Page images
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors]

FEDERAL OCCUPATION OF MORRIS ISLAND.

437

calcium lights turned night into day, and brought the minutest details of the fort into sharp relief. For forty-two consecutive hours, seventeen siege and coehorn mortars unceasingly dropped their shells into the work while thirteen heavy Parrott rifles-100, 200, and 300-pounders-pounded away at short though regular intervals. Peal on peal of artillery rolled over the waters; a semi-circle of the horizon was lit up; an autumnal moon hung in the misty sky; and ear and eye were alike appealed to with emotions of sublimity and grandeur. The shock of the rapid discharges trembled through the city, calling hundreds of citizens to the battery, wharves, steeples, and various look-outs, where, with an interest never felt before, they gazed on a contest that might decide the fate of Charles. ton itself.

On the night of the 6th September, Gen. Gillmore ordered an assault on Fort Wagner at the hour of low tide on the following morning. The assault was to be made in three columns. About midnight a deserter reported to him that the Confederates were evacuating the island. The work of evacuation had commenced at nine o'clock that night, and was already concluded. All the garrison had got off upon the Chicora, an iron-clad gunboat of the Confederates, and fourteen barges. Fort Gregg had been equally abandoned. Morris Island was thus the prize of the enemy, who now possessed themselves of Cumming's Point, from which they could plainly see Charleston at a distance of four miles.

The Northern public at once jumped to the conclusion that Gillmore had the key of Charleston, and had at last opened the gate to the Monitors and iron-clads, which, at leisure, might ascend the harbour. Gillmore himself insisted that he had done his part of the work; that "Fort Sumter was a shapeless and harmless mass of ruins ;" and he indicated that it only remained for Admiral Dahlgren, with his fleet, to enter upon the scene, and accomplish the reduction of Charleston. But from this view the Federal admiral dissented; he indicated that Gen. Beauregard had accomplished a new object by his long retention of Morris Island; that, in fact, he had replaced Sumter by an interiour position, had obtained time to convert Fort Johnson from a foriorn old fort into a powerful earthwork, and had given another illustration of that new system of defence practised at Comorn and Sebastapol, where, instead of being any one key to a plan of fortification, there was the necessity of a siege for every battery, in which the besiegers were always exposed to the fire of others. He was unwilling, too, to risk the destructive defences and infernal machines with which the passes were blockaded. The Confederates had given out that by no possibility could one of the gunboats escape these, and Dahlgren's squadron of iron-clads and Monitors did not dare venture far up the har bour past Fort Ripley and within range of the immediate defences of the city. Gillmore claimed that he had reduced Fort Sumter; but the Confed

erate flag still floated over it. It had been held through the siege and can nonade by the First South Carolina Artillery, under Col. Alfred Rhett, until its armament had been disabled; and the services of the artillerymen being elsewhere required, Gen. Beauregard determined that it should be held by infantry. On the night of the 4th September, the Charleston Battalion, under Maj. Blake, relieved the garrison; Maj. Stephen Elliot relieving Col. Rhett in command of the post. On the 7th of September, Admiral Dahlgren, determined to test Gillmore's assertion that Sumter was a "harmless mass of ruins," summoned the fort to surrender. Gen. Beauregard telegraphed to Maj. Elliot to reply to Dahlgren that he could have Fort Sumter when he took it and held it, and that in the mean time such demands were puerile and unbecoming.

In the evening of the 7th September, the iron-clads and Monitors approached Fort Sumter closer than usual, and opened a hot fire against it. In the night of the 9th September thirty of the launches of the enemy attacked Fort Sumter. Preparations had been made for the event. At a concerted signal, all the batteries bearing on Sumter assisted by one gunboat and a ram, were thrown open. The enemy was repulsed, leaving in our hands one hundred and thirteen prisoners, including thirteen officers. There were also taken four boats and three colours, and the original flag of Fort Sumter, which Maj. Anderson was compelled to lower in 1861, and which Dahlgren had hoped to replace.

After this repulse of the Federals in their last attack upon Fort Sumter, but little more was done during the year by the enemy, except bombarding the forts and shelling Charleston at intervals during day and night, until this became so customary that it no longer excited dismay or was an occasion of alarm to even women and children. The city was intact and safe; Gillmore had expended many thousand lives and thrown shell enough to build several iron-clads to obtain a position that proved worthless; Admiral Dahlgren feared the destruction of a fleet which had cost so much sacrifice, and refused to ascend the harbour; and the demonstration upon Charleston degenerated into the desultory record of a fruitless bombardment. The Northern public appeared to sicken of the experiment of Parrott guns and monster artillery, and read with disgust the daily bulletins of how many hundred useless shots had been fired, and of how much ammunition had been grandly expended in a great noise to little purpose. "How many times," asked an indignant Philadelphia paper, "has Fort Sumter been taken? How many times has Charleston been burned? How often have the people been on the eve of starvation and surrender? How many times has the famous Greek Fire poured the rain of Sodom and the flames of hell upon the secession city? We cannot keep the count -but those can who rang the bells and put out the flags, and invoked the imprecations, and rejoiced at the story of conflagration and ruin."

CHAPTER XXVII.

GEN. JOSEPH E. JOHNSTON'S PROPHECY OF THE FATE OF TENNESSEE.-CHARACTER AND EXTRAORDINARY FORESIGHT OF THIS COMMANDER.-HOW TENNESSEE WAS SACRIFICED TO THE ATTEMPTED DEFENCE OF VICKSBURG. BRAGG'S ARMY FLANKED AT HOOVER'S GAP.—IT COMMENCES A RETREAT TO CHATTANOOGA.-EXPEDITION OF JOHN MORGAN.-HOW IT AFFECTED THE WESTERN CAMPAIGN AND EMBARRASSED BURNSIDE.-MORGAN'S CIRCUIT THROUGH KENTUCKY, INDIANA, AND OHIO.—WHAT HE ACCOMPLISHED.—HIS ANXIETY FOR RETREAT.-CUT OFF ON THE OHIO RIVER.-TERRIBLE SCENES IN THE ATTEMPT TO SWIM THE RIVER.-CAPTURE OF MORGAN AND THE BULK OF HIS COMMAND.-CRUEL AND INFAMOUS TREATMENT OF THE DISTINGUISHED CAPTIVE AND HIS OFFICERS.--SURRENDER OF CUMBERLAND GAP.-PRESIDENT DAVIS' COMMENTARY ON THIS EVENT.-RECOIL OF SERIOUS CHARGES UPON THE RICHMOND ADMINISTRATION.-BURNSIDE'S INVASION OF EAST TENNESSEE. GEN. FRAZIER IN COMMAND AT CUMBERLAND GAP.-HIS CORRESPONDENCE WITH GEN. BUCKNER.-THE DEFENCES OF THE GAP IMPERFECT.-INSUFFICIENCY OF THE GARRISON. WHY GEN. FRAZIER SURRENDERED IT.-TWO LINES OF OPERATIONS NOW OPENED AGAINST CHATTANOOGA.-THE BATTLE OF CHICKAMAUGA.-TOPOGRAPHY OF THE COUNTRY AROUND CHATTANOOGA.-MOVEMENTS OF ROSECRANS.-HE THREATENS A FLANK MOVEMENT TOWARDS ROME. THE CONFEDERATES EVACUATE CHATTANOOGA.-BRAGG'S NEW LINE FROM LEE'S AND GORDON'S MILLS TO LAFAYETTE.-LONGSTREET'S CORPS ON THE WAY FROM VIRGINIA TO REINFORCE HIM.-ROSECRANS PURSUES THE CONFEDERATES, AND EXPOSES HIMSELF IN DETAIL. THE LOST OPPORTUNITY IN M'LEMORE'S COVE.-LINES OF ROSECRANS' ADVANCE.—BRAGG RESOLVES TO ADVANCE AND ATTACK HIM.-ARRIVAL OF LONGSTREET WITH FIVE BRIGADES. THE ENEMY ANTICIPATES A FLANK MOVEMENT BY BRAGG.—A SEVERE ENCOUNTER.-CLEBURNE'S GALLANT CHARGE.-THE CONFEDERATE PLAN OF BATTLE FOR THE NEXT DAY.-GEN POLK TO OPEN THE ACTION.—A STRANGE DELAY.— A SINGULAR BREAKFAST SCENE.-GEN. BRAGG FURIOUS.-THE CONFEDERATE RIGHT WING BEATEN BACK.-CRITICAL CONDITION OF THE FIELD.-LONGSTREET'S ATTACK.-HE SAVES THE DAY.-THE ENEMY UTTERLY ROUTED.-CHICKAMAUGA A BRILLIANT BUT UNPRODUCTIVE VICTORY.

THERE was no Confederate commander so remarkable for long foresight and for the most exact fulfilment of prophetic words as Gen. Joseph E. Johnston. He was more profound than Lee; his mind could range over larger fields; at all times of the war his cool, sedate judgments were so in opposition to the intoxicated senses of the Confederate people, that he was

rather unpopular than otherwise, and rested his reputation on the apprecia tive and intelligent, who steadily marked him as the military genius of the Confederacy. It remained for the sequel to justify the reputation of this greatest military man in the Confederacy, who, cooler even than Lee himself, without ardour, made up almost exclusively of intellect, saw more clearly than any other single person each approaching shadow of the war, and prophesied, with calm courage, against the madness of the Administration at Richmond and the extravagant vanity of the people.

When the Vicksburg campaign was decided upon at Richmond, Gen. Johnston then warned the authorities there that they should make choice between Mississippi and Tennessee; and in urging the retention of the latter State, he declared, with singular felicity of expression, that it was "the shield of the South." In six weeks after the battle of Murfreesboro, our army in Tennessee was as strong as when it fought that battle, and, with ordinary generalship, might have driven Rosecrans from the State. But when Stevenson's division was sent to the lines of the Mississippi, Johnston saw the errour; he sent to Richmond a protest against it, which he thought of such historical importance as to duplicate and to copy carefully among his private memoranda; and he then predicted that the Richmond Administration, in trying to hold the Mississippi River and Tennessee, would lose both, and that the enemy, once pressing the northern frontier of Georgia, would obtain a position that would eventually prove the critical one of the war.

With his forces reduced for the defence of Vicksburg, Gen. Bragg insisted upon regarding his army in Tennessee as one merely of observation. Rosecrans was in his front, and Burnside, who commanded what was called the Army of the Cumberland, was in a position, by an advance towards Knoxville, to threaten his rear. In July, Gen. Bragg occupied a ridge extending from Bellbuckle towards Bradyville, very strong by nature on the right and made strong by fortifications on the left, in front of Shelbyville. An injudicious disposition of forces left Hoover's Gap undefended by our army. Rosecrans advanced upon Hoover's Gap. Three brigades of Confederates moved rapidly up, and held them in the Gap over forty hours. This position gained placed Rosecrans on Bragg's flank, who, to save his army, commenced a retreat, which was eventually continued to Chattanooga.

EXPEDITION OF JOHN MORGAN.

As part of the general plan of action in the West, and an important contribution to the success of Gen. Bragg's retreat, we must notice here a remarkable expedition of the famous cavalier, Gen. John Morgan, the

EXPEDITION OF JOHN MORGAN.

441

effect of which, although its immediate event was disaster, was to create an important diversion of Burnside's army, large detachments of which were drawn after Morgan into and through Kentucky, and to prevent that Federal commander from getting in rear of Bragg's army at the time it was menaced in front by Rosecrans, at Shelbyville.

In the latter part of the month of June the command of Gen. Morgan, consisting of detachments from two brigades, and numbering nearly three thousand men, approached the banks of the Cumberland. The passage of the river was weakly contested by three Ohio regiments, which had advanced from Somerset, Kentucky. Gen. Morgan was obliged to build a number of boats, and commenced crossing the river on the 1st July. By ten o'clock next morning his whole regiment was over the river; the advance proceeding to Columbia, where, after a brief engagement, the enemy was driven through the town.

Passing through Columbia, Gen. Morgan proceeded towards Green River Bridge, and attacked the enemy's stockade there with two regiments, sending the remainder of his force across at another ford. The place was judiciously chosen and skilfully defended; and the result was that the Confederates were repulsed with severe loss-about twenty-five killed and twenty wounded.

At sunrise on the 4th July, Gen. Morgan moved on Lebanon. The Federal commander here-Col. Hanson-made a desperate resistance; placing his forces in the depot and in various houses, and only surrendering after the Confederates had fired the buildings in which he was posted. About six hundred prisoners were taken here, and a sufficient quantity of guns to arm all of Morgan's men who were without them.

Rapid marches brought Morgan to Bradensburg on the 7th July; and the next day he crossed the Ohio, keeping in check two gunboats, and dispersing a force of militia posted with artillery on the Indiana shore. When the pursuing column of the enemy, which had increased now to seven regiments and two pieces of artillery, reached the banks of the river, it was to find the passenger boat on which Gen. Morgan had effected a crossing in flames, and to see far back on the opposite shore the rear-guard of his force rapidly disappearing in the distance.

On the 9th July Morgan marched on to Corydon, fighting near four thousand State militia, capturing three-fourths of them, and dispersing the remainder. He then moved without a halt through Salisbury and Palmyra to Salem, where he destroyed the railroad bridge and track and a vast amount of public stores. Then taking the road to Lexington, after riding all night, he reached that point at daylight, capturing a number of supplies, and destroying during the night the depot and track at Vienna, on the Jeffersonville and Indianapolis Railroad. Leaving Lexington, he passed on north to the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad near Vernon, where,

« PreviousContinue »