Chapter XLIV: Peace (2)

Passing through Frederick in the first Maryland campaign (1862), a good-natured-looking citizen, who evidently had not been able to tie his shoestrings for a number of years, stood on his doorstep watching us as we passed. "Hi, there! Hog-killing time, boys," suddenly astonished his ears, and was the signal for an instant fire of playful chaff. "Aint he swelled powerful?" "Must have swallowed a bass drum." "I say, stranger, buttermilk or corn-fed?" "Does it hurt much?" "What hurt?" ventured the fat man, quizzically. "Why, totin' them rations around with yer all day." In a minute or two the old gentleman, very red in the face, carried his abdominal rotundity into the house, but quickly reappeared with a demijohn in each hand. "Here, boys!" he exclaimed, "wash your mouths out with some of this applejack, and have a bit of mercy on a fat man." It is needless to say that the boys promptly cheered their vote of thanks.

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The colonel of a South Carolina regiment, having returned from his furlough with a pair of high top boots--boots were then worth seven or eight hundred {461} dollars--had the temerity to run the gauntlet of a neighboring brigade, and heard comments like these: "I say, mister, better git out'r them smokestacks; know you're in thar 'cause we kin see yer head stickin' out." "Boys, the kern'l 's gone into winter quarters." "What mout be the price o' them nail kags?" etc. An officer wearing noticeably bushy whiskers was unfeelingly invited to "come out from behind that bunch of har! 'Taint no use t' say yer aint in thar, 'cause yer ears is workin' monstrous powerful." It was rarely safe, under these circumstances, to answer with either wit or abuse.

Our soldiers had little respect for what were known as "bombproofs"--the fellows who had easy positions in the rear. On one occasion a smartly dressed young officer belonging to this kindred cantered up to a depot where a regiment of men were awaiting transfer. As soon as they saw him they began whooping: "Oh, my! aint he pooty!" "Say, mister, whar'd ye git that biled shut?" "Does yer grease that har with ham fat, or how?" And so they plied the poor fellow with all manner of questions concerning his age, occupation, religious and political convictions, that were calculated to make a man feel uncomfortable. One feather, however, broke the camel's back. A long, cadaverous specimen of humanity, who had evidently been making a comical survey of the victim--his handsome uniform, and well-polished boots--taking a step or two forward as if to show his intense interest, solemnly drawled out: "Was yer ra-a-ly born so, or did they put yer together by corntract? Strikes me yer must have got yere in a drove or ben picked afore you was ripe." Then somebody suggested that "sich a nice-lookin' rooster ought to git down and scratch for a wurrum"; and amid the laughter that followed, he was glad to put spurs to his horse and gallop out of hearing.

Cavalrymen were called by the infantry "buttermilk rangers," and the musicians came in for more than their share of good-natured chaff. Rather than be tormented, the latter would sometimes leave the line of march and go through the fields, thus avoiding the frequent invitation to "give us a toot on yer old funnel," or "brace up with yer blow-pipe." One day a bass drummer, plodding along, was attracted by a pitiful voice coming from a group of men resting by the roadside: "Mister, oh, mister, please come yere?" Turning in the direction, he found it proceeded from a woe-begone-looking Mississippian, whose sickly appearance was well calculated to arouse the sympathy of a tender-hearted musician. "Well, what can I do for you?" said the man with the drum. "Oh, a heap, a heap. I've got a powerful misery, and I thought as how you mout set down yere and pick a chune for a sick man on that ar thing you tote around on your stomach." Shouts of laughter told him that he was "sold," and he never heard the last of the applications for the soothing tones of "that ar thing."

This drollery of expression cropped out even amid the turmoil and excitement of the battlefield. The story is told of a young fellow who was under fire at Manassas for the first time, one of those hundreds of thousands on both sides behind whose inexperience was too much pride of character to permit them to show the white feather, and whose fear of the contempt of their comrades, as well as of the disgrace at home, made them good fighters. He had become pretty well warmed up and was doing excellent service when suddenly he caught sight of a rabbit loping across the field between the lines. Dropping his gun, as he was about to shoot, he looked dolefully at the little animal for an instant and then yelled with honest pathos: "Go it, cotton tail, go it. I'm ez skeered ez you be, an' ef I hadn't a reputation to lose I'd run too."

At the battle of Kinston, N. C., Gen. N. E. Evans, of South Carolina, familiarly known in the old army as "Shanks," posted a body of raw militia at the crossing of a creek, but they were met by a severe fire and forced to give way. In the disorder that followed, the general caught one of the fugitives and with a number of emphatic adjectives demanded: "What are you running away for, you blank, blank coward? You ought to be ashamed of yourself." "I ain't runnin' away, gineral, I'm jes' skeered. Why, them fellers over thar are shootin' bullets at us big {462} as watermillions, boo-hoo-hoo! One on 'em went right peerst my head--right peerst--an' I want ter go home."

"Well, why didn't you shoot back, sir? You are crying like a baby."

"I know it, gineral, I know it, boo-hoo! and I wish I was a baby, and a gal baby too, and then I wouldn't have ben cornscripted."

This reminds us of another North Carolina story. During the Rebellion the staff of General Wise was riding through a rather forlorn part of that State, and a young Virginian of the staff concluded to have a little fun at the expense of a long-legged specimen of the genus _homo_ who wore a very shabby gray uniform and bestrode a worm fence at the roadside. Reining in his horse, he accosted him with "How are you, North Carolina?"

"How are you, Virginia?" was the ready response.

The staff officer continued: "The blockade on turpentine makes you rather hard up, don't it? No sale for tar now?"

"Well--yes--" was the slow response. "We sell all our tar to Jeff Davis now."

"The thunder you do! What on earth does the President want of your tar?"

North Carolina answered, "He puts it on the heels of Virginians to make them stick on the battlefield."

The staff rode on.

Speaking of General Evans, an incident is recalled concerning his brother-in-law, Gen. Mart Gary, who succeeded Wade Hampton in the command of the Hampton Legion. Gary employed many phrases, especially in battle, that are not often heard in polite society. His old body-servant, commenting on this habit, gave the following description of the manner in which his master stormed and swore at some disobedience of orders during one of the fights.

"I golly, massa, but de way de ole man moub about dat day was 'scrutiatin'. He went dis away an' he went dat away wabin his sword like a scythe blade. He went yere and he went dar; but to hear de ole man open battery on de hard wuds in de langidge and jes' frow um aroun'--frow um aroun' loose--I declar, boss, it were plum nigh like preachin'."

At first, the necessity for discipline was not recognized by the raw Southern volunteers, and instances of the verdancy which prevailed were common. When a picket guard at Harper's Ferry, where our first troops assembled, was being detailed for duty, one of the men stoutly protested against any such arrangement, because, as he remarked, "What's the use of gwine out thar t' keep ev'rybody off? We've all kim here t' hev a fight with the Yankees, and ef yer keep fellers out thar t' skeer 'em off, how in thunder are we gwine to hev a scrimmage?"

An officer, while inspecting the sentinel lines one day, asked a picket what he would do if he saw a body of men coming. "Halt 'em, and demand the countersign, sir!" "But suppose they wouldn't halt?" "Then I'd shoot." "Suppose they didn't stop then, what would you do?" "I reckon I'd form a line, sir." "A line? What kind of a line?" "A bee-line straight for camp, and run like thunder!"

{463} A young lieutenant, fresh from a country drill ground and sadly ignorant of the tactics of Hardee or Scott, didn't know exactly what to do when the commanding officer ordered him one morning to "mount guard." He marched off with his squad of men, however, and about an hour afterwards was found sitting under a tree and talking to some one in the branches. "Well, lieutenant, have you mounted guard?" "Oh, yes, sir," was the cool reply; "got 'lev'n up this tree and t'others 'r' over yander roost'n' in another."

The Southern negroes also furnished abundant humor of their peculiar kind. During the occupation of Yorktown, Va., a shell entering camp made a muddle of a lot of pots and kettles. Mingo, the cook, at once started off for a safe place in the rear. On the way he was met by one of his brother servants, who inquired: "Wot's de matter, Mingo? Whar's yo' gwine wid such a hurrification?"

"'Ain't gwine nowhar p't'c'lar; jis' gittin' outen de way dem waggin hubs dey's t'rowin' at us."

"Eh, eh, Mingo, I 'spects dat's a sign you's a wicked nigger, for ef yo' was a good Chrishun yo' nebber be skeer by dem shell. Ef yo' listen to de Good Book, yo' find dat Massa up yander am pintin' eb'ry one ob em, an' know 'zactly whar to drap um!"

"Da' mebbe so, mebbe so; but yo' can't fool dis chile. Hear me, Jupiter. Dar's too much powder in dem t'ings for the good Lor' to meddle wid 'em, and dis chile ain't gwine ter bu'n hisself, needer. And dar's dem Minnie bullets, too. When dey come flyin' troo de air singin' de chune, whar is yer, whar is yer? I ain't gwine for to stop and say whar I is fur de bessest cotton patch in the lan'. I'se a twenty-two-hundred-dollar nigger, Jupiter, an' I'se gwine t' tek keer ob what b'long t' massa."

It is said that the body-servant of Stonewall Jackson always knew when he was about to engage in a battle. Some one asked him how he came to be so much in the confidence of his master. "Lor', sir," was the reply, "de gin'rul nebber tell me nuffin'. De way I know is dis: massa say he prayer twice a day--mornin' an' night; but w'en he git up two or t'ree time in de night to pray, den I begin to pack de haversack de fus' t'ing, ca'se I know dere'll be de ole boy to pay right away."

In the early part of the war there was much equality between the officers and privates. Many of the latter were socially and intellectually superior to the former. In the course of an altercation one day, a subordinate made an irritating remark, when his captain exclaimed: "If you repeat that, I'll lay down my rank and fight you." "Lay down your rank!" was the indignant response. "That won't make you a gentleman. A coward ought to fight with straps on his shoulders, but it takes a gentleman to fight for eleven dollars a month!"

The women of the South furnished what may be called the nerve-force of the war. From the very beginning they made it disgraceful for any man of fighting age to stay at home without sufficient cause. Their earliest associations were soldiers' sewing societies. Yet not all of the ladies were at first adepts in fashioning men's attire, and sometimes comical results followed. Stockings failed to match, and buttons would be sewed on the wrong side of a man's shirt or breeches. In one instance a friend of the writer turned over to the matron president of her society in Charleston a pair of trousers with one leg. "Why, what in the world did you make that thing for?" was asked by the old lady. "Oh--er--er, why, that's for a one-legged soldier, of course," gasped the young patriot in her confusion. "That's all right, Miss Georgia; very thoughtful, very thoughtful. But," looking at them quizzically through her spectacles, "Miss Georgia, you've got 'em buttoned up behind."

After the battle of Leesburg, Va., a group of ladies visited the wounded, and seeing one of the latter prone upon his stomach, the sympathetic question was asked, as would be quite natural: "Where are you hurt?" The man, an Irishman, pretended not to hear, and replied: "Purthy well, I thank ye, mum." "But where were you wounded?" again fired away one of the ladies. "Faith, it's nothing at all, at all, that I want, leddies. I think I'll be on me way to Richmond in about tin days," again answered Pat, with a peculiarly distressed look, as if he wished to avoid further conversation on a delicate subject.

Thinking that he was deaf, an old lady, who had remained in the background, now put her mouth down to his ear and shouted: "We--want--to--know--where--you--are--hurt--where--you--are--wounded-- so--we--can--do--something--for--you!"

Pat, evidently finding that if the bombardment continued much longer he would have to strike his flag, concluded to do so at once, and with a face as rosy as a boiled lobster and a humorous twinkle in his eye replied: "Sure, leddies, it's not deaf that I am; but since ye're determined to know where I've been hurted, it's--it's where I can't sit down to take my males. The rascally bullet entered the behind o' me coat!"

Sudden locomotion followed, and the story circulated among the fair sex like quicksilver on a plate of glass; but while Paddy had plenty of sympathy, the pestered him with no more questions of "Where are you hurt?"

HENRY W. B. HOWARD.

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INDIVIDUAL HEROISM AND THRILLING INCIDENTS.

KINDNESS TO FEDERAL PRISONERS BY MEMBERS OF THE FIFTY-FOURTH VIRGINIA REGIMENT--AN ORATION ON PATRIOTISM--THE LAST WORDS OF AN HEROIC SOLDIER--HE DIES FOR US--MATCHING GALLANT AND CHIVALROUS DEEDS OF PREVIOUS WARS--AN INCIDENT OF GETTYSBURG--HOW GENERAL JOHN B. GORDON GAVE AID AND COMFORT TO HIS ENEMY, GENERAL BARLOW--WOMEN WHO DARED AND SUFFERED FOR THE FLAG--MRS. BROMWELL, A BRAVE COLOR-BEARER IN TIME OF DANGER--A MODERN ANDRÉ--THE SULTANA DISASTER--THE HERO OF BURNSIDE'S MINE.

AN ORATION ON PATRIOTISM.

I have listened to the best speakers our country has possessed in the thirty years which have elapsed since the war, but not one of them has made the impression on my mind which a few words, falling from the lips of a private soldier, did away back in 1862.

It was the night of the 30th of August, 1862, and I, with others, was lying in the Van Pelt farmhouse, on the field of the Second Bull Run. The time of night I do not know. I had been semi-unconscious from the joint effect of chloroform and amputations. The room in the old farmhouse in which I lay was crowded with desperately wounded men, or boys, for some of us were not nineteen years of age--one hundred and seventy odd men in and around the house. With returned consciousness, sometime in the night, I became aware of voices near me.

I turned my head as I lay on the floor, and next beyond me I saw the dim light of a kerosene lamp on the floor. I soon made out that some one was kneeling by a wounded man and examining his wounds. I heard the injunction given, "Tell me honestly, doctor, what my chance is." He had been shot in the abdomen, and all too soon came the verdict, "My poor fellow you will not see another sunrise." I heard his teeth grate as he struggled to control himself, and then he spoke: "Doctor, will you do me a favor?"--"Certainly," was the response; "what is it?"--"Make a memorandum of my wife's address and write her a line telling her how and when and where I die." Out came the surgeon's pencil and memorandum book, and made note of the name and address. I did not remember them the next day, or since. I only recall it was some town in Michigan.

It appeared that the dying soldier was a man of some property, and in the clearest manner he stated his advice to his wife as to the best way to handle it. All this was noted down, and then he paused; and the surgeon, anxious, it is to be presumed, to get along to others who so sorely needed his aid, said, "Is that all, my friend?"--"No," he replied falteringly; "that is not all. I have two little boys. Oh, my God!" Just this one outburst from an agonized heart, and then, mastering his emotion, he drew himself hastily up, resting on his elbows, and said: "Tell my wife, doctor, that with my dying breath I charge her to so rear our boys that if, when they shall have come to years of manhood, their country shall need their services, even unto death, they will give them as fully as, I trust under God, their father gives his life this night." That was all. He sank back, exhausted, and the surgeon passed along. In the gray of the morning, when I roused enough to be aware of what was transpiring around me, I glanced toward him. A cloth was over his face, and soon his silent form was carried out. I repeat, I have heard the best speakers of my time, but after all these years I still {465} pronounce the dying utterances of that unknown soldier as the grandest oration on patriotism I have ever listened to.

HE DIED FOR US.

As I stir the memories of those days, there comes to mind one experience which, even after the lapse of all these years, stirs me deeply. For over three hundred years English history has been enriched by the recital of the chivalrous act of Sir Philip Sidney, who, stricken with a mortal wound at Zutphen, and being offered a drink of water, took the cup, but, when about to raise it to his lips, saw the eyes of a wounded private soldier fixed longingly thereon. With all the grace and courtliness which had at any time characterized him when treading the salon of Queen Elizabeth, the gallant knight handed him the refreshing draught, saying, "Friend, thy necessities are greater than mine, drink." The private drank, and the knight died.

I have a pride in the belief that in our four years of bloody strife we matched the most gallant, chivalrous deeds that previous history has recorded. It was my good fortune to meet and participate in the beneficence of a lineal descendant, in spirit, if not in blood, of Sir Philip Sidney, albeit he was garbed in the uniform of a private soldier of the Union army. Some of us who were lying there in the Van Pelt farmhouse, after the battle of the Second Bull Run, and who had suffered amputations, were carried out of the house and placed in a little tent in the yard. There were six of us in the tent, and we six had had seven legs amputated. Our condition was horrible in the extreme. Several of us were as innocent of clothing as the hour we were born. Between our mangled bodies and the rough surface of the board floor there was a thin rubber blanket. To cover our nakedness, another blanket. I was favored above the others in that I had a short piece of board set up slanting for a pillow. Between us and the fierce heat of that Virginia sun there was but the poor protection of the thin tent-cloth. There were plenty of flies to pester us and irritate our wounds. Our bodies became afflicted with loathsome sores, and, horror indescribable! maggots found lodging in wounds and sores, and we were helpless. Cremation made converts in those hours.

A very few attendants had been detailed to stay behind with us when it was apparent we must fall into the enemy's hands, but they were entirely inadequate in point of numbers to minister to our wants. Heat and fever superinduced an awful thirst, and our moans were for water, water, and very often there was none to give us water.

We lay there one day when there was none to answer our cry; but outside of our tent the ground was strewn with wounded men, one among whom was Christ-like in his humanitarianism. Sorely wounded in his left side, torn by a piece of a shell, he could not rise and go and get us drink, but it always seemed to us that, like his prototype of more than three centuries ago, he said in the depths of his great heart, "Their necessities are greater than mine," for he could crawl and we could not. Some little distance across the grass he saw where some apples had fallen down from the branches overhead. Every motion must have been agony to him, yet he deliberately clutched at the grass, dragged himself along until he was in reach of the apples, some of which he put in the pockets of his army blouse, and then turning, and keeping his bleeding side uppermost, he dragged himself back to our tent and handed out the apples.

As I lay nearest, I took them from him one by one and passed them along till we each had one, and I had just set my teeth in the last one he handed in, and it tasted as delicious as nectar, when, hearing an agonizing moan at my right, I turned my head on my board pillow, and saw our unknown benefactor, his hands clutched, his eyes fixed in the glare of death; a tremor shook his figure, and the eternal peace of death was his.

This was all we ever knew of him. His name and condition in life were a sealed book to us. I saw that he was unkempt of hair, unshaven of beard; his clothes were soiled with dirt and stained with blood--not at all such a figure as you would welcome in your parlor or at your dinner table; but this I thought as I gazed at the humble tenement of clay from which the great soul had fled, that in that last act of his he had exhibited so much of the purely Christ-like attribute in the effort to reach out and help poor suffering humanity, that in the last day when we shall be judged for what we have been and not for what we may have pretended to have been, I had rather take that man's chance at the judgment bar of God than that of many a gentleman in my circle of acquaintance of much greater pretensions.

AN INCIDENT OF GETTYSBURG.[1]

[Footnote 1: The account here given of this interesting incident is taken from an article by Capt. T. J. Mackey, of the Confederate army, recently published in _McClure's Magazine_.]

Though never a war was fought with more earnestness than our own late war between the North and the South, never a war was marked by more deeds of noble kindness between the men, officers and privates, of the contending sides. Serving at the front during the entire war as a captain of engineers of the Confederate army, many such deeds came under my own personal attention, and many have been related to me by eye-witnesses. Here is one especially worthy of record:

The advance of the Confederate line of battle commenced early on the morning of July 1, 1863, at Gettysburg. The infantry division commanded by Major-Gen. John B. Gordon, of Georgia, was among the first to attack. Its objective point was the left of the Second Corps of the Union army. The daring commander of that corps occupied a position so far advanced beyond the main line of the Federal army, that, while it invited attack, it placed him beyond the reach of ready support when the crisis of battle came to him in the rush of charging lines more extended than his own. The Confederate advance was steady, and it was bravely met by the Union troops, who for the first time found themselves engaged in battle on the soil of the North, which until then had been virgin to the war. It was "a far cry" from Richmond to Gettysburg, yet Lee was in their front, and they seemed resolved to welcome their Southern visitors "with bloody hands to hospitable graves." But the Federal flanks rested in air, and, being turned, the line was badly broken, and, despite a bravely resolute defence against the well-ordered attack of the Confederate veterans, was forced to fall back.

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Gordon's division was in motion at a double quick, to seize and hold the vantage ground in his front from which the opposing line had retreated, when he saw directly in his path the apparently dead body of a Union officer. He checked his horse, and then observed, from the motion of the eyes and lips, that the officer was still living. He at once dismounted, and, seeing that the head of his wounded foeman was lying in a depression {467} in the ground, placed under it a near-by knapsack. While raising him at the shoulders for that purpose, he saw that the blood was trickling from a bullet-hole in the back, and then knew that the officer had been shot through the breast. He then gave him a drink from a flask of brandy and water, and, as the man revived, said, while bending over him, "I am very sorry to see you in this condition. I am General Gordon. Please tell me who you are. I wish to aid you all I can."

The answer came in feeble tones: "Thank you, general. I am Brigadier-General Barlow, of New York. You can do nothing for me; I am dying." Then, after a pause, he said, "Yes, you can. My wife is at the headquarters of General Meade. If you survive the battle, please let her know that I died doing my duty."

General Gordon replied: "Your message, if I live, shall surely be given to your wife. Can I do nothing more for you?"

After a brief pause, General Barlow responded: "May God bless you! Only one thing more. Feel in the breast pocket of my coat--the left breast--and take out a packet of letters."

As General Gordon unbuttoned the blood-soaked coat, and took out the packet, the seemingly dying soldier said: "Now please take out one, and read it to me. They are from my wife. I wish that her words shall be the last I hear in this world."

Resting on one knee at his side, General Gordon, in clear tones, but with tearful eyes, read the letter. It was the missive of a noble woman to her worthy husband, whom she knew to be in daily peril of his life, and with pious fervor breathed a prayer for his safety, and commended him to the care of the God of battles. As the reading of the letter ended, General Barlow said: "Thank you. Now please tear them all up. I would not have them read by others."

General Gordon tore them into fragments and scattered them on the field "shot-sown and bladed thick with steel." Then, pressing General Barlow's hand, General Gordon bade him good-by, and, mounting his horse, quickly joined his command.

He hastily penned a note on the pommel of his saddle, giving General Barlow's message to his wife, but stated that he was still living, though seriously wounded, and informing her where he lay. Addressing the note to "Mrs. General Barlow, at General Meade's headquarters," he handed it to one of his staff, and told him to place a white handkerchief upon his sword, and ride in a gallop toward the enemy's line, and deliver the note to Mrs. Barlow. The officer promptly obeyed the order. He was not fired upon, and, on being met by a Union officer who advanced to learn his business, he presented the note, which was received and read, with the assurance that it should be delivered instantly.

Let us turn from Gettysburg to the capital, Washington, where, eleven years later, General Gordon held with honor, as now, a seat as senator of the United States, and was present at a dinner party given by Orlando B. Potter, a representative in Congress from the State of New York.

Upon Mr. Potter's introducing to him a gentleman with the title of General Barlow, General Gordon remarked: "Are you a relative of the General Barlow, a gallant soldier, who was killed at Gettysburg?"

The answer was: "I am the General Barlow who was killed at Gettysburg, and you are the General Gordon who succored me!" The meeting was worthy of two such brave men--every inch American soldiers.

I should add, that, on receiving her husband's note, which had been speedily delivered, Mrs. Barlow hastened to the field, though not without danger to her person, for the battle was still in progress. She soon found her husband, and had him borne to where he could receive surgical attendance.

Through her devoted ministrations he was enabled to resume his command of the "Excelsior Brigade," and add to the splendid reputation which it had achieved under General Sickles, its first commander.

AN INTERESTING INCIDENT.

It was a curious fact during the war, that, however savage and hostile the armies and the troops might be in action, there was a certain friendly relation subsisting between individuals on the {468} opposing sides, and even between special commands. The semi-intercourse between the picket lines is a familiar story; it was based principally on an agreement that the popping over of an occasional poor devil who happened to be exposed was not compensated for by any material military gain, so the pickets were generally suffered to perform their lonesome vigil without being shot like squirrels. But there was also a touch of the common humanity in this intercourse, which went beyond mere military conventions. A pleasant episode of warfare in Tennessee marked the kindly relation that sometimes was established between regiments. The Third Ohio Regiment were among the prisoners after a certain engagement, and when they entered a Tennessee town, on their way to the prisons in Richmond, they were visited, through curiosity, by a number of the Fifty-fourth Virginia, who wanted to see how the Yankees liked it to be hungry and tired and hopeless. The melancholy picture that met their gaze was enough to touch their hearts, and it did so. They ran back to their camp, and soon returned reinforced by others of their regiment, all bringing coffee (and kettles to boil it in), corn-bread, and bacon; and with these refreshments, which were all they had themselves, they regaled the hungry prisoners, mingling with them and doing all they could to relieve their distress, and the next morning the prisoners departed on their weary way, deeply grateful for the kindness of their enemies, and vowing never to forget it. It was not long before the opportunity came to them to show that they remembered it. In due time they were exchanged, and, returning to service, they found themselves encamped near Kelly's Ferry, on the Tennessee River. When Missionary Ridge was stormed, a lot of prisoners were taken from the Confederates, and among the number was the Fifty-fourth Virginia, and they were marched nine miles to Kelly's Ferry. It happened that at the landing there were some of the Third Ohio, and they asked what regiment this was. The answer, "The Fifty-fourth Virginia," had a most surprising effect on them. They left the spot on the run, and rushing up to their camp they shouted out to the boys, "The Fifty-fourth Virginia is at the ferry!" If they had announced the appearance of a hostile army in force, they could not have started up a greater or a quicker activity in the camp. The men ran about like mad, loaded themselves up with every eatable thing they could lay their hands on--coffee, bacon, sugar, beef, preserved fruits, everything--and started with a yell for the ferry, where they surrounded and hugged the Virginians like so many reunited college-mates, and spread before them the biggest feast they had seen since the Old Dominion seceded from the Union.

THE "SULTANA" DISASTER.

The Mississippi steamer _Sultana_ called at Vicksburg, April 25, 1865, on her journey from New Orleans to St. Louis, receiving on board nineteen hundred and sixty-four Union prisoners from Columbia, Salisbury, Andersonville, and elsewhere, who had been exchanged in regular manner, or set free through the surrender or flight of their jailers.

Being anxious to proceed North, the poor fellows gave little heed to the fact that the _Sultana_ was already carrying a heavy load of passengers and freight, and that workmen were busy repairing her boilers as she lay at the wharf. So great was the swarm that when they came to lie down for sleep every foot of available space on all the decks, and even the tops of the cabins and the wheel-house, was occupied by a soldier wrapped in his blanket, and making light of his uncomfortable berth in anticipation of a speedy arrival home.

From Vicksburg the _Sultana_ steamed to Memphis, and there took on coal, leaving the wharf at one A.M. on the 27th. The next news of her received at that port came from the lips of survivors snatched from the rushing current of the river. When about eight miles above Memphis, one of her boilers had blown up, with frightful effect. To add to the horror, the woodwork around the engines had been set on fire by the accident, and the steamer burned to the water's edge, compelling all who had been spared by the explosion to leap overboard for safety.

The force of the explosion hurled hundreds of the sleeping soldiers into the air, killing many, mangling others; while others again, terribly scalded, fell into the water and were swallowed up by the resistless tide, never again to rise. The few survivors {469} who had escaped all these perils finally reached the Arkansas shore, which, owing to the unusual high waters, was a long distance from the channel.

Among the soldiers on board were thirty commissioned officers, of whom only three were rescued. The dead at the scene of the accident numbered fifteen hundred, nearly all of them soldiers belonging to Western States. The heaviest loss in any one regiment fell to the One Hundred and Fifteenth Ohio, which numbered eighty-three victims on the list. The One Hundred and Second Ohio counted seventy, and the Ninth Indiana cavalry was represented by seventy-eight.

A catastrophe of similar character, not quite so appalling in results, had occurred on the Atlantic coast only three weeks previous. The steamer _General Lyon_, from Wilmington, bound for Fortress Monroe, burned to the water's edge off Cape Hatteras, on the night of March 31st. Out of five hundred on board, over four hundred of them soldiers, only twenty escaped. Among the lost were eleven officers and one hundred and ninety-five men belonging to the Fifty-sixth Illinois, with nearly two hundred released Union prisoners.

THE HERO OF BURNSIDE'S MINE.

In the ranks of the Forty-eighth Pennsylvania, the regiment which placed the powder magazine of Burnside's mine, at Petersburg, underneath the doomed Confederate fort, was a sergeant known as Harry Reese.

He had been the first to propose the mine seriously. Permission to construct it having been granted at headquarters, he, with a score of his fellows, all experienced coal miners, set to work with their ordinary camp tools, and, under cover of night, in one month excavated, concealed from the enemy's eyes, eighteen thousand cubic feet of earth, creating a tunnel nearly six hundred feet long. On two occasions Reese, by personal effort, saved the enterprise from failure; once when the shaft opened into a bed of quicksand, and again when the army engineers through faulty measurements located the powder-chamber outside the limits of the fort to be destroyed, instead of directly under it.

Finally came the hour for the explosion. The troops stood ready to charge into the breach, and the long fuse was ignited by Reese, who, with a group of his mining companions, stayed at the mouth of the shaft, awaiting the result. Generals and aids anxiously studied their watch-dials, that would show the flight of moments beyond the appointed time. Grant telegraphed from army headquarters over his special field-wire: "Is there any difficulty in exploding the mine?" and again: "The commanding general directs, if your mine has failed, that your troops assault at once."

The mine had failed. Daylight was spreading over the trenches, and the enemy were alert even to the point of expecting an assault.

Reese drew his soldier's clasp dirk, and, turning to a comrade, said: "I am going into the mine. If it don't blow up, give me time to reach the splice in the fuse, and then come to me with fresh fuse and twine." He creeps into the shaft with resolute caution, following up the tell-tale streak of black ashes, which shows that the fuse has surely burned its way toward the powder-cells in the chamber beyond. It may reach there any second, {470} and then! At last, just ahead of him, the brave miner sees a stretch of fuse outwardly uncharred. A fine thread of flame may be eating through its core, nevertheless, one spark of which is enough to set the terrible train ablaze. Reese knows this, for a man accustomed to handling powder cannot for an instant lose consciousness of its quick and awful violence when the connecting flash is struck. He knows his peril, yet presses on, and with his blade severs the fuse beyond the charred streak. Danger for that moment is over.

The delay had been caused by a splice wound so tightly that the fire could not eat through freely. He made a new short fuse, relit the flashing string, and escaped to the mouth of the tunnel, just as the magazine chambers exploded, spreading a mass of ruins where the armament of Lee had stood grim and threatening in the morning light but a moment before.

The fort thus destroyed was occupied by Capt. R. G. Pegram's Virginia battery, and the trenches--which means the system of walled ditches, bomb proofs, and other shelter for troops on both sides of the battery--by the Eighteenth and Seventy-second South Carolina infantry. These men, numbering several hundred, lay sound asleep, all except the sentinels. The battery and the sections of work adjoining were hoisted into the air, and two hundred and eighty-eight officers and soldiers were buried in the débris, while their comrades who escaped injury fled in confusion, leaving a defenceless gap in the line twenty or thirty rods wide, into which Burnside's corps charged without a moment's hesitation.

The Union advance was promptly met by a sharp fire from the Confederate reserves, and the fight which ensued in the breach is known as the battle of the Crater.

THE ARKANSAS BOY SPY.

When the Confederate army abandoned Little Rock in 1863, one of its military operators, David O. Dodd, stayed back and lived some time in the Union lines. He was a lad of seventeen. Shortly after the town was Unionized he left there, ostensibly to go to Mississippi, but returned in a few days and lingered about in his old haunts. A second time he passed out of the picket lines, unrestrained until he reached the outposts, where the guards, searching him, discovered some curious pencil marks in a memorandum book carried openly in his pocket.

He was arrested, and at headquarters the marks were shown to be telegraphic dots and dashes that gave a full description of the Union fortifications and the distribution of forces about the city. His act was that of a spy, and his life was the forfeit. Having admitted that he had accomplices, he was offered pardon if he would betray them. A last appeal was made at the scaffold by his friends and relatives, but he firmly put the temptation aside and signalled the executioner to do his duty. Then the drop fell, carrying him and his secret to another world. My informant, who witnessed the hanging, declared that the lad met his doom with the coolness of a stoic, while the spectators, chiefly soldiers, wept like children.

WOMEN WHO DARED AND SUFFERED FOR THE FLAG.

War calls women to weep, not to take up the sword in battle, yet to such lengths does their devotion run that the place of danger finds them on hand unasked. On the Union side in the civil war military heroines came from every class and from every stage of civilization. Of those who put on uniforms the record is hard to trace, but their dead and mangled forms on countless battlefields proved that the American amazon was no myth. Not to speak of these, there were women who openly faced all the terrors and hardships of war. Michigan seems to have eclipsed the record in this class of heroines.

When the Second Michigan volunteers started for the seat of war in 1861, Annie Etheridge, a young woman just out of her teens, volunteered as daughter of the regiment. Her dress was a riding habit, and she wore a military cap as a badge of her calling. A pair of pistols rested in her holsters for use in emergencies. Annie served four years, part of the time with the Fifth Michigan, and always in the Army of the Potomac. Her service was the relief of wounded on the field, which means under fire. General Kearny presented her with the "Kearny badge" for her devotion to his wounded at Fair Oaks. Once while bandaging a wound for a New York boy a Confederate shell killed him under her hands.

Though not called on to fight, Annie had spirit enough to make a battle hero. At Chancellorsville she went to the outposts with the skirmishers, and was ordered back to the lines. The enemy was already shooting at the pickets. On the way back she passed a line of low trenches where the Union soldiers lay concealed, and spurning the thought that the affair must end in a retreat, she turned her face to the front and called out to the men, "Boys, do your duty and whip those fellows!" A hearty cheer was the response, and "those fellows" poured a volley into the hidden trenches. Annie was hit in the hand, her skirt was riddled, and her horse wounded. At Spottsylvania she turned a party of retreating soldiers back to their place in the ranks by offering to lead them into battle. No one but a miscreant could spurn that call.

The other Michigan heroines were Bridget Divers, of the First cavalry, an unknown in the Eighth and in the Twenty-fifth regiments who passed as Frank Martin, and Miss Seelye who served in the Second as Frank Thompson. "Thompson" and "Martin" wore men's disguise. Bridget Divers was the wife of a soldier, and performed deeds of daring in bringing wounded from the field, under fire.

Two Pennsylvania regiments carried women into battle in men's disguise--Charles D. Fuller, of the Forty-sixth, and Sergt. Frank Mayne, of the One Hundred and Twenty-sixth. "Mayne" was killed. The Fifth Rhode Island Regiment produced a heroine in Mrs. Kady Brownell, wife of a sergeant. She is credited with having been a skilful shooter with a rifle and also a brave color-bearer in time of danger. The wives of officers were accorded great freedom of action at the front, and many a gallant and noble deed was called forth by devotion to husband first and incidentally to the cause. Madame Turchin, wife of the Illinois general, went into battle and rescued wounded men, besides cheering and inspiring the soldiers of the general's command. Gen. Francis C. Barlow, of New York, was accompanied by his wife, who attended the wounded on the field. This devoted woman served at the front until 1864, and died of fever contracted in the hospitals at Petersburg.

A MODERN ANDRÉ.

Lieut. S. B. Davis, of the Confederate service, probably came the nearest of any officer on either side to playing the rôle of the André of the Rebellion. He did not, it is true, lose his life in an attempt to negotiate for the surrender of an enemy's fortress, as did the noted British spy; but he was sentenced to be {471} hanged for complicity, under disguise, in negotiations between citizens of the United States and Confederate officials in Richmond and in Canada for the delivery of the States of Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana, and certain military positions on the lakes, into the power of organized and armed emissaries of the South, led by Confederate officers.

Lieutenant Davis was but twenty-four, a native of Delaware, a State that did not secede, and entered into the part he played on his own motion; that is, he volunteered to act as a messenger between Richmond and Canada. He was provided with a British passport under an assumed name, had his hair dyed, and put on citizen's dress. The regular route of communication between Richmond and Canada was by steamer, viâ Bermuda; but for some reason never yet explained Davis went from Richmond to Baltimore, and from there to Columbus, O., where he certainly communicated with people of suspicious character at the time.

From Columbus he went to Detroit, and from there to Windsor, Canada, where he met the notorious Jacob Thompson and other Confederate emissaries.

There were many points about the young man to give him peculiar fitness for his work; there was also a fatally weak spot in his harness. He was well bred and of prepossessing appearance. A native of Delaware, he could mingle with Northern people without arousing suspicion. He was a distant relative of Jefferson Davis, and had the respect and confidence of the Confederate chieftains. Too young to have attained prominence before the war, and never having served in the regular army, his personality was not likely to be known on the Union side of the lines. But he had served a long time on the staff of General Winder, commander at Andersonville prison, where many Union soldiers had seen him often.

Fortune favored him in his daring enterprise until his arrival, on what proved to be his final trip southward from Canada, at Newark, O. He was travelling in the passenger cars of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad; had passed safely through Columbus and other public centres most dangerous to him.

At Newark two Union soldiers entered the car where the disguised Confederate sat. They had been in Andersonville prison, and after eying their fellow passenger for a time one ex-prisoner whispered in his comrade's ear, "There is Lieutenant Davis, of Andersonville!"

Both arose, and, approaching Davis, one called out bluntly to the stranger, "Aren't you Lieutenant Davis?"

"No, sir; my name is Stewart," was the prompt reply.

"Yes, you are Lieutenant Davis, and you had charge of the prison when I was in Andersonville," persisted the soldier. A crowd of passengers quickly surrounded the parties, and seeing that his stubborn cross-questioners would not be convinced, the Confederate yielded, and said:

"Well, boys, you've got me. I am Lieutenant Davis."

The provost marshal of Newark was summoned, and the prisoner was speedily hurried to the common jail. A search of his person failed to disclose any secret papers, and he was left in the main room with a number of ordinary county criminals. Soon after the military had left the place the stranger was seen to remove from inside his coat-lining a number of despatches and drawings upon white silk, and to burn them in the fire which was blazing in an open stove. The link that would have removed all doubt as to his purposes and condemned him to the gallows was thus hopelessly destroyed; but a court martial held that his presence in the Union lines in disguise constituted the offence for which the penalty is death. When the evidence was all in and the case clear against him, the prisoner rose, facing the officers and witnesses, every one wearing the colors of his mortal enemies, and some of them scarred with the conflicts in which he and his own had been pitted against them. There was no reason to expect mercy, and he did not ask it.

After stating his case briefly, he looked over his accusers and judges, and said: "I do not fear to die. I am young and would like to live, but I deem him unworthy who should ask pity of his foemen. Some of you have wounds and scars; I can show them, too. You are serving your country as best you may; I have done the same. I can look to God with a clear conscience; {472} and whenever the chief magistrate of this nation shall say, 'Go,' whether upon the scaffold or by the bullets of your soldiery, I will show you how to die."

The sentence was that he be confined in the military prison at Johnson Island, in Lake Erie, until the 17th of February, 1865, then "to be hung by the neck until he is dead."

During the night of the 16th of February, when all preparations had been made, and Davis had, as he believed, beheld the last sunset on earth, a reprieve came from President Lincoln. He was placed in a dungeon at Fort Warren, Boston Harbor, and before the reprieve ended the war closed. Then the authorities permitted him to go free. To the end he kept the secret of his mission to Ohio.

ENGAGEMENTS IN WHICH THE REGIMENT, WITH THESE FLAGS, TOOK PART.

WILDERNESS, VA., May 5-7, 1864.
SPOTTSYLVANIA C. H., May 10-19, 1864.
NORTH ANNA RIVER, VA., May 23-26, 1864.
TOCOPOTOMY CREEK, VA., May 30, 1864.
BETHESDA CHURCH, VA., May 31, 1864.
SHADY GROVE ROAD, VA., June 2, 1864.
COLD HARBOR, VA., June 3-12, 1864.
PETERSBURG FRONT, VA., June 16-18, 1864.
SIEGE OF PETERSBURG, FIRST, June 19 to August 19, 1864.
CRATER, VA., July 30, 1864.
BLIELL'S STATION, VA., August 19, 1864.
WELDON RAILROAD, VA., August 21, 1864.
PEEBLES FARM, VA., September 29, 1864.
POPLAR SPRINGS CHURCH, VA., September 30, 1864.
SIEGE OF PETERSBURG, SECOND, November 29, 1864 to April 3, 1865.
FORT HASKELL, VA., March 25, 1865.
FORT STEADMAN, VA., March 25, 1865.
CAPTURE OF PETERSBURG, VA., April 3, 1865.
APPOMATTOX, VA., April 9, 1865, Surrender of Lee and
his Army of Northern Virginia.]

REMINISCENCES OF THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN.

BY GENERAL JOHN T. MORGAN, C. S. A.

The battle of Bull Run--the first battle of Manassas--was a great and decided victory for the Confederate army, and aroused the pride and enthusiasm of the Southern people as no other event ever did. Yet there is a painful recollection in every mind that it was the first act in an awful drama, the first great field upon which the hosts of the North and the South measured arms and opened the series of great tragedies of the civil war, in which millions of men perished.

If that had been the last battle of the war instead of the first, and if it had been accepted as the final arbitrament of the questions that could not have been settled otherwise, I would still recall its incidents with pride, but also with sadness. But the glory of it would have scarcely compensated for its sacrifices.

I doubt if any humane person can recall without pain even the most gratifying victories of a great war in which he was a participant. The excessive toil and anxiety are only made tolerable, and the suffering and waste of human life can only be endured, for the sake of our interest in the cause that demands such victims for the altar of sacrifice.

Yet war, like other intense passions, often becomes a consuming desire, as the hope of victory verges upon the recklessness of despair. My earlier impressions of civil war may be illustrated by a few personal incidents connected with the first battle of Manassas.

With the exception of a few "regulars" in either army, every experience of actual warfare was then entirely new to the soldiery, and not a man in any position failed to seriously question his heart as to its fortitude in the approaching crisis of battle. None, perhaps, were about to march upon that great and open field who did not overdraw the pictures of danger and distress that he would be called to meet. It was a relief from this excessive tension that enabled men of highly nervous condition to quiet their emotions and to engage in battle like trained veterans, when its realities were found to be less harrowing than they expected.