Part 2 (1/2)

The capture of the city resulted in the destruction of a great quant.i.ty of war material, over 60 guns, the ram _Jackson_, mounting 6 guns, a large number of small arms, 125,000 bales of cotton, 15 locomotives, 250 cars, a navy yard and armory, 2 rolling mills, 1 a.r.s.enal and nitre works, 2 powder magazines, 2 iron works, 3 foundries, 10 mills and factories turning out war material, 100,000 rounds of artillery ammunition, and a great quant.i.ty of machinery used in the manufacture of war material.

THE CAVALRY AT COLUMBUS.

Columbus was the great manufacturing center of the Confederacy, and this destruction inflicted irreparable damage. While little was known at the North of this sweep of Wilson's columns through the industrial centers and military storehouses of the Confederacy, it is easy to understand that these fatal blows at vital points of interior military supply added to the demoralization and discouragement attending the evacuation of Richmond and the gathering storm about the armies of Lee and Johnson.

The column moved swiftly for Macon, and about eighteen miles out from it the officer in advance was met with a flag of truce carrying a note from General Beauregard notifying the commander of the forces of General Sherman's truce with General Johnston, stating that an agreement had been entered upon that the contending forces were to occupy their present positions till forty-eight hours' notice had been given of the resumption of hostilities. As General Wilson was eight or ten miles in the rear with his main command, the note was sent to him, and the officer in the advance pushed to and into Macon, taking possession of the city. When General Wilson arrived in the city he went at once to the city hall, where Generals Howell Cobb, Gustavus W. Smith, and others had been confined.

General Cobb demanded that he and his command should be released, and that General Wilson should retire to where the flag of truce had met his advance. General Wilson declared that after receiving the note he had lost no time in pus.h.i.+ng on to the head of his column, and found it in full possession of the city. He could not accept notification of a truce through the Confederate authorities, as they were not his channel of communication with General Sherman, and ended the conference by a positive refusal to acknowledge the armistice, to retire from the town, or to release his prisoners. When he announced this decision he said to General Cobb that he could conceive of but one adequate reason for the truce, and that was that Lee's army had surrendered. Cobb, however, declined to give any information, but General Smith, to whom Wilson addressed the same remark, answered that Lee had surrendered, and that peace would soon follow. Thereupon General Wilson announced his decision to remain at Macon and conduct his future operations upon the principle that every man killed thereafter was a man murdered.

This interview was held on the 20th of April just before midnight, and was the first definite knowledge which Wilson's column had obtained of the events which had occurred in Virginia.

The surrender at Macon included a large number of small guns and a great quant.i.ty of military stores and supplies. The next day the Confederate authorities opened communication over their own telegraph lines between Wilson and Sherman, and the former received orders from the latter to desist from hostilities pending an armistice. Soon after he received orders from the Secretary of War, through Thomas, to disregard this armistice and resume operations, but before this order reached him he learned that Johnston had surrendered all the Confederate forces east of the Mississippi, and that peace was a.s.sured.

The closing act of General Wilson's campaign was the capture of Jefferson Davis by regiments from his command. Thus ended the most noted cavalry movement of the war.

The above is of necessity a very concise presentation of the salient points of General Wilson's remarkable campaign, conducted alone by mounted troops. It is not claimed that the account is new. I have published it heretofore in extended form, though not in the press. This briefer story cannot but be a repet.i.tion of the facts and a synopsis of the fuller statement of them. It is a chapter in our war history than which no other is more replete with thrilling and brilliant incident, with skillful planning, and bold and successful execution. No purely cavalry campaign in our war approached it in these features. It is doubtful whether its parallel can be found in the cavalry annals of any modern nation. And to this general statement should be added that the officer who commanded it, who was its organizer and its controlling spirit, the one upon whom General George H. Thomas leaned as one of his most trusted lieutenants and advisers, was only twenty-seven years old.

It is not strange that Lee's and Johnston's surrender fixed the attention of the country and turned it away from General Wilson's campaign. Had these two events been delayed a month the land would have rung with Wilson's praises and with new honors for General Thomas. Indeed, had the withdrawal from Richmond and the events which so quickly followed it been only delayed in their beginning by a few days necessary to have informed the country of Wilson's marvelous successes, it is certain that his breaking up of these interior storehouses of military material, and the destruction of these many plants for producing more, would have inseparably and largely connected themselves in the minds of the people with the eastern surrender as cause and effect.

It was a campaign whose success would have been the same had Lee been able to hold on to Richmond, and had Johnston so eluded Sherman as to prolong the contest in Virginia and North Carolina.

THOMAS'S PLAN THOUGHT OUT AND FOLLOWED.