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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40477 ***
+
+WITH FIRE AND SWORD
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: W. T. Sherman]
+
+[Illustration: S. H. M. Byers.]
+
+
+
+
+  With Fire and Sword
+
+    BY
+  MAJOR S. H. M. BYERS
+
+  OF GENERAL SHERMAN'S STAFF
+
+  Author of "Sherman's March to the Sea," "Iowa
+    in War Times," "Twenty Years in
+      Europe," and of other books
+
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+
+  NEW YORK
+  THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY
+  1911
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1911, by
+
+THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+             PAGE
+
+
+CHAPTER I      11
+
+  My enlistment in the Union Army--The "Bushwhackers" of Missouri--The
+    Quantrells and the James Brothers--Cutting a man's head off--My
+    first adventure in the war--Capturing a guerrilla.
+
+
+CHAPTER II      22
+
+  We leave Missouri and go South--The prisoners of Donelson--The taking
+    of New Madrid--"Kindly bury this unfortunate officer"--Quaker guns
+    at Shiloh--The killing of the colonel.
+
+
+CHAPTER III      29
+
+  Iuka, the fiercest battle of the war, 217 men out of 482 of my
+    regiment are shot--The awful rebel charge at Corinth--Moonlight on
+    the battlefield--Bushels of arms and legs--Tombstones for
+    fireplaces--One of Grant's mistakes.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV      40
+
+  An unlucky campaign led by General Grant--Holly Springs burned up--The
+    first foragers--Some modern Falstaffs--Counting dead men.
+
+
+CHAPTER V      49
+
+  The laughable campaign of the war--An army floating among the tree
+    tops of the Yazoo Pass.
+
+
+CHAPTER VI      54
+
+  Grant's new plan at Vicksburg--Running the Vicksburg batteries--An
+    hour and a half of horror--The batteries are passed--The most
+    important event in the war.
+
+
+CHAPTER VII      63
+
+  Crossing the Mississippi on gunboats and steamers--Battle of Port
+    Gibson--How General Grant looked to a private soldier--A boy from
+    Mississippi--Fights at Raymond--Battle of Jackson in a
+    thunderstorm--Digging his brothers' grave--Grant in battle--Saving a
+    flag--How men feel in battle--An awful spectacle--The critical
+    moment of General Grant's life--A battlefield letter from him to
+    Sherman.
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII      87
+
+  Assaults on the walls of Vicksburg--Logan in battle--An army mule--A
+    promotion under the guns of Vicksburg--A storm of iron hail at
+    Vicksburg--The Vicksburg clock--The town surrenders--The glad
+    news--Reading my first order to the regiment--My regiment put on
+    guard in the captured city--Eight days' furlough in four years of
+    war.
+
+
+CHAPTER IX      102
+
+  Sherman's army floats across the Tennessee River at
+    midnight--Washington at the Delaware nothing compared to this--We
+    assault Missionary Ridge--An awful battle--My capture.
+
+
+CHAPTER X      111
+
+  In Libby Prison--Life there--"Belle Isle"--All prisons bad--The great
+    escape--"Maryland, My Maryland."
+
+
+CHAPTER XI      119
+
+  Escaping from Macon--An adventure in Atlanta--In the disguise of a
+    Confederate soldier--My wanderings inside the Confederate army and
+    what I experienced there--I am captured as a spy--How I got out of
+    it all.
+
+
+CHAPTER XII      137
+
+  Under fire of our own guns at Charleston--Trying to capture a railway
+    train--The secret band--Betrayed--The desolation of Charleston.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII      144
+
+  Living in a grave--An adventure in the woods of South Carolina--Life
+    in the asylum yard at the capital of South Carolina--The song of
+    "Sherman's March to the Sea"--How it came to be written--Final
+    escape--The burning up of South Carolina's capitol.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV      174
+
+  The army in the Carolinas--General Sherman sends for me--Gives me a
+    place on his staff--Experiences at army headquarters--Sherman's life
+    on the march--Music at headquarters--Logan's violin--The General's
+    false friend--The army wades, swims, and fights through the
+    Carolinas--I am sent as despatch bearer to General Grant--A strange
+    ride down the Cape Fear River in the night--General Terry--Learn
+    that my song "The March to the Sea" is sung through the North, and
+    has given the campaign its name--I bring the first news of Sherman's
+    success to the North--An interview with General Grant.
+
+
+CHAPTER XV      198
+
+  Washington City in the last three days of the war--Look, the
+    President!--_The last man of the regiment._
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+In war some persons seek adventures; others have them in spite of
+themselves. It happened that the writer of this book belonged to a
+regiment that seemed to be always in the midst of great experiences. It
+was, in fact, one of the few regiments that absolutely fought themselves
+out of existence. It was mustered in a thousand strong; it lost seven
+hundred and seventy-seven men by death, wounds, and disease. The
+fragment that was left over was transferred to a cavalry command. When
+the writer finally escaped from prison, after many months of confinement
+and many thrilling adventures both in prison and in the army of the
+enemy, he was mustered out as a "supernumerary officer." His command had
+ceased to exist. He was literally the _last man of the regiment_. Of the
+eighty of his regiment who had been taken to prison with him all but
+sixteen were dead. Of the nine captured from his own company all were
+dead but one.
+
+While with his command he had served as a private soldier, as sergeant,
+and as adjutant. On escaping from prison he was for a time on General
+Sherman's staff and was selected to run down the Cape Fear River and
+carry the great news of Sherman's successes to the people of the North.
+
+He kept a diary every day in the four years of war and adventure. The
+substance of the facts related here is from its pages; occasionally they
+are copied just as they are there set down. The book is not a history of
+great army movements, it is simply a true tale of the thrilling
+experiences of a subordinate soldier in the midst of great events.
+
+
+
+
+With Fire and Sword
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+  My enlistment in the Union Army--The "Bushwhackers" of Missouri--The
+    Quantrells and the James Brothers--Cutting a man's head off--My
+    first adventure in the war--Capturing a guerrilla.
+
+
+I am writing down these sketches of adventures of mine from a daily
+journal or diary kept by me throughout the four years of the Civil War.
+Its pages are crumpled and old and yellow, but I can read them still.
+
+Fate so arranged it that I was the very first one to enlist in my
+regiment, and it all came about through a confusion of names. A
+patriotic mass-meeting was held in the court-house of the village where
+I lived. Everybody was there, and everybody was excited, for the war
+tocsin was sounding all over the country. A new regiment had been
+ordered by the governor, and no town was so quick in responding to the
+call as the village of Newton. We would be the very first. Drums were
+beating at the mass-meeting, fifes screaming, people shouting. There was
+a little pause in the patriotic noise, and then someone called out,
+"Myers to the platform!" "Myers! Myers! Myers!" echoed a hundred other
+voices. Mr. Myers never stirred, as he was no public speaker. I sat
+beside him near the aisle. Again the voices shouted "Myers! Myers!"
+Myers turned to me, laughed, and said, "They are calling you, Byers,"
+and fairly pushed me out into the aisle. A handful of the audience
+seeing Myers would not respond, did then call my own name, and both
+names were cried together. Some of the audience becoming confused called
+loudly for me. "Go on," said Myers, half-rising and pushing me toward
+the platform.
+
+I was young,--just twenty-two,--ambitious, had just been admitted to the
+bar, and now was all on fire with the newly awakened patriotism. I went
+up to the platform and stood by the big drum. The American flag, the
+flag that had been fired on by the South, was hanging above my head. In
+a few minutes I was full of the mental champagne that comes from a
+cheering multitude. I was burning with excitement, with patriotism,
+enthusiasm, pride, and my enthusiasm lent power to the words I uttered.
+I don't know why nor how, but I was moving my audience. The war was not
+begun to put down slavery, but what in the beginning had been an
+incident I felt in the end would become a cause.
+
+The year before I had been for many months on a plantation in
+Mississippi, and there with my own eyes had seen the horrors of slavery.
+I had seen human beings flogged; men and women bleeding from an
+overseer's lash. Now in my excitement I pictured it all. I recalled
+everything. "And the war, they tell us," I cried, "is to perpetuate this
+curse!" In ten minutes after my stormy words one hundred youths and men,
+myself the first, had stepped up to the paper lying on the big drum and
+had put down our names for the war.
+
+We all mustered on the village green. Alas, not half of them were ever
+to see that village green again! No foreboding came to me, the
+enthusiastic youth about to be a soldier, of the "dangers by flood and
+field," the adventures, the thrilling scenes, the battles, the prisons,
+the escapes, that were awaiting me.
+
+Now we were all enthusiasm to be taken quickly to the front, to the
+"seat of war." We could bide no delay. Once our men were on the very
+point of mobbing and "egging" our great, good Governor Kirkwood, because
+for a moment he thought he would be compelled to place us in a later
+regiment. However, we were immediately started in wagons for the nearest
+railroad, fifty miles away.
+
+At the town of Burlington, on the 15th of July, 1861, we were mustered
+into the service as Company B of the Fifth Iowa Infantry. Our colonel,
+W. H. Worthington, was a military martinet from some soldier school in
+Kentucky. His sympathies were with his native South. Why he was leading
+a Northern regiment was a constant mystery to his men.
+
+The regiment spent scant time in Burlington, for in a little while we
+were whisked down the Mississippi River in a steamer to St. Louis, and
+soon joined the army of Frémont, organizing at Jefferson City to march
+against General Price, who was flying toward Springfield with the booty
+he had gained in his capture of Mulligan and his men at Boonville. Now
+all began to look like war. Missouri was neither North nor South; she
+was simply hell, for her people were cutting one another's throats, and
+neighboring farmers killed each other and burned each other's homes. The
+loyal feared to shut their eyes in sleep; the disloyal did not know if a
+roof would be above their heads in the morning. Brothers of the same
+family were in opposing armies, and the State was overrun by Southern
+guerrillas and murderers. The Quantrells, the James Brothers, and other
+irregular and roaming bands of villains rode everywhere, waylaying,
+bushwhacking, and murdering.
+
+We followed General Price's army to the Ozark Mountains, marching day
+and night--the nights made hideous by the burning of homes on the track
+of both the armies, while unburied corpses lay at the roadside. We
+marched half the nights and all the days and just as we got close enough
+to fight, the Washington politicians caused Frémont to be removed from
+his command. Frémont had been ahead of his time. He had freed some
+slaves, and the dough-faced politicians were not yet ready for action of
+that character.
+
+The campaign had been to no purpose. Some of our regiment, indignant at
+the removal of their general, had to be guarded to prevent mutiny and
+disorder. Now we turned about and made the long march back to the
+Missouri River. Half that cold winter was spent near Syracuse, in
+guarding the Pacific Railway. We lived in wedge tents, and spite of the
+cold and snow and storm, our squads by turn tramped for miles up and
+down the railroad in the darkness every night. What terrible tales, too,
+we had in our little tents that winter, of the deeds of Quantrell's men.
+It did not seem possible that the South could set loose a lot of
+murderers to hang on the skirts of our army, to "bushwhack" an honorable
+foe, burn villages, destroy farms, and drive whole counties into
+conditions as frightful as war was in the Middle Ages. Only savage
+Indians fought that way. Yet Quantrell's band of murderers was said to
+be on the payroll of the Confederate States. Here and there, however,
+his guerrilla outlaws met with awful punishment, and horrible incidents
+became the order of the day and night.
+
+I recall now how a prize was once offered by one of our commanders for
+the head of a certain man among those desperate murderers, a desperado
+with a band of men that knew no mercy. His troop of riders had
+ambuscaded almost scores of our soldiers, and innocent farmers who did
+not happen to like his ways were strung up to trees as unceremoniously
+as one would drown a kitten. The offered prize of a thousand dollars
+stimulated certain of our men in taking chances with this beast of the
+Confederacy, and a corporal of our cavalry learned of the desperado's
+occasional visits at night to his home, only a dozen miles away from
+where we were camped. Several nights he secretly watched from a thicket
+near the cabin for the bandit's return. Once in the darkness he heard a
+horse's hoofs, and then a man dismounted and entered at the door. The
+evening was chilly, and a bright fire in the open fireplace of the cabin
+shone out as the man entered.
+
+The corporal, who had disguised himself in an old gray overcoat, knocked
+for entrance, and pretended to be a sick Confederate going on a furlough
+to his home not far away. He was cautiously admitted and given a seat by
+the open fire. He had no arms, and to the bandit and his wife his story
+of sickness and a furlough seemed probable enough. The two men and the
+one woman sat in front of the fireplace talking for an hour. The
+corporal, with the guerrilla sitting within a few feet of him, thought
+of the prize, and of his comrades murdered by this man. But what could
+he do? Suddenly the thought came, "I must kill or be killed." Outside
+there was only darkness and silence; inside the cabin, the low voices of
+these three people and the flickering fire.
+
+The corporal glanced about him. There was no gun to be seen that he
+could seize. The guerrilla's big revolver hung at his belt. While
+sitting thus, a bit of burning wood rolled out onto the hearth. The
+guerrilla stooped over to put it in its place. Instantly the corporal
+saw his chance and, springing for the iron poker at the fireside, dealt
+the guerrilla a blow on the head that stretched him dead on the cabin
+floor. In an instant his big jackknife was out of his pocket and in the
+presence of the screaming wife the brute severed the man's head from his
+body. Then he left the cabin, mounted his horse in the thicket, and in
+the darkness carried his ghostly trophy into camp. It is a horrible ride
+to think of, that dozen miles, with the bleeding head of a murdered man
+on the saddle bow.
+
+So the awful things went on all that winter in Missouri. As for myself,
+I was tramping about as a corporal, helping in a small way to keep the
+great railroad free from marauders and in possession of the Union army.
+
+I don't know how it happened, but one morning our colonel, who had
+always treated me with extreme gruffness, though he well knew I did my
+duties with patriotic zeal, sent for me to come to his tent. I was a
+little alarmed, not knowing what was about to happen to me. The colonel
+called me by name as I entered, saluting him cap in hand, and for once
+he actually smiled.
+
+"Corporal," he said dryly, as if suddenly regretting his smile, "I have
+noticed that you always did the duty assigned you with promptness. I
+need a quartermaster sergeant. You are the man."
+
+I was almost paralyzed with astonishment and pleasure. I stood stock
+still, without a word of gratitude. At last, recovering myself, I
+explained that I had enlisted expecting to fight, and not to fill some
+easy position with the trains.
+
+"If I could only be allowed to find a substitute," I ventured to say,
+"in case of a fight, so I might share the danger with my comrades, I
+would like the promotion."
+
+Again the colonel tried to smile. "You probably will change your mind;
+you will find excitement enough," he remarked, dismissing me.
+
+I was hardly installed in my new post when to my surprise I was ordered
+by the colonel to take a good horse and ride twelve miles across the
+lone prairies and carry a message to a command at the village of Tipton.
+Instantly my mind was excited with the hopes of an adventure. I don't
+know, even now, just why I was selected for the venturesome undertaking.
+I knew there was scarcely a road and not a house in the whole distance.
+I knew, too, the whole country was full of murderous guerrillas. But
+nevertheless I was full of elation. This was the kind of a thing I had
+hoped for when I enlisted.
+
+Light flakes of snow were falling when, with exultant spirits, I started
+from the camp. The trip outward proved uneventful, for nothing happened
+to me on my way. As I was returning, however, at a point halfway across
+the prairie I was surprised to see a man in gray, probably a guerrilla,
+ride out of a long slough or hollow to my left and gallop into the road
+directly ahead of me. He was in complete gray uniform, wore a saber, and
+had revolvers at his saddle bow. The man glanced back at me, and I saw
+him reaching for his pistols. "Here comes my first fight in the war," I
+thought instantly, "out here alone on the prairie." Save my one
+half-loaded revolver, strapped to my waist, I was unarmed. The stranger,
+without firing, galloped faster. I, too, galloped faster, the distance
+between us remaining about the same. Each of us now had a pistol in his
+hand, but it looked as if each were afraid to commence the duel. If the
+stranger checked his horse to give him breath, I checked mine. If he
+galloped again, I, too, put spurs to my animal. Imagining that other
+guerrillas must be lurking quite near, I was not over-anxious to bring
+on the engagement, and I suppose the armed man felt much the same way,
+for he could not have thought that I was in such a place absolutely
+alone. So neither fired. We just looked at each other and galloped.
+Finally we approached a little wood, and in a twinkling he turned into a
+path and was out of sight. I did not care to follow him to his
+hiding-place just then, and quickly galloped to our camp a few miles
+off.
+
+Before midnight that night I, with a dozen of my regiment, surrounded
+the little wood and a cabin secreted in its center. Approaching, we
+looked into the windows, and, sure enough, there, roasting his feet in
+front of an open fire, sat my rider of the day. When three of us
+suddenly entered the house and demanded his surrender he sprang for a
+rifle that stood like a poker by the fireside, aimed it at me, and
+shouted "Never! Surrender yourself." A bayonet that instant against his
+breast brought him to terms, however. There followed a little farewell
+scene between him and his wife, who poured bottles of wrath on the heads
+of the "bluecoats," and our captive--my captive--was hurried to the
+guardhouse at the camp. It had been a perfectly bloodless encounter, but
+next morning it turned out that I had by chance captured one of the most
+dangerous guerrillas in Missouri.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+  We leave Missouri and go South--The prisoners of Donelson--The taking
+    of New Madrid--"Kindly bury this unfortunate officer"--Quaker guns
+    at Shiloh--The killing of the colonel.
+
+
+It was a trifling incident, this capture, compared with the dreadful
+things I have referred to as going on in Missouri that memorable first
+year of the Civil War. A great volume would not contain the record of
+them all. The first dead men I saw while in the army were eight Missouri
+farmers murdered by guerrillas and left lying in the hot sun and dust at
+the roadside. The sight moved me as no great battle ever did afterward.
+
+One half of the male population of Missouri was trying to kill the other
+half. They were not opponents from different far-off sections fighting,
+but near neighbors, and nothing seemed too awful or too cruel for them
+to do. How I pitied the women and children who lived in the State in
+those awful days!
+
+General Sherman's designation of war as "hell" found more confirmation
+in the dreadful raids, outrages, and murders by Quantrell's guerrillas
+in Missouri than in the bloodiest battles of the four years' conflict.
+
+Now for months my regiment, with others, had chased up and down, and all
+over that unhappy old State of Missouri, trying to capture and punish
+these bands of murderers. On the old steamboat _War Eagle_, too, we
+paddled for weeks along the "Muddy Missouri" River, landing every here
+and there to have a little brush with guerrillas who had fired on our
+boat from the banks or from secret recesses in the woods. It was rare
+that we could catch them or have a real fight. Their kind of war meant
+ambuscades and murder.
+
+At last an end came to this dreadful guerrilla-chasing business in
+Missouri so far as we were concerned, anyway. We were to stop running
+after Price's ubiquitous army too. We were no longer to be the victims
+of ambuscades and night riding murderers.
+
+The glad news came to my regiment that we were to be transferred to the
+South, where the real war was.
+
+One morning we left the cold and snow, where we had lived and shivered
+in thin tents all the winter, left the thankless duty of patrolling
+railroads in the storm at midnight, and marched in the direction of St.
+Louis. A long, cold, miserable march it was too, hurrying in the daytime
+and freezing in our bivouacs in the snow and woods at night. Many a man
+we left to sicken and die at some farmhouse by the roadside. Our
+destination was New Madrid, where we were to be a part of Pope's army in
+the siege and capture of that town.
+
+As we were about to embark on boats at St. Louis we beheld in the snow
+and storm many steamers anchored out in the pitiless waters of the
+Mississippi River. These vessels were loaded with shivering thousands in
+gray and brown uniforms, the prisoners whom General Grant had captured
+at the battle of Fort Donelson. There were twelve or fifteen thousand of
+them. Seeing this host of prisoners made us feel that at last the Union
+army had a general, although we had scarcely heard of U. S. Grant
+before. This army of prisoners taken in battle was his introduction to
+the world.
+
+Shortly we were before New Madrid, and the siege conducted by General
+Pope commenced. The town was defended by strong forts and many cannon,
+but its speedy capture by us helped to open up the Mississippi River. It
+was a new experience to us, to have cannonballs come rolling right into
+our camp occasionally. Yet few men were injured by them. We were in more
+danger when a fool officer one day took our brigade of infantry down
+through a cornfield to assault a gunboat that lay in a creek close by.
+
+The Rebel commander had expected us, and had his grape shot and his hot
+water hose, and such things all ready for us. We went out of that
+cornfield faster than we went in. This was real war, the thing my
+regiment had been so longing for, in place of chasing murderers and
+guerrillas in Missouri.
+
+We entered New Madrid one morning before daylight. The enemy had left in
+awful haste. I recall finding a dead Rebel officer, lying on a table in
+his tent, in full uniform. He had been killed by one of our shells. A
+candle burned beside him, and his cold hands closed on a pencil note
+that said, "Kindly bury this unfortunate officer." His breakfast waited
+on a table in the tent, showing how unexpected was his taking off.
+
+Our victory was a great one for the nation, and it put two stars on the
+shoulder straps of General Pope. It made him, too, commander of the
+Eastern army.
+
+A comrade in Company A of my regiment had been wounded a few days before
+and had died in the enemy's hands. I now found his grave. At its head
+stood a board with this curious inscription: "This man says he was a
+private in the Fifth Iowa Regiment. He was killed while trying to attend
+to other people's business."
+
+Our command was now hurried to the Shiloh battlefield, of course too
+late to be of any use. But we took part in the long, wonderful, and
+ridiculous siege of Corinth, under Halleck, when our great army was held
+back by red tape, martinets, and the fear of a lot of wooden guns that
+sat on top of the enemy's breastworks, while that enemy, with all his
+men, and with all his guns, and bag and baggage, was escaping to the
+south. Our deeds were no credit to anybody, though here and there we had
+a little fight.
+
+One incident of great importance, however, happened to my regiment here.
+It was the death of our colonel. One night when he was going the rounds
+of the picket lines out in the woods he was shot dead by one of our own
+men. The sentinel who did the killing declared that Rebels had been
+slipping up to his post all night, and when he would hail with "Who goes
+there?" they would fire at him and run into the darkness. He resolved to
+stand behind a tree the next time and fire without hailing. By some
+accident Colonel Worthington and his adjutant were approaching this
+sentinel from the direction of the enemy. Suddenly the sentinel held his
+gun around the tree and fired. The bullet struck the colonel in the
+forehead, killing him instantly. As he fell from his horse the adjutant
+sprang to the ground and cried, "Who shot the officer of the day?" "I
+fired," exclaimed the sentinel, and he then told of his experiences of
+the night. He was arrested, tried, and acquitted. Yet there were many
+among us who believed that the colonel had been intentionally murdered.
+He was one of the most competent colonels in the army, but among his
+soldiers he was fearfully unpopular. He was, however, a splendid
+disciplinarian, but this was something the volunteers did not want. In
+their minds the colonel had been only a petty tyrant, and not even
+wholly loyal. With a different disposition he certainly would have been
+a distinguished soldier. He was one of the most military-looking men in
+the whole army, but friends he had none. More than once his life had
+been threatened by soldiers who regarded themselves as having been
+treated badly by him.
+
+His body was brought into camp the next morning and lay in his tent in
+state. He was given a military funeral, and the horse that was bearing
+him when he was killed was led behind his coffin.
+
+After his death numbers of the men of the regiment were indignant, when
+they found among his papers warrants and commissions intended by the
+governor for them, commissions that had never been delivered. Their
+promotions had never come about. Now they knew why.
+
+Worthington was succeeded by Colonel C. L. Matthies, one of the
+bravest, best, and most loved commanders of our army. Later Matthies was
+made a general, and at the close of the war died of wounds received in
+battle.
+
+Although I was quartermaster sergeant of the regiment, I was always
+careful that this should not keep me away from the command when enduring
+hard marches or when engagements were coming on. When in camp I kept my
+rifle in one of the ammunition wagons (of several of which I had
+charge), but if the alarm sounded my rifle was on my shoulder and I was
+the private soldier in the ranks of the company. I deserved no special
+credit for this. I was only doing my duty. We had muzzle-loading Whitney
+rifles and bayonets. The equipment and rations we carried in weight
+would have been a respectable load for a mule.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+  Iuka, the fiercest battle of the war, 217 men out of 482 of my
+    regiment are shot--The awful Rebel charge at Corinth--Moonlight on
+    the battlefield--Bushels of arms and legs--Tombstones for
+    fireplaces--One of Grant's mistakes.
+
+
+All that summer, after taking Corinth, we chased up and down the State
+of Mississippi, trying to get fair battle with the Rebel army. At last
+the chance came, and for my regiment it was an awful one--the battle of
+Iuka.
+
+The battle of Iuka took place on the 19th of September, 1862. It was
+fought by a handful of the troops of General Rosecrans against half the
+army of General Price. Grant was only a few miles away, but although
+commander-in-chief, he knew nothing of the hardest-fought battle of the
+Civil War until it was over.
+
+One morning before daylight while camped in the woods near Jacinto half
+expecting to be attacked, we heard that Price's army was in Iuka, some
+eighteen miles away, and that if we would hurry there and attack from
+one side, General Grant, with Ord's troops, would attack from another
+side. How eagerly the regiment made the forward march on that beautiful
+autumn day! The woods were in their fairest foliage, and it seemed too
+lovely a day for war and bloodshed. The bugles played occasionally as
+the men hurried along, but not a shot was fired. No noise like war fell
+on the soldiers' ears as they tramped over the beautiful country road
+toward the Tennessee River. They had time for reflection as they
+marched, and they knew now they were going to battle. There had been no
+time for letters or farewells, and each thought the other one, not
+himself, most likely to fall in the coming engagement.
+
+There were only 482 of my little regiment now marching there, hoping,
+almost praying, the enemy might only wait. How little anyone dreamed
+that before the sun set 217 of that little command would be stretched
+dead or dying among the autumn leaves!
+
+It was just two o'clock when the regiment ran on to the army of the
+enemy, lying in line right across the road close to Iuka. My own
+regiment was in the advance. Instantly it, too, was in line of battle
+across that road, and in a few minutes absolutely the fiercest little
+conflict of the war began. Our brigade was fearfully outnumbered.
+Rosecrans, had ten thousand soldiers within five miles of the
+battlefield, yet let three or four small regiments and a battery do all
+the fighting. Ten miles away, in another direction, lay General Grant
+and General Ord, with many other thousands, as silent as if paralyzed.
+An unlucky wind blew, they said, and the sound of our cannon, that was
+to have been the signal for them to attack also, was unheard by them.
+
+Charge after charge was made upon our little line, and the Eleventh Ohio
+Battery, which the regiment was protecting, was taken and retaken three
+times. There were no breastworks, yet that one little brigade of
+Hamilton's division stood there in the open and repulsed assault after
+assault. It was the Iowa, the Missouri, and the Ohio boys against the
+boys of Alabama and Mississippi, and the grass and leaves were covered
+with the bodies in blue and gray. Not Balaklava, nor the Alma, saw such
+fighting. It was a duel to the death. For hours the blue and the gray
+stood within forty yards of each other and poured in sheets of musketry.
+Every horse of the battery at the left of my regiment was killed, and
+every gunner but one or two was shot and lying among the debris. No
+battery in the whole four years' war lost so many men in so short a
+time. Antietam, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, could show nothing like it.
+Only the setting sun put an end to what was part of the time a hand to
+hand conflict. One daring Rebel was shot down and bayoneted clear
+behind the line of Company B, where he had broken through to seize the
+flag of my regiment.
+
+That night the enemy slipped away, leaving hundreds and hundreds of his
+dead and wounded on the field. With a few lanterns our men then went
+about and tried to gather up the wounded; the dead were left till
+morning. There were 782 Union men lying there in their blood that long
+night, 608 of them out of a single small brigade. While mothers and
+sisters at home were praying for the safety of these dear ones at the
+front, their spirits that night were leaving their torn bodies in the
+dark and ascending heavenward. Five of my eight messmates of the day
+before were shot. It was not a question who was dead, or wounded, but
+who was _not_. Fifteen officers of our little half regiment were dead or
+wounded. The enemy lost more than one thousand men in trying to destroy
+that single brigade and its Ohio battery.
+
+The burying party the next morning found nineteen dead Rebels lying
+together at one place. At another spot 182 Rebel corpses lay in a row
+covered by tarpaulins. The enemy had not had time to bury them.
+
+It was a principle among our generals that if a command fought well in a
+battle or got cut all to pieces, that was the particular command to be
+put at the very front in the next hard scrap. And so it was that within
+two weeks my regiment was placed outside the breastworks at Corinth, to
+wait and receive another awful assault.
+
+The night before the battle of Corinth the Fifth Iowa Regiment lay
+across the Purdy road, in the bright moonlight. I remained awake all
+night, talking with a comrade who shared my blanket with me. Poor Jimmy
+King! he survived the war only to be murdered later on a plantation in
+Mississippi. As we lay there in the wagon road, the awful losses of my
+regiment at Iuka kept us thinking there in the moonlight what would
+happen on the morrow. When morning came the firing opened, and for all
+that day the battle raged fiercely at the left and center left, we
+getting the worst of it, too. The Rebels were charging works that they
+themselves had built when they held the town during Halleck's siege.
+General Haccelman and many other of our officers had fallen. Our own
+division, though fighting some, had lost but few men. That evening an
+order came for us--Hamilton's Division--to assault the enemy's left
+flank at midnight. Before the hour came, however, the move was decided
+to be too dangerous, and we changed our position to one nearer the
+forts. All the night we lay there under the brightest moonlight I ever
+saw. Under the same quiet moonlight, and only six hundred yards away
+from us, also lay the victorious Rebel army. They believed Corinth as
+good as taken, but they had only captured our outer lines of forts. Yet
+it looked very bad for us. Every house in town was full of our wounded
+and our dead lay everywhere.
+
+Once in the night I slipped away from the bivouac and hurried to the old
+Tishimingo Hotel, to see a lieutenant of my company, who had been shot
+through the breast. Never will I forget the horrible scenes of that
+night. The town seemed full of the groans of dying men. In one large
+room of the Tishimingo House surgeons worked all the night, cutting off
+arms and legs. I could not help my friend. It was too late, for he was
+dying. "Go back to the regiment," he said, smiling, "all will be
+needed."
+
+It was a relief to me to get back into the moonlight and out of the
+horror, yet out there lay thousands of others in line, only waiting the
+daylight to be also mangled and torn like these. The moon shone so
+brightly the men in the lines, tired though they were, could scarcely
+sleep. There the thousands lay, the blue and the gray, under the same
+peaceful moon, worshiping the same God, and each praying for dear ones
+North and South they would never again see. God could not answer the
+prayers of the men in both armies that night. Had He done so, all would
+have been killed on the morrow. At early daybreak I again went to see my
+lieutenant. As I entered the building a cannonball from the enemy
+crashed through the house and killed four soldiers by the stairway. My
+friend, with many others, was being carried out to die elsewhere.
+
+It was soon full day. In one of the rooms I saw the floors, tables, and
+chairs covered with amputated limbs, some white and some broken and
+bleeding. There were simply bushels of them, and the floor was running
+blood. It was a strange, horrible sight,--but it was war. Yes, it was
+"hell." I hastened back to the lines. Nine o'clock came, and now we knew
+that the great assault was to be made. We looked for it against our own
+division, as we lay in the grass waiting. Suddenly we heard something,
+almost like a distant whirlwind. My regiment rose to its feet, fired a
+few moments at scattering Rebels in our front, and were amazed to see a
+great black column, ten thousand strong, moving like a mighty
+storm-cloud out of the woods and attacking the forts and troops at our
+left. Instantly we changed direction a little and, without further
+firing, witnessed one of the greatest assaults of any war. It was the
+storming of Fort Robinett. The cloud of Rebels we had seen divided
+itself into three columns. These recklessly advanced on the forts,
+climbing over the fallen trees and bending their heads against the awful
+storm of grape and canister from all our cannon. A perfect blaze of
+close range musketry, too, mowed them down like grass. Even a foe could
+feel pity to see brave men so cruelly slaughtered.
+
+When the assault had failed and the noise of battle was stilled, I
+hurried down in front of Robinett. My canteen was full of water and I
+pressed it to the lips of many a dying enemy--enemy no longer. Our grape
+shot had torn whole companies of men to pieces. They lay in heaps of
+dozens, even close up to the works. General Rogers, who had led a
+brigade into the hopeless pit, lay on his back, dead, with his flag in
+his hand. _He was the fifth one to die carrying that flag._ When I
+reached him some cruel one had stripped him of his boots. Another had
+taken his fine gold watch.
+
+In this attack on Corinth the brave Southerners lost 5000 wounded, and
+we buried 1423 of their dead on the battlefield. Our own loss had been
+2200 dead and wounded. That night I stood guard under an oak tree on the
+battlefield among the unburied dead. Many of the wounded, even, had not
+yet been gathered up. The moon shone as brightly as the night before,
+while thousands who had lain there under its peaceful rays before the
+battle were now again sleeping, but never to waken.
+
+Our regiment now pursued the flying Rebels with great vigor. The
+quantities of broken batteries, wagons, tents, knapsacks, guns, etc.,
+strewn along the roads behind them were immense. At the Hatchie River
+the Rebels were momentarily headed off by a division under Hurlbut that
+had hurried across from Bolivar. A seven hours' battle was fought at the
+bridge, but the Rebels got away in another direction. Possibly the best
+friend I had in the world, save my kin, was killed at that bridge. It
+was Lieutenant William Dodd, a classmate in school. His head was shot
+off by a cannonball just as his regiment was charging at the bridge.
+
+The pursuit of the enemy was being pushed with vigor when the army was
+ordered to desist and return to camp. It was an astounding order, as it
+was in our power to destroy the defeated and flying columns. That order
+was one of the mistakes of Grant's earlier days as a commander. Indeed,
+we of the rank and file had little confidence in Grant in those days. We
+reflected that at Shiloh he was miles away from the battlefield at the
+critical moment. Sherman had saved the Union army from destruction
+there. At Iuka, Grant, though commander, did not even know a battle was
+going on. At Corinth he was forty miles away, and now, when we had the
+enemy almost within our grasp, he suddenly called us back. Rosecrans
+protested. It was in vain. The order, more imperative than before, was
+repeated. It required months, and great events, to make Grant the hero
+of the army which he afterward became.
+
+This entry I find in my diary in one of those days: "Our commander of
+the district is General U. S. Grant, who took Donelson; but aside from
+that one hour's fighting, and a little fighting at Shiloh, the troops
+know little about him. Rosecrans is at present the hero of this army,
+and, with him leading it, the boys would storm Hades."
+
+With the mercury at one hundred, the dust in the roads ankle deep, and
+the whole atmosphere yellow and full of it, the regiments exhausted by
+the pursuit, and yet disgusted at our recall, slowly tramped their way
+back to Corinth. Now I visited my wounded companions in the hospital. On
+inquiry for certain ones I learned that they were dead and lying out in
+the improvised graveyard near by.
+
+For some reason the dead at Hatchie Bridge were not buried. A week after
+the battle my brother rode by there on a cavalry expedition and made the
+horrible discovery that hogs were eating up the bodies of our dead
+heroes. _That too was war._
+
+We now camped on the edge of the town and went on building still other
+and greater forts. Many of the soldiers made huts for themselves. It was
+getting cooler now, and little fireplaces were built in the huts and
+tents. Brick was scarce, and in a few instances the men used the stone
+slabs from a graveyard close at hand. It seemed vandalism, but the dead
+did not need them and the living did.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+  An unlucky campaign led by General Grant--Holly Springs burned up--The
+    first foragers--Some modern Falstaffs--Counting dead men.
+
+
+In a month's time, or by November 2, 1862, the army, reorganized, our
+division led by Quimby, and Grant in command of the whole force, started
+on that very first disastrous campaign for the rear of Vicksburg. Grant
+had some thirty thousand soldiers to march with him by way of Grand
+Junction and Holly Springs, and another thirty thousand men, under
+Sherman, he sent down the Mississippi River to attack Vicksburg from
+another direction. We marched in mud and wind and rain till nearly
+Christmas, the enemy constantly retreating before us. We made a
+tremendous supply station at Holly Springs and left it in charge of a
+garrison. There were supplies there for a hundred thousand men, besides
+a million dollars' worth of captured cotton.
+
+Just as we were confident of overtaking and destroying the enemy, we
+were stunned by the tidings that a great column of Rebel cavalry had
+dashed in behind our army. With torches and firebrands they had burned
+Holly Springs to the ground, and had destroyed all the army stores.
+There was not a potato or cracker or a pound of bacon left. How I
+remember that dark night when Van Dorn's cavalry got behind us in the
+country lanes of Mississippi! I had been started back to a hospital in
+Holly Springs, for my eyes had been inflamed for days. Just as my little
+freight train reached the suburb of what had been the town, the rear
+guard of the enemy rode out at the other side. The morning that I
+arrived there was nothing there but smoke, and ashes, and ruins, and a
+smell of coal oil over all. A million dollars' worth of our army
+supplies had been burned up in a night. The pretty town, too, was in
+ashes, and Van Dorn's bold cavalry swung their sabers in the air and
+rode away laughing. General Grant's father and mother, in the town at
+the time on their way to visit their illustrious son with the advance of
+the army, were captured, but politely paroled and left among the ruins.
+
+The loss of the town was a disgrace to the North. There was a fort
+there, solidly built of cotton bales and occupied by a colonel and a
+thousand troops. The colonel forgot what our ancestors did with cotton
+bales at New Orleans, and promptly threw up the sponge. But then Colonel
+Murphy was not General Jackson. With the loss of Holly Springs and the
+destruction of our base of supplies there was nothing for that whole
+army of Grant's to do but to trudge its weary way back to Corinth and
+Memphis, through the mud and the wind and the rain.
+
+The tragical part of that campaign was taking place at the same moment
+down by the Yazoo River, right under the guns of Vicksburg. Grant, when
+he marched out of Memphis, had sent Sherman and thirty thousand men down
+the river in steamboats to attack Vicksburg from one side while he
+should hurry along with another thirty thousand men and pound it from
+the other side. Sherman and his heroes made the awful assaults at
+Chickasaw bayou we read of, never dreaming of the fiasco that had
+befallen the main army at Holly Springs. Not one word of the news ever
+reached him--and then in swamps and bayous his soldiers waded in water
+halfway to their necks and assaulted impregnable hills and breastworks.
+Two thousand men were killed or mangled to no purpose. Some of the
+heroic fighting of the war was done in that Yazoo slaughter pen, and
+then Sherman and his crippled army withdrew in utter failure.
+
+Vicksburg was safe for awhile.
+
+My own duty in that unlucky campaign with Grant had been to search the
+country in the neighborhood of our camps and bivouacs for additional
+supplies. Many a time, with a dozen or twenty men for guards, and a
+couple of six-mule teams, we would venture miles from camp to confiscate
+bacon, flour, poultry, or whatever else a soldier could eat. On my
+return to the regiment with a wagon full of good things, the companies
+would set up a cheer for the quartermaster sergeant. The colonel always
+allowed me to choose the guards who should accompany me. Many a time our
+little squad got back to camp by the skin of their teeth, chased by
+guerrillas or some wandering band of Rebel cavalry. Our habit was, when
+we found a plantation with something to spare on it, to post sentinels
+in the lanes in every direction, while a few of us with the aid of the
+negroes loaded the wagons. If all went well, the procession, followed by
+the slaves we freed and took with us, went back to camp in state.
+Sometimes there was indecorous haste in getting home, owing to our
+sentinel firing his gun in warning of near danger. More than one of the
+boys of those venturous excursions, to this day, have not yet come back
+to camp.
+
+On one of these excursions one day we were surprised by a little party
+of rangers, but we took their leader captive, and with him a fine
+Kentucky charger and a splendid rifle. The brigade colonel presented to
+me the rifle I myself had captured, for my "bravery," he said, but the
+splendid thoroughbred he took for himself. Alas! this rifle, the
+testimonial of my adventure, was burned up when the Rebel cavalry took
+Holly Springs. I had left it there to send North some day.
+
+These excursions after food that I have described must have been the
+forerunners of Sherman's great forage parties later, on his "march to
+the sea." It was easy enough to feed an army that way, if men could be
+found to take the risk. Sherman's later forage parties were so strong
+that the risk was reduced to fun.
+
+I copy from my diary here (1862):
+
+"Now the enemy is in front of us. He is on our flank and all around us.
+It is dangerous to venture a mile from camp alone. In fact, orders are
+strict for every man and every officer to stay close to his regiment day
+or night.
+
+"On all the plantations along our way in this campaign there are signs
+of war. The cotton gins, the fences, the barns, are all gone,--burned by
+raiders of both armies, who have scouted through this same country time
+and again. The weather is often gloomy; the fenceless fields are brown
+and naked; the big houses left standing on the plantations look lone and
+desolate. There is no song of birds. The army wagons, in long trains,
+and the soldiers in great strung-out columns of blue, go over the soft
+ground across the fields, along what once was lanes and country roads,
+almost in silence. Here and there a skirmish of musketry at some creek
+crossing or at some wood is the only noise heard. This state of
+Mississippi, like the whole South, sees the desolation of war. But the
+big, white, lone houses on the deserted lawns, with their low verandas
+about them, are not wholly unoccupied. Though the arms-bearing men of
+the country are every one in the army fighting us, the women and the
+children and the slaves are still at home. These slaves desert their
+mistresses and come into the Union camps at night by hundreds, bearing
+their bundles on their heads and their pickaninnies under their arms.
+
+"As Rebel cavalry bands are rioting all around us, the strictest orders
+are given about leaving camp. But those who slipped away without leave
+the oftenest were themselves officers. Numbers of these went off almost
+nightly, to pay their devoirs to ladies whom they happened to admire at
+neighboring plantations. These women, glad enough of the compliments of
+the Federal officers, let it be very clearly understood that they were
+nevertheless true-blue Rebels. Things as to the war were simply glossed
+over in conversation, and both the lady and the officer sometimes had a
+delightful evening, even if the delight on the officer's part was in
+violation of duty. Sometimes these visits led to ridiculous
+terminations. War is not all tragedy."
+
+Again I copy from the journal of that December:
+
+"The other night three of the officers of our brigade, Captain H---- and
+Lieutenants D---- and O---- got themselves into a pretty mess by leaving
+camp to visit at a plantation. The laughable facts are these: We had
+stopped two or three days, to mend bridges over the Yocona River.
+General Grant had asked our brigade commander to report the names of
+three officers for promotion. Captain H---- and two lieutenants were
+selected. Among the private soldiers these men were not regarded as
+deserving honor. On the contrary, they were looked upon as common
+braggarts. Some politician at home, probably, had moved the wires for
+their promotion. As it happened, these three officers were the worst
+offenders of all, as to leaving camp without orders for the purpose of
+visiting Rebel ladies at neighboring plantations. Some of the staff
+heard of this and determined to unmask them. Some Rebel uniforms were
+secured from prisoners in our hands, and one dark night when the captain
+and his friends were away from camp at the home of a Mrs. S----,
+visiting, a dozen of us in disguise were sent to surround the house.
+Instantly there was a cry among the women of "guerrillas!"
+"Confederates!" "Confederates!" "Friends!" and a bonny blue Rebel flag
+was waved in the doorway. We were indeed a desperate-looking lot, but
+the women met the supposed Rebel guerrillas almost with embraces. The
+captain and his two lieutenants we pulled from under the bed by their
+heels, and threatened them with instant death. The women begged us only
+not to kill them in the house. The officers, on their knees, pleaded for
+their lives. It was agreed that they should simply give up their swords,
+be paroled, and allowed to return to camp. At headquarters the next
+morning, in explanation of the loss of their swords, they told a
+wonderful and Falstaffian tale of being overwhelmed by Van Dorn's
+guerrillas the night before, and of their miraculous escape to camp.
+That moment they were confronted with their surrendered swords and their
+signatures to their paroles. There was a fine collapse at headquarters
+that morning. The names of the three gentlemen were sent to General
+Grant the same day, I understand. But not for promotion."
+
+I had a little taste of life in the hospital that December. My eyes got
+worse. For a little time I was in a fine private home in Holly Springs,
+for the town, after its burning by Van Dorn, had been retaken by us.
+Every room in the house had its floors filled with the sick and the
+dying of both armies. Long years after that, while on shipboard
+returning from Europe, I made by chance the acquaintance of Mrs. Kate
+Sherwood Bonner, the authoress, who as a girl had lived in Holly
+Springs. We talked of the war times, and it transpired that the mansion
+where I had witnessed such distressful scenes among the dead and dying
+was her father's home.
+
+I saw General Grant's father and mother there in Holly Springs daily. At
+the capture of the town they had been taken as stated, and released, the
+father on parole.
+
+I was now sent to Memphis, as I was still in hospital. The hospital here
+was in the old Overton Hotel, which was crowded with hundreds of
+wounded. The room used as a dead house was filled every night. It was
+across the court and below my own room. I could see the corpses
+distinctly, as the window was left open. It was my habit, a strange one,
+when I awoke in the morning, to look over and count the corpses of men
+who had been carried in there while I had been sleeping. It seems now a
+ghastly business enough.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+  The laughable campaign of the war--An army floating among the tree
+    tops of the Yazoo Pass.
+
+
+In a little time, February, 1863, Grant's army was again off to try for
+Vicksburg. This time it was to go on that campaign, so laughable now,
+but romantic always, called the "Yazoo Pass expedition." We were to go
+down the Mississippi River in big steamers to Helena, and there transfer
+ourselves on to a fleet of little steamers, cut the levee into the
+overflooded country, and try floating a whole army a hundred miles
+across the plantations and swamps of Mississippi.
+
+My eyes were well again, and I was happy to join our regiment and be one
+of the aquatic throng. Just as we were getting on to the boat at Memphis
+two of my company managed to get shot by the provost guard. They had
+been full of liquor, and refused to go to the steamer. They had been
+heroes at Iuka. How unlucky now to get crippled for life in a drunken
+brawl!
+
+On the 22d of March, near Helena, my regiment went aboard the pretty
+little schooner called the _Armada_. Shortly, dozens of these small
+boats, crowded with regiments, accompanied by gunboats, were floating
+about, awaiting the order to sail through a big cut that our engineers
+had made in the river levee and get down the pass into Moon Lake. The
+Mississippi was high and raging. All the low-lying country for half a
+hundred miles was flooded till it looked like a vast sea, with forests
+of trees standing in its midst. Here and there, too, a plantation,
+higher than the surrounding country, was noticeable. The first pass into
+Moon Lake was but a mile long. But through that pass swirled and roared
+the waters of the Mississippi, so suddenly let loose by the break in the
+levee.
+
+At just four in the evening our little steamer got the order to turn out
+of the river and into the rushing waters of the pass. We would not have
+been more excited at being told to start over Niagara Falls. Our engines
+are working backward and we enter the crevasse slowly, but in five
+minutes the fearful, eddying current seized us, and our boat was whirled
+round and round like a toy skiff in a washtub. We all held our breath as
+the steamer was hurled among floating logs and against overhanging
+trees. In ten minutes the rushing torrent had carried us, backward,
+down into the little lake. Not a soul of the five hundred on board the
+boat in this crazy ride was lost. Once in the lake we stopped, and with
+amazement watched other boats, crowded with soldiers, also drift into
+the whirl and be swept down the pass. It was luck, not management, that
+half the little army was not drowned.
+
+Now for days and days our little fleet coursed its way toward Vicksburg
+among the plantations, swamps, woods, bayous, cane-brakes, creeks, and
+rivers of that inland sea. Wherever the water seemed deepest that was
+our course, but almost every hour projecting stumps and trees had to be
+sawn off under the water to allow our craft to get through. Sometimes we
+advanced only four or five miles a day. At night the boat would be tied
+to some tall sycamore. Here and there we landed at some plantation that
+seemed like an island in the flood. The negroes on the plantation,
+amazed at our coming, wondered if it was the day of Jubilee or if it was
+another Noah's flood and that these iron gunboats arks of safety.
+
+We soldiers, if not on duty pushing the boat away from trees, had
+nothing to do but sleep and eat and read. Most of the soldiers slept on
+the decks, on the guards, and on the cabin floors. Four of us had a
+little stateroom. I had with me a copy of Shakespeare, cribbed by one
+of the boys somewhere, and the Bard of Avon was never studied under
+stranger circumstances.
+
+The Yazoo Pass, though not so crazy as the crevasse we had come through,
+was nevertheless bad and dangerous. Two of our craft sank to the bottom,
+but the soldiers were saved by getting into trees. All the boats were
+torn half to pieces. One day as we pushed our way along the crooked
+streams amid the vine-covered forests we ran onto a Rebel fort built on
+a bit of dry land. In front of it were great rafts that completely
+obstructed our way. An ocean steamer was also sunk in the channel in
+front of us. To our amazement we learned that it was the _Star of the
+West_, the ship that received the first shot fired in the war of the
+Rebellion. That was when it was trying to take supplies to Fort Sumter.
+Our gunboats shelled this "Fort Greenwood" in vain, and now Rebels were
+gathering around and behind us and guerrillas were beginning to fire on
+the boats. The waters, too, might soon subside, and our fleet and army
+be unable to get back into the Mississippi. We could not go ahead.
+Suddenly the orders came to turn about and steam as fast as possible to
+a place of safety.
+
+By April 8 we had made the journey through the woods and cane-brake back
+to the pass. The picturesque farce was ended. We could now hunt some
+other road to Vicksburg. We know nothing of what the generals thought of
+this fiasco, but we private soldiers had great fun, and the long stay on
+the boats had been a rest from hard campaigning. We had not lost a man.
+A whole campaign and not a soldier lost!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+  Grant's new plan at Vicksburg--Running the Vicksburg batteries--An
+    hour and a half of horror--The batteries are passed--The most
+    important event in the war.
+
+
+The attempt on Vicksburg was not to be given up. In the spring of 1863
+the whole army moved down the Mississippi to begin one of the most noted
+campaigns of history.
+
+A real sane notion had gotten hold of Grant, and of scarcely anyone
+else. That notion was, if possible, to get across the Mississippi
+_below_ the town (Sherman had failed trying it above) and throw the
+whole army on to the fortifications at the rear. If the town's defenders
+should be bold and come out and fight us, so much the better. We wanted
+that.
+
+Soon General Grant built long stretches of wagon roads and corduroy
+bridges that ran snakelike for forty miles among the black swamps,
+cane-brakes, and lagoons on the west bank of the Mississippi River. He
+then marched half his army down these roads to a point below Vicksburg,
+below Grand Gulf, and bivouacked them on the shore of the river. The
+other half, of which my regiment was a part, remained near the river
+above the city. Possibly we were twenty-five thousand men there.
+
+One night these twenty-five thousand bivouacked along the levees of the
+great river were all in great excitement. "Coming events were casting
+their shadows before."
+
+It must have been some great event was about to happen that April night
+of 1863, for the Assistant Secretary of War was there, and General Grant
+and General Sherman were there, waiting and watching in the greatest
+suspense. What was going to happen? Some one hundred and fifty private
+soldiers were going to perform a deed that should help make American
+history. The success of a whole army and the capture of the best
+fortified city on the American continent depended on the heroism of this
+handful of private soldiers on this April night. No wonder the
+government at Washington sat by the telegraph and anxiously awaited
+every scrap of news sent from Grant's army before Vicksburg. He was to
+open the Mississippi River. That very day, almost, the government at
+Washington sent a letter urging General Grant to hurry. "In my opinion,"
+telegraphed General Halleck for the President, "_this is the most
+important operation of the war. To open the Mississippi River would be
+better than the capture of forty Richmonds._"
+
+General Grant realized the mighty things he had at stake.
+
+But what availed it to collect his soldiers there? In front of him, in
+high flood, swept the mightiest river on the continent; he had not a
+boat to cross with, and the enemy laughed and dared him from the other
+side. His fleet of steamboats was forty miles and more up the river, and
+between him and that fleet were four miles of hostile batteries strong
+enough to blow a fleet to pieces. In fact, every hill, hollow, and
+secret place above and below the city hid a dozen cannon. All the way
+from Vicksburg down to Warrentown was a fort.
+
+What could be done? Without some steamers on which to cross, the game
+was blocked, and Vicksburg, strong as Sebastopol itself, might stand
+there forever and the Mississippi River be blockaded to the end of the
+war. Two or three of Grant's ironclad gunboats had run past these awful
+batteries one night, their sides banged to pieces and their iron mail
+scooped up as if it had been made of putty. One of them was sunk. But
+these iron tubs could not serve as ferryboats for forty thousand men.
+Then, the scheme was proposed to cover some of the wooden steamboats
+with cotton bales and on a dark night try and rush them past the
+batteries. The boat captains, however, would not risk it with their own
+crews, even had they as a rule been willing, and so the commands of the
+army asked for _volunteers_ from the private soldiers. Desperate as the
+undertaking seemed, one hundred and fifty Union soldiers stepped forward
+and offered to run these steamboats past the guns. The writer was one of
+these volunteers. But too many had offered to take the risk. The
+required number was selected by lot, and the most I could do that
+historic night was to stand on the river levee in the dark and watch my
+comrades perform one of the most heroic acts of any war. It was hardly a
+secret. The whole army was excited over the desperate proposal. The
+enemy must have heard of it, and been doubly prepared to destroy us. "If
+Grant's attempt prove successful he can destroy the whole Confederate
+army, take Vicksburg, and open the Mississippi River." No wonder the
+Washington officials sat by the telegraph day and night just then
+awaiting great news.
+
+The moon was down by ten o'clock of the night of April 16. Under the
+starlight one hardly saw the dark river or the cane-brakes, swamps, and
+lagoons along its border. The whole Northern fleet lay anchored in
+silence. Grant's army too, down below, was silent and waiting. A few
+miles below us lay Vicksburg, dark, sullen, and sleeping. Not a gun was
+being fired. A few lonesome Confederate river guards floated above the
+town in rowboats watching to give the alarm at the approach of any foe
+on the water.
+
+Three mysterious looking Northern steamboats, with crews of volunteer
+soldiers on board, lay out in the middle of the Mississippi River in
+front of Milliken's Bend, a dozen miles above Vicksburg. Down in the
+dark hold of each vessel stand a dozen determined men. They have boards,
+and pressed cotton, and piles of gunny sacks beside them there, to stop
+up holes that shall be made pretty soon by the cannon of the enemy. They
+have none of war's noise and excitement to keep them up--only its
+suspense. They are helpless. If anything happens they will go to the
+bottom of the river without a word. Above the decks the pilot-houses are
+taken off and the pilot wheels are down by the bows, and the pilot will
+stand there wholly exposed. Lashed to the sides of each of the three
+little steamers are barges piled up with bales of hay and cotton. They
+look like floating breastworks. Anchored still a little further down the
+stream seven gunboats also wait in silence. They will lead these
+steamboats and try the batteries first. The boats must all move two
+hundred yards apart. That is the order.
+
+All is suspense. For a little while the night grows darker and more
+silent; the moon now is down. The thousands of soldiers standing on the
+levee waiting, and watching to see them start, almost hold their
+breath. At the boats there is no noise save the gurgling of the water as
+it grinds past the hulls of the anchored vessels. That is all the noise
+the men waiting down in the dimly lighted hulls can hear. On a little
+tug, near by, General Grant, the commander of the Western armies, waits
+and listens. The Assistant Secretary of War is at his side. In a yawl,
+farther down the stream, General Sherman ventures far out on the dark
+river to watch events. All is ready, all is suspense. Just then a
+lantern on the levee is moved slowly up and down. It is the signal to
+start. Down in Vicksburg the unexpectant enemy sleeps. Their guards out
+on the river, too, almost sleep; all is so safe. Quietly we lift anchors
+and float off with the current. Our wheels are not moving. There is a
+great bend in the river, and as we round it the river guard wakened,
+sends up a rocket, other rockets too go up all along the eastern or
+Vicksburg shore. That instant, too, a gun is fired from a neighboring
+bluff. We are discovered. "Put on all steam," calls the captain, and our
+boats move swiftly into the maelstrom of sulphur and iron, for the enemy
+opens fire vigorously. The enemy sets houses on fire all along the levee
+to illuminate the river, bonfires are lighted everywhere, and suddenly
+the whole night seems but one terrific roar of cannon. The burning
+houses make the river almost as light as day. We see the people in the
+streets of the town running and gesticulating as if all were mad; their
+men at the batteries load and fire and yell as if every shot sunk a
+steamboat. On the west side of the river the lagoons and cane-brakes
+look weird and dangerous. The sky above is black, lighted only by sparks
+from the burning houses. Down on the river it is a sheet of flame. One
+of the steamers and a few of the barges have caught fire and are burning
+up, the men escaping in life-boats and by swimming to the western shore.
+The excitement of the moment is maddening, the heavy fire appalling,
+while the musketry on the shore barks and bites at the unprotected
+pilots on the boats. Ten-inch cannon and great columbiads hurl their
+shot and shell into the cotton breastworks of the barges or through the
+rigging of the steamers. The gunboats tremble from the impact of shot
+against their sides, and at times the little steamers are caught in the
+powerful eddies of the river and are whirled three times around right in
+front of the hot firing batteries.
+
+_Five hundred and twenty-five shells and cannonballs are hurled at the
+hurrying fleet._ The flash of the guns, the light of the blazing houses,
+make the night seem a horrible tempest of lightning and thunder.
+Sherman, sitting out there alone in his yawl on the dark river, has
+witnessed awful spectacles, but this is the sight of a lifetime. "It
+was," he exclaimed, "_a picture of the terrible not often seen_." And
+amid all this roar and thunder and lightning and crash of cannonballs
+above, the men down in the holds of the boats--they are the real
+heroes--stand in the dim candle-light waiting, helpless, ignorant of
+events, and in terrible suspense, while sounds like the crash of worlds
+go on above their heads. Once some of them climb up to the hatchways and
+look out into the night. One look is enough! What a sight! The whole
+Mississippi River seems on fire, the roar of the gunboats answering the
+howling cannon on the shore, the terrific lightnings from the batteries,
+the screeching shells above the decks. It was as if hell itself were
+loose that night on the Mississippi River. For one hour and thirty
+minutes the brave men stood speechless in the holds of the boats while
+hell's hurricane went on above. They lived an age in that hour and a
+half, and yet a thousand of us in Grant's army tried to volunteer that
+we, too, might have this awful experience.
+
+Daylight saw the little fleet safe below Vicksburg, where thousands of
+soldiers welcomed it with cheers. No such deed had ever been done in the
+world before. Only one boat and some barges were lost, and only a few
+of the soldiers were hurt. The cotton bales had proved a miracle of
+defense. In a week still other steamers, though with greater loss,
+passed the batteries.
+
+We know the rest. On these same boats Grant's army would ferry across
+the Mississippi, and there on the other side fight five battles and win
+them all. Vicksburg will be surrounded and assaulted and pounded and its
+soldiers starved, till, on the nation's birthday, thirty thousand of its
+brave defenders will lay down their arms forever.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+  Crossing the Mississippi on gunboats and steamers--Battle of Port
+    Gibson--How General Grant looked to a private soldier--A boy from
+    Mississippi--Fights at Raymond--Battle of Jackson in a
+    thunderstorm--Digging his brothers' grave--Grant in battle--Saving a
+    flag--How men feel in battle--An awful spectacle--The critical
+    moment of General Grant's life--A battlefield letter from him to
+    Sherman.
+
+
+Now that the boats were below the city, we were to begin the Vicksburg
+campaign in earnest. All the troops that had been left camped on the
+river levee above at Milliken's Bend hurried by roundabout roads through
+cane-brakes and swamps to the point where our little boats had anchored
+after running past the batteries that night. Here we joined the rest of
+the army, and the ferrying of thousands of soldiers across the great
+river day and night at once commenced.
+
+My own regiment was put on to one of the iron gunboats and ferried over
+the Mississippi at a point close to Grand Gulf. Here our river navy had
+silenced the Rebel forts. It was the first gunboat I had ever seen. Its
+sides bore great scars, indentations made by the enemy's batteries on
+the preceding day. We hurried on and became a part of the reserve at the
+hot battle of Port Gibson, as we ourselves did no fighting. In a
+plantation yard, close by my regiment, lay our wounded as they were
+carried back from the front. It was a terrible sight. Many had been torn
+by shrapnel and lay there on the grass in great agony. Some seemed with
+their own hands to be trying to tear their mangled limbs from their
+bodies. The possession of all Vicksburg did not seem worth the pain and
+the agony I saw there that afternoon. That was war; and it was "hell,"
+sure enough.
+
+The next day, when the battle was over, I was at a negro cabin getting a
+loaf of corn bread. I suddenly heard a little cheering down by the
+river, where some men were putting down pontoons in place of the bridge
+burned by the enemy. I went down at once, and as I stood by the river
+bank I noticed an officer on horseback in full general's uniform.
+Suddenly he dismounted and came over to the very spot where I was
+standing. I did not know his face, but something told me it was
+Grant,--Ulysses Grant,--at that moment the hero of the Western army.
+Solid he stood, erect, about five feet eight in height, with square
+features, thin, closed lips, brown hair, brown beard, both cut short,
+and neat. "He must weigh one hundred and forty or fifty pounds. Looks
+just like the soldier he is. I think he is larger than Napoleon, but not
+much; he is not so dumpy, his legs are not so short, and his neck is not
+so short and thick. He looks like a man in earnest, and the Rebels think
+he is one."
+
+This was the first time I saw Grant. I think I still possess some of the
+feeling that came over me at that moment as I stood so near to one who
+held our lives, and possibly his country's life, in his hands. How
+little I dreamed that some day I would have the great honor of sitting
+beside him at my own table. Yet this occurred.
+
+Now he spoke, "Men, push right along; close up fast, and hurry over."
+Two or three men on mules attempted to wedge past the soldiers on the
+bridge. Grant noticed it, and quietly said, "Lieutenant, arrest those
+men and send them to the rear." Every soldier passing turned to gaze on
+him. But there was no further recognition. There was no McClellan
+begging the boys to allow him to light his cigar by theirs; no inquiring
+to what regiment that exceedingly fine marching company belonged; there
+was no Pope bullying the men for not marching faster, reproving officers
+for neglecting trivial details remembered only by martinets; there was
+no Bonaparte posturing for effect; no pointing to the pyramids, no
+calling the centuries to witness. There was no nonsense, no sentiment.
+Only a plain business man of the republic there for the one single
+purpose of getting that army across the river in the shortest time
+possible. In short, it was just plain General Grant, as he appeared on
+his way to Vicksburg. On a horse near by, and among the still mounted
+staff, sat the General's son, a bright-looking lad of perhaps eleven
+years. Fastened to his little waist by a broad yellow belt was his
+father's sword--that sword on whose clear steel was yet to be engraved
+"Vicksburg," "Spotsylvania," "The Wilderness," "Appomattox." The boy
+talked and jested with the bronzed soldiers near him, who laughingly
+inquired where we should camp that night; to which the young field
+marshal replied, "Oh, over the river."
+
+"Over the river!" Ah, that night we slept with our guns in our hands,
+and another night, and another, saw more than one of our division, and
+of my own regiment, camped over the river--in that last tenting
+ground--where the réveille was heard no more forever.
+
+My own command crossed the bridge that night by torchlight. It was a
+strange weird scene. Many of the Rebel dead--killed beyond the stream by
+our cannon before our approach--still lay at the roadside or in fields
+unburied. At one turn in the road my regiment marched close by a Rebel
+battery that had been completely destroyed. Men, horses, and all lay
+there dead in indiscriminate heaps. The face of one boy lying there
+among the horses I shall never forget. It was daylight now, the bright
+sun was just rising, when I left the ranks a moment to step aside to see
+that boy. He was lying on his back. His face was young and fair, his
+beautiful brown hair curled almost in ringlets, and his eyes, brown and
+beautiful, were wide open; his hands were across his breast. A
+cannonball had in an instant cut away the top of his head in as straight
+a line as if it had been done with a surgeon's saw. There had been no
+time for agony or pain. The boy's lips were almost in a smile. It was a
+Mississippi battery that had been torn to pieces there, and it may be
+that in a home near by a mother stood that morning praying for her boy.
+The South had such war costs as well as the North.
+
+My regiment now entered on all those rapid marches and battles in the
+rear of Vicksburg--Raymond, Jackson, Champion Hills, and the assaults on
+the breastworks about the city. For days we scarcely slept at all; it
+was hurry here and quickstep there, day or night. None of us soldiers or
+subordinates could tell the direction we were marching. We had few
+rations, little water, and almost no rest. We had left our base at the
+river, and in a large sense we were cut off and surrounded all the time.
+The capture of a Rebel scout at once changed everything. Through him
+Grant learned how hurrying divisions of the enemy were about to unite. A
+quick move could checkmate everything. Indeed, it was nothing but a
+great game of chess that was being played, only we, the moving pieces,
+had blood and life. At one time Grant's army was as likely to be
+captured as to capture. My regiment, like all the others, hurried along
+the country roads through dust that came to the shoe top. The atmosphere
+was yellow with it. The moving of a column far away could be traced by
+it. We followed it in the way that Joshua's army followed the mighty
+cloud. As we passed farms where there was something to eat the captains
+would call out to a dozen men of the line to hurry in, carry off all
+they could, and pass it over to the companies still marching. It was a
+singular looking army. So whole regiments tramped along with sides of
+bacon or sheaves of oats on the points of their bayonets. We dared not
+halt. When we bivouacked, long after dark, often it was the dust of the
+roadside. We always lay upon our arms. Sometimes there was a little
+fire, oftener there was none. The fat bacon was eaten raw.
+
+My regiment was in advance at the engagement at Raymond; also at
+Jackson. At Jackson it rained and thundered fearfully during the battle.
+A Rebel battery was on a green slope right in front of us, pouring a
+terrible shelling into us as we approached it from the Raymond road. The
+shocks of thunder so intermingled with the shocks from the guns that we
+could not tell the one from the other, and many times a sudden crash of
+thunder caused us all to drop to the ground, fearing a cannonball would
+cut its swath through the regiment. We were marching in columns of
+fours. Shortly, we formed line of battle, and in rushing to the left
+through a great cane-brake, while we were advancing in battle line under
+a fire of musketry, the order was given to lie down.
+
+We obeyed quickly. How closely, too, we hugged the ground and the
+depression made by a little brook! While I lay there it happened that my
+major (Marshall) was close behind me on horseback. He had no orders to
+dismount. I could glance back and see his face as the bullets zipped
+over our heads or past him. He sat on his horse as quiet as a statue,
+save that with his right hand he constantly twisted his mustache. He
+looked straight into the cane-brake. He was a brave man. Could the enemy
+behind the forests of cane have seen where they were firing he would not
+have lived a minute. Shortly there was roaring of cannon and quick
+charges at the other side of the town. Jackson was won.
+
+At daylight the next morning we hurried in the direction of Champion
+Hills. At our left, as we went down the road, the battlefield of the day
+before was strewn with corpses of our own men. In a few minutes the
+brave Seventeenth Regiment of Iowa had lost 80 men at this spot, out of
+350 engaged in an assault. My friend Captain Walden received honorable
+mention, among others, for gallantry in this Jackson charge. A few
+hundred yards off I noticed a man in a field quite alone, digging in the
+ground. Out of curiosity I went to him and asked what he was doing alone
+when the regiments were all hurrying away. A brown blanket covered
+something near by. He pointed to it and said that two of his brothers
+lay dead under that blanket. He was digging a grave for them. He went on
+with his work and I hurried to overtake my command. This was the 15th of
+May, 1863. I did not know it then, but shortly I was to see General
+Grant in the midst of battle. I was to see several other things, and
+feel some of them also.
+
+My situation as to the Fifth Regiment was a peculiar one; being the
+quartermaster sergeant, I belonged to no company in particular. The
+good colonel, however, knowing my love for adventure, and that I was
+never lacking in duty, allowed me to attach myself to any company I
+liked, provided only, that there was a reliable substitute performing my
+duties with the train at the rear. I had no trouble in securing such a
+substitute, usually found among the slightly wounded soldiers.
+
+Since we crossed the Mississippi I had marched and carried my rifle all
+the way,--had been in every skirmish and engagement. Sometimes I tramped
+along with my old Company B of Newton, sometimes I went with the extreme
+left of the regiment. I was no more heroic than all the others in the
+command, but I was fond of the risk and the excitement of battle. I
+would have resigned my warrant as quartermaster sergeant in a moment
+rather than miss a hard march or an engagement, let the chance be what
+it might. I think my love of adventure, and my seeking it so often away
+from my proper post of duty at the rear, was often the occasion of
+amused comment. Once when marching at the left I heard our surgeon,
+Carpenter, cry out to another officer riding beside him: "There's a
+fight to-day. Look out. The sign's sure. The quartermaster sergeant has
+got his gun."
+
+None of us private soldiers now really knew in what direction we were
+marching. We heard only that the enemy was concentrating at Edwards
+Ferry Station, between us and Big Black River. General Crocker of my
+State was now leading our division, and the magnificent General
+McPherson commanded the army corps. The night of May 15 the division
+bivouacked in the woods by the side of a road that leads from Bolton
+toward Vicksburg. We marched hard and late that day. The morning of the
+16th my regiment was up and getting breakfast long before daylight. The
+breakfast consisted of some wet dough cooked on the ends of ramrods;
+nothing more.
+
+Troops were hurrying past our bivouac by daylight. Once I went out to
+the roadside to look about a bit. It was scarcely more than early
+daylight, yet cannon could occasionally be heard in the far distance,
+something like low thunder. As I stood there watching some batteries
+hurrying along I noticed a general and his staff gallop through the
+woods, parallel with the road. They were leaping logs, brush, or
+whatever came in their way. It was General Grant, hurrying to the front.
+Shortly came the orders, "Fall in!" and we too were hurrying along that
+road toward Champion Hills. By ten o'clock the sound of the cannon fell
+thundering on our ears, and we hurried all we could, as riders came back
+saying the battle had already begun. As we approached the field the
+sound of great salvos of musketry told us the hour had surely come. The
+sound was indeed terrible.
+
+At the left of the road we passed a pond of dirty water. All who could
+broke ranks and filled canteens, knowing that in the heat of the fight
+we would need the water terribly. I not only filled my canteen, I filled
+my stomach with the yellow fluid, in order to save that in the canteen
+for a critical moment. Just then there was in front of us a terrific
+crashing, not like musketry, but more like the falling down of a
+thousand trees at once. Our brigade, a small one, was hurried into line
+of battle at the edge of an open field that sloped down a little in
+front of us and then up to a wood-covered ridge. That wood was full of
+the Rebel army. Fighting was going on to the right and left of us, and
+bullets flew into our own line, wounding some of us as we stood there
+waiting. There was an old well and curb at the immediate right of my
+regiment, and many of our boys were climbing over each other to get a
+drop of water. Soon the bullets came faster, zipping, zipping among us,
+thicker and thicker. We must have been in full view of the enemy as we
+stood there, not firing a shot. Our line stood still in terrible
+suspense, not knowing why we were put under fire without directions to
+shoot. Zip! zip! zip! came the Rebel bullets, and now and then a boy in
+blue would groan, strike his hand to a wounded limb or arm, drop his gun
+and fall to the rear; or perhaps he fell in his tracks dead, without
+uttering a word. We too, who saw it, uttered no word, but watched
+steadily, anxiously at the front.
+
+Then General Grant himself rode up behind us, and so close to the spot
+where I stood, that I could have heard his voice. He leaned against his
+little bay horse, had the inevitable cigar in his mouth, and was calm as
+a statue. Possibly smoking so much tranquillized his nerves a little and
+aided in producing calmness. Still, Grant was calm everywhere; but he
+also smoked everywhere. Be that as it may, it required very solid
+courage to stand there quietly behind that line at that moment. For my
+own part, I was in no agreeable state of mind. In short, I might be
+killed there at any moment, I thought, and I confess to having been
+nervous and alarmed. Every man in the line near me was looking serious,
+though determined. We had no reckless fools near us, whooping for blood.
+Once a badly wounded man was carried by the litter-bearers--the drummers
+of my regiment--close to the spot where the General stood. He gave a
+pitying glance at the man, I thought,--I was not twenty feet away,--but
+he neither spoke nor stirred. Then I heard an officer say, "We are going
+to charge." It seems that our troops in front of us in the woods had
+been sadly repulsed, and now our division was to rush in and fight in
+their stead, and the commander-in-chief was there to witness our
+assault. Two or three of us, near each other, expressed dissatisfaction
+that the commander of an army in battle should expose himself, as
+General Grant was doing at that moment. When staff officers came up to
+him, he gave orders in low tones, and they would ride away. One of them,
+listening to him, glanced over our heads toward the Rebels awhile,
+looked very grave, and gave some mysterious nods. The colonel who was
+about to lead us also came to the General's side a moment. He, too,
+listened, looked, and gave some mysterious nods. Something was about to
+happen.
+
+"My time has probably come now," I said to myself, and with a little bit
+of disgust I thought of the utter uselessness of being killed there
+without even firing a shot in self-defense. The suspense, the anxiety,
+was indeed becoming fearfully intense. Soon General Grant quietly
+climbed upon his horse, looked at us once, and as quietly rode away.
+Then the colonel came along the line with a word to each officer. As he
+came near me he called me from the ranks and said: "I want you to act
+as sergeant-major of the regiment in this battle." I was surprised, but
+indeed very proud of this mark of confidence in me. "Hurry to the left,"
+he continued. "Order the men to fix bayonets--quick!" I ran as told,
+shouting at the top of my voice, "Fix bayonets! fix bayonets!" I was not
+quite to the left, when I heard other voices yelling, "Forward! quick!
+double quick! forward!" and the line was already on the run toward the
+Rebels. I kept up my shouting, "Fix bayonets!" for by some blunder the
+order had not been given in time, and now the men were trying to get
+their bayonets in place while running. We were met in a minute by a
+storm of bullets from the wood, but the lines in blue kept steadily on,
+as would a storm of wind and cloud moving among the tree-tops. Now we
+met almost whole companies of wounded, defeated men from the other
+division, hurrying by us, and they held up their bleeding and mangled
+hands to show us they had not been cowards. They had lost twelve hundred
+men on the spot we were about to occupy. Some of them were laughing
+even, and yelling at us: "Wade in and give them hell." We were wading in
+faster than I am telling the story.
+
+On the edge of a low ridge we saw a solid wall of men in gray, their
+muskets at their shoulders blazing into our faces and their batteries
+of artillery roaring as if it were the end of the world. Bravely they
+stood there. They seemed little over a hundred yards away. There was no
+charging further by our line. We halted, the two lines stood still, and
+for over an hour we loaded our guns and killed each other as fast as we
+could. The firing and the noise were simply appalling. Now, I was not
+scared. The first shot I fired seemed to take all my fear away and gave
+me courage enough to calmly load my musket at the muzzle and fire it
+forty times. Others, with more cartridges, fired possibly oftener still.
+Some of the regiments in that bloody line were resupplied with
+cartridges from the boxes of the dead. In a moment I saw Captain Lindsey
+throw up his arms, spring upward and fall dead in his tracks. Corporal
+McCully was struck in the face by a shell. The blood covered him all
+over, but he kept on firing. Lieutenant Darling dropped dead, and other
+officers near me fell wounded.
+
+I could not see far to left or right, the smoke of battle was covering
+everything. I saw bodies of our men lying near me without knowing who
+they were, though some of them were my messmates in the morning. The
+Rebels in front we could not see at all. We simply fired at their lines
+by guess, and occasionally the blaze of their guns showed exactly where
+they stood. They kept their line like a wall of fire. When I fired my
+first shot I had resolved to aim at somebody or something as long as I
+could see, and a dozen times I tried to bring down an officer I dimly
+saw on a gray horse before me. Pretty soon a musket ball struck me fair
+in the breast. "I am dead, now," I said, almost aloud. It felt as if
+someone had struck me with a club. I stepped back a few paces and sat
+down on a log to finish up with the world. Other wounded men were there,
+covered with blood, and some were lying by me dead. I spoke to no one.
+It would have been useless; thunder could scarcely have been heard at
+that moment. My emotions I have almost forgotten. I remember only that
+something said to me, "It is honorable to die so." I had not a thought
+of friends, or of home, or of religion. The stupendous things going on
+around me filled my mind. On getting my breath a little I found I was
+not hurt at all,--simply stunned; the obliquely-fired bullet had struck
+the heavy leather of my cartridge belt and glanced away. I picked up my
+gun, stepped back into the line of battle, and in a moment was shot
+through the hand. The wound did not hurt; I was too excited for that.
+
+The awful roar of battle now grew more terrific, if possible. I wonder
+that a man on either side was left alive. Biting the ends off my
+cartridges, my mouth was filled with gunpowder; the thirst was
+intolerable. Every soldier's face was black as a negro's, and, with
+some, blood from wounds trickled down over the blackness, giving them a
+horrible look. Once a boy from another part of the line to our left ran
+up to me crying out: "My regiment is gone! what shall I do?"
+
+There was now a little moment's lull in the howling noise; something was
+going on. "Blaze away right here," I said to the boy, and he commenced
+firing like a veteran. Then I heard one of our own line cry, "My God,
+they're flanking us!" I looked to where the boy had come from. His
+regiment had indeed given way. The Rebels had poured through the gap and
+were already firing into our rear and yelling to us to surrender. In a
+moment we would be surrounded. It was surrender or try to get back past
+them. I ran like a racehorse,--so did the left of the regiment, amid a
+storm of bullets and yells and curses. I saved my musket, anyway. I
+think all did that,--but that half-mile race through a hot Mississippi
+sun, with bullets and cannonballs plowing the fields behind us, will
+never be forgotten. My lungs seemed to be burning up. Once I saw our
+regimental flag lying by a log, the color-bearer wounded or dead. I
+cried to a comrade flying near me, "Duncan Teter, it is a shame--the
+Fifth Iowa running."
+
+Only the day before Teter had been reduced to the ranks for some offense
+or another. He picked up the flag and with a great oath dared me to stop
+and defend it. For a moment we two tried to rally to the flag the men
+who were running by. We might as well have yelled to a Kansas cyclone.
+Then Captain John Tait, rushing by, saw us, stopped, and, recognizing
+the brave deed of Corporal Teter, promoted him on the spot. But the
+oncoming storm was irresistible, and, carrying the flag, we all again
+hurried rearward. We had scarcely passed the spot where I had seen Grant
+mount his horse before the charge when a whole line of Union cannon,
+loaded to the muzzle with grape-shot and canister, opened on the howling
+mob that was pursuing us. The Rebels instantly halted, and now again it
+seemed our turn. A few minutes rest for breath and our re-formed lines
+once more dashed into the woods. In half an hour the battle of Champion
+Hills was won, and the victorious Union army was shortly in a position
+to compel the surrender of the key to the Mississippi River. Grant's
+crown of immortality was won, and the jewel that shone most brightly in
+it was set there by the blood of the men of Champion Hills. Had that
+important battle failed, Grant's army, not Pemberton's, would have
+become prisoners of war. Where then would have been Vicksburg,
+Spotsylvania, Richmond, Appomattox?
+
+Six thousand blue- and gray-coated men were lying there in the woods,
+dead or wounded, when the last gun of Champion Hills was fired. Some of
+the trees on the battlefield were tall magnolias, and many of their
+limbs were shot away. The trees were in full bloom, their beautiful
+blossoms contrasting with the horrible scene of battle. Besides killing
+and wounding three thousand of the enemy, we had also captured thirty
+cannon and three thousand prisoners.
+
+When the troops went off into the road to start in pursuit of the flying
+enemy, I searched over the battlefield for my best friend, poor Captain
+Poag, with whom I had talked of our Northern homes only the night
+before. He lay dead among the leaves, a bullet hole in his forehead.
+Somebody buried him, but I never saw his grave. Another friend I found
+dying. He begged me only to place him against a tree, and with leaves to
+shut the burning sun away from his face. While I was doing this I heard
+the groaning of a Rebel officer, who lay helpless in a little ditch. He
+called to me to lift him out, as he was shot through both thighs, and
+suffering terribly. "Yes," I said, "as soon as I get my friend here
+arranged a little comfortably." His reply was pathetic. "Yes, that's
+right; help your own first." I had not meant it so. I instantly got to
+him and, with the aid of a comrade, pulled him out of the ditch. He
+thanked me and told me he was a lieutenant colonel, and had been shot
+while riding in front of the spot where he lay. I eased his position as
+best I could, but all that night, with many another wounded soldier,
+blue and gray, he was left on the desolate battlefield.
+
+Now I realized how terrible the fire had been about us,--for some
+comrades counted two hundred bullet marks on a single oak tree within a
+few feet of where the left of the regiment had stood loading and firing
+that awful hour and a half. Most of the bullets had been fired too high,
+else we had all been killed. Near by lay the remains of a Rebel battery.
+Every horse and most of the cannoneers lay dead in a heap, the caissons
+and the gun carriages torn to pieces by our artillery. Never in any
+battle had I seen such a picture of complete annihilation of men,
+animals, and material as was the wreck of this battery, once the pride
+of some Southern town--its young men, the loved ones of Southern homes,
+lying there dead among their horses. That was war!
+
+Some weeks after this battle, and after Vicksburg had been won, my
+regiment was marched in pursuit of Joe Johnston, and we recrossed this
+same battlefield. We reached it in the night and bivouacked on the very
+spot where we had fought. It was a strange happening. Our sensations
+were very unusual, for we realized that all about us there in the woods
+were the graves of our buried comrades and the still unburied bones of
+many of our foes. Save an occasional hooting owl the woods were sad and
+silent. Before we lay down in the leaves to sleep the glee club of
+Company B sang that plaintive song, "We're Tenting To-night on the Old
+Camp Ground." Never was a song sung under sadder circumstances. All the
+night a terrible odor filled the bivouac. When daylight came one of the
+boys came to our company and said, "Go over to that hollow, and you will
+see hell." Some of us went. We looked but once. Dante himself never
+conjured anything so horrible as the reality before us. After the battle
+the Rebels in their haste had tossed hundreds of their dead into this
+little ravine and slightly covered them over with earth, but the rains
+had come, and the earth was washed away, and there stood or lay hundreds
+of half-decayed corpses. Some were grinning skeletons, some were
+headless, some armless, some had their clothes torn away, and some were
+mangled by dogs and wolves. The horror of that spectacle followed us
+for weeks. That, too, was war!
+
+I have written this random but true sketch of personal recollections of
+a severe battle because it may help young men who are anxious for
+adventure and war, as I was, to first realize what war really is. My
+experiences probably were the same as hundreds of others in that same
+battle. I only tell of what was nearest me. A third of my comrades who
+entered this fight were lost. Other Iowa and other Western regiments
+suffered equally or more. General Hovey's division had a third of its
+number slain. I have been in what history pronounces greater battles
+than Champion Hills, but only once did I ever see two lines of blue and
+gray stand close together and fire into each other's faces for an hour
+and a half. I think the courage of the private soldiers, standing in
+that line of fire for that awful hour and a half, gave us Vicksburg,
+made Grant immortal as a soldier, and helped to save this country.
+
+But I must return to that afternoon of the battle. All that could be
+assembled of our men gathered in line in a road near the field. It was
+nearly dark. Sergeant Campbell walked about, making a list of the dead
+and wounded of Company B. As I was not now on the company rolls, being
+quartermaster sergeant, my name was not put down as one of the wounded.
+Nor, seeing how many were sadly torn to pieces, did I think my wound
+worth reporting. Shortly General Grant passed us in the road. Knowing
+well how the regiment had fought in the battle, he rode to where our
+colors hung over a stack of muskets and saluted them. We all jumped to
+our feet and cheered. He spoke a few words to the colonel and rode on
+into the darkness. That night we marched ahead, and in the morning
+bivouacked in the woods as a reserve for troops fighting at the Black
+River bridge. _There it was that Grant reached the crisis of his
+career._ While sitting on his horse waiting to witness a charge by
+Lawler's brigade, a staff officer overtook him, bringing a peremptory
+order from Washington to _abandon the campaign_ and take his army to
+Port Hudson to help General Banks. That moment Grant glanced to the
+right of his lines and saw a dashing officer in his shirt sleeves
+suddenly come out of a cluster of woods, leading his brigade to the
+assault. It was General Lawler, and in five minutes the Rebel
+breastworks were carried, the enemy in flight or drowning in the rapid
+river. Then Grant turned to the staff officer and simply said, "_See
+that charge! I think it is too late to abandon this campaign._" The
+movements that were to make him immortal went on. Had that order of
+Halleck's, written of course without knowledge of the recent victories,
+been followed, Banks, and not Grant, would have been first commander in
+the West. Had Lawler's charge failed just then and the battle been lost,
+Grant could have had no excuse for not obeying the order that staff
+officer held in his hand, directing him to abandon what turned out to be
+one of the great campaigns of history. While sitting there in his saddle
+at the close of that charge, General Grant wrote a little note in
+pencil, the original of which is among my treasured souvenirs of the
+war:
+
+    "DEAR GENERAL: Lawler's brigade stormed the enemy's works a few
+    minutes since; carried them, capturing from two thousand to three
+    thousand prisoners, ten guns, so far as heard from, and probably
+    more will be found. The enemy have fired both bridges. A. J. Smith
+    captured ten guns this morning, with teams, men, and ammunition. I
+    send you a note from Colonel Wright.
+
+    "Yours,
+    "U. S. GRANT, M. G.
+
+    "TO MAJOR GENERAL SHERMAN."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+  Assaults on the walls of Vicksburg--Logan in battle--An army mule--A
+    promotion under the guns of Vicksburg--A storm of iron hail at
+    Vicksburg--The Vicksburg clock--The town surrenders--The glad
+    news--Reading my first order to the regiment--My regiment put on
+    guard in the captured city--Eight days' furlough in four years of
+    war.
+
+
+The next morning (the 18th) my regiment crossed the pontoon bridge over
+the Big Black and marched eight miles further toward Vicksburg. Now we
+knew we were getting close to the Richmond of the West. As we crossed
+the Black River we gazed with curiosity at the half-burned bridge from
+which so many unfortunates had been hurled into the water by our
+artillery the day before. After Lawler's charge thousands had tried to
+get over the stream by the trestle-work and bridge, or by swimming.
+General Osterhaus, seeing the fugitives from a high point where he
+stood, cried out to his batteries: "Now, men, is the time to give them
+hell." Twenty cannon instantly hurled their iron missiles at the bridge,
+and the flying soldiers fell to the ground or into the foaming river,
+almost by hundreds. "Lost at Black River," was the only message that
+ever reached the home of many a Southern soldier of that day.
+
+On the 19th, at two o'clock, a terrible assault was made by the army on
+the walls of Vicksburg. My own regiment, still in McPherson's corps, lay
+close to the Jackson wagon road and under a tremendous thundering of the
+enemy's artillery. We suffered little, however. Once I was ordered to
+help some men build sheds of brush for the wounded. This was in a ravine
+behind us. In an hour the work was done, and as I crept up the slope to
+get forward to my regiment again I heard the loud voice of some officer
+on horseback. It was General John A. Logan. The enemy's artillery was
+sweeping the field at this point, but I could still hear Logan's voice
+above the battle, cheering a number of soldiers that were near. "We have
+taken this fort and we have taken that," he cried in tones that were
+simply stentorian. "We are giving them hell everywhere." He was in full
+uniform, his long black hair swept his shoulders, his eyes flashed fire,
+he seemed the incarnation of the reckless, fearless soldier. He must
+have thought cannonballs would not hurt him. For five minutes, perhaps,
+I stood in a little dip in the ground, comparatively protected, while
+he rode up and down under a storm of cannonballs, calling at the top of
+his warrior's voice. I expected every moment to see him drop from his
+horse, but nothing happened, and I went on to the line where all our men
+were closely hugging the ground. Soon I, too, was stretched on the
+ground, making myself as thin as I could.
+
+On the 20th we advanced still closer to the frowning works. It was only
+a thousand yards to the forts of Vicksburg. We moved up in the darkness
+that night. I think no one knew how close we were being taken to the
+enemy. We lay down in line of battle and in the night our line was moved
+a little. When daylight came my regiment was no little astonished to
+find that we were on an open place in full view of the enemy. A comrade
+and I rose from the ground and commenced our toilet, by pouring water
+into each other's hands from our canteens. Almost at that moment the
+Rebels had caught sight of our men lying there in long lines so close to
+them, and instantly commenced throwing shells at us. My friend and I
+left our morning toilet uncompleted and, seizing our rifles, we all
+stood in line waiting. We could see the flags of the enemy above the
+forts distinctly. With a glass the gunners could be seen at their guns,
+hurling shot and shell at us. We were in a perilous and helpless
+position. We were also very tired and hungry, for we had had nothing
+whatever to eat. But here we stayed, and by the next morning our
+skirmishers had advanced so close to the Vicksburg forts that the Rebel
+gunners could reach us but little. Our gunboats too, down in the river
+now commenced hurling mighty bombs and balls into the city.
+
+On the morning of the 22d of May all the batteries of the army and the
+big guns of the river fleet bombarded the city for an hour, and under
+the fog and the smoke of the battle the infantry advanced to assault the
+works. It was a perilous undertaking. The day was fearfully hot; the
+forts, ten feet high, were many and powerful; the ditches in front of
+them were seven feet deep. That made seventeen feet to climb in the face
+of musketry. In battle line, my regiment ran down into the ravines in
+front and then up the opposite slope to the smoking breastwork.
+
+The colonel had ordered me to fasten two ammunition boxes across a mule
+and follow the regiment into the assault. I was to lead my mule. A
+soldier with a bush was to beat him from behind, so as to hurry him over
+an exposed bit of ground at our front. The moment my mule appeared in
+full sight of the enemy the bullets commenced whizzing past us. The
+mule, true to his ancestral instinct, commenced pulling backward.
+Yelling and pounding and pulling helped none at all. Two or three
+bullets struck the boxes on his back, and before we had pulled him half
+across he braced himself, held his ears back, and stood stock still.
+That moment the bridle came off. My assistant dodged back to our rifle
+pit and I hurried down to the ravine in front. The mule, too, as luck
+would have it, also ran now,--ran down into the ravine beside me, right
+where he was wanted. I tied him to a little bush and, awful as the
+situation about me was, I almost laughed to see the antics of that
+animal's ears as the bullets whizzed past him.
+
+My regiment was all lying against the hill close up to the fort. In
+front of them was the ditch seven feet deep, beyond them an armed fort
+ten feet high, emitting a constant blaze of cannon and musketry. The sun
+was broiling hot. I crept along the line of the regiment and gave
+ammunition to every company; then I crept back a little to where my mule
+was still alive and his ears still at their antics. Lying there in the
+line beside the boys, roasting in the sun and suffering from the
+musketry in front, was our brave Colonel Boomer, leading the brigade. He
+asked me once what I was doing, and, when I told him, he gave me some
+compliments in a kind, but sad, low tone. Now I saw a company of men
+creep by me, dragging little ladders in their hands. They were to make a
+rush and throw these ladders across the ditch of the forts for the
+assaulters to cross on. They were all volunteers for a work that seemed
+sure death. I looked in each hero's face as he passed me, knowing almost
+that he would be dead in a few minutes. Scarcely a dozen of them
+returned alive. My regiment, with the rest of the assaulters, was simply
+being shot to pieces without a hope of getting into the forts. We fell
+back under the smoke of the battle as best we could, only to be led into
+an assault at another point. McClernand had sent Grant word that he had
+taken a fort on our left. He wanted help to hold it.
+
+Our division, now led by Quimby, was double quicked to the next place of
+assault. I saved my mule. Again I strapped two ammunition boxes over his
+back and followed the regiment. This time I did not risk my mule so
+close in the battle, but took all the cartridges I could carry in my
+arms and went to the left of the regiment. Once I saw a body lying on
+the grass by me, with a handkerchief over the face. I went up and
+looked. It was our own Colonel Boomer, who had spoken so kindly to me in
+the morning. A useless charge had already been made by the brigade and
+he, with many brave men, was dead. Some of my own company lay dead there
+too. One of them had come from Iowa and joined his brother in the
+company that very morning. All the assaulting of the 22d of May and all
+the sacrifice of life had been for nothing. Vicksburg was not taken.
+
+Now commenced the regular siege of the city. We hid ourselves behind
+ridges, in hollows, and in holes in the ground, as best we could.
+Communication with our gunboats on the Yazoo was opened, and we had
+plenty to eat and ammunition enough to bombard a dozen cities. Then the
+bombardment commenced indeed, and lasted to the end, forty-four days. We
+often threw three hundred cannonballs and shells a day into the city.
+The whole Rebel army was also hidden in holes and hollows. All the
+people of Vicksburg lived in caves at the sides of the hills or along
+the bluffs of the river. Their homes now were like swallows' nests, with
+small entrances in the face of hills and bluffs and big, dug-out
+chambers inside. It was a strange life. With the eternal hail of cannon
+over them day and night, and starvation a familiar figure to them, it
+must have been a horrible one.
+
+Now we advanced our rifle pits and trenches and mines close up to the
+Rebel forts, though our main lines lay in the ravines and on the ridge
+a few hundred feet farther back. As for me, when not looking after the
+ammunition, a trifling duty now, I was in the trenches with the others.
+
+One morning when out there at the front among our riflemen, who were
+forever blazing day and night at every Rebel fort and rifle pit, I
+noticed our good Colonel Matthies creeping along the trench to where I
+was. He had a package of brown paper in his hand. Imagine my surprise
+and pride to have him come to me and say: "Sergeant, this officer's sash
+is yours." Then he announced my appointment as adjutant of the regiment.
+He had been made a general now, and would soon leave for his new
+command. This sash was one that he had worn and honored on many a
+battlefield. Is it any wonder that now, after the long and perilous
+years, it is preserved by me as a souvenir of honor? Soon after, I went
+to a sutler's store on the Yazoo River to buy a sword and uniform. In
+those days swords were not given to officers by committees in dress
+coats, until they had been earned. This little trip to get my sword
+almost cost me my life. My path to the river, six miles away, lay partly
+along a ridge and partly close to an empty Rebel fort. This fort showed
+scarcely any signs of having ever been used. I stayed all night with
+the sutler, whom I knew very well, and at noon on a hot day started, on
+my big yellow government horse, to go back to my regiment. My sword was
+buckled on me and my new uniform was tied in a bundle on my saddle-bow.
+It was too hot to ride fast, and my horse almost slept as he slowly
+carried me close by the seemingly abandoned fort. Suddenly there was a
+crash and a whole volley of musketry rattled about my ears. My poor
+horse fell dead. It was a quick awakening, but I managed to pull my
+bundle from the saddle-bow and to escape into a ravine where our own
+troops lay. There I learned that the fort had been occupied by the
+Rebels in the night, while I was with the sutler. It was a close call
+for me. One of the boys declared he could save my saddle and bridle.
+"Take them as a present," I said, "if you can get them." He crept up to
+where my dead horse lay, and as he rose to his feet to undo the saddle
+another volley from the fort hastened him to the ravine. I laughed. "If
+your saddle and bridle were made of gold and silver," he shouted at me
+as he ran back, "I wouldn't try it again."
+
+Slowly and without perceptible advance the siege went on. The little
+battery that my regiment had saved at Iuka was still with us and behind
+some breastworks at our immediate right. It was no uncommon thing to
+see even Grant himself come along and stop and watch Captain Sears' guns
+knock the dirt up from some fort in front of us. One day this battery
+wounded a man who was running between two Rebel breastworks. The enemy
+tried to secure his body, but every soul that showed himself for an
+instant was shot by our riflemen. For half an hour this shooting over
+one poor man's body was kept up, until it seemed that a battle was
+taking place.
+
+Now our lines were so close together that our pickets often had a cup of
+coffee or a chew of tobacco with the Rebel pickets at night. Drummer
+Bain, of my company, had a brother among the soldiers inside Vicksburg.
+One night he met him at the picket line, and together they walked all
+through the beleagured town. But such things were dangerous business and
+had to be kept very quiet. The weather was now very warm and fine, some
+of the nights clear moonlight, and when the guns had stopped their
+roaring many a time in the quiet night we heard the bell clock on the
+Vicksburg Court House measuring out the hours. It is said that this
+clock never stopped for an instant in all the siege, nor under the
+hundred cannon that rained iron hail into the town. At night, too, the
+big mortars from our fleet some miles from us tossed mighty bombs into
+the air, that sailed like blazing comets and fell at last among the
+people hidden in their caves.
+
+One day Governor Kirkwood of Iowa visited our regiment and made a speech
+to us in a hollow back of our line. We cheered, and the Rebels, hearing
+us and knowing we must be assembled in masses, hurled a hundred
+cannonballs and shells over our heads, yet I think few were hurt. This
+was the 3d of June. Every night that we lay there on the line we went to
+sleep fearing to be waked by an attack from the army of Rebels under
+Johnston, now assembled at our rear. This was the force we most feared,
+not the army we had penned up in Vicksburg. Nevertheless, the batteries
+in front of us gave us enough to do to prevent any ennui on our part. On
+the 15th of June the enemy got one big gun in a position to rake from
+our left the ravine in which my regiment was lying. We all stuck close
+to our little caves on the ridge side, and few got hurt. In the meantime
+we were working day and night putting more breastworks in front of us,
+though we were now but four hundred yards away from the Rebel lines.
+Here, as many times elsewhere, I copy from my diary. "Last night, the
+16th, the major of our regiment, Marshall, took two hundred men and
+worked all night digging new ditches and building breastworks. It was
+rainy and muddy. The Rebels heard us at the work and in the darkness
+slipped up and captured a few men. Some of the enemy, however, also got
+taken in. This is the kind of work that is going on every night until
+daybreak, and then we fire bullets all the day into the enemy's lines,
+to prevent their repairing their forts. The cannonading and the rifle
+shooting never cease. The roar is simply incessant, and yet when off
+duty we sleep like newborn babes.
+
+"All the region we are in is hills and ravines, brush and cane-brake,
+with here and there a little cotton field. Nature defends Vicksburg more
+than a dozen armies could. She has built scores of positions around the
+town strong as anything at Sevastapol."
+
+The rumors kept coming of a purposed attack on our rear. On the 20th of
+June, at four o'clock in the morning, all the cannon on Grant's lines
+and all the cannon on the gunboats opened fire on the town and thundered
+at it for six mortal hours. They must have been awful hours for the
+people inside. No such cannonading ever took place on the continent
+before or since. We private soldiers did not know the exact object of
+this fearful bombardment. The Rebels probably lay in battle line,
+expecting an assault, and must have suffered greatly.
+
+In the night of the 22d of June, at midnight, rumors again came of a
+great Rebel army marching on our rear. It was a beautiful moonlight
+night, and my regiment, together with whole divisions of the army,
+received orders to hurry back toward Black River, where cavalry
+skirmishing had taken place. No battle came on, but for two days we lay
+in line of battle, or else built breastworks for defense.
+
+On the 3d of July, as we were bivouacked in a little wood, news came
+that the whole Rebel army in Vicksburg had prepared to surrender the
+next day, the Nation's jubilee day. Instantly the regiment was ordered
+to fall in. I had no little pride in reading to the men the dispatch
+from General Grant announcing the great news. It was the first order I
+had ever read to the regiment as its adjutant, and its great importance
+gratified me much. The whole command acted as if they were drunken or
+had suddenly lost their minds. Privates and officers shook hands and
+laughed and wept, while majors and colonels turned somersaults on the
+grass. It was indeed a great moment to us all. Twenty-seven thousand
+men, with twenty-four generals and one hundred and eighty cannon, was a
+great capture. We all knew we had made history on that day.
+
+Now the whole Rebel army passed out along the roads where we lay. I sat
+on a rail fence near our bivouac and watched the host go by. The
+officers all looked depressed, but the soldiers seemed glad the suspense
+and danger were over and that now they could have enough to eat. Our
+regiment freely divided with them all we had.
+
+"After a few days pursuit of Johnston's army at our rear (now suddenly
+our front), my regiment is ordered into Vicksburg. We pass in over the
+breastworks that had been so terrible to us a few days before. Looking
+at them, I wonder at our hardihood in assaulting them. It would be hard
+to climb through these ditches and into these forts even were no cannon
+and no deadly muskets behind them.
+
+"My regiment is put on duty as a city guard. It now seems strange enough
+to be guarding the very town and the very forts we had so recently been
+assaulting. There are other troops here, but the Fifth Iowa is the guard
+proper. We find the town badly battered up, with terrible signs of war
+everywhere. There, too, were the graves of the dead and brave defenders.
+If wrong, they still had been brave men." Years afterward, a shaft was
+put up to their memory, and on it I read these words:
+
+    "We care not whence they came,
+       Dear in their lifeless clay,
+     Whether unknown, or known to fame,
+     Their cause and country's still the same,
+       They died, and they wore the gray."
+
+The weather continued hot while we were there guarding the town, and the
+place was very sickly; many citizens and very many colored soldiers
+died. It was pitiable to see how little people cared, even our own
+soldiers, whether these poor negro soldiers died or lived. Our own
+regiment suffered little, yet on July 28 seventy were in the hospital.
+We camped at Randolph and Locust streets, and spite of the mercury's
+being 100 degrees in the shade, had pleasant soldier times. I mounted
+the guard every morning and then spent most of the day reading to the
+colonel, who was sick.
+
+In September I secured a leave of absence to go North. For the only time
+during the four years' war I visited my home. I was there but eight
+days, half of my time having been lost by the steamer I was on sticking
+on sandbars.
+
+I saw strange sights in the North in those few days--women and children
+and old men reaping the fields; home guards training at every village;
+cripples and hospitals everywhere. Yet in spite of war prosperity was
+blessing the North.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+  Sherman's army floats across the Tennessee River at
+    midnight--Washington at the Delaware nothing compared to this--We
+    assault Missionary Ridge--An awful battle--My capture.
+
+
+On my return from my home to my regiment I found it had been transported
+to Memphis, where, as a part of General Sherman's army corps, we were
+now to make a forced march to relieve Rosecrans' army at Chattanooga.
+Chickamauga had been lost. The Union army lying under Lookout Mountain
+was starving and its destruction almost certain. We made now the march
+of four hundred miles from the Tennessee River, at Florence, in twenty
+days, without incident. On the 22d of November, 1863, we beheld the
+heights of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge.
+
+November 23, 1863, and the great battle of Chattanooga was about to
+begin. The victorious Rebel army, seventy-five thousand strong, lay
+intrenched along the heights of Missionary Ridge and on top of Lookout
+Mountain. My regiment was in Sherman's corps that had just hurried
+across from Memphis. We had marched twenty miles a day. Now this corps
+was to form the left of Grant's forces, cross a deep river in the
+darkness, and assault the nearly inaccessible position of Bragg's army.
+That night we lay in bivouac in the woods close by the Tennessee River.
+We very well knew that 116 rude pontoon boats had been built for us and
+were lying hidden in a creek near by. We had almost no rations for the
+army. As for the horses and mules, they had already starved to death by
+the thousands, and were lying around everywhere. Rosecran's army had
+been virtually besieged, and was about to starve or surrender when Grant
+came on to the ground and took command. When Sherman's corps got up it
+was decided to stake all on a great battle. If defeated, we should
+probably all be lost. All the men in Sherman's corps who were to make
+the first great assault realized that, and they realized also the danger
+we were now to encounter by attempting to cross that rapid river in the
+night.
+
+Midnight came and all were still awake, though quiet in the bivouac. At
+two o'clock we heard some quiet splashing in the water. It was the sound
+of muffled oars. The boats had come for us. Every man seized his rifle,
+for we knew what was coming next. "Quietly, boys, fall in quietly," said
+the captains. Spades were handed to many of us. We did not ask for
+what, as we knew too well. Quietly, two by two, we slipped down to the
+water's edge and stepped into the rude flatboats that waited there. "Be
+prompt as you can, boys; there's room for thirty in a boat," said a tall
+man in a long waterproof coat who stood on the bank near us in the
+darkness. Few of us had ever before heard the voice of our beloved
+commander. Sherman's kind words gave us all cheer, and his personal
+presence, his sharing the danger we were about to undertake, gave us
+confidence.
+
+In a quarter of an hour a thousand of us were out in the middle of the
+river afloat in the darkness. Silent we sat there, our rifles and our
+spades across our knees. There was no sound but the swashing of the
+water against the boats. We had strange feelings, the chief of which was
+probably the thought: Would the enemy on the opposite bank fire into us
+and drown us all? Every moment we expected a flash of musketry or a roar
+of cannon. We did not know that a ruse had been played on the pickets on
+the other side; that a boatload of our soldiers had crossed farther up
+and in the darkness caught every one of them without firing a shot. One
+only got away. Who knew how soon all of Braggs' army might be alarmed
+and upon us?
+
+In half an hour we were out on the opposite bank and creeping along
+through the thicket, a spade in one hand a rifle in the other. What
+might happen any moment we knew not. Where was that escaped picket? And
+where was Braggs' army? Instantly we formed in line of battle and
+commenced digging holes for ourselves. We worked like beavers, turn
+about; no spade was idle for one moment. Daylight found us there, two
+thousand strong, with rifle pits a mile in length. Other brigades got
+over the river, pontoons soon were down; still other troops, whole
+divisions, were across, and forty cannon were massed close to the
+crossing to protect us. What a sight was that for General Bragg, when he
+woke up that morning at his headquarters' perch, on top of Missionary
+Ridge! All that day we maneuvered under heavy cannonading and drove the
+enemy from hill to hill at our front. Some of the troops did heavy
+fighting, but the Rebels only fell back to their great position on the
+Ridge.
+
+That night my regiment stood picket at the front. The ground was cold
+and wet, none of us slept a wink, and we were almost freezing and
+starving. We had not slept, indeed, for a hundred hours. It had been one
+vast strain, and now a battle was coming on. All that night we who were
+on the picket line could hear the Rebel field batteries taking position
+on Missionary Ridge, to fight us on the morrow. The morning of the 25th
+dawned clear and beautiful. Instantly whole divisions of troops
+commenced slaughtering each other for the possession of single hills and
+spurs. At times the battle in front of Sherman was a hand to hand
+encounter. My own brigade was so close that the Rebels even threw stones
+down upon us. Over to the far right Hooker's men were in possession of
+Lookout Mountain, and were breaking in on the enemy's left flank.
+
+It was two o'clock when our division, my own regiment with it, received
+orders from Sherman to fix bayonets and join in the assault on
+Missionary Ridge. General J. E. Smith led the division, and General
+Matthies, our former colonel, led the brigade. We had to charge over the
+open, and by this time all the cannon in the Rebel army were brought to
+bear on the field we had to cross. We emerged from a little wood, and at
+that moment the storm of shot and shell became terrific. In front of us
+was a rail fence, and, being in direct line of fire, its splinters and
+fragments flew in every direction. "Jump the fence, men! tear it down!"
+cried the colonel. Never did men get over a fence more quickly. Our
+distance was nearly half a mile to the Rebel position.
+
+We started on a charge, running across the open fields. I had heard the
+roaring of heavy battle before, but never such a shrieking of
+cannonballs and bursting of shell as met us on that charge. We could
+see the enemy working their guns, while in plain view other batteries
+galloped up, unlimbered, and let loose at us. Behind us our own
+batteries (forty cannon) were firing at the enemy over our heads, till
+the storm and roar became horrible. It sounded as if the end of the
+world had come. Halfway over we had to leap a ditch, perhaps six feet
+wide and nearly as many deep. Some of our regiment fell into this ditch
+and could not get out, a few tumbled in intentionally and stayed there.
+I saw this, and ran back and ordered them to get out, called them
+cowards, threatened them with my revolver; they did not move. Again I
+hurried on with the line. All of the officers were screaming at the top
+of their voices; I, too, screamed, trying to make the men hear. "Steady!
+steady! bear to the right! keep in line! Don't fire! don't fire!" was
+yelled till we all were hoarse and till the awful thunder of the cannon
+made all commands unheard and useless.
+
+In ten minutes, possibly, we were across the field and at the beginning
+of the ascent of the Ridge. Instantly the blaze of Rebel musketry was in
+our faces, and we began firing in return. It helped little, the foe was
+so hidden behind logs and stones and little breastworks. Still we
+charged, and climbed a fence in front of us and fired and charged again.
+Then the order was given to lie down and continue firing. That moment
+someone cried, "Look to the tunnel! They're coming through the tunnel."
+Sure enough, through a railway tunnel in the mountain the gray-coats
+were coming by hundreds. They were flanking us completely.
+
+"Stop them!" cried our colonel to those of us at the right. "Push them
+back." It was but the work of a few moments for four companies to rise
+to their feet and run to the tunnel's mouth, firing as they ran. Too
+late! an enfilading fire was soon cutting them to pieces. "Shall I run
+over there too?" I said to the colonel. We were both kneeling on the
+ground close to the regimental flag. He assented. When I rose to my feet
+and started it seemed as if even the blades of grass were being struck
+by bullets. As I ran over I passed many of my comrades stretched out in
+death, and some were screaming in agony. For a few minutes the whole
+brigade faltered and gave way.
+
+Colonel Matthies, our brigade commander, was sitting against a tree,
+shot in the head. Instantly it seemed as if a whole Rebel army was
+concentrated on that single spot. For a few moments I lay down on the
+grass, hoping the storm would pass over and leave me. Lieutenant Miller,
+at my side, was screaming in agony. He was shot through the hips. I
+begged him to try to be still; he could not. Now, as a second line of
+the enemy was upon us, and the first one was returning, shooting men as
+they found them, I rose to my feet and surrendered. "Come out of that
+sword," shrieked a big Georgian, with a terrible oath. Another grabbed
+at my revolver and bellowed at me "to get up the hill quicker than
+hell." It was time, for our own batteries were pouring a fearful fire on
+the very spot where we stood. I took a blanket from a dead comrade near
+me, and at the point of the bayonet I was hurried up the mountain. We
+passed lines of infantry in rifle pits and batteries that were pouring a
+hail of shells into our exposed columns. Once I glanced back,
+and--glorious sight!--I saw lines of bluecoats at our right and center,
+storming up the ridge.
+
+In a few minutes' time I was taken to where other prisoners from my
+regiment and brigade were already collected together in a hollow. We
+were quickly robbed of nearly everything we possessed and rapidly
+started down the railroad tracks toward Atlanta. While we were there in
+that little hollow General Breckenridge, the ex-Vice President of the
+United States, came in among us prisoners to buy a pair of Yankee
+gauntlets. I sold him mine for fifteen dollars (Confederate money).
+
+General Grant's victorious army was already over the Ridge and in rapid
+pursuit. Taking the Ridge and Lookout Mountain cost the Union army well
+on to six thousand dead and wounded. The Rebels lost as many, or more,
+so that twelve thousand human beings were lying dead, or in agony, that
+night among the hills of Chattanooga. Not long before, thirty thousand
+had been killed and wounded, on both sides, close to this same Ridge.
+Forty-two thousand men shot for the possession of a single position.
+_That was war._
+
+That night as the guards marched us down the railroad we saw train after
+train whiz by loaded with the wounded of the Rebel army. The next day
+when they halted us, to bivouac in the woods, we were amazed to see
+quite a line of Union men from East Tennessee marching along in
+handcuffs. Many of them were old men, farmers, whose only crime was that
+they were true to the Union. They were hated ten times worse than the
+soldiers from the North. These poor men now were allowed no fire in the
+bivouac, and had almost nothing to eat. "They will everyone be shot or
+hanged," declared the officer of our guard to me. I do not know what
+happened to these poor Tennesseeans. Shortly after, we Northern
+prisoners were put aboard cattle cars and started off for Libby Prison
+at Richmond, most of us never to see the North or our homes again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+  In Libby Prison--Life there--"Belle Isle"--All prisons bad--The great
+    escape--"Maryland, My Maryland."
+
+
+The story of Libby Prison at Richmond has been told so often I shall not
+dwell on details about it here. Besides, the experiences of one man
+there were not materially different from the experiences of another. I
+was to stay there some seven months, always in the same room, and
+oftenest denied the poor privilege of looking out of the window. Our
+lives were to be very wretched there. That is now a thread-worn tale. At
+their very best, war prisons in every country are wretched places. One's
+friends do not stand guard there; it is our enemies. They are not penal
+establishments; they are simply places for keeping captives who, until
+in our so-called civilized days, would have been put to death on the
+battlefield.
+
+Our little company of captives from Chattanooga reached Libby Prison
+just after daylight of December 8, 1863. As we crossed the big bridge
+over the James River we looked down into the stream and saw "Belle
+Isle." It was a cold wet sandbar, and there, shivering in the wind, we
+saw five thousand ragged and emaciated human beings. They were prisoners
+of war. Some of them were from my own regiment. Most of them were never
+to see their homes again. The tales of their experiences would stagger
+human belief. These were all private soldiers; the commissioned officers
+were to be locked up in Libby Prison.
+
+The old tobacco warehouse of Libby & Son had been transformed into a
+monster guardhouse for officers captured from the Federal army. Little
+the two old tobacco merchants must have dreamed with what infamy their
+names would go down to history, through no fault of their own.
+
+The big brick building stood close to the James River. It had no glass
+in its windows, and the cold wind from the bay swept through its vast
+rooms day and night. Six hundred other prisoners were already there on
+our arrival, picked up from many battlefields.
+
+Libby Prison was three stories high and its floors were divided into
+several rooms each. The prisoners slept on the floor, with only old army
+blankets around them. When thus lying down, the floor was entirely
+covered with shivering human beings. Each group of half a dozen men had
+extemporized tables, made from old boxes. A few seats were made by
+cutting barrels in two. At night the seats, and whatever else might be
+there, were piled on top of the tables, while the prisoners stretched
+themselves on the floor to try to sleep. In my diary of the time I read:
+"The food doled out to us is miserable and scanty in the extreme. A
+species of corn bread, ground up cobs and all, and a little rice form
+the principal part of the ration. The fact that this bread is burned
+black outside and is raw inside renders it more detestable. Occasionally
+letters from the North reach us by a flag of truce, and at very rare
+intervals a prisoner is allowed to receive a little box of coffee,
+sugar, and salt, sent to him by his friends in the North."
+
+As the time went on this privilege was denied us. The high price of
+everything South in the war times was the flimsy excuse for giving the
+captured ones so little.
+
+Prices of provisions were indeed terrible in Richmond. This list I
+copied from a Richmond paper, December 20, 1863: Bacon, $3 per pound;
+potatoes, $18 per bushel; turkeys, $25 each; sugar, $3 per pound; beef,
+$1 per pound; butter, $5 per pound; shad, $34 per pair; whisky, $75 a
+gallon. This was in the discounted money of the Confederates.
+
+The beginning of the new year 1864 came in cold and gloomy. We could
+keep warm only by running and jumping and pushing each other about the
+prison. I was in the upper east room, and had for messmates Captains
+Page and Bascom and Lieutenants Austin and Hoffman, all of my own
+regiment. In the little box of provisions sent me by my mother in the
+North was a copy of a Latin grammar, put there by good old Professor
+Drake, my former school-teacher. Evidently he thought the mind needed
+feeding as well as the body. I took the hint and studied the book
+faithfully. I recited to Major Marshall, and eight times I went through
+this Latin grammar. I had nothing else to do, but Latin is no go on an
+empty stomach. When, later, I got out of prison Latin was as strange to
+me as if I had never seen a grammar in my life. My memory had been
+well-nigh ruined by my confinement. One day, fearing our escape, the
+authorities put iron bars on all our windows. They did not think to put
+glass in them to keep the cold air out.
+
+On the night of February 10 occurred the famous escape of one hundred
+and nine prisoners. For many weeks certain officers had been missing.
+They were in the earth under the prison, digging a tunnel to liberty.
+The length of this secret tunnel, dug under the prison, under stone
+walls, under the street and under the very feet of the guards, was
+eighty-six feet.
+
+Forty-six nights were consumed in digging it. Only certain of the
+prisoners knew anything about it. On the night of the escape I was told
+of it. I stood in the dark at an upper window and watched the prisoners
+as they came out at the farther end of the tunnel and slipped away. I
+did not try to enter the tunnel when I heard of it; there was already
+five times as many men in the cellar as could possible get away by
+daylight. As it was, a third of those escaping were captured and brought
+back again to the prison.
+
+On the 20th of March some exchanged Confederates were sent into Richmond
+under flag of truce. The President, Jefferson Davis, and all the
+dignitaries welcomed them. The President also came into Libby Prison one
+day, possibly to see with his own eyes and hear with his own ears if all
+the terrible tales of hardship and cruelties occurring there were true.
+Whatever conclusion he may have reached, the hard lines of our life in
+the prison were not visibly altered. They have been told of a hundred of
+times.
+
+All the nights now it was very cold. I had but one blanket. I, like all
+the others, slept on the floor, and in my clothes, with my boots under
+my head for a pillow. One night,--it was at the close of February,
+1864,--we in the prison were greatly excited over a report that Union
+cavalry under Generals Kilpatrick and Dahlgren were making a raid on
+the city for the purpose of releasing us. It was raining outside, and
+very dark, but we were sure we heard the Union cannon close at hand. We
+thought the hour of our deliverance had come. Instantly, but secretly,
+we organized ourselves into bands to break out and help.
+
+Soon Major Turner, the prison commander, came into the prison, making
+mysterious threats of something awful that would happen should we lift a
+single hand. Some negro help about the prison whispered to us all that,
+under Turner's direction, they had been compelled to carry thirty kegs
+of gunpowder into the cellar of the prison. Rumor said that it was
+Turner's intention, if our troops should get into Richmond, to blow up
+the prison and destroy us. A horrible plan, if true. Sadly for us, the
+great raid proved a failure. Dahlgren was killed, and his body was
+mutilated and exposed to an enraged public at one of the railroad depots
+in the city. These things were not done by honorable Confederate
+soldiers, but by irresponsible home guards and undisciplined rowdies.
+
+Now we saw no hopes of ever getting away. We would at last all die here,
+we thought. The nights seemed colder than ever; perhaps our blood was
+getting thinner. Some of us played chess; numbers sat with cards in
+their hands from early morning till bedtime. A few, experts with the
+knife, made bone rings and the like to sell, and so increased their
+rations a little. Generally now the rations were getting poorer, if such
+a thing were possible. Many prisoners were breaking down and were
+carried out to die. My own health--and I was young and strong--was
+beginning to give way. Once I fell on the floor in an utter swoon from
+weakness and hunger. From Andersonville, where the private soldiers
+were, came the horrible reports that "all were dying."
+
+One day a lot of Marylanders, most of whom had run through the Union
+lines from Baltimore, were organized into a battalion called "The
+Maryland Line." They were led by Marshall Wilder. They were marched past
+the prison, singing "Maryland, My Maryland." It was the first time I
+ever heard the song sung by Southerners. The music seemed to stir the
+whole city.[A]
+
+   [A] Years afterwards I wrote a song to this music myself ("The Song
+   of Iowa"). To this day it is well known, and has become the official
+   State song.
+
+Great battles were being fought in Virginia, and sometimes Grant's
+soldiers approached close to Richmond. Before daylight of May 7 our
+captors, fearing mutiny and escape, placed all the prisoners in cattle
+cars and hurried us across the Confederacy to Macon, Ga. For seven
+long, dreary, awful months I had been in one room in Libby Prison, with
+little to eat or wear. It all seems a horrible dream as I write of it
+now.
+
+Now there were rumors that we were to be taken to a prison farther
+South.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+  Escaping from Macon--An adventure in Atlanta--In the disguise of a
+    Confederate soldier--My wanderings inside the Confederate army and
+    what I experienced there--I am captured as a spy--How I got out of
+    it all.
+
+
+I have related how suddenly we prisoners were hurried from Libby Prison
+in Richmond to the town of Macon in Georgia.
+
+It was now the hot summer of 1864, that summer when Sherman, only a
+hundred and fifty miles from our prison, was having a battle every day.
+He was marching and fighting his way to Atlanta. Seven hundred of us,
+all Federal officers, were now penned up in a hot stockade. I copy a
+page from my diary:
+
+"The walls here at Macon prison are twelve feet high. Sentries are
+posted near the top of them on a platform running around the outside.
+Their orders are to shoot any prisoners seen approaching the dead line.
+This dead line is simply marked off by an occasional stake, and is
+twelve feet inside the surrounding wall. It is fearfully hot here inside
+this stockade. The ground is pure sand, reflecting the sun's rays
+powerfully. We had no cover of any kind at first, save the blankets
+stretched over pine sticks. It is as hot here at Macon as it was cold at
+Libby Prison."
+
+We tried digging a tunnel by which to escape. It was four feet under
+ground and seventy-five feet long. It was barely ready when some spy
+revealed it, and our chance was lost. For my own part, I was determined
+to get away. The food was now again horrible, and all kinds of
+indignities and insults were heaped upon the prisoners. One night during
+a hard rain I attempted to escape through a washout under the stockade.
+I remained by the spot till nearly midnight, not knowing that I was
+being watched every moment. As I was about to give up the attempt and go
+away Captain Gesner, of a New York regiment, came to the little brook
+for a cup of water. The guard who had been watching me then fired, and
+Gesner dropped dead. They came in with lanterns to see who had been
+killed, and the guard who had fired related how he had watched the man
+for nearly two hours trying to escape. I did not dare say that it was I,
+not poor Gesner, who had been trying to get away.
+
+Now I contemplated, too, a different means of escape. It was to get a
+Rebel uniform, escape from the stockade by some means, and enter the
+Rebel army in disguise, trusting my chance to get away during the first
+battle.
+
+There was but one gate or door to the stockade, and this door was kept
+constantly closed. It was guarded by a sentinel who stood, gun in hand,
+immediately above it while a corporal stood watch below. Once a day a
+few guards and officers entered this door, closed it behind them, and
+formed us into lines for counting. I had studied a small map of the
+country for days, and by dint of trading tobacco, etc., with an
+occasional guard who was dying for the weed I acquired, piece by piece,
+a pretty decent Rebel uniform. This I kept buried in the sand where I
+slept. July 15, 1864, came around. My term of enlistment expired that
+day. I had been in the Union army three years; was it not a good time to
+give the Rebels a trial? There were a few old sheds not far from the
+gate, and in one of these one morning about nine o'clock I waited with a
+friend, and saw the sergeants and the guards come in, when the bell
+rang, to count the prisoners. I had resurrected my Rebel uniform and had
+quietly slipped it on. It fitted amazingly. My friend was lingering
+there, simply to see what would become of me. He has often declared
+since then that he expected me to be shot the moment I should approach
+the dead-line.
+
+The prisoners were some way off, in rows, being counted. I stepped from
+under cover and quickly walked up to and over the dead-line by the gate.
+The guard walking above brought his gun from his shoulder, halted, and
+looked at me. I paid no attention, but knocked, when the door opened,
+and the corporal stepped in the opening and asked what I wanted. "The
+lieutenant misses a roll-list, and I must run out and bring it from
+headquarters," I answered, pushing by him hurriedly. There was no time
+for questions, and the corporal, before getting over his surprise, had
+passed me out as a Rebel sergeant. I quickly turned the corner, passed a
+number of "Johnnies" sitting on the grass drinking coffee and went
+straight up to the commandent's tent, near the edge of the wood, but did
+not go in. I had not looked behind me once, but expected every moment to
+hear a bullet whizzing after me. I passed behind the tent, walked slowly
+into the wood, and then ran my best for an hour.
+
+I was outside of prison. How free, how green, how beautiful all things
+seemed! It was the joy of years in a few minutes. Of course I was
+instantly missed at the roll-call, and bloodhounds were soon upon my
+track. I avoided them, however, by different maneuvers. I changed my
+course, shortly repassed the prison pen on the opposite side, and went
+back and up into the city of Macon. After wandering through its streets
+for an hour I again took to the woods. That night I slept in a swamp of
+the Ocmulgee River. What bedfellows I had!--frogs, lizards, bats, and
+alligators. But it was better than the inside of a war prison. All the
+next day I lay in a blackberry patch, fearing to move, but feasting on
+the luscious, ripe berries. What a contrast it was to my previous
+starving! Never in this world shall I enjoy food so again.
+
+Near to me was a watering-station for the railway to Atlanta. As I lay
+in the bushes I heard trains halting all the day. With night came a
+glorious moon. Such a flood of heaven's own light I had never seen
+before. By ten at night a long, empty train halted, and in two minutes I
+had sprung from the bushes and was inside of an empty freight car. In
+ten minutes more I stood in the door of the car watching the fair farms
+and the hamlets of Georgia sleeping under the glorious moonlight, while
+I was being hurled along heaven knew where.
+
+That was the strangest ride of my life. The conductor came along when we
+were near Atlanta, swinging his lantern into the cars, and found a
+strange passenger. He threatened all sorts of things if my fare were not
+paid, of course I had no money, but I put myself on my dignity, told him
+I was a convalescent soldier coming back from a furlough, and dared him
+or any other civilian to put me off the train. That ended the colloquy,
+and just before daylight the whistle screamed for Atlanta, and I was
+inside the lines of Hood's army.
+
+I left the train and in a few moments was tucked away in the haymow of a
+barn near the station. So far, good; but daylight brought a squad of
+Rebel cavalry into the barn, who, to my dismay, soon commenced climbing
+up to the mow for hay for their horses. My presence of mind was about
+leaving me utterly when I happened to notice an empty sugar hogshead in
+the corner of the mow. Before the Rebels were up I was in it, and there
+I sat and perspired for six mortal hours. Those hours were days, every
+one of them. All of this time Sherman's army, then besieging Atlanta,
+was throwing shells into our neighborhood. At last, at last! the Rebels
+saddled their horses and rode out of the barnyard.
+
+I was not long in changing my headquarters. For days and days I walked
+up and down Atlanta among the troops, to the troops, away from the
+troops, always moving, always just going to the regiment, to which I had
+attached myself as ordnance sergeant. I was very careful, however, to
+keep far away from that particular regiment. I knew its position, its
+chief officers, knew, in fact, the position of every brigade in Hood's
+army. It was to my interest, under the circumstances, to know them well,
+for I was continually halted with such exclamations as, "Hallo! which
+way? Where's your regiment? What you doing away over here?" A hundred
+times I was on the point of being arrested and carried to my alleged
+command. For every man I met I had a different tale, to suit the
+circumstances. At night I slept where I could--under a tree, behind a
+drygoods box; it made little difference, as my lying down on the ground,
+hungry, pillowless, and blanketless, and fearing every moment to be
+arrested, could not be called sleeping. This life was growing monotonous
+at last; the more so as, aside from an occasional apple, I had nothing
+at all to eat.
+
+About the fifth day I overheard an old Irishman, hoeing among his
+potatoes, bitterly reviling the war to his wife. I made his acquaintance
+and discovered our sentiments as to the rebellion to be very nearly
+identical. Under the most tremendous of oaths as to secrecy, I told who
+I was and that I was absolutely starving. If he would help me, I knew
+how to save his property when Sherman's army should enter. That it would
+enter, and that Atlanta would be razed to the ground, and every human
+being's throat cut, he had not a doubt. Still, if detected in secreting
+or feeding me, he would be hanged from his own door-post. There was no
+doubting that, either.
+
+However, that night I slept in his cellar and was fed with more than the
+crumbs from his table. It was arranged that I should wander about the
+army day-times, and come to his cellar--unknown to him, of course--about
+ten every night, when his family were likely to be in bed. The outside
+door was to be left unlocked for me. Prisoners did not carry timepieces
+in the South. Mine disappeared with my pistols on the battlefield of
+Chattanooga, and as an unfortunate result I went to my den in the cellar
+an hour too early one evening. None of my protector's family seemed to
+have been aware of the guest in the cellar.
+
+I was sitting quietly in a corner of the dark, damp place when the
+trap-door opened above and a young lady, bearing a lamp, descended and
+seemed to be searching for something. It was a romantic
+situation--destined to be more so. Groping about the cellar, the young
+lady approached me. I moved along the wall to avoid her. She unluckily
+followed. I moved farther again. She followed, cornered me, screamed at
+the top of her voice, dropped the lamp, and fainted. In half a minute
+three soldiers who had happened to be lunching upstairs, the old lady,
+and my friend, her husband, rushed down the steps, armed with lights.
+The old gentleman recognized me and was in despair. I think I too was in
+despair, but, rightfully or wrongfully, I took to my heels and escaped
+through the door which I had entered, leaving the fainting girl, the
+despairing father, and the astonished soldiers to arrange matters as
+they might. The girl recovered, I learned years afterward, and her
+father's house was one of the few that escaped the flames when Sherman
+started to the sea.
+
+From that night on I slept again at the roadsides, and as for rations, I
+might say I did not have any. The weather was terribly hot, but I spent
+my days wandering from regiment to regiment and from fort to fort,
+inspecting the positions and the works. I knew if I did get through, all
+this would be equal to any army corps for Sherman.
+
+Once I crept into a little deserted frame house and, happening to find
+an old white palmetto hat there, I changed it for my own, on account of
+the heat. I then laid my Rebel jacket and cap under the boards and,
+fastening my pantaloons up with a piece of broad red calico that
+happened to be with the hat, sallied out, seeing what I could see. I
+very soon saw more than I had calculated on. I had wandered well off to
+the right of the army and was quietly looking about when a squad of
+cavalry dashed in, shouting, "The Yankees are on us!" There was a
+regiment of infantry close by, which sprang to its feet, and every man
+in sight was ordered to seize a gun and hurry to the front. I, too, was
+picked up, and before I had time to explain that I was just going over
+to my division a gun was in my hands and I was pushed into the line. The
+whole force ran for a quarter of an hour into the woods, firing as they
+ran, and shouting. Suddenly, as a few shots were fired into us, we
+stopped and formed line of battle.
+
+The skirmish was soon over. Some cavalry had flanked the Yanks and
+brought them in, and while their pockets were being gone through with by
+my fellow-soldiers I slipped to the rear, and was glad to get back into
+my own cap and jacket.
+
+I lay in the little empty house that night. Sherman's army had been
+banging at the city fearfully, and setting houses on fire all night. It
+was a little revenge, I presume, for the losses in the skirmish in which
+I had taken so picturesque a part. These shelled houses had emptied
+their occupants into the street, and a little after daylight I noticed a
+family, with its worldly baggage piled on a one-mule wagon, stop in
+front of my residence. "Here's a house out of range of bullets. Why not
+move in?" I heard a manly voice call to the women and children,
+following with the traps. "Move in," I thought to myself. "Well, they
+can stand it, if I can." The house consisted of but one large room,
+unceiled, and reaching to the rafters, with the exception of a small
+compartment, finished off and ceiled, in one corner. On top of this
+little compartment were my headquarters.
+
+In they moved, bag and baggage, and the women folks soon commenced
+preparing a meal outside, under the shadows of the front door. This
+half-finished room had been used as a butcher shop in the past, it
+seemed, and the meat hooks in the corner had served me as a ladder to
+mount to my perch on the ceiling. "Now, Johnny," chirped the wife, "do
+run uptown and buy some red and white muslin. We will make a Union flag,
+and when Sherman gits in, as he's bound to, we're jest as good Union
+folks as he is. You know I'm dyin' for real coffee. I'm tired of chicory
+and Injun bread, and I don't keer if Sherman's folks is in to-morrow.
+We'll draw government rations, and be Union."
+
+These good people were probably "poor trash" of the South, not caring
+much which way the war went provided they could get rations. Their
+general talk, however, was of the real Rebel character, and it was an
+unsafe place for me to stop in. In an hour the banquet before the front
+door was prepared, and all hands went out to partake. Soon they were
+joined by a Rebel soldier, who seemed to be on a half-hour's furlough
+to visit the young lady of the party, whom I took to be his sweetheart.
+Sherman's army, I was sorry to learn from this soldier, was being simply
+"mowed out of existence." "All the woods about Atlanta were as a reeking
+corpse." Sherman himself was in flight northward.
+
+By looking more closely through a chink in the weather-boarding of my
+hiding-place I discovered that he was reading all this dreadful
+information from a Copperhead newspaper from Chicago, and then I felt
+easier.
+
+Again, there was the talk about money purses made of Yankee's scalps and
+finger rings from Yankee bones; and during the dinner I was no little
+astonished to see this valiant Southerner exhibit to his eager listeners
+a veritable ring, rough and yellow, made, as he said, from the bones of
+one of Sherman's cavalrymen. This was probably brag.
+
+The banquet of cucumbers, chicory, and Injun bread was about
+terminating. My soldier with the ring had used up his furlough and was
+gone. The house was still empty, and it was now, or never, if I proposed
+getting down from my perch without alarm. My plan was silently to climb
+down the meat hooks which I had ascended and to slip out at the still
+open back door of the house. On peeping over the edge of the ceiling,
+however, what was my amazement to see a bull-dog of immense proportions
+tied to one of my hooks!
+
+Here was a "situation"! He was sound asleep, but had an amiable
+countenance. I dropped a bit of plaster on his nose. He looked up
+amazed, and smiled. Then I smiled, and then he smiled again; and then I
+carefully crept down, patted him on the head, said good-by in a whisper,
+and in a twinkling was out at the back door. My gratitude to this dog is
+boundless.
+
+I had found it unsafe to be about houses, and again I took my lodgings
+in the field. Again I was busy, just _going to my division_, but never
+getting there. Once, near the sacred quarters of a brigadier, the guard
+arrested me. I protested, and our loud talk brought the brigadier to the
+rescue. I explained how I was "just going to my regiment," and how my
+pass had been lost, and the necessity of my going on at once. The
+brigadier took in the situation at a glance, and with a pencil wrote me
+a pass, good for that day.
+
+Fighting was going on about Atlanta constantly, but with so many
+apparent reverses to our arms that I feared I should never get away.
+
+The memorable 22d of July came, and with it the most terrific fighting
+on Hood's right, and in fact all round the semi-circle about the city. A
+division, with my Alabama regiment, entered the battle on Hood's right
+wing, and I followed, at a safe distance, as an ordnance sergeant.
+Everybody was too busy and excited to ask me questions, and in the hope
+that Hood would be defeated and an opportunity for getting through the
+lines be at last presented, I was feeling good. Hundreds, thousands
+possibly, of wounded men fell back by me, but all shouting, "The Yankees
+are beaten, and McPherson is killed."
+
+It was too true! McPherson had fallen and, if reports were correct,
+Sherman's army had met with an awful disaster. For me, there was nothing
+left but to get back to the rear and try another direction. I knew that
+Sherman's advance was at the ford, at Sandtown, on the Chattahoochie
+River, at our left. Could I only get there, I might still be saved. I
+had now been seen among the Rebel forts and troops so much that there
+was the greatest danger of my being recaptured, and shot as a spy. On
+the night of the 22d I took refuge under a hedge, near to a field
+hospital.
+
+No food and no sleep for days was killing me. Still there was no rest,
+for all the night long I heard the groans of the poor fellows whose arms
+and legs were being chopped off by the surgeons. The whole night was
+simply horrible. I might have died there myself; I wonder that I did
+not. Only the hope of escape was keeping me alive. I had not eaten a
+pound of food in days.
+
+Daylight of the 23d came. It was my birthday. Auspicious day, I thought,
+and again my hopes gave me strength and courage to work my way past
+lines of infantry and cavalry.
+
+All day, till nearly sunset, I had crept around in the woods, avoiding
+sentinels, and now I was almost in sight of the longed-for goal. It was
+not a mile to the ford. When darkness set in I should swim the river and
+be a free man. More, I had news that would help Sherman's army to
+capture Atlanta. A thousand pictures of home, of freedom, peace, were
+painting themselves in my mind. One hour more, and all would be well.
+
+Hark! a shot, and then a call to halt and hold up my arms. I was
+surrounded in a moment by fifty cavalrymen who had been secreted in the
+bushes--how or where I know not. We were in sight of the river, and the
+Union flag was just beyond. It was no use here to talk about being a
+Confederate. I was arrested as a spy, and in great danger of being shot
+then and there, without a hearing. I was partly stripped, searched
+thoroughly, and then marched between two cavalrymen to General Ross, of
+Texas, who, with his staff, was also at a hidden point in the woods.
+General Ross treated me kindly and gave me lunch and a blanket to rest
+on. It was his duty, however, to send me to the division headquarters,
+to be tried. I was again marched till nine at night, when I was turned
+over to General H----. He was sitting by a fire in the woods roasting
+potatoes and reviling the Yankees. As I was arrested as a spy, and to be
+tried, I deemed it best to say nothing. "Try to escape from me tonight,"
+shouted General H----, as if he were commanding an army corps, "and I'll
+put you where there is no more 'scaping." Through the whole night a
+soldier sat at my head with a cocked pistol, but for the first time in
+days I slept soundly. Why not? The worst had happened. By daylight a
+guard marched me up to the city, where Hood had army headquarters in the
+yard of a private residence.
+
+On the way there my guard, a mere boy, was communicative, and I
+persuaded him to show me the paper that was being sent around with me,
+from one headquarters to another. I read it. Sure enough, I was
+considered a spy, and was being forwarded for trial. The paper gave the
+hour and place of my capture, with the statement that one of those
+capturing me had seen me inspecting a fort on the previous Sunday.
+
+When we reached Hood's tents, in the dooryard of the Atlanta mansion, I
+was turned over to a new guard, and the document brought with me was
+carelessly thrown into an open pigeon-hole of a desk out on the grass by
+a clerk who seemed too much disturbed about other matters to ask where
+the guard came from or what I was accused of. I, at least, noticed where
+the paper was put. There was the most tremendous excitement at
+headquarters. Orderlies and officers were dashing everywhere at once,
+fighting was constantly going on, and an immediate retreat seemed to be
+determined. I was left that night in a tent with a few other prisoners,
+among them two deserters, sentenced to be shot. Close by on the lawn was
+the desk where the clerk had deposited my paper. Our guard was very
+accommodating, or very negligent, for he allowed different persons to go
+in and out from our tent at all hours during the night. Daylight brought
+the provost-marshal general to the tent, to dispose of the prisoners.
+The name of each was called, and all but myself were taken out, heard,
+and sent off.
+
+"And who are you?" he said, pleasantly enough to me. I stepped forward.
+The clerk was asked for the paper, but it was gone. "It certainly had
+been misplaced," said the clerk, in embarrassment. He had put it in that
+particular pigeon-hole. I testified to that myself, and added,--this
+sudden inspiration coming to me in the emergency,--that "it was of
+little consequence, as it was from an officer,--I didn't know whom,--who
+had simply picked me up as an escaped prisoner." The provost-marshal
+took me aside and asked me if I had been about the works or the troops
+any. I told him my name, that I was really an escaped prisoner, and that
+I had just walked up from Macon and had hoped to get away. "You have had
+a hard time of it," he said, "and I almost wish you had got away. I hope
+you will soon be free," he added, "and that the cruel war is almost
+over." It was a sudden and great relief to me to know that now I was not
+to be regarded as a spy. What became of the "papers" and the charges
+against me afterward in the midst of war excitements, I never knew. The
+next night the provost-marshal sent me under guard back to Macon prison
+whence I had escaped.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+  Under fire of our own guns at Charleston--Trying to capture a railway
+    train--The secret band--Betrayed--The desolation of Charleston.
+
+
+I was scarcely returned to the Macon prison again when two hundred of
+us, all officers, were selected to be placed under the fire from our
+navy then bombarding Charleston. By some wonderful fiction of military
+law the "Confederates," as the Rebels called themselves, pretended to
+regard the bombardment of Charleston as a crime. I do not remember now
+how the selection of victims to be sent to Charleston was made one
+evening about the end of July, 1864. This, however, happened that night,
+to add adventure and excitement to the Charleston trip. The greater
+number of those selected were members of a "Secret Band" of prisoners
+who had resolved to mutiny or to do any act in our power that could
+result in our escape from captivity. I recall how Major Marshall one
+afternoon secretly administered to me the oath of this desperate band.
+With my hand on my heart I swore to instantly obey every order given to
+me by the "head captain." I was to ask no questions, but to strike,
+whenever told; to kill, no matter whom, even were my own brother to be
+the victim. I was ready to do anything. I had been mistreated and
+starved long enough. Death could be little worse than all of us had been
+undergoing for months. The news coming to us from our prison comrades at
+Andersonville was perfectly horrible. History had never related the like
+of it. We received the _Telegraph_, a Macon newspaper, into the prison
+pen every morning. At the head of one of its columns each day the editor
+reported the awful number of poor starving creatures who had died at
+Andersonville the day before. It was not unlike the reports of the
+number of dumb beasts killed each day in the Chicago slaughter pens.
+Pretty soon I learned that the eighty comrades of my regiment captured
+with me at Missionary Ridge were nearly every one dead. The details of
+their sufferings were too horrible to dilate upon. WE WONDERED SOMETIMES
+IF GOD HAD FORSAKEN THE WORLD.
+
+We who joined the "Band," and took the awful oath we did, knew what it
+all meant. Outside our stockade loaded cannon waited but the least alarm
+to fire upon us. On top of the stockade guards walked day and night with
+orders to instantly kill any prisoner who should approach within twelve
+feet of the high wall. We were only eight hundred prisoners all told,
+and nothing to fight with but naked hands. Outside whole regiments armed
+to the teeth lay with guns in their hands waiting to destroy every one
+of us should we offer to escape. What was our chance? Almost nothing; or
+if anything, death! Still we resolved to try.
+
+Then came that night when we were to get on the cars and start for
+Charleston. Instantly the word was passed along for every member of the
+secret "Band" to quietly arm himself with a short club, made from our
+bunks and sheds, and to keep it hid under his coat or blanket. Now we
+were counted and put into a train of box cattle cars. Twenty-five
+prisoners were in a car, and in the side door of each car stood a guard
+with his loaded musket. We who were not leaders of the "Band" wondered
+what desperate thing we were about to try. I do not know where the tools
+came from, but when the train was well in motion, and the noise deadened
+our movements, a big hole, large enough to permit a man to creep
+through, was knocked in the end of each car. The darkness, the crowd in
+the cars and the noise prevented the guards knowing what was going on.
+This was the first "_vestibule_" railroad train ever made.
+
+Shortly now one of our leaders came creeping along from car to car, and
+in a low voice he told us what was about to happen. The train on its way
+to Charleston would halt close to the sea at a little town called
+Pocotaligo. We knew that some ships of the Union navy lay out in the
+water there, scarce a dozen miles away. The design was to seize on our
+guards as we reached the village, disarm them, kill them, if necessary,
+ditch the train, destroy the road and the telegraph, and then escape to
+the ships. I think not a soul of us doubted the likelihood of our
+success. We would be free men on the morrow if all went well. It would
+be two or three o'clock in the night when the train would pass the point
+of action. Every one of us had his club and his pocket knife in his hand
+ready to strike. At the proper moment Colonel ----, our leader, with
+three comrades, was to spring through the end of the front car where he
+was, onto the tender, seize the engineer and fireman and wave a lantern
+violently as a signal for us to suddenly lay hold of every Rebel soldier
+on the train. Ten miles out from Pocotaligo our hearts beat in terrible
+excitement. No one spoke; we only waited. It was silence, all save the
+rumbling of the car wheels. So far our guards seemed in perfect
+ignorance of the approaching danger. Five miles out, so sure were we of
+success, a few began to act without waiting for the signal. In one or
+two of the cars the guards had been suddenly seized and their muskets
+were in our hands. In the car where I was, one of the astonished guards,
+finding himself without a gun, coolly said: "And what are you 'uns going
+to do with we 'uns?" It was a tremendous moment, as the train sped along
+in the dark. Three miles to Pocotaligo; two miles; one mile. With quick
+beating heart I leaned from our car door, straining my eyes for the
+lantern signal. Then the whistle blew loudly, but the train only
+hastened its speed, and in two minutes, instead of stopping, we shot
+past the station at lightning speed.
+
+What had happened? Were we discovered? Not a signal had been given to
+us. In the morning we were all hurried inside the jail yard of
+Charleston. Now we knew it all. At the crucial moment our leader _had
+lost his nerve_ and _become a coward_; or had he betrayed us? He had not
+waved the lantern, though he had captured it, and held it in his hand.
+We were now much alarmed as to what would be done with us for seizing
+the guards. We might lose our lives. Colonel ----, the false leader, was
+taken to another prison to save him from being torn to pieces by his own
+comrades.
+
+The newspapers of Charleston that morning contained flaming articles,
+describing how a terrible catastrophe had been averted by the cowardice
+or treason of one man. Where they got the details of the proposed
+capture of the train, no one will ever know. Was the leader simply a
+coward, or was he paid for betraying us?
+
+After a while we were transferred to what was called the "Roper
+Hospital." It was close to the jail, and the danger of being killed by
+the shells from our own fleet was still very great, though, in fact, few
+of us were hurt. The yellow fever was to be a greater scourge than
+Yankee cannon.
+
+Our fleet officers had learned the locality where the prisoners were
+guarded, and fired their shells mostly in other directions. It was a
+grand spectacle at night--the soaring through the heavens of so many
+blazing bombshells and their bursting in the city. Parts of Charleston
+that we could see were perfect pictures of desolation; whole quarters
+stood in black ruins and uninhabited. The weather was exceedingly hot,
+and the yellow fever broke out and raged fearfully among both prisoners
+and guards. It seemed as if we should all die there. At last they
+transported us away to a little open field in the woods, close to the
+town of Columbia, the capital of South Carolina.
+
+The surgeon of the prison camp at Charleston was Dr. Todd, a brother of
+President Lincoln's wife. A more rabid Secessionist was nowhere to be
+found. It was a curious situation, that the brother-in-law of the great
+President should be so attached to the country's opponents.
+
+On our way to the prison at Columbia Major Marshall of my regiment and
+two captains escaped from the train and reached the North by tramping at
+night through the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee. They had
+horrible experiences for many weeks.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+  Living in a grave--An adventure in the woods of South Carolina--Life
+    in the asylum yard at the capital of South Carolina--The song of
+    "Sherman's March to the Sea"--How it came to be written--Final
+    escape--The burning up of South Carolina's capital.
+
+
+Now we were near the capital of South Carolina. It is our third prison.
+We were placed in a cleared field among the pine woods, a few miles from
+the town. Here we spent a part of a terrible winter exposed to the storm
+and rain. We had no shelter save such as we made at last of sticks and
+logs that we were allowed to carry in from the neighboring wood. Our
+food was wretched, we had almost no clothing, and the weather was very
+bad nearly all the time. We were surrounded by a line of guards. A
+battery constantly in readiness to fire on us should an alarm be given
+stood near by. Our food was still the half-cooked corn and cobs
+together, with quantities of a poor and sickly sorghum molasses. We
+heard that the Rebel army was living little better than we were. In
+ridicule of the rations the prisoners dubbed this prison pen "Camp
+Sorghum." Every man among us was sick with diarrhoea. The little
+grave-yard for the prisoners near by grew rapidly. The details of our
+life in this miserable camp I shall not relate. They were simply too
+horrible. As for myself,--my only shelter was a hole in the ground, four
+feet deep, four feet wide and eight feet long. It was covered with
+boughs and earth. Lieutenant Morris and myself occupied this living
+grave for months. We had a tiny fire-place of clay built in the end of
+it, where we burned roots, and the long rainy nights we two sat there
+alone, reading an old newspaper by our root-light or talking of our
+far-away homes. One very stormy night our water-soaked roof fell in on
+us, and then we were compelled to walk about in the rain. I wonder now
+that any soul survived the miseries of that camp. Valley Forge was
+paradise compared to it. But all this misery was a part of war.
+
+Naturally, numbers ran the guard lines at this woeful prison pen and
+escaped into the woods. Firing by the sentinels on these escaping
+prisoners was a common occurrence on dark nights. Here and there an
+officer was killed, and sometimes under circumstances that marked the
+sentinel a common murderer. A battery of loaded cannons stood outside
+the guard line, with orders to open on the prisoners should five musket
+shots be heard. With the constant escaping of prisoners at night these
+five fatal shots could occur at any hour.
+
+For my own part, I resolved to again attempt escape, but my efforts
+failed again, and twice in succession. I recall with a shudder how one
+night late in November my friend, Lieutenant Ecking of New York, was
+foully murdered. He had bribed a guard to let two or three of us run
+across the line that night at midnight. The bribe was to consist of a
+silver watch. Some of these men were easily bribed. They were not
+regular Confederate soldiers, but usually cowardly home guards, who
+regarded the murdering of a helpless prisoner a heroic act.
+
+When midnight came three of us were secreted close to the dead line. As
+soon as the bribed sentinel came to his post and commenced walking up
+and down his beat Lieutenant Ecking rose and approached him. The night
+was clear moonlight. The moment Ecking had crossed the dead line, and
+was holding the watch up to the guard, the coward shot him dead. For
+this outrage the home guard received a furlough.
+
+About this time, too, Lieutenant Turbayne was murdered by a guard for
+mistaking the ringing of a bell. Some of us had been permitted to go out
+on parole and carry in wood at stated times. Without notice, this
+privilege was suspended, but the bellman, by mistake, rang as usual.
+Turbayne started for the dead line. "Go back, halt!" shouted a sentinel.
+Turbayne turned to obey, but was instantly shot in the back and dropped
+dead. There was a furious commotion among the prisoners. The guards,
+too, collected about the spot. The Rebel officer in charge left his
+lunch and walked over also. He held in his hand a great piece of pumpkin
+pie, and continued eating from it as he stood there by the corpse of the
+man they had murdered. There was almost a mutiny in the prison camp, and
+one proper leader at that moment would have put an end to the whole
+Rebel outfit. In the end it would have been death to the whole of us.
+
+Previous to this threatened outbreak I had again tried my own chance at
+escaping. It was now November 4, 1864, a cold blustering day, and the
+prisoners in their rags and almost barefooted stood and shivered in the
+naked field. At four o'clock a dozen were paroled and allowed to go out
+to the woods and carry in some fuel.
+
+Lieutenant Fritchie and myself managed to mix ourselves among this
+little paroled company, and forgot to return to the enclosure. We helped
+a little in the fuel getting, and then suddenly disappeared in the pine
+forests. For some days we crept about in the great pine woods, scarcely
+knowing our direction or where we were going. Our leaving had been so
+sudden that we were planless. Here and there we stumbled onto a darkey,
+who never hesitated to bring us corn hoe cake or whatever eatables he
+might happen to have in his cabin. The slaves universally were the
+prisoners' friends, and they knew a hundred times more about the war and
+its object than their plantation masters ever supposed. Many an escaping
+prisoner was fed by them and, with the north star as a guide, conducted
+to safety. Many an army movement was made possible by loyal negroes.
+Barring an occasional Union white man, they were the only friends the
+soldiers had in the South.
+
+Lieutenant Fritchie and I had some queer adventures while we wandered
+about the woods of South Carolina during this little leave of absence
+from the Confederates. We did not see a single white man, save one, and
+he tried to shoot us. One night we lodged in an open-topped corn-crib,
+not knowing in the darkness that we were quite close to an inhabited
+farmhouse. When daylight came we peeped over the corn-crib and were much
+astonished to see a woman at her wash-tub on the back porch of a cabin
+close by. She must have seen our heads, for that very moment she stopped
+her washing and entered the cabin. Shortly she appeared again, followed
+by a man, who took one long steady look at the corn-crib; then he
+entered the cabin, and we knew it was to get his gun. Very quick
+resolution and action on our part became advisable. A little plowed
+field only separated our corn-crib, at the back, from a thick piece of
+woods. In a moment the man was out again on the porch, bearing a musket.
+
+"Drop to the ground behind the crib and run to the woods," said
+Fritchie. "I'll keep watch on the man. I'll drop down too. When you are
+across wave your hand if he is not coming, and then I'll run." In a
+moment's time I was running across the plowed field, keeping the crib
+between me and the porch of the cabin. The man with the musket never saw
+me. I waved to Fritchie; he, too, started on the run, and to this hour I
+laugh to myself when I picture to my mind Fritchie, a short, stumpy
+fellow, tumbling absolutely heels over head in his haste to cover that
+bit of plowed ground.
+
+Very shortly we heard bloodhounds bellowing. We knew too well what that
+meant. Numbers of escaping prisoners had been torn to pieces by them.
+That was the common way of catching runaway slaves and prisoners of war
+down South. They hunt "niggers" that way to-day down there.
+
+By hard running, turns and counter-turns, and frequent crossing and
+recrossing little streams, we threw the dogs off our track, and slept
+until night in the thicket. The wind blew hard and cold that night, and
+as we stood secreted under a thorn-tree by the roadside two men passed,
+so close we could have touched them. Something told us they, too, were
+escaping prisoners. We tried to attract their attention enough to be
+sure. One of us spoke, scarcely more than whisper. Instantly and in
+alarm the two men bounded away like scared wolves. Days afterward we
+found out that they had been not only fleeing prisoners, but were,
+indeed, two of our personal friends.
+
+The next night was fair, and a full round moon lighted up the sandy
+desert with its oasis of tall, immense pine trees. The white winding
+road of sand that seemed to have been abandoned for a hundred years was
+almost trackless. Here and there, too, we saw an abandoned turpentine
+camp, the spiles still in the trees and the troughs lying rotting at
+their feet.
+
+There was nothing but silence there, and loneliness, and moonlight. Here
+in the quiet night, if anywhere in the world, two poor escaping
+prisoners of war would be in no danger of a foe.
+
+For hours we trudged along, going where we knew not, when suddenly to
+our amazement two mounted cavalrymen stood right in our way and called
+to us to surrender. There was nothing to do but to obey. Our capture
+had been an accident. These two officers, a captain and a lieutenant,
+had been riding the country trying to catch some deserters from their
+army and had blundered on to us. They started with us to Lexington jail,
+some miles away. The captain rode a dozen yards or so ahead, with a
+revolver in his hand. I trudged along in the sand at his side,
+faithfully hanging on to his stirrup strap. The lieutenant and Fritchie
+followed us in a like manner in the moonlight. It seems to have been a
+romantic occasion, when I think of it now; we two Federals and these two
+Confederates, there alone in the moonlight, and the big pine trees and
+the white sands about. I could not help reflecting, though, how many a
+captured prisoner had never been accounted for. Possibly we should never
+see Lexington jail. It would be an easy thing for these men to leave our
+bodies there in the sand somewhere. There were few words at first as we
+plodded our slow way in the moonlight. At last my captain and I entered
+into lively conversation about the South in general, and then both of us
+hoped the war would soon come to an end. To my surprise the young
+captain confided to me that he was, at heart, a Union man. "And why in
+the Confederate army?" I asked, in astonishment. "Because," said the
+captain, "everybody in my village in South Carolina is. I would have
+been hooted to death had I remained at home. My father is a rich man; he
+is opposed to the war, but he, too, is in the service at Richmond."
+
+"Under the circumstances," I said, "I being Union, and you being Union,
+why not look the other way a moment and let me try the time required to
+reach yonder clump of trees." "No, not a thought of it," he answered
+almost hotly. "You are my prisoner, I will do my duty." The subject was
+dropped, and in half an hour Fritchie and I were inside a stone cell in
+Lexington jail. "You can lie down on the stone floor and sleep if you
+want to," the jailer said, crustily. The two young officers said a
+cheery good-by and went away.
+
+Before daybreak the door of our cell opened again and the gruff jailer
+called, "Which of you is Adjutant Byers." Then he pushed a basket and
+blanket in to me, and a little note. The basket was full of good warm
+food and the little note, in a woman's hand, said: "With the compliments
+of the captain's wife."
+
+I think tears came to the eyes of both of us there in that cell that
+night. It was among the few kindnesses I ever experienced in the
+Confederacy. Of course it was a woman's act. The captain had gone to his
+home near by and told his wife about his prisoners, and here was the
+remembrance. The world is not so bad after all, we said to each other,
+Fritchie and I.
+
+The next day the jailer paraded us out in the corridor, and I think all
+the people in the county came to see us, to remark on us, and touch us
+with their hands. Most of these men, women, and children had absolutely
+never seen a Northern man before, and a Yankee soldier was a greater
+curiosity than a whole menagerie of polar bears. I saw the ignorance of
+the "poor white trash" of the South that day. Not one in twenty of them
+knew what the war was about. The negroes had a more intelligent notion
+of affairs than did the people of the Carolinas.
+
+In a few days Fritchie and I were conducted back to our prison pen near
+Columbia, South Carolina.
+
+Shortly they moved us once more. This time to the high-walled yard of
+the lunatic asylum, inside the city. As they marched us through the
+streets we could see how beautiful the little capital of South Carolina
+was. It had handsome shops and residences, and beautiful shade trees
+everywhere gave it a most attractive appearance. It was almost the best
+known city of the South and here the fatal heresy of secession had been
+born. As we went along the streets a mob of people gathered around us,
+hooting and hissing their hatred at us, just as they had done that
+first time we were taken through the town. A few wanted the guards to
+give them a chance to hang us. It was a sorry sight--this band of
+ragged, helpless, hungry loyalists being led like slaves and animals
+through the hooting, threatening crowd. That mob, thirsting for our
+blood, did not dream what was about to happen.
+
+Here now in Columbia we were walled in just as we had been at Macon, and
+our lives continued in much the same hardship as before. Only here I do
+not recall that any prisoner was murdered. It is right to say, too, that
+the outrages so often committed on prisoners here and elsewhere in the
+South were not by the regular Confederate soldiers, but by home guards
+usually set over us. It seems now, when I recall it, that life was not
+quite so bad here. We soon had some boards given us; so we built sheds
+to live in. As for myself, I, with three or four comrades, lived in a
+little wedge tent. It was very cold and midwinter now. I scarcely slept
+at night, but walked about to keep warm. It was on one of these midnight
+tramps that it occurred to me to write the song, "Sherman's March to the
+Sea." I recur to it here because it gave its name to the great campaign
+it celebrates.
+
+The story of how it came to be written cannot perhaps be wholly without
+interest. During the days that Sherman's army was tramping from Atlanta
+toward Savannah we prisoners were not permitted to have any news from
+the outside of any kind whatever. There was a fear that if we knew what
+was going on a mutiny might follow. We were constantly being told by our
+guards that Sherman's invading army was being headed off or destroyed.
+In the beginning we feared these stories to be true, but the uneasy
+actions and sullen looks of our captors soon began to belie their
+statements. As said, three or four of us prisoners occupied a little
+wedge tent. A negro had recently been allowed to come into the prison
+pen mornings to sell bread to those who had any money with which to buy.
+Our little mess got a small loaf now every morning; not more for the
+bread, though we needed that badly enough, than for a certain little
+roll of paper carefully hidden away in the middle of the loaf. It was a
+Columbia morning newspaper printed on soft thin paper and of extremely
+small size. Our loyal negro had easily enough been persuaded to hide a
+copy of this paper in the bread for us as often as he could have the
+chance unobserved. A knowing wink from him told us when to eat our loaf
+of bread inside the tent and with one of us watching at the door while
+another read in a low voice the news from the invading army. The paper
+rolled up was not larger than a walnut.
+
+It was full of misrepresentations and reports of disasters to Sherman,
+to mislead the Georgians and lessen their alarm. Yet between the lines
+we easily enough read that Sherman was surely marching on, and
+victorious. His columns were coming nearer to us; and how we longed
+night and day that he might capture the prison! At last we saw that
+there was no hope. He was passing us,--though, but many miles away.
+
+Then one morning, when we unrolled the little paper in the bread and
+read it, we knew that _he had reached the sea_. Savannah had fallen. The
+consternation of the Southerners was tremendous. But, next, they
+pretended that they could box Sherman up in Savannah and capture his
+whole army.
+
+One December night when I was tramping up and down the prison pen in the
+dark, trying to keep warm, I reflected on the tremendous importance of
+what Sherman had done. And I wondered what so curious a campaign would
+be called. It was not a series of battles--it was a great _march_. And
+then the title, and almost the words, of the song came to me.
+
+The next morning when my tent comrades were out of doors shivering over
+a little fire I remained in our little heap of straw, and completed the
+verses.
+
+I went out to the fire and read them to my comrades. A Lieutenant
+Rockwell happened to be present and asked permission to make a copy of
+the verses. He, with many others, slept on the ground under the hospital
+building. One had to crawl on his hands and knees to enter there. There
+was a most capable Glee Club among the officers, and they had by some
+means secured a flute, violins, and bass viol for accompaniments. They
+kept their instruments under the house, too, where they slept.
+
+Every afternoon this Glee Club was permitted to sing and play on the
+little elevated porch of the hospital. The only condition was that
+Southern songs should be sung, not less than Northern songs. There was
+no trouble about that. The songs of our captors were better than no
+songs. Besides, these singers made music. All the crowd of prisoners,
+eight hundred now, often stood in front of the little porch to enjoy the
+singing. Almost hundreds of the Rebels, too, together with many ladies
+of Columbia, climbed up onto the walls, where the guards stood, and
+applauded the singers as much as any.
+
+One drizzly afternoon I was standing by a little persimmon tree in the
+midst of the crowd listening to the songs, when Major Isett, leader of
+the Glee Club, said: "Now we will have a song about Sherman." To my
+astonishment, it was my "Sherman's March to the Sea."
+
+It was received in a tremendous fashion. Everybody cheered and hurrahed.
+The news of Sherman's victories was fresh upon them. In five minutes'
+time the good fortune of my song was settled. The name of the author was
+loudly called for; someone saw me by the little tree, and I was quickly
+hauled to the front and up onto the platform. In a few moments an
+unknown officer among the many prisoners became a sort of prison hero.
+
+Everybody wanted the song, everybody sang it; and clever penmen made a
+good thing making copies at twenty dollars apiece, Confederate money. As
+a little compliment to me the captain of the prison allowed me to sleep
+on the floor of the hospital room. To me that was important, as shall
+appear. Later in this narrative, too, will be seen how an exchanged
+prisoner, by the name of Tower, who had an artificial leg, carried the
+song in this wooden limb through the lines to our soldiers in the North,
+where it was sung everywhere and with demonstration. In a week it had
+given its name to the campaign, and a million copies of it soon passed
+into circulation.
+
+Lieutenant Rockwell, who had asked my leave to copy the verses that
+first morning, was a composer, and there in the dust under the old
+hospital he had, unknown to me, written the first music to which the
+song was ever sung. Later, it had many other settings, but that one,
+though difficult, remained the best. The song has often since been sung
+to the air of "The Red, White, and Blue." This is the history of the
+song, which I print here as a part of this narrative.
+
+
+    SHERMAN'S MARCH TO THE SEA
+
+    Our camp fires shone bright on the mountains
+      That frowned on the river below,
+    While we stood by our guns in the morning
+      And eagerly watched for the foe--
+    When a rider came out from the darkness
+      That hung over mountain and tree,
+    And shouted, "Boys, up and be ready,
+      For Sherman will march to the sea."
+
+    Then cheer upon cheer for bold Sherman
+      Went up from each valley and glen,
+    And the bugles re-echoed the music
+      That came from the lips of the men.
+    For we knew that the stars in our banner
+      More bright in their splendor would be,
+    And that blessings from Northland would greet us
+      When Sherman marched down to the sea.
+
+    Then forward, boys, forward to battle,
+      We marched on our wearisome way,
+    And we stormed the wild hills of Resaca,--
+      God bless those who fell on that day--
+    Then Kenesaw, dark in its glory,
+      Frowned down on the flag of the free,
+    But the East and the West bore our standards,
+      And Sherman marched on to the sea.
+
+    Still onward we pressed, till our banners
+      Swept out from Atlanta's grim walls,
+    And the blood of the patriot dampened
+      The soil where the traitor flag falls;
+    But we paused not to weep for the fallen,
+      Who slept by each river and tree;
+    Yet we twined them a wreath of the laurel
+      As Sherman marched down to the sea.
+
+    O, proud was our army that morning
+      That stood where the pine darkly towers,
+    When Sherman said: "Boys, you are weary,
+      This day fair Savannah is ours."
+    Then sang we a song for our chieftain
+      That echoed over river and lea,
+    And the stars in our banner shown brighter
+      When Sherman marched down to the sea.
+
+    [SHERMAN'S MARCH TO THE SEA.--From _Eggleston's Famous War
+    Ballads_.--General Sherman, in a recent conversation with the editor
+    of this collection, declared that it was this poem with its phrase,
+    "march to the sea," that threw a glamour of romance over the
+    campaign which it celebrates. Said General Sherman: "The thing was
+    nothing more or less than a change of base; an operation perfectly
+    familiar to every military man, but a poet got hold of it, gave it
+    the captivating label, 'The March to the Sea,' and the unmilitary
+    public made a romance out of it." It may be remarked that the
+    General's modesty overlooks the important fact that the romance lay
+    really in his own deed of derring-do; the poet merely recorded it,
+    or at most interpreted it to the popular intelligence. The glory of
+    the great campaign was Sherman's and his army's; the joy of
+    celebrating it was the poet's; the admiring memory of it is the
+    people's.--EDITOR.]
+
+As stated, I slept nights now on the floor of the prison hospital. This
+added comfort, however, did not tempt me to stay in prison, if I could
+get away. Once more we heard that the prisoners were to be carted away
+to some safer place, out of the line of Sherman's army, now turned North
+and moving rapidly toward us. A night or two before this move of
+prisoners really commenced Lieutenant Devine of Philadelphia joined me
+in an effort to get away. The walls of the least used room of the
+hospital were made of joined boards. By the use of an old case knife,
+hacked into a saw, or auger, we managed to cut a hole sufficiently large
+to permit us to pull ourselves through and out into an attic above a
+little porch. We repaired the boards as best we could and crept out
+into the dark hole. It was the attic of the same porch on which our Glee
+Club stood when they sang my song. It was a little cramped up place we
+were in, where we could neither sit erect nor lie at full length. There
+were no guards inside the prison hospital; the night was very dark; the
+sick prisoners seemed to be sleeping. A dim lamp hung from the ceiling.
+We were not detected. The next night at midnight, when the prisoners
+were being marched away, two of them were missing. What a night and day
+and part of another night that was for us, crooked and cramped as we
+were, in the top of that little porch.
+
+At the next midnight, when every soul, prisoners, guards and all, seemed
+to be gone far away and dead silence was upon the place, Devine and I
+crept down from our hiding place. The big gate was closed and locked. By
+the aid of a scantling I managed to get up onto the high brick wall. My
+surprise was immense to see guards waiting for us outside, and to know
+that we were discovered. One of the guards rushed up to his post at the
+top of the wall, but he was too late to shoot; we were already in hiding
+among the empty board huts and barracks.[B]
+
+   [B] When springing down from the top of that wall I lost my shoes--I
+   had had them in my hand. I also let fall from my pocket the pages of
+   this diary. I could not think of losing them, and at the risk of my
+   life I slipped over the dead line and from under the guard's very
+   feet, I snatched them up and ran behind one of the huts.
+
+In a moment the big gate opened and a hundred men rushed in, looking for
+the escaping Yankees. They howled, they cursed at us, they set the
+barracks on fire. Then amid the mêlée and excitement in the dark my
+comrade and myself pulled our gray blankets about us, picked up a water
+bucket each, and pushed up to the guard at the gate. We were "going for
+water," we said. "The lieutenant says the fire must be put out." Without
+waiting a reply we hurried out in the darkness. There were some vain
+shots after us.
+
+Shortly we heard the tramp of horses coming toward us. A friendly
+culvert in the road into which we dodged afforded us protection while a
+whole company of Johnny Rebs rode over our heads. What would they have
+thought, that night, had they known it as they went skipping along with
+arms and jingling sabers, to confront Sherman's advance guards?
+
+We were gone. After a while, in the outskirts of the city, we saw a
+light in a cabin and a negro walking up and down by the window. Every
+negro we knew to be a loyal friend. This one we called out among some
+rose bushes in the dooryard. Instantly, and without fear, we told him
+who we were and that we were in his power. There is not a question but
+he would have been well rewarded had he betrayed us to the Confederate
+soldiers in the city that night. Few words were spoken. That morning two
+escaped prisoners were secreted under some bean stalks in the garret of
+the negro's cabin. The negro's sick wife lay in the single room below.
+Had we been discovered now that negro would have been hanged from his
+own door lintel. And well he knew it.
+
+Sherman's army was already pounding at the gates of the town. He was
+crossing the river and his shells reached to the capital. This much we
+knew from what we could hear in the yard below, for the negro's cabin
+stood at the edge of a green lawn where General Chestnut had his
+headquarters. We broke a little hole through the siding of the house,
+and now could see what the general and his staff were doing. We also
+could hear much that was said. Once we thought ourselves discovered, for
+we observed two or three of the general's negro servants standing in a
+group on the grass looking steadily toward the spot where our little
+improvised window was. What on earth were they looking at?
+
+It was not much the old negro could give us to eat. A little dried beef
+and some cold corn bread; that was all, save that once he brought us a
+gallon of buttermilk. He had no cow, but he would not tell us where
+this, to us, heavenly nectar had come from.
+
+There was much hurrying of officers back and forth at General Chestnut's
+headquarters, and plainly we could see there was great excitement. Our
+own negro was kept going back and forth into the town to pick up for us
+whatever news he could of the fight going on at the river. After awhile
+the cannonading grew louder, and it seemed to us the conflict must be
+right at the outskirts of the town. Then we saw General Chestnut
+hurriedly ride on to the headquarter's lawn, and we distinctly heard him
+say to an officer, "Sherman has got a bridge down. The game's up. We
+must evacuate." In a few minutes the sound of the guns increased, and
+then we saw General Chestnut call his slaves to him to bid them
+farewell. It was a touching scene, amid the dramatic surroundings. He
+seemed very kind, and some of them in their ignorance wept. "You will be
+free," he said. "Be good." I thought, he too was affected as he mounted
+his horse and, followed by his staff, rode away. He was hardly out of
+sight when our negro protector came running toward the cabin. He was
+tremendously excited. A tall, old cylinder hat he had picked up on the
+way was on his head, his eyes bulged out, his hands waved like
+windmills; he was celebrating. In a moment the black face and the
+cylinder hat shot up the ladder and through the hatch-way to where we
+were.
+
+"God Almighty be thanked!" he cried in a loud voice. "Massa, the Stars
+and Stripes are waving above the capital of South Carolina. Praise to
+the God Almighty!"
+
+Sure enough, Union troops, had entered, and a flag from my own State had
+been run up on the State House. Instantly we bade him hurry and bring
+some Union soldiers to us. In his absence Devine and I stood shaking
+each other's hands and thanking God for our deliverance. No slave who
+had his chains knocked off that day by the coming of the Union army felt
+more thankful than we, freed from the wretchedness and horrors of
+fifteen months of imprisonment. Now we could see the Confederate cavalry
+evacuating the town. Whole companies passed, each trooper having a sheaf
+of oats slung to his saddle bow. Shortly our black friend returned, and
+with him two Union soldiers. "It is time to drink, boys," they cried
+out, as they fairly forced us to partake of the whisky in their
+canteens. When we all went down into the yard I was sure we would be
+recaptured, for the Rebel rear-guard was passing close to our cabin. The
+flying troops, however, had fish of their own to fry, and were in too
+much haste to be looking after us. Now, too, we were surrounded by
+General Chestnut's black servants, who were hopping about, giving thanks
+for their freedom. I asked one of them what it was they had been looking
+at so attentively the day before, when I had seen them gazing right at
+our hiding-place. "Ha ha! massa! we just knowed you was up there all the
+time. Reckon you didn't like that ar buttermilk what we'uns sent you."
+Our negro friend then had made confidents of them, and we had been fed,
+without knowing it, on some of the good things from General Chestnut's
+kitchen. Should the general ever read this little book, I hope he will
+cease wondering what became of his buttermilk that day at Columbia.
+
+Now, our two soldiers escorted us to a street where some of the army had
+halted and stacked arms. A Union flag hung over a stack of muskets, and
+no human being will ever know with what thankful heart-beatings and
+tears we gathered its silken folds into our arms. Now we knew that we
+were free. The terrible days were indeed over, and God's rainbow
+illumined our sky.
+
+In half an hour the victorious veterans of Sherman's army, their great
+leader riding before, with bands playing and banners flying, entered the
+captured city. My comrade and I stood on a high door-step and saw them
+pass. Someone pointed us out to Sherman, and for a moment the whole
+moving army was halted till he greeted the freed prisoners. We two
+comrades lived a month in that short seventeenth day of February, 1865,
+in Columbia. I think we shook hands with a thousand soldiers, even with
+many soldiers we had never seen before. It seemed to us that everybody
+must be as glad to see us as we were to see them.
+
+That night Columbia was burned to the ground amid untold horrors. The
+conflagration had commenced from bales of cotton that the enemy had
+fired and left in the street to prevent falling into the Union hands. A
+big wind rose toward evening and the burning cotton flakes were flying
+all over the city. It was a terrible spectacle that night. My comrade
+and I walked about the streets till nearly morning. Whole squares and
+streets were crumbling to ashes and tall buildings tumbled down
+everywhere. Here and there, too, there was a terrific explosion. It was
+Moscow done over on a smaller scale. A division of Union troops, under
+Hazen, was sent into the town to fight the flames and to arrest every
+man discovered firing houses or walking around without a pass. So it
+happened that my comrade and myself, though but innocent spectators,
+were at midnight arrested and taken to provost headquarters. We very
+soon explained ourselves and were released and sent to comfortable
+quarters, where we slept till late the next day. It was four nights
+since we had had any sleep at all.
+
+But the sights of that awful night will never fade from my memory. Most
+of the citizens of Columbia had sons or relations in the Rebel army.
+Half of them were dead, the army itself was flying everywhere, and in
+the blackness of this terrible night their fortunes were all lost, their
+homes were all burning up. Many wandered about wringing their hands and
+crying; some sat stolid and speechless in the street watching everything
+that they had go to destruction. A few wandered around, wholly demented.
+Some of the invading soldiers tried earnestly to extinguish the flames;
+others broke into houses and added to the conflagration. Numbers of the
+Federal prisoners, who only a few weeks before had been marched through
+the streets like felons, had escaped, and what average human nature led
+them to do never will be known. There were fearful things going on
+everywhere. It was reported that an explosion occurred in one house and
+that twenty-four soldiers, carousing there, were lost in the ruins. Most
+of the people of Columbia would have been willing to have died that
+night, then and there. What had they left to live for? _This, too, was
+war._
+
+When the army entered in the afternoon, Lieutenant Devine and I, as
+related, stood on the high steps of a mansion and watched it pass.
+Shortly after a very charming young woman, a Mrs. C----, seeing us, came
+down and invited us into her father's house and gave us food. It was the
+first real food we had had for many, many months. The lady's father was
+a rich jeweler, and, though a Southerner, was a Union man. Her own
+husband, however, was somewhere in the Southern army. My comrade and I
+spent an entertaining hour in the mansion, and then went and walked
+about the city.
+
+At six o'clock the awful cry, "The town is burning up, the town is
+burning up!" was heard everywhere. Devine and I at once thought of Mrs.
+C----and our friends of the afternoon, and hurried to their home to
+offer help. The flames were already across the street from there. Mrs.
+C----'s father was weeping in the drawing-room. Once he took me by the
+arm and led me to where we could see his own business establishment
+burning to the ground. "There goes the savings of a life," said he, in
+bitterness. "There is what the curse of secession has done for us; there
+is what Wade Hampton and the other political firebrands have done for
+South Carolina." My comrade and I at once began carrying some of the
+more valuable goods out of the house for them, doing everything possible
+to help them save some remnant from their beautiful and luxurious home.
+We ran up and down the mansion stairs until we were almost dead with
+exhaustion. Everything we could save we piled into a phaeton that stood
+by the yard. Once the lady cried that her child was still in the house,
+burning up. Her shrieks pierced even the noise of that fearful night.
+Her alarm was without cause, for I soon found the child safe in the arms
+of a faithful slave nurse. She had simply carried it out of danger.
+
+When the walls of the house seemed about to fall, Devine and I took the
+loaded buggy, he pulling in the shafts, I pushing behind, and, followed
+by the weeping family on foot, we drew it for a mile or more to the
+outer edge of the town. Here we left them in safety by a little wood,
+yet not knowing if we would ever see them again. Many of our soldiers
+were burnt up that night.
+
+The next day Sherman's army left the ruins of the city behind them and
+marched away. They had, however, left supplies of rations for their
+unfortunate enemies. A train of empty wagons was also furnished for
+those fugitives who wished to follow the army and work their way North.
+Hundreds, possibly thousands, left the smoking ruins of their homes and
+traveled along with us in every conceivable conveyance that was heard
+of. Black and white, slave and free, rich and poor, joined in the
+procession behind the army. Mrs. C---- and her father's family were
+among them.
+
+I now tried to find my regiment. It was gone. Many battles and many
+marches had so decimated it that the little fragment left had been
+disbanded and transferred into a regiment of cavalry.
+
+Colonel Silsby, of the Tenth Iowa, offered me a place with his mess. I
+accepted. The Colonel, as it happened, had charge of perhaps a hundred
+prisoners, captured on the march. Naturally, I was interested to go
+among them. I soon saw how much better they fared than I had done when
+in Southern hands. Two or three of them, as it happened, had been among
+the guards who had treated us so badly while we were in the prison known
+as "Camp Sorghum," outside of Columbia. They were perfectly terrified
+when they learned that I had been there under their charge. They seemed
+to fear instant and awful retaliation; but I thought of nothing of the
+kind. I was too glad just to be free to be thinking of any vengeance.
+
+A curious incident now happened. This was the discovery, among these
+prisoners, of the husband of the young Mrs. C---- who had given us food
+in Columbia and whose belongings I and my comrade had tried to save. He
+was overjoyed to learn from me that his wife and child were at least
+alive. I instantly went to General Logan, and related to him how this
+man's family had been kind to me the day that I escaped. I had no
+trouble in securing his release. It was at Logan's headquarters, too,
+that I had secured money and an order for provisions to give to Edward
+Edwards, the black man who had been the means of my final rescue. His
+sick wife had kept him behind, else he would have followed the army. We
+left him in Columbia. Years later, as a sign of my gratitude toward this
+slave, I dedicated a little volume to him, in which I had described my
+prison life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+  The army in the Carolinas--General Sherman sends for me--Gives me a
+    place on his staff--Experiences at army headquarters--Sherman's life
+    on the march--Music at headquarters--Logan's violin--The General's
+    false friend--The army wades, swims, and fights through the
+    Carolinas--I am sent as a despatch bearer to General Grant--A
+    strange ride down the Cape Fear River in the night--General
+    Terry--Learn that my song "The March to the Sea" is sung through the
+    North, and has given the campaign its name--I bring the first news
+    of Sherman's successes to the North--An interview with General
+    Grant.
+
+
+It was on this march in the Carolinas that General Sherman sent for me
+to come to army headquarters. We were two days away from Columbia. I was
+ashamed to go in my prison rags, so I waited. The next day the request
+was repeated, and Major Nichols of the staff came and said, "But you
+must go, it is an order." And I went. The General was sitting by a
+little rail fire in front of his tent, reading a newspaper, when we
+approached his bivouac in the woods. I was introduced. He at once told
+me how pleased he had been with my song, that I had written in prison
+about his army. Devine had given him a copy at that time when he halted
+his column to greet us by the door-step at Columbia. "Our boys shall all
+sing this song," he said; "and as for you, I shall give you a position
+on my staff. Tomorrow you will be furnished a horse and all that you
+need; and you must mess with me."
+
+It would be very hard to express my feelings at this sudden transition
+from a prisoner in rags to a post at the headquarters of the great
+commander. I was almost overcome, but General Sherman's extreme kindness
+of manner and speech at last put me partly at my ease. Shortly a big
+colored man, in a green coat, announced dinner. "Come," said the
+General, pushing me ahead of him into a tent, where a number of
+handsomely uniformed staff officers stood around a table waiting his
+approach. I was still in my rags. I could not help noticing the curious
+glances of the fine gentlemen, who doubtless were wondering what General
+Sherman had picked up now.
+
+My embarrassment was extreme. The commander however soon told them who I
+was, gave me the seat at his right hand, and almost his entire
+conversation at the table was directed to me. The officers of the staff
+quickly took the General's cue, and I was soon an object of interest,
+even to them.
+
+He directed a hundred questions to me as to the general treatment of
+war prisoners in the South, and he, as well as the staff, interested
+themselves in all the details of my escape. Telling the story very soon
+relieved me of my embarrassment as to my clothes. The horrible tales of
+Southern prison pens, however, was nothing new to General Sherman, for
+he related to me some of the awful things he had heard of Andersonville
+while his army was at Atlanta.
+
+"At one time," said he, "I had great hopes of rescuing all of them at
+one quick blow. I gave General Stoneman a large body of cavalry, with
+directions to raid down about Macon. This raid was to go farther, and,
+by a quick, secret dash capture Andersonville and release every prisoner
+there. It was a chance to do the noblest deed of the war, but it all
+failed miserably. Stoneman had not fully obeyed orders, and, instead of
+releasing a whole army of suffering captives, he got captured himself,
+and, with him, a lot of my best cavalry."
+
+It happened that I saw General Stoneman the very day he was brought to
+the prison. My narrative of how by desperately bold and violent cursing
+he denounced and defied his captors, and everything in Rebeldom, greatly
+amused Sherman and all at the table.
+
+Stoneman's awful language and flashing eyes did indeed fairly
+intimidate the officer in charge. Evidently he thought he had captured a
+tiger. It was a wonder Stoneman was not killed.
+
+The conversation about the prisoners continued. Twenty-five thousand of
+them were starving and dying in Andersonville. "It is one of the awful
+fates of war," said the General. "It can't be helped; they would have
+been better off had all been killed on the battlefield; and one almost
+wishes they had been." After a pause, he continued. "At times, I am
+almost satisfied it would be just as well to _kill all prisoners_." The
+remark, to me, a prisoner just escaped, seemed shocking. I am sure he
+noticed it, for he soon added: "They would be spared these atrocities.
+Besides, _the more awful you can make war the sooner it will be over_."
+
+It would, after all, be a mercy.
+
+"_War is hell, at the best_," he went on, half in anger, and using an
+expression common to him.
+
+For the moment I thought him heartless, but other remarks made to me,
+and to the staff, soon told us that whatever the cruelties imposed on
+him as a commander, they were executed with heart-pain and only as plain
+duty for the salvation of his own army. He even talked of how glad he
+would be to be out of the whole bloody business, once the Union were
+restored. But if the rebellion continued all his life, he would stay and
+fight it out.
+
+When the dinner was over each looked about him to find some garment to
+give me. This one had an extra coat, that one a pair of trousers, and
+another one a hat. In short I was quickly attired in a rather
+respectable uniform.
+
+This matter was just about ended when a beautiful woman was conducted to
+Sherman, to ask protection for her home, that was in his line of march.
+She was "true blue Union," despite her surroundings. In a moment the
+whole atmosphere about the tent was changed. The red-handed warrior, who
+a moment before was ready to kill even prisoners, suddenly became the
+most amiable, the most gallant and knightly looking man I ever saw.
+Beauty, that can draw a soldier with a single hair, had ensnared the
+great commander. He had become a gentle knight. The whole army if need
+be, would stand stock still to do her one little favor. I now recall how
+long after the war I noticed a hundred times this perfectly knightly
+gallantry of Sherman toward all women.
+
+This one particular woman seemed a hundred times more beautiful, more
+fascinating, there in the green wood alone, with an army of a hundred
+thousand strangers about her, when, pointing her hand toward a great
+banner that swung in the wind between two tall pines, she smiled and
+cried: "General Sherman, THAT IS MY FLAG TOO." There was a clapping of
+hands from all of us, and any one of us would have been glad to be sent
+as the protector of her home.
+
+The great army was now marching, or rather swimming and wading, in the
+direction of Fayetteville, N. C. There were heavy rains and the country,
+naturally swampy, was flooded everywhere. I soon learned from the staff
+where the army had already been. After the end of the march to the sea
+and the capture of Savannah, Sherman had started in with sixty thousand
+men, to treat South Carolina in the manner he had treated Georgia--march
+through it and desolate it. His proposed march northward from Savannah
+was regarded by the Southern generals as an impossibility. The obstacles
+were so great as to make it a hundred times as difficult as his march
+from Atlanta to the sea. But he led a great army of picked veterans,
+accustomed to everything, whose flags had almost never known defeat.
+Their confidence in their general and in themselves was simply absolute.
+So far, in their march from Savannah they had hesitated at nothing.
+
+It was midwinter, and yet that army had often waded in swamps with the
+cold water waist deep, carrying their clothes and their muskets on their
+heads. Half the roads they followed had to be corduroyed, or their
+horses would all have been lost in the bottomless mire and swamps. Often
+their artillery was for miles pulled along by the men themselves, and
+that in the face of the enemy, hidden behind every stream, and ready to
+ambush them at every roadside. Over all these infamous wagon roads,
+across all these bridgeless rivers and endless swamps, our army now
+dragged with it a train of sixty-nine cannon, twenty-five hundred
+six-mule wagons, and six hundred ambulances. The tremendous obstacles
+they encountered before reaching Columbia they were again to encounter
+beyond. Not a bridge was left on any creek or river in the Carolinas.
+Roads were built of poles and logs through swamps ten miles wide.
+Sherman's army had few rations and no tents. The foragers brought in all
+the food they could pick up near the line of march. The little rubber
+blankets the soldiers carried were their sole protection from storm.
+They were almost shoeless. There were not a dozen full tents in the
+army. Officers used tent flies sometimes, but oftener simply rolled
+themselves up in their blankets, as their men did. At army headquarters
+we had but one large tent, used generally for dining under; so we
+usually slept in deserted cabins at the roadside.
+
+I recall one fearfully stormy night when the General and his staff had
+all crept into a little church we found in the woods. The General would
+not accept the bit of carpet one of us had improvised into a bed for him
+on the pulpit platform. "No," he said, "keep that for some of you young
+fellows who are not well." He then stretched himself out on a wooden
+bench for the night. I think he never removed his uniform during the
+campaign. Day and night he was alert, and seemed never to be really
+asleep. We of the staff now had little to do save carrying orders
+occasionally to other commanders.
+
+General Sherman did most of his own writing, and he wrote a rapid,
+beautiful hand. We had breakfast by the light of the campfire almost
+every morning, and were immediately in the saddle, floundering along
+through the mud, always near to, or quite at, the head of the army. At
+noon we always dismounted and ate a simple lunch at the roadside,
+sometimes washed down by a little whisky. Now and then some one of the
+army, recognizing the General riding past, would give a cheer that would
+be taken up by brigades and divisions a mile away. There seemed to be
+something peculiar about this Sherman cheer, for soldiers far off would
+cry out: "Listen to them cheering Billy Sherman."
+
+On the 3d of March we took Cheraw, and twenty-four cannon, also nearly
+four thousand barrels of gunpowder. That day General Logan, General
+Howard, General Kilpatrick, General Hazen, and many other notables came
+to headquarters. There was a jolly time of rejoicing.
+
+Here General Logan, who could play the violin, entertained them by
+singing my song of "Sherman's March to the Sea," accompanying his voice
+with the instrument. A dozen famous generals joined in the chorus. After
+the singing, Logan insisted that I should also recite the poem. I did
+so, meeting with great applause from the very men who had been the
+leaders in the great "March." Alas! save one or two, they are now all
+dead.
+
+Among the captures that day had been eight wagonloads of fine, old wine.
+It was now distributed among the different headquarters of the Union
+army, and as a result some of the said headquarters were pretty nearly
+drunk. One of our staff, at dinner the next day, attempted to explain
+his condition of the day before. "Never mind explaining," said General
+Sherman crustily, and without looking up, "but only see that the like of
+that does not happen again; that is all." That staff officer was a very
+sober man the rest of the campaign.
+
+While we were lying there in Cheraw we heard an awful explosion; the
+very earth shook. I supposed it to be an earthquake until a messenger
+brought word that a lot of captured gunpowder had exploded and killed
+and wounded twenty soldiers.
+
+As we were crossing on our pontoons over the Pedee River at Cheraw I
+noticed a singular way of punishing army thieves. An offender of this
+kind stood on the bridge, guarded by two sentinels. He was inside of a
+barrel that had the ends knocked out. On the barrel in big letters were
+the words: "I am a thief." The whole army corps passed close by him. An
+occasional man indulged in some joke at his expense, but the body of
+soldiers affected not to see him. The day we entered Cheraw General
+Sherman and his staff rode through the country alone for ten miles,
+going across from one column to another. It was a hazardous ride, as the
+whole country was full of guerrillas. But nothing of note happened to
+us.
+
+On the 8th of March the headquarters staff was bivouacked in the woods
+near Laurel Hill. The army was absolutely cut off from everywhere. It
+had no base; it was weeks since Sherman had heard from the North or
+since the North had heard from him. Now he resolved to try to get a
+courier with a message through to Wilmington, at the seaside. An
+experienced spy by the name of Pike was selected to float down the Cape
+Fear River to ask the commander to try to send a tugboat up, to
+communicate with the army. I did not know then that the next one to run
+down Cape Fear River would be myself.
+
+In four days we had taken Fayetteville and its wonderful arsenal, built
+years before by the American people, and where now half the war supplies
+of the Rebel army were made.
+
+When the General and his staff first rode into Fayetteville headquarters
+were established in the arsenal. The General, wishing to look about the
+town for an hour or so, left me in charge. The other officers rode away
+with him. Very shortly a well-dressed, fine-looking old Southerner came
+to me and complained that his home was being disturbed by some of our
+soldiers. He was, he said, an old West Point friend of General
+Sherman's. While waiting the return of the commander, he regaled me with
+incidents of their early days together in the North and with his
+intimacies with one who would now doubtless be overwhelmed with joy at
+seeing him. He begged me to observe what would be his reception when the
+General should come. Impressed by his conversation, I at once sent a
+soldier or two to guard his home.
+
+Shortly after General Sherman rode in through the arsenal portal and
+dismounted. The Southerner advanced with open arms, and for a moment
+there was a ray of pleasure illuminating Sherman's face. Then he went
+and leaned against a column, and, turning to the Southerner, said, "Yes,
+we were long together, weren't we?" "Yes," answered the Southerner,
+delighted. "You shared my friendship, shared my bread, even, didn't
+you?" continued Sherman. "Indeed, indeed!" the Southerner replied, with
+increasing warmth. The General gave the Southerner a long, steady,
+almost pathetic look, and answered, "You have betrayed it all; me, your
+friend, your country that educated you for its defense. You are here a
+traitor, and you ask me to be again your friend, to protect your
+property, to send you these brave men, some of whose comrades were
+murdered by your neighbors this very morning--fired on from hidden
+houses by you and yours as they entered the town. Turn your back to me
+forever. I will not punish you; only go your way. There is room in the
+world even for traitors." The Southerner turned ashy white and walked
+away from us in silence. Sherman sat down with the rest of us to our
+noonday lunch. We sat about the portal on stones, or barrels, or
+whatever happened to answer for seats. The General could scarcely eat.
+Never had I seen him under such emotion; the corners of his mouth
+twitched as he continued talking to us of this false friend. The hand
+that held the bread trembled and for a moment tears were in his eyes.
+For a little while we all sat in silence, and we realized as never
+before what treason to the republic really meant. The General spoke as
+if he, nor we, might ever live through it all.
+
+Very soon General Howard rode in to complain anew of the outrages
+committed on our troops by men firing from windows as they passed along
+the streets. Two or three soldiers had been killed. "Who did this
+outrage?" cried Sherman, in a loud and bitter voice, "Texans, I think,"
+answered General Howard. "Then shoot some Texan prisoners in
+retaliation," said Sherman sternly. "We have no Texans," replied Howard,
+not inclined, apparently, to carry out the serious, but just order.
+"Then take other prisoners, take any prisoners," continued General
+Sherman. "I will not permit my soldiers to be murdered." He turned on
+his heel and walked away. Howard mounted and rode into the town. What
+happened, I do not know.
+
+On Sunday morning General Sherman asked me to take a walk with him
+through the immense arsenal of Fayetteville before he should blow it up.
+We were gone an hour, and I was surprised at his great familiarity with
+all the machinery and works of the immense establishment. He talked
+constantly and explained many things to me. Never more than at that time
+was I impressed with the universal knowledge, the extraordinary genius,
+of the man. There seemed to be nothing there he did not understand. On
+our way back to headquarters I heard him give the order to destroy
+everything, to burn the arsenal down, blow it up, to leave absolutely
+nothing, and he added the prayer that the American government might
+never again give North Carolina an arsenal and forts to betray. He was
+very angry now at those who had used the United States property in their
+desire to destroy the government itself. He had seen nothing in the war
+that seemed so treasonable, unless it was the base ingratitude of those
+who entered the service of the Rebellion after having been educated at
+West Point at the Government's expense.
+
+Pretty soon he said to me: "If I can get any kind of a boat up here, I
+am going to have you try to reach Wilmington with dispatches." Almost at
+that minute a steam whistle sounded in the woods below us. "There it
+is," said the General joyfully. "Pike got through." Very soon someone
+came running to say a communication had come from the seashore; a little
+tug had run the Rebel gauntlet all the way from Wilmington.
+
+We went in to lunch and the General announced to the staff his intention
+of sending me down the river, and off to General Grant with dispatches.
+This chance to get word of his movements and his successes to General
+Grant and the North was of vast importance, and it moved him greatly. He
+left his lunch half finished and commenced writing letters and reports
+to the commander-in-chief. That evening at twilight General Sherman
+walked with me down to the riverside where the little tug lay waiting.
+"When you reach the North," he said, putting his arm around me, "don't
+tell them we have been cutting any great swath in the Carolinas; simply
+tell them the plain facts; tell them that the army is not lost, but is
+well, and still marching." So careful was I as to his injunctions, that
+even the newspapers at Washington never knew how the great news from
+Sherman reached the North.
+
+I did not know then, starting down the river with my message, that it
+was to be seven years before I was again to see the face of my beloved
+commander.
+
+The Cape Fear River was flooded at this time, a mile wide, in places
+even more, and though its banks were lined with guerrillas there could
+not be great danger, if we could stay in the middle of the stream,
+unless our little boat should get wrecked in the darkness by floating
+trees or by running into shallow places. The lights were all put out.
+The pilot house and the sides of the boat were covered by bales of
+cotton, to protect us against the Rebel bullets. My dispatches to
+General Grant were carefully sewed up inside my shirt, and were
+weighted, so that I could hastily sink them in the river should we be
+captured. A half dozen refugees from Columbia joined us. Among them was
+the Mrs. C----, whose property Devine and I had tried to save the night
+of the fire. It was a curious and dangerous voyage down that roaring,
+flooded river for a woman to be undertaking in the darkness, but this
+woman had now undertaken many dangers. Another of my companions on that
+strange voyage was Theodore Davis, a corresponding artist of _Harper's
+Weekly_. We kept the boat in the channel as far as we could guess it,
+and, for the rest, simply floated in the darkness. We went through
+undiscovered; not a shot fired at us. Before daylight, so swift had been
+the current, we were in Wilmington.
+
+General Terry had just taken Wilmington and was in command of the city.
+Some of my dispatches were for him. He was still in bed, in one of the
+fine residences of the place, but instantly arose and urged me to jump
+into bed and get some rest while he should arrange to get me immediate
+transportation to Grant. I slept till nine, and when I came down to the
+drawing-room, now used as headquarters, General Terry asked if perhaps
+it were I who wrote the song about Sherman's March from Atlanta seaward.
+It had been sung at the theater the night before, he said. I was much
+gratified to have him tell me that the whole army had taken it up. "Tens
+of thousands of men," he said, "were singing it." I knew, as already
+told, that an exchanged prisoner had brought the song through the Rebel
+lines in an artificial leg he wore, but it was an agreeable surprise to
+now learn of its sudden and tremendous success.
+
+General Terry impressed me as the handsomest soldier I had seen in the
+army--McPherson, the commander of my own corp, only excepted. He was,
+too, a refined and perfect gentleman. Looking at him I thought of the
+cavaliers of romance. Here was real knighthood, born and bred in the
+soil of the republic. The laurels for his heroic capture of Fort Fisher
+were fresh on his brow.
+
+Before noon an ocean steamer, the _Edward Everett_, was ordered to take
+me at once to Fortress Monroe. Two of my army friends went along. The
+captain, leaving on so short notice, had provided his ship with
+insufficient ballast, and to me, a landsman, the vessel's lurchings were
+very astonishing. I had never seen the ocean before, and it was not long
+till I wished I might never see it again. To add to my alarm, a fierce
+tempest sprang up as we passed around Cape Hatteras, and the danger was
+no longer imaginary, but very real. The few passengers on the boat might
+as well have been dead, so far as any self-help was to be thought of in
+case of disaster. Even the captain was very seasick, and, altogether,
+passengers and crew were badly scared. For many hours it was nothing but
+a fierce blow and a roll about on the mad waters. All things come to an
+end; so did this storm, and at last we reached Fortress Monroe, where I
+was hurriedly transferred by some sailors in a yawl over to a boat that
+had already started up the James toward Richmond. Our captain had
+signaled that he had a dispatch bearer from the Carolinas. We had not
+gone far until we passed the top of a ship's mast sticking a few feet
+above the water. It was the mast of the _Cumberland_, that had gone down
+in her fight with the _Merrimac_ with as brave a crew as ever manned a
+war boat.
+
+The steamer I was now on was crowded with officers in bright uniforms,
+apparently returning to their regiments. I wondered if all the Eastern
+army had been home on a furlough. I could not help contrasting to myself
+this ship full of sleek, brightly uniformed officers with the
+rough-clad soldiers and officers of the army of Sherman. Sherman's
+foragers and veterans of the March to the Sea might have cut an awkward
+figure alongside these gay youths just from Washington.
+
+In the afternoon the ship came to at City Point, and I climbed up the
+bank of the river bluff for perhaps a hundred feet, and was soon
+directed to the headquarters of the commander-in-chief of the United
+States armies.
+
+When I reached the open door of Grant's famous little cabin a young
+officer asked me to come in, and was introducing me to the chief of
+staff, Rawlins, who stood there with some letters in his hands. That
+instant General Grant showed his face at the door in the back of the
+room. I knew who it was at once. He stepped forward to where General
+Rawlins was speaking with me, listened to the conversation a moment, and
+without any formal introduction, smiled, took me by the hand and led me
+into the back room of the cabin shutting the door behind us. He asked me
+to sit down, but I first proceeded to rip the dispatches out of my
+clothing, and with intense interest watched his features while he sat on
+a camp stool by the window, his legs crossed, and read Sherman's letter.
+I could see the glow of silent satisfaction as he glanced along the
+lines that told of his great lieutenant's successes in the South. He
+glanced at another letter I held in my hand. "It is for the President,"
+I said. "He will be here yet to-night," he answered. "His boat must now
+be coming up the bay."
+
+Then General Grant questioned me as to all I knew about Sherman's army,
+the character of the opposition he had met, the condition of his
+soldiers, their clothing, the roads, the weather. He also asked me how I
+had reached him with the dispatches, coming all the way from the
+interior of North Carolina. He seemed to have thought for a moment that
+I had come across Virginia on foot. He wanted to know of me again about
+the terrible treatment of prisoners in the South. What I told him only
+"confirmed," he said, what he had heard from a hundred sources.
+
+Very shortly he heard the voice of General Ord in the outer room.
+
+"Come in here, Ord," he said, holding the door open. "Come in and hear
+the news from Sherman. Look at that, listen to this," and again he went
+through Sherman's letter, reading parts of it aloud. "Good! Good!" cried
+Ord, fairly dancing about the cabin, his spurs and saber jingling. "I
+was really getting afraid." "Not I, not I, not a bit," exclaimed Grant
+enthusiastically, as he rose to his feet. "_I knew my man. I knew
+General Sherman._"
+
+I was astonished now at the simple and perfectly frank manner with which
+General Grant talked to me about the situation of the army. I had
+ventured to ask if there was any outlook for the immediate fall of
+Richmond or a battle.
+
+"Very great," he answered. "I am only afraid Lee may slip out before we
+can get a great blow at him. Any hour this may happen." Just then there
+was cannonading. I wondered if a fight were commencing somewhere in the
+line already. General Grant did not change a muscle in his face. "Send
+out and see what the firing is," he said to an officer quietly, and then
+as quietly continued talking, asking me to tell him all I knew of a
+recent escapade of Kilpatrick and his cavalry. It happened that I knew
+all about it. Only a couple of weeks before Kilpatrick and his
+headquarters had been surprised in bed at a bivouac on the flank of
+Sherman's army, and were surrounded and some were captured. By a heroic
+struggle the cavalry leader had escaped his captors, had instantly
+rallied his troops there in the dark woods and given the bold Rebels a
+little drubbing. The next day I had been with Sherman at headquarters
+and listened to Kilpatrick's recital of his adventure. My own narration
+of the night's cavalry fight, reciting how the cavalrymen and his aids
+dashed about with nothing on but their shirts, made General Grant smile
+very audibly. "I had expected the whole thing to be about as you say,"
+he exclaimed, in a grateful way, "but the Richmond newspapers which fell
+into my hands made a big thing of the so-called capture of Sherman's
+cavalry leader."
+
+Once, as the General rose and stood directly in front of us, I was
+astonished to see how small he seemed. I had seen Grant before, but on
+horseback or in battle, and, somehow, I had always regarded him as a
+rather large, solidly built man. To-day in the little back room of his
+cabin, talking with him, I saw how mistaken I had been. General Grant,
+as I now saw him, was, in fact, a little man. Several times he rose and
+walked about the room. He was not more than five feet seven or eight
+inches high, and he could not have weighed more than one hundred and
+forty or fifty pounds. He wore a simple fatigue uniform, and his coat
+thrown open gave him the appearance of being larger chested than he
+really was. His brown hair was neither short nor long, and he wore a
+full beard, well trimmed. Had I not known to whom I was talking, or had
+I not seen the three stars on his shoulders, I would have supposed
+myself in the presence of some simple army captain. There was nothing
+whatever about him to announce the presence of genius or extraordinary
+ability of any kind. He was in no sense a striking-looking man. His
+manner and words to me were kind and earnest. There was an agreeable
+look about his mouth and eyes that made him seem very sincere. Indeed,
+if any one thing about him impressed me more than another, it was his
+apparent sincerity and earnestness. And he looked to me like a man of
+great common sense. Of vanity, pretence, or power there was not a single
+sign. He could not have looked very greatly different when he was hewing
+logs for his house at his father-in-law's farm ten years before, from
+what he looked just now, quietly directing a million soldiers in the
+greatest war of modern times.
+
+Like General Sherman, he repeatedly expressed his interest concerning
+the terrible experiences I had undergone in Southern prisons.
+
+"I suppose you will want to get home as quickly as possible, won't you?"
+he inquired, "or would you rather remain here awhile and look about the
+army?" A steamer was to leave for the North in an hour. Privately, I was
+fearing a sudden break-down of my health, and longed for a home that I
+had visited but eight days during four long years of war. Then I thought
+of my letter to Mr. Lincoln. The General seemed to anticipate my
+thought. "Leave the President's letter with me," he said, "if you
+choose, and I will give it to him, or stay over and give it to him
+yourself."
+
+There was no man living I was so anxious to see as Abraham Lincoln. And
+this was my opportunity. But something like a premonition said, "Go
+home." When I expressed my feeling General Grant stepped to the door of
+the office room and directed General Rawlins to see that I be provided
+with leave of absence and transportation. That little order, signed by
+Rawlins, I still possess.
+
+With an earnest handshake and good-by General Grant thanked me for
+bringing him the dispatches. I was not to see him again for many
+years.[C]
+
+   [C] At the town of Lucerne in Switzerland there is in front of the
+   Schweizerhof a quay lined with castanien trees. It overlooks the
+   beautiful lake. Long years after the war General Grant sat there on a
+   bench one quiet summer night and talked to me of the time I brought
+   the news to him from Sherman in the Carolinas. In a few weeks from
+   that night by the lakeside I had the honor of entertaining my old
+   commander at my own home, in the city of Zurich, where I was now
+   representing the government as one of his appointees. The order
+   naming me to go to Zurich had, on a certain time, been written by his
+   own hand.
+
+   This night at Zurich proved to be almost the last time I was ever to
+   see the great commander. His presence and words that evening are
+   among the treasured memories of my life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+  Washington City in the last days of the war--Look, the
+    President!--_The last man of the regiment._
+
+
+Leaving General Grant's headquarters at City Point was for me a final
+good-by to the army. The little steamer _Martin_ carried me down the
+James River, up the Chesapeake Bay, and the Potomac, toward the North. I
+recall now the strange sensations I had in passing Washington's tomb at
+Mount Vernon. The green slopes and the oak wood in front of the old
+mansion were in full view. I could even see the front columns of the
+house, and someone on the steamer's deck pointed out to me the spot
+where stood the simple brick mausoleum where with folded arms slept the
+Father of his Country. I could not help reflecting that at that moment
+not a hundred miles away stood nearly all George Washington's State's
+descendants, with arms in their hands, striving to destroy the
+government that he had founded.
+
+How I enjoyed that ship ride! Here there was no sandy prison pen with
+poor, starving, dying comrades lying around; no futile efforts at
+escape; no taunts and jeers that the American flag had gone down in
+disgrace; now all was free and beautiful, and _mine_. The hated rag of
+the Confederacy that had floated over my head and threatened me every
+day with death for fifteen long months was gone forever. At the mast of
+our little vessel waved the Stars and Stripes, conscious, it seemed to
+me, of the free air I was breathing. That was a happy day for me.
+
+Some time in the following night the wheels of the boat stopped
+revolving--there was silence; and when I woke at daylight there was the
+land. The ship was fast in the slip at the wharf, and there, too, was
+the capital of the republic. I went ashore by myself and wandered into
+the city, my mind crowded every moment with the thoughts of what had
+taken place here in the last four years. Soldiers I saw everywhere, with
+arms and without arms. Negroes, now freedmen, by the ten thousand fairly
+darkened the population. With some friends I found a boarding place on
+the avenue above the National Hotel. If I wanted to see great men,
+notorious men, men making history, all kinds of men, I had only to step
+into the corridors of the National.
+
+I had little or no ready money, nor could I get any until the
+government settled my accounts. I waited in Washington for a week.
+General Sherman had given me papers that would insure my promotion in
+the regular army. I presented them; they were all-sufficient; I needed
+only to say the word. But I was sick and tired of war, and would not
+have exchanged a glimpse of my Western home for the commission of a
+brigadier.
+
+But while I stayed in Washington what sights I saw! Our capital is now
+possibly the finest in the world. Then it was the most hateful; the most
+hateful in every way. Militarism, treason, political scoundrelism, and
+every other bad ism reigned in every hotel, on every street corner, in
+Congress, out of Congress--everywhere; reigned right at the elbows of
+loyalty and patriotism such as the world never saw. Society was one
+grand conglomeration of everything good and bad.
+
+Washington City itself was a spectacle. It had no streets, save one or
+two--simply dirty unpaved roads. The dirty street cars, pulled by
+worn-out horses, were crowded inside and outside by a mass of struggling
+politicians, soldiers, gamblers, adventurers, and women. The city was
+also full of hospitals; everywhere there were lazarettos and graveyards.
+It looked as if half the Union army had dragged itself into the capital
+to die. The great Capital building was uncompleted; its dome stood
+there covered with scaffoldings and windlasses. The plaza at the east
+end of the structure looked like a vast stone quarry. The Washington
+Monument had only gotten itself safe above high-water mark; and what
+there was of it was in danger of falling down. It stood in the middle of
+the flats, the mud and the malaria--the graveyard, in short, that formed
+the unsavory prospect from the White House windows.
+
+Aside from the unfinished government buildings there was not a pretense
+of architecture in all Washington. There was nothing beautiful there.
+The very atmosphere seemed sickly; fever, malaria, were everywhere. It
+was the one city in all creation to get out of as soon as possible.
+
+Once I tried to get a glimpse of the President. I failed. The White
+House gates were held by sentries. "Why do you want to see that old
+Ape?" said a man to me one day. I was shocked, and would like to have
+killed him. But he was not alone in his vileness. Thousands in
+Washington affected to despise Lincoln. I wondered then that it was
+regarded safe for him to appear in public. One day a carriage rolled
+rapidly up the avenue in front of the National. I heard some men cry,
+"Look, the President!" I glanced quickly. A tall, dark man, wearing a
+silk hat sat in the carriage; at his side a lady.
+
+In a moment they were out of sight. There was not a cheer, not a hat
+touched, not a hand waved, and yet _that was Abraham Lincoln passing_,
+soon to be the greatest man in history. A little wrangle and almost a
+fist-fight between some bystanders on the pavement followed; one party
+denouncing the President for freeing the "damned niggers"; another
+thanking God for the President's noble deed. Such scenes were going on
+everywhere all over the capital, pro and con. Approval and hatred. The
+best praised, the worst abused mortal in America was just entering on
+his second term at the White House. I never even had a glimpse of the
+kindly face again.
+
+At last my accounts were ready. "But your regiment," said the Assistant
+War Secretary, "does not exist. What was left of them were all put into
+a cavalry troop long ago. _You are the last man of the regiment._"
+Across the face of my paper he wrote, "_Discharged as a supernumerary
+officer._" That paper lies before me while I write. I was paid off in
+shining greenbacks for all the time I had been in prison.
+
+As to the eighty comrades who had been captured with me that 25th of
+November in the assault on Missionary Ridge, all but sixteen were dead.
+Nine of my old Company B of the Fifth Regiment were taken prisoners, and
+only one of them had survived the horrors of Andersonville. Poor
+Cartwright died not long after, and I alone of the little band was left
+to tell the story.
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
+
+
+Obvious typos and printer errors have been corrected without comment.
+Other than obvious errors, the author's spelling, grammar, and use of
+punctuation are retained as in the original publication. In addition to
+obvious errors, the following changes have been made:
+
+  Page 50: "dozen" changed to "dozens" in the phrase, "Shortly, dozens
+    of these small boats...."
+
+  Page 89: "connonballs" changed to "cannonballs" in the phrase, "...
+    storm of cannonballs...."
+
+  Page 100: opening quote mark added: "My regiment is put...."
+
+  Page 132: "thousand" changed to "thousands" in the phrase, "Hundreds,
+    thousands possibly, of...."
+
+  Page 187: "gaunlet" changed to "gauntlet" in the phrase, "... had run
+    the Rebel gauntlet...."
+
+  Page 192: "cammander" changed to "commander"
+
+  Page 198: "straving" changed to "starving" in the phrase, "... poor,
+    starving...."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's With Fire and Sword, by Samuel H. M. Byers
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40477 ***