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6219

Southern Historical Society Papers.

Vol. XXV. Richmond, Va., January-December.

The Career of Wise's Brigade, 1861-5.

AN ADDRESS

1897.

Delivered by GENERAL HENRY A. WISE, near Cappahoosic,
Gloucester County, Virginia, about 1870.

The following graphic address, is now first printed, from the original manuscript in the autograph of the "Noble Old Roman" who died at Richmond, Va., Sept. 12, 1876, an "unrepentant rebel," without government pardon.

It is unfortunately undated, and without definite statement of place of delivery. The object appears to have been to secure funds to meet the cost of gathering together the remains of soldiers from Gloucester county, who died in defence of the South, and to duly mark their graves. A monument has been since erected at Glouces

ter Courthouse.

The address has been furnished by Mr. Barton Haxall Wise, a young lawyer of Richmond, Va., who has in preparation a life of his distinguished grandfather, whose public services thread the warp of our National history for quite a half century:

Surviving Comrades of the Confederate War,

of the County of Gloucester, Ladies and Gentlemen:

The people of no section of the South were more self-sacrificing in their devotion to the "Confederate Cause," or more heroic in its defence, than were the inhabitants of the five peninsulas lying between the Potomac and Rappahannock, the Rappahannock and the York, the York and the James, the James and the Nottoway, and the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay.

The whole Atlantic and Bay Coasts from Hatteras to Assateague Island and the mouth of the Potomac river, were accessible to war steamers far above the head of tidewater, and the rivers and estuaries so parted each from the others that they could not readily or

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adequately support each other in their defences. None were more exposed to the ravages of war, and none worse scourged by them than were these people between the Rappahannock and the York. Homes, houses, labor, fences, crops, provisions, furniture, teams, stock, household necessaries and comforts, things of affection and things sacred, the very cradles and graves of families, the persons of women and children, and the lives and personal liberty of men were all alike exposed to the dangers and disasters of both servile and civil war; and from the first to the last of hostilities all that the inhabitants of the low-lands had and held dear was laid under the guns of invading and marauding navies and armies. There was no mode of escape, no place of refuge. The defenceless condition was unmitigated, the enemy was unscrupulous and relentless. The fathers and sons and brothers could not stay by the firesides and altars and defend them, and they could not leave them without vengeance being taken for their absence; yet, mainly, they obeyed the calls of duty, honor and patriotism, left all to the Providence of God and the fate of war, and betook themselves, with manly decision, to the camps. of the Confederate soldiers, joined them in their privations, endured their marches, hungered and thirsted with them, helped to fight their glorious battles, braved their dangers, shouted in their victories, wept in their defeats, and did all that good and true men could do for country, kindred, honor and renown, from the first, the tocsin gun of Fort Sumter, to the stacking of arms at Appomattox.

We are here to-day not only to collect the means to gather the remains of their dead, but to plead that the good which the living and the dead did, shall not be interred with their bones.

Of these patriotic heroes and martyrs, it becomes me to speak. They were the comrades of my command. They largely filled the rank and file of my noble Brigade, and I know full well where to place them in the estimation of men and soldiers. In speaking of them I do not shrink from being compelled to speak of myself. To have been associated with them; to have been the General who ordered them; to have had their confidence and cheerful obedience; to have had the sympathy of their brave hearts; to have been loved by them as well as to have led and loved them; to have shared with them privations and dangers; to have shouted with them in the charge and in victory, and to have wept with them when all was lost, made of me, even me, that "stern stuff," of which they were composed in earnest, in the unsuccessful because unequal struggle of a war for a principle, a faith, and a feeling, without counting the cost.

or calculating the issue; they asked not "whether it would pay," or what would be their fate, if they failed. It was enough that honor, and self-respect, and a sense of duty and a love of liberty and of law to guard it, required of them to resist ursurpation, and to assert and fight for the rights of conscience and self-government.

How they fought was worthy of the precious and undying Cause, for which they died-not in vain. During Magruder's stubborn stand across the Peninsula and the York river, from Warwick river to Gloucester Point, the most if not all of these men were enrolled in his lines. They were among the forlorn 7,000, only baring their brave breasts and keeping their vigils against the countless columns of an enemy attacking their redoubts and breast-works with seigeguns of batteries, and bombs of iron-clads. This they encountered unbroken to the last, and until they were ordered to raise their indomitable defences of Yorktown and move to the defences of Richmond. This they did after the victory at Bethel, and after fighting most gloriously the battles at Williamsburg and Barhamsville.

During this period, before the evacuation of the defences of Yorktown, I was in command of a legion of 2,000 men and two regiments of Virginia Volunteers in the Kanawha valley. To pass over the scenes there of Scary and Pocataligo, and the evacuation of that valley, and the burning of Gauley Bridge, and of Carnifax, and of Honey Creek, on the east peak of Sewell Mountain, and of Camp Defiance and the Slaughter Pen of Roanoke Island, after Richmond was invested by McClellan's army, my legion was converted into a brigade of infantry, and was reorganized. The 46th and 59th Virginia Regiments of the legion were left to my command, and to these were added the 26th and 34th Regiments of Virginia, largely composed of men from the counties of Mathews, Gloucester, King and Queen and Essex. This reorganization was effected early in the spring of 1862, and we were soon posted to guard the batteries at Chaffin's Bluff and the entire district from Richmond to Williamsburg, on the James, Chickahominy and Pamunkey rivers.

To the four regiments commanded by Colonel Powhatan R. Page, of the 26th, Colonel J. Thomas Goode, of the 34th, Colonel J. H. Richardson, of the 46th, and Colonel W. B. Tabb, of the 59th, were added two batteries of artillery under Major A. W. Starke, commanded by Captains Armistead and French, with a few cavalry for videttes.

This small force did post duty at Chaffin's for sixteen months, from April, 1862, until September, 1863. During that time they

scouted the enemy incessantly, and so effectually as to keep them close to their seventeen redoubts at Williamsburg. The 59th was stationed mostly at the Diascund, its rangers keeping the miserable 5th Pennsylvania Cavalry timidly at bay. Under orders, they guarded the River road whilst the battles around Richmond were going on, until the last at Malvern Hill was fought, when, without orders, they reinforced the fagged forces of General T. H. Holmes, on Lee's extreme right, and where they stood unbroken for two days under the Paixhans and bombs of the enemy's batteries and ironclads, though regiments of infantry and batteries of artillery of General Junius Daniel's command stampeded through their ranks. After that, Colonel A. W. Starke riddled one of the enemy's sidewheel steamers from the heights of Deep Bottom. Again, in 1863, they were given the most difficult order to be executed which can be issued from headquarters. To make a divertisement in favor of Longstreet in his operations around Suffolk, in Nansemond, and to prevent the enemy from sending reinforcements from Yorktown against him, orders were issued to me from Richmond to move with all my available force as low down the peninsula as possible, and to do all the damage possible to the enemy and threaten him as closely as was in my power, without hazarding a battle unless certain of sucWith 1,100 men, we moved to the six miles' ordinary in James City, ascertained that the enemy, 3,000 strong, already apprised of our movement, had occupied Fort Magruder and the other sixteen redoubts around Williamsburg, and we planned to destroy his stores of munitions and provisions at Whitaker's Mill, nearly four miles in his rear. Tabb, with only 218 men, a portion of the 59th, was sent forward that night, and we attacked the redoubts in front with 900 men at daybreak the next morning. The plan succeeded gloriously, in destroying from $300,000 to $500,000 worth of stores and their quarters at Whitaker's Mill, witnout the loss of a man. We occupied Williamsburg and vicinity for about a week in face of an enemy in our front three times our number; relieved many of the inhabitants of their durance vile; saved much property, and avenged somewhat the outrages which had followed Shingler's raid, and returned. to Chaffin's to meet the thanks of the War Department and of General Elzey. Tabb and Page and Captain Rives, with a section of artillery, especially met my commendation.

cess.

After this, in September, 1863, this brigade was ordered to report to General Beauregard at Charleston, South Carolina. Whilst at Chaffin's Bluff, its men and officers began to chafe somewhat that

they were not put into a service where more laurels and less hard service could be gained. But there was one officer who nobly said: "I am ready to do my whole duty wherever I am put, and if my superiors in command see fit to give me the least glorious duty to perform, I will do it with the same alacrity that I would or could perform those duties which are crowned with the brightest leaves of honor; and if duty don't require of me to incur greater danger than that of the service at this post, I thank God for the chance of being spared to my little family. Any may have the honors of war, if I can be allowed to do my duty wherever put, and I can be spared to my wife and child." From that moment forward I set that man down as a true man and soldier of the first water and purest crystal, all of which he so proved to the moment of his death at his post, so brightly, so grandly, so great and so good as to make the name of Colonel P. R. Page immortal among angels in Heaven if not among men on earth. During the durance at Chaffin's, the time was not lost in drilling, and without any disparagement to other regiments, my own or those of other commands, I hesitate not to say that the officers of the 26th Regiment of Virginia, from Colonel Page and Lieutenant-Colonel J. C. Council down to the sergeants and corporals, had perfected its drill to a degree superior to that of any regiment known to me in the entire army of General Lee. Mahone had the best drilled brigade, but this was the best drilled regiment known to me in the Confederate army. It twice saved my brigade by its regular and orderly and steady rally; once at the White Oak road, on the 31st March, 1865, near Hatcher's Run, and again on the 6th April, 1865, at Sailor's creek, on the retreat to Appomattox.

And before I leave the camps at Chaffin's and at Diascund and at the White House on the Peninsula, I cannot omit to pay a tribute to the people who remained at home to make bread for our army and comforts for the boys of our brigade. However, other soldiers in the field may have suffered for want of supplies or from neglect of quartermasters and commissaries, I must do credit and pay but just dues to our purveyors as far above the general demerits of their class in the army. Major W. F. C. Gregory, as Commissary, and Majors F. D. Cleery and H. C. Watkins of our brigade were above reproach in the discharge of their duties. Gregory, particularly, was distinguished as surpassing his own superiors so far that in the last retreat he was the main agent of supplies to Johnson's Division, though he was but the commissary of our brigade. But though so well served officially, what I desire to say most gratefully is: that

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