THE LAST CHANCE OF THE CONFEDERACY.

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BY ALEXANDER C. McCLURG.

[Read October 4, 1882.]

N the morning of the 19th of March, 1865, the little group of ragged and weather-stained wall-tents which formed the modest field headquarters of the Fourteenth Army Corps one of four corps of General Sherman's army was pitched on a sloping hillside about forty miles south of Raleigh, North Carolina, and about twenty-five miles east of Fayetteville, or nearly midway between that place and Goldsborough, toward which latter point General Sherman was moving.

The early spring morning was soft and balmy, and the trees were covered with the delicate verdure which does not appear until May in the States north of the Ohio River. Fruit-trees were in full bloom around the Underhill farmhouse, not far off, and here and there along the roadside. It was about five o'clock, and the reveille had been sounded in the camps of one regiment after another, in the woods and fields around; and now, as it was Sunday morning, the familiar strains of "Old Hundred " floated up to our ears from a brigade band hidden in the little valley of Mill Creek, below us. Never before had the sweet notes of the grand old hymn sounded sweeter than they did in the stillness of that bright spring morning; and to many a weary soldier they brought the thought of quiet homes and of country churches and friends far away. Some of those who heard the old hymn then never heard it again; for like many a Sunday during the war, that day, which opened so calmly and beautifully, was to be a day of battle and death.

Six weeks before, General Sherman's army had started from Savannah; and ever since it had been toiling through mud and rain across the States of South and North Carolina. The inhospitable rains of the hostile South had poured down incessantly; and unfriendly mud, as if intelligently plotting for the Confederacy, had delayed us in every road. Layer after layer of corduroy had disappeared in the ooze, as each successive hundred of our heavy wagons passed over them. The streams, faithful to their States, had risen into torrents, and swept away our pontoon bridges. Supplies were few; and shoes and hats and coats had been worn out and lost. "The pride and pomp and circumstance of glorious war" had disappeared, and the whole command looked shabby and ragged and tattered. Here a Confederate coat, and there a Confederate hat, did duty on a Federal back or head, while many a valiant Union warrior went entirely hatless and shoeless. But a hardier and knottier lot of men never carried musket or helped a wagon out of the mire. Years of hardship and exposure and fighting had thinned out the weak and the sickly, and none but the toughest were left. The deeper the mud and the harder the march, the jollier they were; and a heavier rain pouring down on them as they went into camp, or a wetter swamp than usual to lie down in for the night, only brought out a louder volley of jokes. An army of military Mark Tapleys, they strode onward, uncomplaining and jolly under the most difficult circumstances possible.

There had been a day of most welcome rest at Fayetteville, during which the beautiful United States Arsenal there had been destroyed, so that it never again might fall into hostile hands. A day or two later, a part of the Twentieth Corps, supported by the Fourteenth, had had a sharp engagement with the enemy, under Hardee, at Averysborough, and had chased him northward toward Raleigh. After this affair and Hardee's retreat, General Sherman made his dispositions for an easy though rapid

march to Goldsborough, -"supposing," as he says in his "Memoirs," "all danger was over." In his report of the campaign, he uses these words: "All signs induced me to believe that the enemy would make no farther opposition to our progress, and would not attempt to strike us in the flank while in motion. I therefore directed," etc. These directions provided for a rapid march of his army toward Goldsborough, over the best parallel roads available, without reference to danger from a menacing enemy.

For once General Sherman had reckoned without his host; and that host was Joseph E. Johnston, whose hospitalities, if such they might be called, General Sherman had known and had thoroughly respected the year before, in all the long campaign from Chattanooga to Atlanta. The Confederate President, who harbored an unreasoning hatred for General Johnston, had but recently been compelled to recall him from retirement, and had placed him in command of all the Confederate troops in that region, with instructions to "concentrate all available forces, and drive back Sherman." It is difficult to ascertain exactly what those forces were, but from Johnston's own narrative it is certain they must have numbered between twenty-five and forty thousand men. The event proved that when General Sherman supposed "all danger was over," these forces had been, unknown to him, well concentrated on his left flank and front, and within striking distance. Once more, as so often before, these two foemen, well worthy of each other's steel, were to try conclusions; and this time with the odds largely in favor of the Confederate chieftain.

General Sherman's army consisted of between fiftyseven and fifty-eight thousand men, as the official records show, and not seventy thousand, as General Johnston states in his narrative. On the morning of the 19th of March, this force was situated as follows: two divisions of the Fourteenth Army Corps, numbering a little over eight

thousand men, and constituting the advance of the left wing, were at the point named at the opening of our narrative, on the direct road from Averysborough to Goldsborough. Two divisions of the Twentieth Corps, also about eight thousand men, had encamped eight miles in the rear of the advance divisions on the same road, a terrible stretch of almost impassable mire lying between the two commands. The two remaining divisions of these two corps were escorting and guarding the supply trains, some miles farther to the south and rear. The Fifteenth and Seventeenth corps, constituting the right wing of the army, were similarly scattered out on roads. lying five to ten miles south of the road on which the left wing was advancing.

General Sherman had himself been riding for several days with the left and exposed wing; and on the night of the 18th his headquarters, as well as those of General Slocum, who commanded the left wing, had been pitched within the lines of the Fourteenth Army Corps. On the morning of the 19th, he had determined to ride southward to the right wing, and to push them on rapidly in advance to Goldsborough. He did not leave, however, until after the leading division had moved out; and at about half-past seven o'clock he and General Slocum, with General Jefferson C. Davis, who commanded the Fourteenth Army Corps, sat together upon their horses, at a cross-roads near to the camps of the night before, listening to the signs of skirmishing which already came back from the front. Something impressed the soldierly instinct of General Davis with the belief that he was likely to encounter more than the usual cavalry opposition, and he frankly said so to General Sherman. The latter, after listening attentively a moment or two, replied in his usual brisk, nervous, and positive way, "No, Jeff.; there is nothing there but Dibbrell's cavalry. Brush them out of the way. Good-morning. I'll meet you to-morrow morning at Cox's Bridge." And away he rode, with his

slender staff, to join Howard and the right wing. It turned out that three days and a desperate fight yet lay between us and the goal of Cox's Bridge. But let us go back.

When the strains of "Old Hundred" had ceased, and the men had had their accustomed breakfast of coffee and hard-tack, varied here and there with a piece of cold chicken or ham, or a baked sweet potato, foraged from the country, the regiments of the First Division General W. P. Carlin's of the Fourteenth Corps, filed out one after another upon the road and began the advance. This was about seven o'clock. For the first time after weeks of rain, the sun was shining, and there was promise of a glorious day. The men were in high spirits, and strode on vigorously and cheerily.

They found in their front, as they always did, the enemy's cavalry, watching their movements and opposing their advance. But there was of course "nothing but cavalry;" and the men pressed on, light-hearted, anticipating the rest they should have at Goldsborough, and then the last march toward Richmond and home. But the cavalry in front were stubborn. They did not yield a foot of ground until it was wrested from them. They were inclined to fight; and the old expression of the Atlanta campaign was brought out for use again: “They don't drive worth a damn." Even the organized parties of foragers, the historical "bummers" of Sherman's army, men who generally made short work of getting through a thin curtain of cavalry, when chickens and pigs and corn and sweet potatoes were on the other side, even these renowned troopers fell back, dispirited, behind our heavy skirmish line, and lined the roadsides. It was an unusual sight in those days to see foragers who could not find or make a place to forage.

At length the whole of the First Brigade

General H. C. Hobart's was deployed and pushed vigorously forward; but still the resistance of the enemy was sur