Part 43 (1/2)
”At 1:30 P. M. the firing had almost ceased and the Federals, overcome with heat, did not expect an attack.
Saunders formed his brigade and moved quietly up the side of the ravine. Hardly a word was spoken, for the Alabamians expected to die or retake that salient. The eye of General Lee was fixed on them. When they caught sight of the works their old feelings came back to them and yell they must.
With the fury of a whirlwind they rushed upon the line they had been ordered to take. The movement was so unexpected and so quickly executed that only one sh.e.l.l was thrown into the brigade. The works gained, they found the enemy on the other side. It was stated that Lee, speaking to Beauregard, said: 'Splendid!' Beauregard spoke with enthusiasm of the brilliant charge.
”In an instant the Federal army was aroused, and batteries opened along the whole line, while the infantry fire was a continuous roar. Only a breastwork divided Wilc.o.x's Brigade from the Federals. A moment was required for Saunders to reform, and his brigade mounted the inner line and forced the enemy backwards to the outer line and the crater. The crater was full of white and negro soldiers. The Confederates, surrounding it on every side, poured volley after volley into this heaped-up ma.s.s of terrified negroes and their brave officers. The negroes ran in every direction and were shot down without a thought. Bayonets, swords and the b.u.t.ts of muskets were used. The deafening roar of artillery and musketry, the yells and imprecations of the combatants, drowned the commands of officers. A negro in the crater attempted to raise a white flag, and it was instantly pulled down by a Federal officer. The Federal colors were planted on a huge lump of dirt, and waved until Sergeant Wallace, of the Eleventh Alabama, followed by others, seized them and tore them from the staff. Instantly a white flag was raised, and the living, who were not many, surrendered.
The crater was won.”
With the exception of General Burnside, no commander of the Army of the Potomac was in favor of the Phalanx partic.i.p.ating in a battle. What, then, had the Phalanx to expect of those to whom they had borne the relation of _slave_? The confederates had a right to expect hard fighting when they met the Phalanx, and the Phalanx knew they had to fight hard when they met the confederates. It was the previous a.s.sociations and habits of the negro that kept him from retaliating for the several ma.s.sacres that had been perpetrated upon his brother-soldiers. It was not for a want of courage to do it: it was only necessary for those who commanded them to have ordered it, and they would never have taken a confederate prisoner.
Many of those who commanded them needed but public opinion to sustain them, to give such an order as would have made every battle between the Phalanx and the confederates b.l.o.o.d.y and inhuman. It was but the enlightened sentiment of the North, the religious teaching of the brotherhood of man, the high character and moral training of the statesmen on the side of the Union, that restrained the Phalanx from retaliation, else they possessed none of the characteristics of a courageous, sensitive and high tempered people. The negro is not naturally docile; his surroundings, rather than his nature, have given him the trait; it is not naturally his, but something which his trainers have given him; and it is not a difficult task to untrain him and advance him beyond his apparent unconsciousness of self-duty and self-preservation. Let him feel that he is to be supported in any transaction uncommon to him, and he can act as aggressively as any race of men who are naturally quicker in temperament. It is this characteristic that made the negro what General Grant said he was: in discipline a better soldier than the white man. It was said that he would not fight: there is no man in the South who met him on the battle-field that will say so now.
These are a few of the thoughts that came to me as I listened for an hour, one evening in June, 1883, to the confederate Gen. Mahone, whose acquaintance the writer enjoys, reciting the story of the fight at the crater, where the negro met the confederate, and in a hand-to-hand struggle one showed as much brute courage as the other. It would not be doing the negro justice to accord him less, and yet that courage never led him to acts of inhumanity. It is preferable that the confederates themselves should tell the stories of their butcheries than for me to attempt them. Not the stories told at the time, but fifteen years afterward, when men could reflect and write more correctly. There is one, an orator, who has described the fight, whose reference to the crater so gladdened the hearts of his audience that they reproduced the ”yell,” and yelled themselves hoa.r.s.e. No battle fought during the war, not even that of Bull Run, elicited so much comment and glorification among the confederates as that of the crater. It was the bloodiest fight on the soil of the Old Dominion, and has been the subject of praise by poets and orators upon the confederate side. Capt. J. B. Hope eulogized ”Mahone's brigade” in true Southern verse. Capt. McCabe, on the 1st of November, 1876, in his oration before the ”a.s.sociation of the Army of Northern Virginia,” in narrating the recapture of the works, said:
”It was now 8 o'clock in the morning. The rest of Potter's (Federal) division moved out slowly, when Ferrero's negro division, the men, beyond question, inflamed with drink, (there are many officers and men, myself among the number, who will testify to this), burst from the advanced lines, cheering vehemently, pa.s.sed at a double quick over a crest under a heavy fire, and rushed with scarcely a check over the heads of the white troops in the crater, spread to their right, and captured more than two hundred prisoners and one stand of colors. At the same time Turner, of the Tenth corps, pushed forward a brigade over the Ninth Corps'
parapet, seized the Confederate line still further to the north, and quickly dispersed the remaining brigades of his division to confirm his successes.”
The truth is over-reached in the statement of this orator if he intended to convey the idea that the men of the Phalanx division were drunk from strong drink; but it may be looked upon as an excuse offered for the treatment the courageous negro soldiers received at the hands of their captors, who, worse than enraged by strong drink, gave the battle-cry on their way to the front, ”_No quarter to n.i.g.g.e.rs!_” This has been admitted by those in a position, at the time, to know what went on. In his ”Recollections of the Recapture of the Lines,” Colonel Stewart of the 61st Virginia Regiment, says:
”When nearly opposite the portions of our works held by the Federal troops, we met several soldiers who were in the works at the time of the explosion. Our men began ridiculing them for going to the rear, when one of them remarked, 'Ah, boys, you have got hot work ahead,--they are negroes, and show no quarter.' This was the first intimation we had that we were to fight negro troops, and it seemed to _infuse_ the little band with impetuous daring, as they pressed toward the fray. I never felt more like fighting in my life. Our comrades had been slaughtered in a most inhuman and brutal manner, and slaves were trampling over their mangled and bleeding corpses. Revenge must have fired every heart, and strung every arm with nerves of steel, for the herculean task of blood.”
On the Monday morning after the a.s.sault of Sat.u.r.day, the Richmond _Enquirer_ said:
”Grant's war cry of 'no quarter' shouted by his negro soldiers, was returned with interest, we regret to hear, not so heavily as ought to have been, since some negroes were captured instead of being shot. Let every salient we are called upon to defend, be a Fort Pillow, and butcher every negro that Grant hurls against our brave troops, and permit them not to soil their hands, with the capture of one negro.”
There is no truth in the statement. No such cry was ever made by negro soldiers; and when it is remembered that the confederate congress, in four short months after this declaration, began arming slaves for the defense of Richmond, it is readily seen how deep and with what sincerity such declarations were made. The Southern historian Pollard thus describes the situation after the a.s.sault and the ground had again come into the possession of the confederates:
[ILl.u.s.tRATION: BEFORE PETERSBURG.
Phalanx soldiers, under a flag of truce, burying their dead after one of the terrible battles before Petersburg.]
”The ground all around was dotted with the fallen, while the sides and bottom of the crater were literally lined with dead, the bodies lying in every conceivable position. Some had evidently been killed with the b.u.t.ts of muskets, as their crushed skulls and badly smashed faces too plainly indicated.' Within this crater--this hole of forty by eighty feet--were lying one hundred and thirty-six dead soldiers, besides the wounded. The soil was literally saturated with blood. General Bartlett was here, with his steel leg broken.
He did not look as though he had been at a 'diamond wedding,' but was present at a 'dance of death.' A covered way for artillery was so full of dead that details were made to throw them out, that artillery might be brought in. The dead bodies formed a heap on each side. The Alabamians captured thirty-four officers, five hundred and thirty-six white and one hundred and thirty-nine colored soldiers. The three brigades had seventeen stands of colors, held by seventeen as brave, sweaty, dirty, powder-stained fellows as ever wore the gray, who knew that, when presenting their colors to division headquarters, to each a furlough of thirty days would be granted.
”The crater was filled with wounded, to whom our men gave water. Adjutant Morgan Cleveland, of the 8th Alabama Regiment, a.s.sisted a federal captain who was mortally wounded and suffering intensely. Near him lay a burly, wounded negro. The officer said he would die. The negro, raising himself on his elbow, cried out: 'Thank G.o.d. You killed my brother when we charged, because he was afraid and ran. Now the rebels have killed you.' Death soon ended the suffering of one and the hatred of the other. A darkness came down on the battle-field and the victors began to repair the salient. The crater was cleared of the dead and wounded. Men were found buried ten feet under the dirt.
Twenty-two of the artillery company were missing. Four hundred and ninety-eight dead and wounded confederates were buried or sent to the hospitals. Between the lines lay hundreds of wounded federals, who vainly called for water.
These men had been without water since early morning. Some calling louder than others, their voices were recognized, and as their cries grew fainter, we knew their lives were ebbing away. Our men, risking their lives, carried water to some.
”I find in my diary these lines: 'Sunday, July 31, 1864.
Everything comparatively quiet along the lines. Hundreds of federal soldiers are lying in front of the crater exposed to a scorching sun; some are crying for water. The enemy's fire is too heavy for a soldier to expose himself.' Late on Sunday evening a flag of truce was sent in and forwarded to General Lee. General Grant had asked permission to bury his dead and remove his wounded. The truce was granted, to begin on Monday at 5 A. M. and conclude at 9 A. M. Punctual to the hour the federal details came on the field and by 9 A. M.
had buried about three hundred. The work was hardly begun and the truce was extended. Hour after hour was granted until it was evening before the field was cleared.”
With these selections from the ma.s.s of confederate testimony before us, of their ”daring, b.l.o.o.d.y work,” given by partic.i.p.ants, it is well to read some of the statements of those who battled for the Union on that occasion.
Many of the correspondents at the seat of war, ignorant of the real facts regarding the a.s.sault, attributed the failure, not to General Meade's interference with General Burnside's plan, but to the Phalanx division, the men who bore the brunt of the battle and gained for themselves a fame for desperate fighting. But some of those who _were_ acquainted with the facts have left records that tell the true story and give honor to whom honor is due. Gen. Grant is among the number; he perfectly understood the whole matter, knew that General Burnside, not being allowed to carry out his own plans, but at the last moment compelled to act contrary to his judgment, could not fight with that enthusiasm and confidence that he would have done had he been allowed to carry out his own ideas. In his ”Memoirs,” General Grant gives an account of the explosion of the mine and the a.s.sault after placing the blame for the ”stupendous failure” where it belongs. I quote a few preliminary words which not only intimate where the trouble lies, but gives the key to the whole matter. Speaking of General Burnside's command, he says:
”The four divisions of his corps were commanded by Generals Potter, Wilc.o.x, Ledlie and Ferrero. The last was a colored division; and Burnside selected it to make the a.s.sault.
Meade interfered with this. Burnside then took Ledlie's division--a worse selection than the first could have been.
* * * * Ledlie, besides being otherwise inefficient, proved also to possess disqualifications less common among soldiers.”
A correspondent of the New York _Evening Post_ says:
”We have been continually notified for the last fortnight, that our sappers were mining the enemy's position. As soon as ready, our division was to storm the works on its explosion. This rumor had spread so wide we had no faith in it. On the night of the 29th, we were in a position on the extreme left. We were drawn in about nine P. M., and marched to General Burnside's headquarters, and closed in ma.s.s by division, left in front. We there received official notice that the long-looked-for mine was ready charged, and would be fired at daylight next morning. The plan of storming was as follows: One division of white troops was to charge the works immediately after the explosion, and carry the first and second lines of rebel intrenchments. Our division was to follow immediately, and push right into Petersburg, take the city, and be supported by the remainder of the Ninth and Twenty-eighth corps. We were up bright and early, ready and eager for the struggle to commence. I had been wis.h.i.+ng for something of this sort to do for some time, to gain the respect of the Army of the Potomac. You know their former prejudices. At thirty minutes after five, the ball opened.
The mine, with some fifty pieces of artillery, went off almost instantaneously; at the same time, the white troops, according to the plan, charged the fort, which they carried, for there was nothing to oppose them; but they did not succeed in carrying either of the lines of intrenchments.