produced by David Widger
ANDERSONVILLE
A STORY OF REBEL MILITARY PRISONS
FIFTEEN MONTHS A GUEST OF THE SO-CALLED
SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY
A PRIVATE SOLDIERS EXPERIENCE
IN
RICHMOND, ANDERSONVILLE, SAVANNAH, MILLEN
BLACKSHEAR AND FLORENCE
BY JOHN McELROY
Late of Co. L. 16th Ill Cav.
1879
TO THE HONORABLE
NOAH H. SWAYNE.
JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES,
A JURIST OF DISTINGUISHED TALENTS AND EXALTED CHARACTER;
ONE OF THE LAST OF THAT
ADMIRABLE ARRAY OF PURE PATRIOTS AND SAGACIOUS COUNSELORS,
WHO, IN
THE YEARS OF THE NATION'S TRIAL,
FAITHFULLY SURROUNDED THE GREAT PRESIDENT,
AND, WITH HIM, BORE THE BURDEN
OF
THOSE MOMENTOUS DAYS;
AND WHOSE WISDOM AND FAIRNESS HAVE DONE SO MUCH SINCE
TO
CONSERVE WHAT WAS THEN WON,
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED WITH RESPECT AND APPRECIATION,
BY THE AUTHOR.
INTRODUCTION.
The fifth part of a century almost has sped with the flight of time since
the outbreak of the Slaveholder's Rebellion against the United States.
The young men of to-day were then babes in their cradles, or, if more
than that, too young to be appalled by the terror of the times. Those
now graduating from our schools of learning to be teachers of youth and
leaders of public thought, if they are ever prepared to teach the history
of the war for the Union so as to render adequate honor to its martyrs
and heroes, and at the same time impress the obvious moral to be drawn
from it, must derive their knowledge from authors who can each one say of
the thrilling story he is spared to tell: "All of which I saw, and part
of which I was."
The writer is honored with the privilege of introducing to the reader a
volume written by an author who was an actor and a sufferer in the scenes
he has so vividly and faithfully described, and sent forth to the public
by a publisher whose literary contributions in support of the loyal cause
entitle him to the highest appreciation. Both author and publisher have
had an honorable and efficient part in the great struggle, and are
therefore worthy to hand down to the future a record of the perils
encountered and the sufferings endured by patriotic soldiers in the
prisons of the enemy. The publisher, at the beginning of the war,
entered, with zeal and ardor upon the work of raising a company of men,
intending to lead them to the field. Prevented from carrying out this
design, his energies were directed to a more effective service. His
famous "Nasby Letters" exposed the absurd and sophistical argumentations
of rebels and their sympathisers, in such broad, attractive and admirable
burlesque, as to direct against them the "loud, long laughter of a
world!" The unique and telling satire of these papers became a power and
inspiration to our armies in the field and to their anxious friends at
home, more than equal to the might of whole battalions poured in upon the
enemy. An athlete in logic may lay an error writhing at his feet, and
after all it may recover to do great mischief. But the sharp wit of the
humorist drives it before the world's derision into shame and everlasting
contempt. These letters were read and shouted over gleefully at every
camp-fire in the Union Army, and eagerly devoured by crowds of listeners
when mails were opened at country post-offices. Other humorists were
content when they simply amused the reader, but "Nasby's" jests were
arguments - they had a meaningthey were suggested by the necessities and
emergencies of the Nation's peril, and written to support, with all
earnestness, a most sacred cause.
The author, when very young, engaged in journalistic work, until the drum
of the recruiting officer called him to join the ranks of his country's
defenders. As the reader is told, he was made a prisoner. He took with
him into the terrible prison enclosure not only a brave, vigorous,
youthful spirit, but invaluable habits of mind and thought for storing up
the incidents and experiences of his prison life. As a journalist he had
acquired the habit of noticing and memorizing every striking or thrilling
incident, and the experiences of his prison life were adapted to enstamp
themselves indelibly on both feeling and memory. He speaks from personal
experience and from the stand-paint of tender and complete sympathy with
those of his comrades who suffered more than he did himself. Of his
qualifications, the writer of these introductory words need not speak.
The sketches themselves testify to his ability with such force that no
commendation is required.
This work is needed. A generation is arising who do not know what the
preservation of our free government cost in blood and suffering. Even
the men of the passing generation begin to be forgetful, if we may judge
from the recklessness or carelessness of their political action. The
soldier is not always remembered nor honored as he should be. But, what
to the future of the great Republic is more important, there is great
danger of our people under-estimating the bitter animus and terrible
malignity to the Union and its defenders cherished by those who made war
upon it. This is a point we can not afford to be mistaken about. And
yet, right at this point this volume will meet its severest criticism,
and at this point its testimony is most vital and necessary.
Many will be slow to believe all that is here told most truthfully of the
tyranny and cruelty of the captors of our brave boys in blue. There are
no parallels to the cruelties and malignities here described in Northern
society. The system of slavery, maintained for over two hundred years at
the South, had performed a most perverting, morally desolating, and we
might say, demonizing work on the dominant race, which people bred under
our free civilization can not at once understand, nor scarcely believe
when it is declared unto them. This reluctance to believe unwelcome
truths has been the snare of our national life. We have not been willing
to believe how hardened, despotic, and cruel the wielders of
irresponsible power may become.
When the anti-slavery reformers of thirty years ago set forth the
cruelties of the slave system, they were met with a storm of indignant
denial, villification and rebuke. When Theodore D. Weld issued his
"Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses," to the cruelty of slavery, he
introduced it with a few words, pregnant with sound philosophy, which can
be applied to the work now introduced, and may help the reader better to
accept and appreciate its statements. Mr. Weld said:
"Suppose I should seize you, rob you of your liberty, drive you into the
field, and make you work without pay as long as you lived. Would that be
justice? Would it be kindness? Or would it be monstrous injustice and
cruelty? Now, is the man who robs you every day too tender-hearted ever
to cuff or kick you? He can empty your pockets without remorse, but if
your stomach is empty, it cuts him to the quick. He can make you work a
life-time without pay, but loves you too well to let you go hungry.
He fleeces you of your rights with a relish, but is shocked if you work
bare-headed in summer, or without warm stockings in winter. He can make
you go without your liberty, but never without a shirt. He can crush in
you all hope of bettering your condition by vowing that you shall die his
slave, but though he can thus cruelly torture your feelings, he will
never lacerate your back - he can break your heart, but is very tender of
your skin. He can strip you of all protection of law, and all comfort in
religion, and thus expose you to all outrages, but if you are exposed to
the weather, half-clad and half-sheltered, how yearn his tender bowels!
What! talk of a man treating you well while robbing you of all you get,
and as fast as you get it? And robbing you of yourself, too, your hands
and feet, your muscles, limbs and senses, your body and mind, your
liberty and earnings, your free speech and rights of conscience, your
right to acquire knowledge, property and reputation, and yet you are
content to believe without question that men who do all this by their
slaves have soft hearts oozing out so lovingly toward their human
chattles that they always keep them well housed and well clad, never push
them too hard in the field, never make their dear backs smart, nor let
their dear stomachs get empty!"
In like manner we may ask, are not the cruelties and oppressions
described in the following pages what we should legitimately expect from
men who, all their lives, have used whip and thumb-screw, shot-gun and
bloodhound, to keep human beings subservient to their will? Are we to
expect nothing but chivalric tenderness and compassion from men who made
war on a tolerant government to make more secure their barbaric system of
oppression?
These things are written because they are true. Duty to the brave dead,
to the heroic living, who have endured the pangs of a hundred deaths for
their country's sake; duty to the government which depends on the wisdom
and constancy of its good citizens for its support and perpetuity, calls
for this "round, unvarnished tale" of suffering endured for freedom's
sake.
The publisher of this work urged his friend and associate in journalism
to write and send forth these sketches because the times demanded just
such an expose of the inner hell of the Southern prisons. The tender
mercies of oppressors are cruel. We must accept the truth and act in
view of it. Acting wisely on the warnings of the past, we shall be able
to prevent treason, with all its fearful concomitants, from being again
the scourge and terror of our beloved land.
ROBERT McCUNE.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
Fifteen months ago - and one month before it was begun - I had no more idea
of writing this book than I have now of taking up my residence in China.
While I have always been deeply impressed with the idea that the public
should know much more of the history of Andersonville and other Southern
prisons than it does, it had never occurred to me that I was in any way
charged with the duty of increasing that enlightenment.
No affected deprecation of my own abilities had any part is this.
I certainly knew enough of the matter, as did every other boy who had
even a month's experience in those terrible places, but the very
magnitude of that knowledge overpowered me, by showing me the vast
requirements of the subject-requirements that seemed to make it
presumption for any but the greatest pens in our literature to attempt
the work. One day at Andersonville or Florence would be task enough for
the genius of Carlyle or Hugo; lesser than they would fail preposterously
to rise to the level of the theme. No writer ever described such a
deluge of woes as swept over the unfortunates confined in Rebel prisons
in the last year-and-a-half of the Confederacy's life. No man was ever
called upon to describe the spectacle and the process of seventy thousand
young, strong, able-bodied men, starving and rotting to death. Such a
gigantic tragedy as this stuns the mind and benumbs the imagination.
I no more felt myself competent to the task than to accomplish one of
Michael Angelo's grand creations in sculpture or painting.
Study of the subject since confirms me in this view, and my only claim
for this book is that it is a contribution - a record of individual
observation and experience - which will add something to the material
which the historian of the future will find available for his work.
The work was begun at the suggestion of Mr. D. R. Locke, (Petroleum V.
Nasby), the eminent political satirist. At first it was only intended to
write a few short serial sketches of prison life for the columns of the
TOLEDO BLADE. The exceeding favor with which the first of the series was
received induced a great widening of their scope, until finally they took
the range they now have.
I know that what is contained herein will be bitterly denied. I am
prepared for this. In my boyhood I witnessed the savagery of the Slavery
agitation - in my youth I felt the fierceness of the hatred directed
against all those who stood by the Nation. I know that hell hath no fury
like the vindictiveness of those who are hurt by the truth being told of
them. I apprehend being assailed by a sirocco of contradiction and
calumny. But I solemnly affirm in advance the entire and absolute truth
of every material fact, statement and description. I assert that, so far
from there being any exaggeration in any particular, that in no instance
has the half of the truth been told, nor could it be, save by an inspired
pen. I am ready to demonstrate this by any test that the deniers of this
may require, and I am fortified in my position by unsolicited letters
from over 3,000 surviving prisoners, warmly indorsing the account as
thoroughly accurate in every respect.
It has been charged that hatred of the South is the animus of this work.
Nothing can be farther from the truth. No one has a deeper love for
every part of our common country than I, and no one to-day will make more
efforts and sacrifices to bring the South to the same plane of social and
material development with the rest of the Nation than I will. If I could
see that the sufferings at Andersonville and elsewhere contributed in any
considerable degree to that end, and I should not regret that they had
been. Blood and tears mark every, step in the progress of the race, and
human misery seems unavoidable in securing human advancement. But I am
naturally embittered by the fruitlessness, as well as the uselessness of
the misery of Andersonville. There was never the least military or other
reason for inflicting all that wretchedness upon men, and, as far as
mortal eye can discern, no earthly good resulted from the martyrdom of
those tens of thousands. I wish I could see some hope that their
wantonly shed blood has sown seeds that will one day blossom, and bear a
rich fruitage of benefit to mankind, but it saddens me beyond expression
that I can not.
The years 1864-5 were a season of desperate battles, but in that time
many more Union soldiers were slain behind the Rebel armies, by
starvation and exposure, than were killed in front of them by cannon and
rifle. The country has heard much of the heroism and sacrifices of those
loyal youths who fell on the field of battle; but it has heard little of
the still greater number who died in prison pen. It knows full well how
grandly her sons met death in front of the serried ranks of treason, and
but little of the sublime firmness with which they endured unto the
death, all that the ingenious cruelty of their foes could inflict upon
them while in captivity.
It is to help supply this deficiency that this book is written. It is a
mite contributed to the better remembrance by their countrymen of those
who in this way endured and died that the Nation might live. It is an
offering of testimony to future generations of the measureless cost of
the expiation of a national sin, and of the preservation of our national
unity.
This is all. I know I speak for all those still living comrades who went
with me through the scenes that I have attempted to describe, when I say
that we have no revenges to satisfy, no hatreds to appease. We do not
ask that anyone shall be punished. We only desire that the Nation shall
recognize and remember the grand fidelity of our dead comrades, and take
abundant care that they shall not have died in vain.
For the great mass of Southern people we have only the kindliest feeling.
We but hate a vicious social system, the lingering shadow of a darker
age, to which they yield, and which, by elevating bad men to power, has
proved their own and their country's bane.
The following story does not claim to be in any sense a history of
Southern prisons. It is simply a record of the experience of one
individual - one boy - who staid all the time with his comrades inside the
prison, and had no better opportunities for gaining information than any
other of his 60,000 companions.
The majority of the illustrations in this work are from the skilled
pencil of Captain O. J. Hopkins, of Toledo, who served through the war in
the ranks of the Forty-second Ohio. His army experience has been of
peculiar value to the work, as it has enabled him to furnish a series of
illustrations whose life-like fidelity of action, pose and detail are
admirable.
Some thirty of the pictures, including the frontispiece, and the
allegorical illustrations of War and Peace, are from the atelier of Mr.
O. Reich, Cincinnati, O.
A word as to the spelling: Having always been an ardent believer in the
reformation of our present preposterous system - or rather, no system - of
orthography, I am anxious to do whatever lies in my power to promote it.
In the following pages the spelling is simplified to the last degree
allowed by Webster. I hope that the time is near when even that advanced
spelling reformer will be left far in the rear by the progress of a
people thoroughly weary of longer slavery to the orthographical
absurdities handed down to us from a remote and grossly unlearned
ancestry.
Toledo, O., Dec. 10, 1879.
JOHN McELROY.
We wait beneath the furnace blast
The pangs of transformation;
Not painlessly doth God recast
And mold anew the nation.
Hot burns the fire
Where wrongs expire;
Nor spares the hand
That from the land
Uproots the ancient evil.
The hand-breadth cloud the sages feared
Its bloody rain is dropping;
The poison plant the fathers spared
All else is overtopping.
East, West, South, North,
It curses the earth;
All justice dies,
And fraud and lies
Live only in its shadow.
Then let the selfish lip be dumb
And hushed the breath of sighing;
Before the joy of peace must come
The pains of purifying.
God give us grace
Each in his place
To bear his lot,
And, murmuring not,
Endure and wait and labor!
WHITTIER
ANDERSONVILLE
A STORY OF REBEL MILITARY PRISONS
CHAPTER I.
A STRANGE LAND - THE HEART OF THE APPALACHIANS - THE GATEWAY OF AN EMPIRE
- A SEQUESTERED VALE, AND A PRIMITIVE, ARCADIAN, NON-PROGRESSIVE PEOPLE.
A low, square, plainly-hewn stone, set near the summit of the eastern
approach to the formidable natural fortress of Cumberland Gap, indicates
the boundaries of - the three great States of Virginia, Kentucky and
Tennessee. It is such a place as, remembering the old Greek and Roman
myths and superstitions, one would recognize as fitting to mark the
confines of the territories of great masses of strong, aggressive, and
frequently conflicting peoples. There the god Terminus should have had
one of his chief temples, where his shrine would be shadowed by barriers
rising above the clouds, and his sacred solitude guarded from the rude
invasion of armed hosts by range on range of battlemented rocks, crowning
almost inaccessible mountains, interposed across every approach from the
usual haunts of men.
Roundabout the land is full of strangeness and mystery. The throes of
some great convulsion of Nature are written on the face of the four
thousand square miles of territory, of which Cumberland Gap is the
central point. Miles of granite mountains are thrust up like giant
walls, hundreds of feet high, and as smooth and regular as the side
of a monument.
Huge, fantastically-shaped rocks abound everywhere - sometimes rising into
pinnacles on lofty summits - sometimes hanging over the verge of beetling
cliffs, as if placed there in waiting for a time when they could be
hurled down upon the path of an advancing army, and sweep it away.
Large streams of water burst out in the most unexpected planes,
frequently far up mountain sides, and fall in silver veils upon stones
beaten round by the ceaseless dash for ages. Caves, rich in quaintly
formed stalactites and stalagmites, and their recesses filled with
metallic salts of the most powerful and diverse natures; break the
mountain sides at frequent intervals. Everywhere one is met by surprises
and anomalies. Even the rank vegetation is eccentric, and as prone to
develop into bizarre forms as are the rocks and mountains.
The dreaded panther ranges through the primeval, rarely trodden forests;
every crevice in the rocks has for tenants rattlesnakes or stealthy
copperheads, while long, wonderfully swift "blue racers" haunt the edges
of the woods, and linger around the fields to chill his blood who catches
a glimpse of their upreared heads, with their great, balefully bright
eyes, and "white-collar" encircled throats.
The human events happening here have been in harmony with the natural
ones. It has always been a land of conflict. In 1540 - 339 years ago
- De Soto, in that energetic but fruitless search for gold which occupied
his later years, penetrated to this region, and found it the fastness of
the Xualans, a bold, aggressive race, continually warring with its
neighbors. When next the white man reached the country - a century and a
half later - he found the Xualans had been swept away by the conquering
Cherokees, and he witnessed there the most sanguinary contest between
Indians of which our annals give any account - a pitched battle two days
in duration, between the invading Shawnees, who lorded it over what is
now Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana - and the Cherokees, who dominated the
country the southeast of the Cumberland range. Again the Cherokees were
victorious, and the discomfited Shawnees retired north of the Gap.
Then the white man delivered battle for the possession the land, and
bought it with the lives of many gallant adventurers. Half a century
later Boone and his hardy companion followed, and forced their way into
Kentucky.
Another half century saw the Gap the favorite haunt of the greatest of
American bandits - the noted John A. Murrell - and his gang. They
infested the country for years, now waylaying the trader or drover
threading his toilsome way over the lone mountains, now descending upon
some little town, to plunder its stores and houses.
At length Murrell and his band were driven out, and sought a new field of
operations on the Lower Mississippi. They left germs behind them,
however, that developed into horse thieve counterfeiters, and later into
guerrillas and bushwhackers.
When the Rebellion broke out the region at once became the theater of
military operations. Twice Cumberland Gap was seized by the Rebels, and
twice was it wrested away from them. In 1861 it was the point whence
Zollicoffer launched out with his legions to "liberate Kentucky," and it
was whither they fled, beaten and shattered, after the disasters of Wild
Cat and Mill Springs. In 1862 Kirby Smith led his army through the Gap
on his way to overrun Kentucky and invade the North. Three months later
his beaten forces sought refuge from their pursuers behind its
impregnable fortifications. Another year saw Burnside burst through the
Gap with a conquering force and redeem loyal East Tennessee from its
Rebel oppressors.
Had the South ever been able to separate from the North the boundary
would have been established along this line.
Between the main ridge upon which Cumberland Gap is situated, and the
next range on the southeast which runs parallel with it, is a narrow,
long, very fruitful valley, walled in on either side for a hundred miles
by tall mountains as a City street is by high buildings. It is called
Powell's Valley. In it dwell a simple, primitive people, shut out from
the world almost as much as if they lived in New Zealand, and with the
speech, manners and ideas that their fathers brought into the Valley when
they settled it a century ago. There has been but little change since
then. The young men who have annually driven cattle to the distant
markets in Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia, have brought back occasional
stray bits of finery for the "women folks," and the latest improved
fire-arms for themselves, but this is about all the innovations the
progress of the world has been allowed to make. Wheeled vehicles are
almost unknown; men and women travel on horseback as they did a century
ago, the clothing is the product of the farm and the busy looms of the
women, and life is as rural and Arcadian as any ever described in a
pastoral. The people are rich in cattle, hogs, horses, sheep and the
products of the field. The fat soil brings forth the substantials of
life in opulent plenty. Having this there seems to be little care for
more. Ambition nor avarice, nor yet craving after luxury, disturb their
contented souls or drag them away from the non-progressive round of
simple life bequeathed them by their fathers.
CHAPTER II.
SCARCITY OF FOOD FOR THE ARMY - RAID FOR FORAGE - ENCOUNTER WIT THE REBELS
- SHARP CAVALRY FIGHT - DEFEAT OF THE "JOHNNIES" - POWELL'S VALLEY OPENED
UP.
As the Autumn of 1863 advanced towards Winter the difficulty of supplying
the forces concentrated around Cumberland Gap - as well as the rest of
Burnside's army in East Tennessee - became greater and greater. The base
of supplies was at Camp Nelson, near Lexington, Ky., one hundred and
eighty miles from the Gap, and all that the Army used had to be hauled
that distance by mule teams over roads that, in their best state were
wretched, and which the copious rains and heavy traffic had rendered
well-nigh impassable. All the country to our possession had been drained
of its stock of whatever would contribute to the support of man or beast.
That portion of Powell's Valley extending from the Gap into Virginia was
still in the hands of the Rebels; its stock of products was as yet almost
exempt from military contributions. Consequently a raid was projected to
reduce the Valley to our possession, and secure its much needed stores.
It was guarded by the Sixty-fourth Virginia, a mounted regiment, made up
of the young men of the locality, who had then been in the service about
two years.
Maj. C. H. Beer's third Battalion, Sixteenth Illinois Cavalry - four
companies, each about 75 strong - was sent on the errand of driving out
the Rebels and opening up the Valley for our foraging teams. The writer
was invited to attend the excursion. As he held the honorable, but not
very lucrative position of "high, private" in Company L, of the
Battalion, and the invitation came from his Captain, he did not feel at
liberty to decline. He went, as private soldiers have been in the habit
of doing ever since the days of the old Centurion, who said with the
characteristic boastfulness of one of the lower grades of commissioned
officers when he happens to be a snob:
For I am also a man set under authority, having under me soldiers,
and I say unto one, Go; and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he
cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it.
Rather "airy" talk that for a man who nowadays would take rank with
Captains of infantry.
Three hundred of us responded to the signal of "boots and saddles,"
buckled on three hundred more or less trusty sabers and revolvers,
saddled three hundred more or less gallant steeds, came into line "as
companies" with the automatic listlessness of the old soldiers, "counted
off by fours" in that queer gamut-running style that makes a company of
men "counting off" - each shouting a number in a different voice from his
neighbor - sound like running the scales on some great organ badly out of
tune; something like this:
One. Two. Three. Four. One. Two. Three. Four. One. Two. Three.
Four.
Then, as the bugle sounded "Right forward! fours right!" we moved off at
a walk through the melancholy mist that soaked through the very fiber of
man and horse, and reduced the minds of both to a condition of limp
indifference as to things past, present and future.
Whither we were going we knew not, nor cared. Such matters had long
since ceased to excite any interest. A cavalryman soon recognizes as the
least astonishing thing in his existence the signal to "Fall in!" and
start somewhere. He feels that he is the "Poor Joe" of the Army - under
perpetual orders to "move on."
Down we wound over the road that zig-tagged through the forts, batteries
and rifle-pits covering the eastern ascent to the Flap-past the wonderful
Murrell Spring - so-called because the robber chief had killed, as he
stooped to drink of its crystal waters, a rich drover, whom he was
pretending to pilot through the mountains - down to where the "Virginia
road" turned off sharply to the left and entered Powell's Valley. The
mist had become a chill, dreary rain, through, which we plodded silently,
until night closed in around us some ten miles from the Gap. As we
halted to go into camp, an indignant Virginian resented the invasion of
the sacred soil by firing at one of the guards moving out to his place.
The guard looked at the fellow contemptuously, as if he hated to waste
powder on a man who had no better sense than to stay out in such a rain,
when he could go in-doors, and the bushwhacker escaped, without even a
return shot.
Fires were built, coffee made, horses rubbed, and we laid down with feet
to the fire to get what sleep we could.
Before morning we were awakened by the bitter cold. It had cleared off
during the night and turned so cold that everything was frozen stiff.
This was better than the rain, at all events. A good fire and a hot cup
of coffee would make the cold quite endurable.
At daylight the bugle sounded "Right forward! fours right!" again, and
the 300 of us resumed our onward plod over the rocky, cedar-crowned
hills.
In the meantime, other things were taking place elsewhere. Our esteemed
friends of the Sixty-fourth Virginia, who were in camp at the little town
of Jonesville, about 40 miles from the Gap, had learned of our starting
up the Valley to drive them out, and they showed that warm reciprocity
characteristic of the Southern soldier, by mounting and starting down the
Valley to drive us out. Nothing could be more harmonious, it will be
perceived. Barring the trifling divergence of yews as to who was to
drive and who be driven, there was perfect accord in our ideas.
Our numbers were about equal. If I were to say that they considerably
outnumbered us, I would be following the universal precedent.
No soldier-high or low-ever admitted engaging an equal or inferior force
of the enemy.
About 9 o'clock in the morning - Sunday - they rode through the streets of
Jonesville on their way to give us battle. It was here that most of the
members of the Regiment lived. Every man, woman and child in the town
was related in some way to nearly every one of the soldiers.
The women turned out to wave their fathers, husbands, brothers and lovers
on to victory. The old men gathered to give parting counsel and
encouragement to their sons and kindred. The Sixty-fourth rode away to
what hope told them would be a glorious victory.
At noon we are still straggling along without much attempt at soldierly
order, over the rough, frozen hill-sides. It is yet bitterly cold, and
men and horses draw themselves together, as if to expose as little
surface as possible to the unkind elements. Not a word had been spoken
by any one for hours.
The head of the column has just reached the top of the hill, and the rest
of us are strung along for a quarter of a mile or so back.
Suddenly a few shots ring out upon the frosty air from the carbines of
the advance. The general apathy is instantly, replaced by keen
attention, and the boys instinctively range themselves into fours - the
cavalry unit of action. The Major, who is riding about the middle of the
first Company - I - dashes to the front. A glance seems to satisfy him,
for he turns in his saddle and his voice rings out:
"Company I! FOURS LEFT INTO LINE! - MARCH!!"
The Company swings around on the hill-top like a great, jointed toy
snake. As the fours come into line on a trot, we see every man draw his
saber and revolver. The Company raises a mighty cheer and dashes
forward.
Company K presses forward to the ground Company I has just left, the
fours sweep around into line, the sabers and revolvers come out
spontaneously, the men cheer and the Company flings itself forward.
All this time we of Company L can see nothing except what the companies
ahead of us are doing. We are wrought up to the highest pitch. As
Company K clears its ground, we press forward eagerly. Now we go into
line just as we raise the hill, and as my four comes around, I catch a
hurried glimpse through a rift in the smoke of a line of butternut and
gray clad men a hundred yards or so away. Their guns are at their faces,
and I see the smoke and fire spurt from the muzzles. At the same instant
our sabers and revolvers are drawn. We shout in a frenzy of excitement,
and the horses spring forward as if shot from a bow.
I see nothing more until I reach the place where the Rebel line stood.
Then I find it is gone. Looking beyond toward the bottom of the hill, I
see the woods filled with Rebels, flying in disorder and our men yelling
in pursuit. This is the portion of the line which Companies I and K
struck. Here and there are men in butternut clothing, prone on the
frozen ground, wounded and dying. I have just time to notice closely one
middle-aged man lying almost under my horse's feet. He has received a
carbine bullet through his head and his blood colors a great space around
him.
One brave man, riding a roan horse, attempts to rally his companions.
He halts on a little knoll, wheels his horse to face us, and waves his
hat to draw his companions to him. A tall, lank fellow in the next four
to me - who goes by the nickname of "'Leven Yards" - aims his carbine at
him, and, without checking his horse's pace, fires. The heavy Sharpe's
bullet tears a gaping hole through the Rebel's heart. He drops from his
saddle, his life-blood runs down in little rills on either side of the
knoll, and his riderless horse dashes away in a panic.
At this instant comes an order for the Company to break up into fours and
press on through the forest in pursuit. My four trots off to the road at
the right. A Rebel bugler, who hag been cut off, leaps his horse into
the road in front of us. We all fire at him on the impulse of the
moment. He falls from his horse with a bullet through his back. Company
M, which has remained in column as a reserve, is now thundering up close
behind at a gallop. Its seventy-five powerful horses are spurning the
solid earth with steel-clad hoofs. The man will be ground into a
shapeless mass if left where he has fallen. We spring from our horses
and drag him into a fence corner; then remount and join in the pursuit.
This happened on the summit of Chestnut Ridge, fifteen miles from
Jonesville.
Late in the afternoon the anxious watchers at Jonesville saw a single
fugitive urging his well-nigh spent horse down the slope of the hill
toward town. In an agony of anxiety they hurried forward to meet him and
learn his news.
The first messenger who rushed into Job's presence to announce the
beginning of the series of misfortunes which were to afflict the upright
man of Uz is a type of all the cowards who, before or since then, have
been the first to speed away from the field of battle to spread the news
of disaster. He said:
"And the Sabeans fell upon them, and took them away; yea, they have
slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped
alone to tell thee."
So this fleeing Virginian shouted to his expectant friends:
"The boys are all cut to pieces; I'm the only one that got away."
The terrible extent of his words was belied a little later, by the
appearance on the distant summit of the hill of a considerable mob of
fugitives, flying at the utmost speed of their nearly exhausted horses.
As they came on down the hill as almost equally disorganized crowd of
pursuers appeared on the summit, yelling in voices hoarse with continued
shouting, and pouring an incessant fire of carbine and revolver bullets
upon the hapless men of the Sixty-fourth Virginia.
The two masses of men swept on through the town. Beyond it, the road
branched in several directions, the pursued scattered on each of these,
and the worn-out pursuers gave up the chase.
Returning to Jonesville, we took an account of stock, and found that we
were "ahead" one hundred and fifteen prisoners, nearly that many horses,
and a considerable quantity of small arms. How many of the enemy had
been killed and wounded could not be told, as they were scattered over
the whole fifteen miles between where the fight occurred and the pursuit
ended. Our loss was trifling.
Comparing notes around the camp-fires in the evening, we found that our
success had been owing to the Major's instinct, his grasp of the
situation, and the soldierly way in which he took advantage of it. When
he reached the summit of the hill he found the Rebel line nearly formed
and ready for action. A moment's hesitation might have been fatal to us.
At his command Company I went into line with the thought-like celerity of
trained cavalry, and instantly dashed through the right of the Rebel
line. Company K followed and plunged through the Rebel center, and when
we of Company L arrived on the ground, and charged the left, the last
vestige of resistance was swept away. The whole affair did not probably
occupy more than fifteen minutes.
This was the way Powell's Valley was opened to our foragers.
CHAPTER III.
LIVING OFF THE ENEMY - REVELING IN THE FATNESS OF THE COUNTRY - SOLDIERLY
PURVEYING AND CAMP COOKERY - SUSCEPTIBLE TEAMSTERS AND THEIR TENDENCY TO
FLIGHTINESS - MAKING SOLDIER'S BED.
For weeks we rode up and down - hither and thither - along the length of
the narrow, granite-walled Valley; between mountains so lofty that the
sun labored slowly over them in the morning, occupying half the forenoon
in getting to where his rays would reach the stream that ran through the
Valley's center. Perpetual shadow reigned on the northern and western
faces of these towering Nights - not enough warmth and sunshine reaching
them in the cold months to check the growth of the ever-lengthening
icicles hanging from the jutting cliffs, or melt the arabesque
frost-forms with which the many dashing cascades decorated the adjacent
rocks and shrubbery. Occasionally we would see where some little stream
ran down over the face of the bare, black rocks for many hundred feet,
and then its course would be a long band of sheeny white, like a great
rich, spotless scarf of satin, festooning the war-grimed walls of some
old castle.
Our duty now was to break up any nuclei of concentration that the Rebels
might attempt to form, and to guard our foragers - that is, the teamsters
and employee of the Quartermaster's Department - who were loading grain