Volume II Part 52 (1/2)

Though it contained an implied compliment, General Lee was not a little disturbed by occasional applications made to have troops detached from his army to reenforce others. The last instance had been a call from General Beauregard for reenforcements from the Army of Virginia. He had always been attentive, and ready as far as he could, to meet the wants of other commands of our army, but at this time those who knew his condition could not suppose he had any men to spare; yet the fact of thinking so was a compliment to his success in resisting the large army which was a.s.sailing his small one. There had always been entire co-intelligence and accord between General Lee and myself, but the Congress about this time thought his power would be increased by giving him the nominal dignity of general-in-chief, under which he resumed, as far as he could, the general charge of armies from which, at his urgent solicitation, I had relieved him after he took command, in the field, of the Army of Northern Virginia.

A few days subsequent to the events in North Carolina to which reference has been made, General Lee proposed to me that General J.

E. Johnston should be put in command of the troops in North Carolina.

He still had the confidence in that officer which I had once felt, but which his campaigns in Mississippi and Georgia had impaired. With the understanding that General Lee was himself to supervise and control the operations, I a.s.sented to the a.s.signment. General Johnston, on the 23d of February, at Charlotte, North Carolina, relieved General Beauregard and a.s.sumed command. General Lee's first instructions to General Johnston were to ”concentrate all available forces and drive back Sherman.” The first part of the instructions was well executed; the last part of it was more desirable than practicable, though the brief recital made herein of the events of the campaign claimed the credit due to a vigorous effort.

General Johnston's force, according to his estimate, when he took command, amounted to about sixteen thousand infantry and artillery, and four thousand cavalry; if to this be added the portion of the Army of Tennessee, about twenty-five hundred men, under command of General Stephen D, Lee, which afterward joined the army at Smithfield, North Carolina, and that of General Bragg's command at Goldsboro, which amounted to about eight thousand, the aggregate would be about thirty thousand five hundred men of all arms.

After leaving Columbia, the course of the Federal army through Winnsboro, across the Catawba at Rocky Mount, Hanging Rock, and Peay's Ferry, and in the direction of Cheraw on the Great Pedee, indicated that it would attempt to cross the Cape Fear River at Fayetteville, North Carolina--a town sixty miles south of Raleigh, and of special importance, as containing an a.r.s.enal, several Government shops, and a large portion of the machinery which had been removed from Harper's Ferry--and effect a junction at that point with General Schofield's command, then known to be at Wilmington. Up to this time, while no encounter of any magnitude had taken place, the enemy's progress had been much impeded by the Confederate cavalry, and the robbery of private citizens by gangs of armed banditti, called ”foraging parties,” was in a large measure prevented. The right of an army to forage as it advances through an enemy's country is not questioned. But the right to forage, to collect food for men and horses, does not mean the right to rob household furniture, plate, trinkets, and every conceivable species of private property, and to burn whatever could not be carried away, together with the dwellings. General Sherman complained that some of these ”foragers,” who were caught in the commission of the above-named offenses, and had added thereto the greater crime of a.s.saulting women, had been summarily dealt with by some of those whose wives and daughters they had outraged, and whose homes they had made desolate; and he informed General Hampton that in retaliation he had ordered a number of Confederate prisoners of war to be put to death. To arrest this brutality General Hampton promptly informed him that, ”for every soldier of mine murdered by you, I shall have executed at once two of yours, giving in all cases preference to any officers who may be in our hands,” and adding, with a view to check the inhuman system of burning the houses of those citizens whom they had robbed, that he had ordered his men ”to shoot down all of your men who are caught burning houses.” [117] This notice and the knowledge that General Hampton would keep his word, produced, it is believed, a very salutary effect, and thereafter the fear of punishment wrought a reform which the dictates of honor and humanity had been powerless to effect.

The historian of Sherman's ”Great March,” in his ill.u.s.trated narrative of that expedition, describes both with pen and pencil the manner in which ”with untiring zeal the soldiers hunted for concealed treasures... . Wherever the army halted,” he writes, ”almost every inch of ground in the vicinity of the dwellings was poked by ramrods, pierced with sabers, or upturned with spades,” searching for ”valuable personal effects, plate, jewelry, and other rich goods, as well as articles of food, such as hams, sugar, flour, etc... . It was comical,” adds the chronicler, ”to see a group of these red-bearded, barefooted, ragged veterans punching the unoffending earth in an apparently idiotic but certainly most energetic way. If they 'struck a vein,' a spade was instantly put into requisition, and the coveted wealth was speedily unearthed. Nothing escaped the observation of these sharp-witted soldiers. A woman standing upon the porch of a house, apparently watching their proceedings, instantly became an object of suspicion, and she was watched until some movement betrayed a place of concealment. The fresh earth recently thrown up, a bed of flowers just set out, the slightest indication of a change in appearance or position, all attracted the gaze of these military agriculturists. It was all fair spoil of war, and the search made one of the excitements of the march.” [118] The author of the work from which the foregoing is an extract was an aide-de-camp on the staff of General Sherman. The playful manner in which he describes these habitual acts of plunder of ”plate, jewelry and other rich goods” from private and undefended dwellings shows that not only was such conduct not forbidden by the military authorities, but that it was permitted and applauded, that it was practiced ”wherever the army halted” under the eye of the staff-officers of the General commanding, and was looked upon as one of the pleasurable ”excitements of the march.” Indeed, so agreeable was the impression made by these scenes of robbery of women's ”rich goods” that he has adorned his narrative with a full-page ill.u.s.tration, exhibiting a plantation home surrounded by soldiers engaged, as this staff-officer humorously terms it, in ”treasure-seeking,” while the lady of the house--its only apparent occupant--stands upon the veranda, with hands uplifted, beseeching them not to steal the watch and chain which they are taking out of a vessel which they have just dug up.

That the foreign mercenaries, of which the Federal army was largely composed, should have been guilty of such disgraceful conduct, when free from the observation of their officers, is conceivable; but it is difficult to imagine that, in the nineteenth century, such acts as are described above could be committed habitually, in view of the officer of highest rank in the army of a civilized country, and not merely pa.s.s unpunished or unrebuked, but be recorded with conspicuous approval in the pages of a military history.

The advance of the enemy's columns across the Catawba, Lynch's Creek, and the Pedee, at Cheraw, though r.e.t.a.r.ded as much as possible by the vigilant skill of our cavalry under Generals Hampton, Butler, and Wheeler, was steady and continuous. General Johnston's hope that, from the enemy's order of moving by wings, sometimes a day's march from each other, he could find an opportunity to strike one of their columns in the pa.s.sage of the Cape Fear River, when the other was not in supporting distance, was unhappily disappointed.

On March 6th, near Kinston, General Bragg with a reenforcement of less than two thousand men attacked and routed three divisions of the enemy under Major-General c.o.x, capturing fifteen hundred prisoners and three field-pieces, and inflicting heavy loss in killed and wounded. This success, though inspiring, was on too small a scale to produce important results. During the march from the Catawba to the Cape Fear several brilliant cavalry affairs took place, in which our troops displayed their wonted energy and dash. Among these the most conspicuous were General Butler's at Mount Elon, where he defeated a detachment sent to tear up the railroad at Florence; General Wheeler's attack and repulse of the left flank of the enemy at Hornesboro, March 4th; a similar exploit by the same officer at Rockingham on the 7th; the attack and defeat by General Hampton of a detachment on the 8th; the surprise and capture of General Kilpatrick's camp by General Hampton on the morning of the 10th, driving the enemy into an adjoining swamp, and taking possession of his artillery and wagon-train, and the complete rout of a large Federal party by General Hampton with an inferior force at Fayetteville on the 11th.

As it was doubtful whether General Sherman's advance from Fayetteville would be directed to Goldsboro or Raleigh, General Johnston took position with a portion of his command at Smithfield, which is nearly equidistant from each of those places, leaving General Hardee to follow the road from Fayetteville to Raleigh, which for several miles is also the direct road from Fayetteville to Smithfield, and posted one division of his cavalry on the Raleigh road, and another on that to Goldsboro. On the 16th of March General Hardee was attacked by two corps of the enemy, a few miles south of Averysboro, a place nearly half-way between Fayetteville and Raleigh.

Falling back a few hundred yards to a stronger position, he easily repelled the repeated attacks of these two corps during the day, and, learning in the evening that the enemy's corps were moving to turn his left, he withdrew in the night toward Smithfield.

Early in the morning of the 18th General Johnston obtained definite information that General Sherman was marching on Goldsboro, the right wing of his army being about a day's march distant from the left.

General Johnston took immediate steps to attack the head of the left wing on the morning of the 19th, and ordered the troops at Smithfield and General Hardee's command to march at once to Bentonville and take position between that village and the road on which the enemy was advancing. An error as to the relative distance which our troops and those of the enemy would have to move, exaggerating the distance between the roads on which the enemy was advancing and diminis.h.i.+ng the distance that our troops would have to march, caused the failure to concentrate our troops in time to attack the enemy's left wing while in column; but, when General Hardee's troops reached Bentonville in the morning, the attack was commenced. The battle lasted through the greater part of the day, resulting in the enemy's being driven from two lines of intrenchments, and his taking shelter in a dense wood, where it was impracticable for our troops to preserve their line of battle or to employ the combined strength of the three arms. On the 20th the two wings of the Federal army, numbering, as estimated by General Johnston, upward of seventy thousand, came together and repeatedly attacked a division of our force (Hoke's) which occupied an intrenched position parallel to the road to Averysboro; but every attack was handsomely repulsed. On the next day (21st) an attempt by the enemy to reach Bentonville in the rear of our center, and thus cut off our only route of retreat, was gallantly defeated by an impetuous and skillful attack, led by Generals Hardee and Hampton, on the front and both flanks of the enemy's column, by which he was compelled to retreat as rapidly as he had advanced. In this attack. General Hardee's only son, a n.o.ble boy, charging gallantly with the Eighth Texas Cavalry, fell mortally wounded. On the night of the 21st our troops were withdrawn across Mill Creek, and in the evening of the 22d bivouacked near Smithfield.

On the 23d the forces of General Sherman and those of General Schofield were united at Goldsboro, where they remained inactive for upward of two weeks.

On the 9th of April the Confederate forces took up the line of march to Raleigh, and reached that city early in the afternoon of the same day closely followed by the Federal army.

CHAPTER LII.

Siege of Petersburg.--Violent a.s.sault upon our Position.--A Cavalry Expedition.--Contest near Ream's Station.--The City invested with Earthworks.--Position of the Forces.--The Mine exploded, and an a.s.sault made.--Attacks on our Lines.--Object of the Enemy.--Our Strength.--a.s.sault on Fort Fisher.--Evacuation of Wilmington.-- Purpose of Grant's Campaign.--Lee's Conference with the President.--Plans.--Sortie against Fort Steadman.--Movements of Grant farther to Lee's right.--Army retires from Petersburg.--The Capitulation.--Letters of Lee.

After the battle of Cold Harbor, the geography of the country no longer enabled General Grant, by a flank movement to his left, to keep himself covered by a stream, and yet draw nearer to his objective point, Richmond. He had now reached the Chickahominy, and to move down the east bank of that stream would be to depart further from the prize he sought, the capital of the Confederacy. His overland march had cost him the loss of more men than Lee's army contained at the beginning of the campaign. He now, from considerations which may fairly be a.s.sumed to have been the result of his many unsuccessful a.s.saults on Lee's army, or from other considerations which I am not in a position to suggest, decided to seek a new base on the James River, and to attempt the capture of our capital by a movement from the south. With this view, on the night of June 12th he commenced a movement by the lower crossings of the Chickahominy toward the James River. General Lee learned of the withdrawal on the next morning, and moved to our pontoon-bridge above Drury's Bluff. While Grant's army was making this march to James River, General Smith, with his division, which had arrived at Bermuda Hundred, was, on the night of the 14th, directed to move against Petersburg, with an additional force of two divisions, it being supposed that this column would be sufficient to effect what General Butler's previous attempts had utterly failed to accomplish, the capture of Petersburg and the destruction of the Southern Railroad.

On the morning of the 15th the attack was made, the exterior redoubts and rifle-pits were carried, and the column advanced toward the inner works, but the artillery was used so effectively as to impress the commander of the a.s.sailants with the idea that there must be a large supporting force of infantry, and the attack was suspended so as to allow the columns in rear to come up.

Hanc.o.c.k's corps was on the south side of the James River, before the attack on Petersburg commenced, and was ordered to move forward, but not informed that an attack was to be made, nor directed to march to Petersburg until late in the afternoon, when he received orders to move to the aid of General Smith. It being night when the junction was made, it was deemed prudent to wait until morning. Had they known how feeble was the garrison, it is probable that Petersburg would have been captured that night; but with the morning came another change, as marked as that from darkness to light. Lee crossed the James River on the 15th, and by a night march his advance was in the entrenchments of Petersburg before the morning for which the enemy was waiting. The artillery now had other support than the old men and boys of the town.

The Confederates promptly seized the commanding points and rapidly strengthened their lines, so that the morning's reconnaissance indicated to the enemy the propriety of postponing an attack until all his force should arrive.

On the 17th an a.s.sault was made with such spirit and force as to gain a part of our line, in which, however, the a.s.sailants suffered severely. Lee had now constructed a line in rear of the one first occupied, having such advantages as gave to our army much greater power to resist. On the morning of the 18th Grant ordered a general a.s.sault, but finding that the former line had been evacuated, and a new one on more commanding ground had been constructed, the a.s.sault was postponed until the afternoon; then attacks were made by heavy columns on various parts of our line, with some partial success, but the final result was failure everywhere, and with extraordinary sacrifice of life.

With his usual persistence, he had made attack after attack, and for the resulting carnage had no gain to compensate. The eagerness manifested leads to the supposition that it was expected to capture the place while Lee with part of his force was guarding against an advance on Richmond by the river road. The four days' experience seems to have convinced Grant of the impolicy of a.s.sault, for thereafter he commenced to lay siege to the place. On the 21st a heavy force of the enemy was advanced more to our right, in the vicinity of the Weldon Railroad, which runs southward from Petersburg. But General Lee, observing an interval between the left of the Second and right of the Sixth of the enemy's corps, sent forward a column under General A. P. Hill, which, entering the interval, poured a fire into the flank of one corps on the right and the other on the left, doubling their flank divisions up on their center, and driving them with disorder and with heavy loss. Several entire regiments, a battery, and many standards were captured, when Hill, having checked the advance which was directed against the Weldon Railroad, withdrew with his captures to his former position, bringing with him the guns and nearly three thousand prisoners.

On the same night, a cavalry expedition, consisting of the divisions of Generals Wilson and Kautz, numbering about six thousand men, was sent west to cut the Weldon, Southside, and Danville Railroads, which connected our army with the south and west. This raid resulted in important injury to our communications. The enemy's cavalry tore up large distances of the tracks of all three of the railroads, burning the wood-work and laying waste the country around. But they were pursued and hara.s.sed by a small body of cavalry under General W. H.

F. Lee, and, on their return near Ream's Station, were met, near Sapponey Church, by a force of fifteen hundred cavalry under General Hampton. That officer at once attacked. The fighting continued fiercely throughout the night, and at dawn the enemy's cavalry retreated in confusion. Near Ream's Station, at which point they attempted to cross the Weldon Railroad, they were met by General Fitzhugh Lee's hors.e.m.e.n and a body of infantry under General Mahone, and the force completed their discomfiture. After a brief attempt to force their way, they broke in disorder, leaving behind them twelve pieces of artillery, and more than a thousand prisoners, and many wagons and ambulances. The railroads were soon repaired, and the enemy's cavalry was for the time rendered unfit for service.

Every attempt made to force General Lee's lines having proved unsuccessful, General Grant determined upon the method of slow approaches, and proceeded to confront the city with a line of earthworks, and, by gradually extending the line to his left, he hoped to reach out toward the Weldon and Southside Railroads. To obtain possession of these roads now became the special object with him, and all his movements had regard to that end. Petersburg is twenty-two miles south of Richmond, and is connected with the south and west by the Weldon and Southside Railroads, the latter of which crosses the Danville Railroad, the main line of communication between Richmond and the Gulf States. With the enemy once holding these roads and those north of the city, Richmond would be isolated, and it would have been necessary for the Confederate army to evacuate eastern Virginia.

It will be seen from what has been written that, though the operations against Petersburg have been ordinarily called a siege, it could not in strictness of language be so denominated, as the communications in the rear, as well as to the north and south, were still open. It was really a conflict between opposing intrenchments.

General Grant had crossed a force into Charles City, on the north bank of the James, and thus menaced Richmond with an a.s.sault from that quarter. His line extended thence across the neck of the peninsula of Bermuda Hundred, and east and south of Petersburg, where it gradually stretched westward, approaching nearer and nearer to the railroads bringing the supplies for our army and for Richmond. The line of General Lee conformed to that of General Grant. In addition to the works east and southeast of Richmond, an exterior line of defense had been constructed against the hostile forces at Deep Bottom, and, in addition to a fortification of some strength at Drury's Bluff, obstructions were placed in the river to prevent the ascent of the Federal gunboats. The lines thence continued facing those of the enemy north of the Appomattox, and, crossing that stream, extended around the city of Petersburg, gradually moving westward with the works of the enemy. The struggle that ensued consisted chiefly of attempts to break through our lines. These it is not my purpose to notice _seriatim_; some of them, however, it is thought necessary to mention. While at Petersburg, the a.s.saults of the enemy were met by a resistance sufficient to repel his most vigorous attacks; our force confronting Deep Bottom was known to be so small as to suggest an attempt to capture Richmond by a movement on the north side of the James. On the 26th of July a corps of infantry was sent over to Deep Bottom to move against our pontoon-bridges near to Drury's Bluff, so as to prevent Lee from sending reenforcements to the north side of the James, while Sheridan with his cavalry moved to the north side of Richmond to attack the works which, being poorly garrisoned, it was thought might be taken by a.s.sault. Lee, discovering the movement after the enemy had gained some partial success, sent over reenforcements, which drove him back and defeated the expedition. On the night of the 28th the infantry corps (Hanc.o.c.k's) was secretly withdrawn from the north side of the river, to cooperate in the grand a.s.sault which Grant was preparing to make upon Lee's intrenchments. The uniform failure, as has been stated, of the a.s.saults upon our lines had caused the conclusion that they could only succeed after a breach had been made in the works.