Page images
PDF
EPUB

ately, steam raised on it in a few minutes, and by the aid of the two engines, we gave our train, with the indifferent fuel we had, a speed of five or six miles per hour, until we reached the first wood-pile. Here getting hold of some better fuel, we fired up with better effect, and went thundering, with the usual speed, on our course.

It was thus, after I had, in fact, been abandoned by the Government and the army, that I saved my command from capture. I make no charges-utter no complaints. Perhaps neither the Government, nor the army was to blame. The great disaster fell upon them both so suddenly, that, perhaps, neither could do any better; but the naked fact is, that the fleet was abandoned to shift for itself, there being, as before remarked, not only no transportation provided for carrying a pound of provisions, or a cooking-utensil, but not even a horse for its Admiral to mount. As a matter of course, great disorder prevailed, in all the villages, and at all the way-stations, by which we passed. We had a continual accession of passengers, until not another man could be packed upon the train. So great was the demoralization, that we picked up "unattached" generals and colonels on the road, in considerable numbers. The most amusing part of our journey, however, was an attempt made by some of the railroad officials to take charge of our train, after we had gotten some distance from Richmond. Conductors and engineers now came forward, and insisted upon regulating our affairs for us. We declined the good offices of these gentlemen, and navigated to suit ourselves. The president, or superintendent of the road, I forget which, even had the assurance to complain, afterward, to President Davis, at Danville, of my usurping his authority! Simple civilian discreet railroad officer! to scamper off in the manner related, and then to complain of my usurping his authority! My railroad cruise ended the next day - April 4th about midnight, when we reached the city of Danville, and blew off our steam, encamping in the cars for the remainder of the night. Our escape had been narrow, in more respects than one. After turning Lee's flank, at the Five Forks, the enemy made a dash at the Southside Railroad; Sheridan with his cavalry tearing up the rails at the Burksville Junction, just one hour and a half after we had passed it.

CHAPTER LIX.

INTERVIEW WITH PRESIDENT DAVIS AND SECRETARY MALLORY-MY COMMAND ORGANIZED AS A BRIGADE

OF ARTILLERY-BRIGADE MARCHES TO GREENSBORO', CAPITULATION BETWEEN GENERAL

NORTH CAROLINA

JOSEPH E. JOHNSTON AND SHERMAN- DISPERSION OF JOHNSTON'S TROOPS- AUTHOR RETURNS HOME, AND IS ARRESTED

M

CONCLUSION.

Y memoirs are drawing to a close, for the career of the Confederacy, as well as my own, is nearly ended. I found, at Danville, President Davis, and a portion of his cabinet-the Secretary of the Navy among the rest. Here was temporarily established the seat of Government. I called on the President and Secretary, who were staying at the same house, at an early hour on the morning after my arrival, and reported for duty. They were both calm in the presence of the great disaster which had befallen them and the country. Mr. Mallory could scarcely be said now to have a portfolio, though he still had the officers and clerks of his Department around him. It was at once arranged between him, and the President, that my command should be organized as a brigade of artillery, and assigned to the defences around Danville. The question of my rank being discussed, it was settled by Mr. Davis, that I should act in the capacity of a brigadier-general. My grade being that of a rear-admiral, I was entitled to rank, relatively, with the officers of the army, as a major-general, but it was folly, of course, to talk of rank, in the circumstances in which we were placed, and so I contented myself by saying pleasantly to the President, that I would waive the matter of rank, to be discussed hereafter, if there should ever be occasion to discuss it. "That is the right spirit," said he, with a smile playing over his usually grave features. I did not see him afterward. He moved soon to Charlotte, in North Carolina, and in a few weeks afterward, he fell into

the hands of the enemy. The reader knows the rest of his history; how the enemy gloated over his captivity; how he was reviled, and insulted, by the coarse and brutal men into whose power he had fallen; how lies were invented as to the circumstances of his capture, to please and amuse the Northern multitudes, eager for his blood; and finally, how he was degraded by imprisonment, and the manacles of a felon! His captors and he were of different races-of different blood. They had nothing in common. He was the " Cavalier," endowed by nature with the instincts and refinement of the gentleman. They were of the race of the Roundheads, to whom all such instincts and refinements were offensive. God has created men in different moulds, as he has created the animals. It was as natural that the Yankee should hate Jefferson Davis, as that the cat should arch its back, and roughen its fur, upon the approach of the dog. I have said that the American war had its origin in money, and that it was carried on throughout, "for a consideration." It ended in the same way. The "long-haired barbarian"-see Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" who laid his huge paw upon Jefferson Davis, to make him prisoner, was paid in money for the gallant deed. A President of the United States had degraded his high office, by falsely charging Mr. Davis with being an accomplice in the murder of President Lincoln, and offered a reward for his apprehension; thus gratifying his malignant nature, by holding him up to the world as a common felon. All men now know this charge to be false, the libeller among the rest. Gentlemen retract false charges, when they know them to be such. The charge made by Andrew Johnson against Jefferson Davis has not been retracted.

Upon leaving the presence of the President, and Secretary of the Navy, I sought out my old friend, Captain Sydney Smith Lee, of the Navy, the Assistant Secretary, who had accompanied Mr. Mallory, and arranged with him, and afterward with General Cooper, the Adjutant-General of the Army, the transformation of my sailors into soldiers. There were a great many other naval officers, besides those under my command, fugitives in Danville, and the President and Secretary had been kind enough to authorize me to employ such of them in

my new organization, as I might desire. But the difficulty was not in the want of officers; it was the want of men. Already my command of five hundred had dwindled down to about four hundred on my retreat from Richmond, and since my arrival in Danville. I broke these into skeleton regiments, so as to conform to the Brigade organization, and appointed Dunnington, late Captain of my flag-ship, the Colonel of one of them, and Johnston, late Captain of the Richmond, Colonel of the other. My youngest son, who had been a midshipman on board the School-ship at Richmond, and who had retreated thence with the School, on the night before the surrender, was ordered by Captain Lee to report to me, and I assigned him to a position on my staff, with the rank of a second lieutenant. Mr. Daniel, my secretary, became my other aide de-camp, and Captain Butt, late commander of the Nansemond, was appointed Assistant Adjutant-General.

We remained in the trenches before Danville ten days; and anxious, and weary days they were. Raiding parties were careering around us in various directions, robbing and maltreating the inhabitants, but none of the thieves ventured within reach of our guns. Lee abandoned his lines, on the 3d of April, and surrendered his army, or the small remnant that was left of it, to Grant, on the 9th, at Appomattox CourtHouse. The first news we received of his surrender, came to us from the stream of fugitives which now came pressing into our lines at Danville. It was heart-rending to look upon these men, some on foot, some on horseback, some nearly famished for want of food, and others barely able to totter along from disease. It was, indeed, a rabble rout. Hopes had been entertained that Lee might escape to Lynchburg, or to Danville, and save his army. The President had entertained this hope, and had issued a proclamation of encouragement to the people, before he left Danville. But the fatal tidings came at last, and when they did come, we all felt that the fate of the Confederacy was sealed.

A new impetus was given to desertions, and before I reached Greensboro', North Carolina, to which point I was now removed by the orders of General Joseph E. Johnston, my command had dwindled to about 250 men. Commissioned officers

[ocr errors]

slunk away from me one by one, and became deserters! I was ashamed of my countrymen. Johnston, by reason of his great, personal popularity, and of the confidence which the troops had in his ability, was enabled to gather around him the fragments of several armies, whilst Grant had been pressing Lee; and but for Lee's disaster would soon have been able to hold Sherman in check very effectually. But the moment the news of Lee's surrender reached him, there was a stampede from his army. It melted away like a hillock of snow before the sunshine. Whole companies deserted at a time. Still, many true men remained with him, and with these he stood so defiantly before Sherman, that the latter was glad to enter into negotiations with him for the dispersion of his troops. The reader will be pleased to pay attention to this expression. Johnston dispersed his troops, under the capitulation which will presently be spoken of. He never surrendered them as prisoners to the enemy. The country is familiar with what occurred at Greensboro', between Johnston and Sherman, and I do not propose to rehearse it here. Sherman, yielding to the impulses of Johnston's master-mind, entered into an agreement with the latter, which would have achieved more fame for him in the future than all his victories, if he had had the courage and ability to stand up to his work. This agreement was that the Southern States should be regarded as ipso facto, on the cessation of the war, restored to their rights in the Union. The stroke was one of a statesman. It is in times of great revolutions that genius shows itself. The Federal Government, at the time that this convention was made, was prostrate beneath the foot of the soldier, and a military man of genius might have governed it with the crook of his finger. If such a one had arisen, he might have applied the scourge to the back of the Northern people, and they would have yelped. under it as submissively as any hound. They had yelped under the scourging of Abraham Lincoln. But Sherman was not the man to conceive the emergency, or to avail himself of it. He, on the contrary, permitted himself to be scourged by a creature like Stanton, the Federal Secretary of War, and if he did not yelp under the scourging, he at least submitted to it with most admirable docility. Stanton insolently re

1

« PreviousContinue »