Читать книгу The Boys of '61 or, Four Years of Fighting, Personal Observations with the Army and Navy - Charles Carleton Coffin - Страница 12

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Jan., 1862.

The church-bells of Louisville were ringing the new year in as with the early morning we entered that city. There was little activity in the streets. The breaking out of the war had stopped business. The city, with a better location than Cincinnati, has had a slow growth. Cassius M. Clay gave the reason, years ago.

"Why," he asked, "does Louisville write on an hundred of her stores 'To let,' while Cincinnati advertises 'Wanted'? There is but one answer—Slavery." Many of the houses were tenantless. The people lounged in the streets. Few had anything to do. Thousands of former residents were away, many with the Southern army, more with the Union. There was division of feeling. Lines were sharply drawn. A dozen loyal Kentuckians had been killed in a skirmish on Green River; among them Captain Bacon, a prominent citizen of Frankfort. His body was at the Galt House. Loyal Kentuckians were feeling these blows. Their temper was rising; they were being educated by such adversity to make a true estimate of Secession. Everything serves a purpose in this world. Our vision is too limited to understand much of the governmental providence of Him who notices the fall of a sparrow, and alike controls the destiny of nations; but I could see in the emphatic utterances of men upon the street, that revenge might make men patriotic who otherwise might remain lukewarm in their loyalty.

A friend introduced a loyal Tennesseean, who was forced to flee from Nashville when the State seceded. The vigilance committee informed him that he must leave or take the consequences; which meant, a suspension by the neck from the nearest tree. He was offensive because of his outspoken loyalty. He was severe in his denunciations of the government, on account of its slowness to put down the Rebellion.

"Sir," said he, "this government is not going to put down the Rebellion, because it isn't in earnest. You of the North are white-livered. Excuse me for saying it. No; I won't ask to be excused for speaking the truth. You are afraid to touch the negro. You are afraid of Kentucky. The little province of the United States gets down on its knees to the nation of Kentucky. You are afraid that the State will go over to the Rebels, if anything is done about the negro. Now, sir, I know what slavery is; I have lived among it all my days. I know what Secession is—it means slavery. I know what Kentucky is—a proud old State, which has a great deal that is good about her and a great deal of sham. Kentucky politicians are no better or wiser than any other politicians. The State is living on the capital of Henry Clay. You think that the State is great because he was great. O, you Northern men are a brave set! (It was spoken with bitter sarcasm.) You handle this Rebellion as gingerly as if it were a glass doll. Go on, go on; you will get whipped. Buell will get whipped at Bowling Green, Butler will get whipped at New Orleans. You got whipped at Big Bethel, Ball's Bluff, and Manassas. Why? Because the Rebels are in earnest, and you are not. Everything is at stake with them. They employ niggers, you don't. They seize, rob, burn, destroy; they do everything to strengthen their cause and weaken you, while you pick your way as daintily as a dandy crossing a mud-puddle, afraid of offending somebody. No, sir, you are not going to put down this Rebellion till you hit it in the tenderest spot—the negro. You must take away its main support before it will fall."

General Buell was in command of the department, with his head-quarters at the Galt House. He had a large army at Mumfordville and other points. He issued his orders by telegraph, but he had no plan of operations. There were no indications of a movement. The Rebel sympathizers kept General Johnston, in command at Bowling Green, well informed as to Buell's inaction. There was daily communication between Louisville and the Rebel camp. There was constant illicit trade in contraband goods. The policy of General McClellan was also the policy of General Buell—to sit still.

Events were more stirring in Missouri, and I proceeded to St. Louis, where General Halleck was in command—a thick-set, dark-featured, black-haired man, sluggish, opinionated, and self-willed, arbitrary and cautious.

Soon after his appointment to this department he issued, on the 20th of November, his Order No. 3, which roused the indignation of earnest loyal men throughout the country. Thus read the document:—

"It has been represented that information respecting the numbers and condition of our forces is conveyed to the enemy by means of fugitive slaves who are admitted within our lines. In order to remedy this evil, it is directed that no such persons be hereafter permitted to enter the lines of any camp, or of any forces on the march, and that any within our lines be immediately excluded therefrom."

General Schofield was in command of Northern Missouri, under General Halleck. The guerillas had burned nearly all the railroad bridges, and it was necessary to bring them to justice. The negroes along the line gave him the desired intelligence, and six of the leaders were in this way caught, tried by court-martial, and summarily shot. Yet General Halleck adhered to his infamous order. Diligent inquiries were made of officers in regard to the loyalty of the negroes, and no instance was found of their having given information to the enemy. In all of the slaveholding States a negro's testimony was of no account against a white man under civil law; but General Schofield had, under military law, inaugurated a new order of things—a drum-head court, a speedy sentence, a quick execution, on negro testimony. The Secessionists and Rebel sympathizers were indignant, and called loudly for his removal.

The fine army which Fremont had commanded, and from which he had been summarily dismissed because of his anti-slavery order, was at Rolla, at the terminus of the southwest branch of the Pacific Railroad. This road, sixteen miles out from St. Louis, strikes the valley of the Maramec—not the Merrimack, born of the White Hills, but a sluggish stream, tinged with blue and green, widening in graceful curves, with tall-trunked elms upon its banks, and acres of low lands, which are flooded in freshets. It is a pretty river, but not to be compared in beauty to the stream which the muse of Whittier has made classic. Nearly all the residences in this section are Missourian in architectural proportions and features—logs and clay, with the mammoth outside chimneys, cow-yard and piggery, an oven out of doors on stilts, an old wagon, half a dozen horses, hens, dogs, pigs, in front, and lean, cadaverous men and women peeping from the doorways, with arms akimbo, and pipes between the teeth. This is the prevailing feature—this in a beautiful, fertile country, needing but the hand of industry, the energy of a free people, vitalized by the highest civilization, to make it one of the loveliest portions of the world.

At Franklin the southwestern branch of the Pacific Railroad diverges from the main stem. It is a new place, brought into existence by the railroad, and consists of a lime-kiln, a steam saw-mill, and a dozen houses. Behind the town is a picturesque bluff, with the lime-kiln at its base, which might be taken for a ruined temple of some old Aztec city. Near at hand two Iowa regiments were encamped. A squad of soldiers was on the plain, and a crowd stood upon the depot platform, anxiously inquiring for the morning papers. It was a supply station, provisions being sent up both lines. Two heavy freight trains, destined for Rolla, were upon the southwestern branch. To one of them passenger cars were attached, to which we were transferred.

When the branch was opened for travel in 1859, the directors run one train a day—a mixed train of passenger and freight cars—and during the first week their patronage in freight was immense—it consisted of a bear and a pot of honey! On the passage the bear ate the honey, and the owner of the honey brought a bill against the company for damages.

Beyond Franklin the road crosses the Maramec, enters a forest, winds among the hills, and finally by easy grades reaches a crest of land, from which, looking to the right or the left, you can see miles away over an unbroken forest of oak. Far to the east is the elevated ridge of land which ends in the Pilot Knob, toward the Mississippi, and becomes the Ozark Mountain range toward the Arkansas line. We looked over the broad panorama to see villages, church-spires, white cottages, or the blue curling smoke indicative of a town or human residence, but the expanse was primitive and unbroken. Not a sign of life could be discovered for many miles as we slowly crept along the line. The country is undulating, with the limestone strata cropping out on the hillsides. In the railroad cuttings the rock, which at the surface is gray, takes a yellow and reddish tinge, from the admixture of ochre in the soil. In one cutting we recognized the lead-bearing rocks, which abound through the southwestern section of the State.

We looked in vain to discover a school-house. A gentleman who was well acquainted with this portion of the State, said that he knew of only two school-houses—one in Warsaw and the other in Springfield. In a ride of one hundred and thirteen miles we saw but two churches. As Aunt Ophelia found "Topsy" virgin soil, so will those who undertake to reconstruct the South find these wilds of Southwestern Missouri. And they are a fair specimen of the South.

It was evening when we reached Rolla. When we stepped from the car in the darkness, there was a feeling that the place was a mortar-bed and the inhabitants were preparing to make bricks. Our boots became heavy, and, like a man who takes responsibility, when we once planted our feet the tendency was for them to stay there. Guided by an acquaintance who knew the way, the hotel was reached. In the distance the weird camp-fires illumined the low-hanging clouds. From right and left there came the roll of drums and the bugle-call. A group of men sat around the stove in the bar. The landlord escorted us to the wash-room—a spacious, high-arched apartment, as wide as the east is from the west, as long as the north is from the south, as high-posted as the zenith, where we found a pail of water, a tin basin, and a towel, for all hands; and which all hands had used. After ablution came supper in the dining-hall, with bare beams overhead. Dinah waited upon us—coal-black, tall, stately, worth a thousand dollars before the war broke out, but somewhat less just then, and Phillis, with a mob-cap on her head, bleached a little in complexion by Anglo-Saxon or Missourian blood.

We soon discovered that nothing was to be done by the army in this direction. The same story was current here as on the Potomac and in Kentucky—"Not ready." General Sigel had sent in his resignation, disgusted with General Halleck. General Curtis had just arrived to take command. The troops were sore over the removal of Fremont: they idolized him. Among the forty thousand men in the vicinity were those who had fought at Wilson's Creek. The lines between Rebellion and Loyalty were more sharply drawn here than in any other section of the country. Men acted openly. The army was radical in its sentiments, believing in Fremont's order for the liberation of the slaves, which the President had set aside.

There was one other point which gave better promise of active operations—Cairo. Therefore bidding adieu to Rolla, we returned to St. Louis and took the cars for Cairo.

It was an all-night ride, with a mixed company of soldiers and civilians. There were many ladies on their way to visit their husbands and brothers before the opening of the campaign. One woman had three children. "Their father wants to see them once more before he goes into battle," said the mother, sadly.

At last we found a place where men seemed to be in earnest. Cairo was alive. At the levee were numerous steamboats. Soldiers were arriving. There was a constant hammering and pounding on the gunboats, which were moored along the shore.

The mud cannot be put into the picture. There was thick mud, thin mud, sticky mud, slushy mud, slimy mud, deceptive mud, impassable mud, which appeared to the sight, to say nothing of the peculiarities that are understood by the nose; for within forty feet of our window were a horse-stable and pig-yard, where slops from the houses and washes from the sinks were trodden with the manure from the stables. Bunyan's Slough of Despond, into which all the filth and slime of this world settled, was nothing beside the slough of Cairo. There were sheds, shanties, stables, pig-stys, wood-piles, carts, barrels, boxes—the débris of everything thrown over the area. Of animate things, water-carts—two-horse teams, which were supplying the inhabitants with drinking water from the river. There were truckmen stuck in the mud. There were two pigs in irrepressible conflict; also two dogs. Twenty feet distant, soldiers in their blue coats, officers with swords, sash and belt, ladies, and citizens, were picking their way along the sticky sidewalks. This was Cairo. Delectable Cairo!

The prominent names before the country at that period, as commanders who were to lead our armies to victory, were McClellan, Buell, T. W. Sherman, then at Port Royal, Fremont, Rosecrans, Burnside, Butler, and Banks. William Tecumseh Sherman was reputed to be flighty in the head. He had commanded the Department of the Ohio, but Buell had succeeded him. He was now a brigade commander at Paducah, under General C. F. Smith. There were several brigadiers at Cairo. General McClernand, who had been a member of Congress, a strong partisan of Senator Douglas, was most conspicuous. General Prentiss, who was ready to make a speech on any and every occasion, was also well known. The commander of the post was an obscure man. His name was Grant. At the beginning of the war he was in the leather business at Galena. He had been educated at West Point, where he stood well as a mathematician, but had left the service, and had become a hard-working citizen. He was Colonel of the Twenty-first Illinois, and had been made a brigadier by the President. He was in charge of the expedition to Belmont, which, though successful in the beginning, had ended almost in disaster. Having credentials from the Secretary of War, I entered the head-quarters of the commanding officer, and found a man of medium stature, thick set, with blue eyes, and brown beard closely cropped, sitting at a desk. He was smoking a meerschaum. He wore a plain blue blouse, without any insignia of rank. His appearance was clerkly. General McClellan, in Washington, commanded in state, surrounded by brilliant staffs, men in fine broadcloth, gold braid, plumed hats, and wearing clanking sabres. Orderlies and couriers were usually numerous at head-quarters.

"Is General Grant in?" was the question directed to the clerk in the corner.

"Yes, sir," said the man, removing his meerschaum from his mouth, and spitting with unerring accuracy into a spittoon by his side.

"Will you be kind enough to give this letter to him."

But the clerk, instead of carrying it into an adjoining room, to present it to the commander-in-chief, opened it, ran his eye rapidly over the contents, and said, "I am happy to make your acquaintance, sir. Colonel Webster will give you a pass."

Such was my first interview with General Grant. I have seen him many times since—in the hour of victory, at Donelson; in the shadow of the cloud, after Pittsburg Landing; during the fearful days of the Wilderness; in the last great hours of triumph, with Lee and his army paroled prisoners of war; and there has ever been the same quiet, gentlemanly deportment.

The large hall of the St. Charles Hotel was the general resort of officers, soldiers, guests, and citizens. I was conversing with a friend the same afternoon when a short, muscular, quick-walking man, in the prime of life, wearing a navy uniform, entered. His countenance would attract attention even in a crowd, it was so mild, peaceful, and pleasant. My friend introduced him as Commander Foote.

"I shall be pleased to see you at my office, which is on the wharf-boat. I usually take a little recreation after dinner," said he.

Calling upon him the next day, I found him at leisure, having despatched the business of the forenoon. There was a Bible on his table and a hymn-book, and in one corner of the office a large package of books, just received from the Sunday-School Union, directed to "Captain A. H. Foote, U. S. N."

Noticing my eyes turned in that direction, he said: "They are for the sailors; I want to do what I can for the poor fellows. They haven't any chaplain; I read the service on Sunday and visit the crews, and talk to them; but it is very little religious instruction which they receive. I don't allow any work, except what is absolutely necessary, on Sunday. I believe man and beast need rest one day in seven. I am trying to persuade the men to leave off their grog rations, with a fair chance of success."

General Grant.

He was at leisure, and talked freely of matters relating to the organization of the fleet. He had to contend with great difficulties. The department had rendered him but little service. He had done his best to obtain mortars; had despatched officers to Pittsburg, where they were cast, but they were all sent East for the New Orleans fleet. He regretted it exceedingly, for with good ordnance he thought it would not be a difficult matter to reach New Orleans, though, as he modestly remarked, quoting the Scriptural proverb, "It becomes not him who putteth on the harness to boast." He was lacking men. Recruiting officers had been sent to Chicago, Cleveland, Buffalo, and other lake ports, but they had signally failed, because the department did not pay any advance to those in the river service, while on the seaboard advances were made. He had not men enough to man his gunboats.

General Sherman.

The department had furnished him with but few new guns. He had been obliged to take those which were at Sackett's Harbor—old guns far inferior to those with which Commodore Du Pont knocked Tybee and Hilton Head to pieces. He had to get gun-carriages manufactured in Cincinnati, other things at St. Louis, others at Pittsburg; but notwithstanding this, had organized a fleet which would throw a tremendous weight of metal. He was not ready to move, yet would move, whether ready or not, whenever the word was given. He believed in fighting at close quarters.

He spoke freely of the faults of the gunboats. They were too low in the water and the engines of too limited capacity. They would not be able to make much headway against the stream. He considered them an experiment, and, like all experiments, they were of course defective.

He was a close student, devoted to his profession, and bore the marks of severe thought in the wrinkles which were deepening on his brow. Time had begun to silver his hair and whiskers, but he walked with a firm step. He had rare conversational powers, and imparted information as if it were a pleasure. He was thoroughly conscientious, and had a deep sense of his responsibility. He was aware that his own reputation and standing as well as the interests of the public were at stake. He was greatly beloved by his men.

Two of the gunboats—the Essex and Louisville—were lying six or eight miles below Cairo, guarding the river. The Essex! How often in boyhood had I thrilled at the story of her brave fight with the Cherub and Phebe in the harbor of Valparaiso! How often I wished that Captain Porter could have had a fair chance in that terrible fight—one of the fiercest ones fought on the sea. But there was another Essex commanded by another Captain Porter, son of him who refused to surrender his ship till he had lost all power to defend her.

The new craft was wholly unlike the old. That was a fast sailer, trim, and taut, and graceful as a swan upon the waters; this a black box, once a St. Louis ferry-boat. The sailors who had breathed the salt air of the sea, who had swung in mid-heaven upon the swaying masts, who had rode in glee upon the storm-tost billows,

"Whose home was on the deep."

regarded the new Essex in disgust, and rechristened her the Mud Turtle. But her name, and the glorious record of her deeds, will not fade from remembrance. Coming generations shall read of her exploits with pride and pleasure. We were courteously received by her commander, Captain Wm. D. Porter, a solid man, but little more than five feet high, yet broad-chested, quick and energetic in his movements. He had a long, thick, black beard, and twinkling eyes full of fire. He had the rolling gait of a sailor, and was constantly pacing the deck. He was a rapid talker, and had a great store of adventure and anecdote. We alluded to the part taken by his father in the war of 1812, and the gallant fight against great odds in Valparaiso harbor. The eyes of the son kindled instantly.

"Yes, sir; that was a plucky fight. The old gentleman never would have given in if there had been the least ray of hope; but there was none. And he was too tender-hearted to needlessly slaughter his men."

Three days previous to our visit to the Essex, two Rebel boats came up from Columbus to see what the Yankees were doing. In five minutes Porter had his anchor up and steam on, pushing down to meet them half-way; but they declined the courtesy, and steamed back to Columbus.

"I followed them as fast as I could," said he, as we paced the deck. "I let them have my ten-inch Dahlgren and my two rifled forty-two pounders one after another, and drove them till their batteries on the bluff above the town opened on me. Then I wrote an invitation to Montgomery, who commands their fleet, to meet me any day and I would lick him like thunder. I fastened it to a cork and set it adrift, and saw a boat go out and pick it up. Then I elevated my ten-inch and let them have a shell right into the town. I reckon it waked them up some."

He laughed and chuckled, rubbed his hands, took a fresh quid of tobacco, and began to talk again of his father's exploits on the Pacific.

The Rebels under Major-General Bishop Polk were in force at Columbus. There was also a detachment at Mayfield, east of Columbus. A sudden movement was made by General Grant in the direction of Mayfield, not with any design of an attack, but to deceive the Rebels in regard to the real intentions. The troops landed at old Fort Jefferson, six miles below Cairo, on the Kentucky side. It was a mild day in midwinter. The soldiers marched without baggage. Not one in ten had gloves or mittens; and on the second night of the reconnoissance the cold became intense, and there was great suffering.

The soldiers kindled huge fires, and by running and walking, and constant thrashing of the hands, passed the long, weary night. There were numerous herds of swine in the woods, and fresh pork was abundant. There was roasting, frying, and broiling by every bivouac fire, and a savory fragrance of sparerib and steak.

The dwellings of the farmers in this section of Kentucky are of the Southern style of architecture—log-houses containing two rooms, with chimneys built against the ends. Entering one to obtain a drink of water we found two tall, cadaverous young men, both of them shaking with ague. There was a large old-fashioned fireplace, with a great roaring fire, before which they were sitting with the door wide open at their backs, and the cold air rushing upon them in torrents. Probably it did not occur to either of them that it would be better to shut the door.

A Connecticut wooden clock ticked on a rude shelf, a bed stood in one corner. The walls were hung with old clothes and dried herbs—catnip and tansy and thoroughwort. The clay had dropped out in many places, and we could look through the chinks and see the landscape without. The foundations of the chimney had settled, and the structure was leaning away from the house. There were great cracks between the brickwork and the wood.

They claimed to be good Union men, but said that all the rest of the people round them were disloyal.

"We are having a hard time," said one. "The Secessionists were going to jump us—to take our property because we were for the Union, and now your army has come and killed nigh about seventy-five hogs for us, I reckon. It is kinder hard, stranger, to be used so."

"But, my friend, if it had not been for the Union troops wouldn't you have lost everything, if you are a Union man?"

"Yes—perhaps so," was the long-drawn answer, given with hesitation.

"There is a right smart heap of Southerners at Columbus, I reckon," said he. "There is Sam Wickliff and Josh Turner, and almost all the boys from this yere place, and they'll fight, I reckon, stranger."

We then learned that the officers of McClernand's division, having been deprived of the enjoyments of home-life, and finding themselves among the belles of Western Kentucky, had made the most of the opportunity by dancing all night.

"The gals danced themselves clean out, that is the reason they ain't about," said one of the young men, apologizing for the absence of his sisters, and added, "They is rather afraid of the Lincolnites." The utterance of the last sentence contradicted all previous assertions of loyalty and hearty love for the Union.

The troops made sad havoc among the stock, shooting pigs and sheep for fun. After scouring the country well towards Columbus, having accomplished the object of the expedition—that of deceiving the Rebels in regard to the movement contemplated up the Tennessee—the force returned to Cairo.