BAKED MEATS! OF THE FUNERAL. \ rOLLrCTION OP ESSAYS, POEMS, AND BANQUETS By private MILES O'REILLY, Late of the 47th Reg't, New York Volunteer Infantry, 10th Army Corps. COLLECTED, REVISED, AND EDITED, WITH THE REQUISITE CORRECTIONS OP PUNCTUATION, SPELLING, AND GRAMMAR. BY AN EX-COLONEL OF THE ADJUTANT-GENERAL''s DEPARTMENT, WITH WHOM THE PRIVATE FORMERLY SERVED AS LANCE CORPORAL OF ORDERLIES. New York: Carleton, Publisher^ 413 Broadway DCCC LXVI. T-^ .mB2> Entered, according; to Act of Congress, in the year 1S66, by CHARLES Q. IIALPINE, In the Clerk's Office of tho District Court of the United States for tlie Southern District of New York. The New York Printing Co., 8i, 83, and 85 Centre Street. ®0 CHARLES C. YEATON of Brooklyn. PREFACE " SCfjc funeral baltrti meats Dtli coltihi furntsi) fortlj Ifje SiiftJtiinQ breakfast. O such a very iii- discrirainate col- lection of fugitive essays, and songs not quite so fugi- tive, hastily select- ed from the hasty scribblings of a year, and as hastily pitchforked to- gether in the double hurry and heat of travelling and journalism, what form of introduction can be requi- site ? The very decided popular success of a similar volume published last year, and now in its ninth or tenth edition, is the best apology that can be offered for the appearance of this, its suc- cessor. It may also be urged that the various parts of which it is composed, met with very distinct and gene- ral acceptance at the time of their original appearance ; a,nd that, as mementoes" of how public opinion was formed and ran during the closing stages of the war, VI PREFACE. and in regard to various topics of great interest not directly connected therewith, such as Fenianism, the Monroe Doctrine, Louis Napoleon's character, and so- forth, these fugitive essays and verses have been thought hy many to deserve some more permanent form of life. Everything in the subjoined volume, no matter how supposititiously credited in the text, is from the author's pen, with the exception of two translations into Latin of two of the author's l}Tics of the war, from the pen of his brother — one of the most eminent classical scholars of Trinity College, Dublin ; certain quotations from the official documents of Gens. Hunter and Grant connected with the war ; a ti'auslatiou into German of one of the same songs by Friedrich Gerstiicker, who is said to be a poet of high fame and character in his own particular part of Europe — wherever that may be ; and a translation of one of the odes of Horace j&'om the pen of General John A. Dix. While thus claiming the execution of all the balance of the volume, the author is anxious to make his ac- knowledgments for prolific suggestions and wise advice to ;Mr. James Gordon Bennett of the Herald, to whose shrewd common-sense, very peculiar and pungent humor, and unmense experience of the world, he stands indebt- ed for the origination of many, and the encouragement of all, of his recent literary projects. Mr. Bennett's mind is an electric battery, apparently never to be exhausted by the drafts made upon it for fresh ideas ; and he is one of those rare men whose ordinary conver- sation, in any half hour uf any day, can furnish hints PREFACE. Vll and ringing key-notes for the editorial labors of any- young journalist during tlie next week or fortnight. The chapter giving the song of " The Flaunting Lie," as it has been called, and the history thereof, with the other songs of the same series, will be read with inte- rest by all who remember how bitterly our honored friend, Mr. Horace Greeley, was assailed for his imputed authorship of that much misquoted and garbled lyric during the last ten years, and more especially during the recent Presidential canvass. For evil or 'for good, that song has now passed into history ; and in connexion therewith the author would only say, that he was at all times ready to avow its authorship, but was restrained by the suggestion of Mr. Greeley that in "politics, a lie well stuck to is as good as truth ;" and that, no matter what avowals were made in reo-ard to the sono-, Mr. Greeley's enemies would still continue to hold him responsible therefor, and to garble and misquote such verses of it as might seem to suit their purposes. The long chapter on Fenianism is preserved as a historical relic of some interest, no matter what may be the fate of that curious and erratic movement. It was this article — originally published in the Herald and thence copied in full by the London Times^ and a ma- jority of the leading papers of Great Britain and Europe — that first called any serious pubhc attention to the existence of such an Order ; and it was from the notoriety thus given that the Brotherhood more than trebled their numbers in the six months next following its publication ; and that a movement previously dying out from want of activity and ventilation, became at Vni PREFACE. once one of tlie actual, if not avowed elements, more or less operative, in the international politics of France, Great Britain, and tlie United States. For tlie rest, tlie volume must be taken as each reader will find it — sometimes humorous, sometimes grave, but always with an earnest and wholesome pur- pose, as the author hopes. There are in it some few chapters of personal recollections of the war — only a prelude to a larger and more careful work of the same character, which the writer will endeavor to get time for collecting and writing during the present year. There are in it, also, many poems and songs of greater or less merit, nearly all written within the past year, save " The Union Convoy " and the series of " The Flaunting Lie ;" and of these, as well, with the best or least bad of his other songs previously published in book-form and in the newspapers and magazines, it is the author's hope to have a handsomely illustrated volume made up for next Christmas. The Author. Office N. y. Citizen, New York, January 20th, IS THE UNION CONYOY. [January 1st, I860.] The night is dark and bodeful as through the gloom we sail, And the ground-swell of the moaning sea gives warning of the gale ; The nearest vessels of the fleet our eyes can scarce discern, Though by their creaking cordage that some are near we learn. Ho ! Signal-master, leap aloft, and from the topmost spar, *' The Convoy is in danger" — flash the signal fast and far! Let us know what vessels answer to the old and honored sign, Count the signals reappearing in the Convoy's ordered line ; We have sailed the seas together, Linked in many a common fight, And accursed be all the omens That say we part to-night ! Bright was the glorious morning which saw the Convoy start, Freighted with all that human hope makes precious to the heart ; Bright were our days of summer, while still as riches grew, Another vessel joined us, and we hailed another crew ; A smiling heaven above us, an open path to steer, New treasures ever dawning in the isles we drew anear — 4 THE UNION CONVOY. O, peaceful was the voyage, or when we met a foe, All struck to guard the common rights with one avenging blow ; But Signal-master, hasten. Flash the words in rays of light — " What vessels of the Convoy Part company to-night ? " Great admirals have led us, great names our records bear Of those who shaped our destinies, and taught us how to dare ; Great captains we have numbered — each name itself a star, Bright as those answering signals which flash from spar to spar ! Through many a tempest Washington has paced the heaving deck, And after many a battle-hour his orders cleared the wreck ; — Yea,, oft beneath our gliding keels the mountain waves have swelled, While Jackson's hand with iron grip the foremost tiller held. But now we have no Captain In this dark and bodeful night, Yet — Heaven be praised ! how quickly The signals leap to light. Let us only keep together and in vain the waves may swell, We shall flash the joyous signal to the Convoy — " All is well ! " Though the skies be black with tempest and the seas run high and fast, While the whistling gale allows no sail to bend the groan- ing mast, THE UNION CONVOY. 5 Yet — so the Good Gods whisper — while the skies their influence pour, A. common path the fleet shall steer, a common flag adore ; If mutineers would seize our ships, they shall dangle from the spars, And from every topmast yet shall stream the banner of the stars ! No cloud while we together sail, Their radiance can eclipse ; For the Convoy knows no danger But collision of the ships ! HONOE TO OUR HEROES. GRAND BANQUET IN HONOR OF GENS. SHERMAN AND THOMAS. [From the New York Herald, Jan. 1st, 1865.] DINNER OF THE NEW YORK NATIONAL CLUB. At the entertainment given last evening at the Maison Doree, by the members of the New York National Club, to celebrate the successes of Gene- rals Sherman and Thomas, there was quite a select and brilliant gathering of military and other cele- brities. All the arrangements for the feast were of the choicest, and the company seemed to be in excellent spirits for appreciating the entertain- ment, both intellectual and physical, to which they were invited. The walls, pictures, and chandeliers were beautifully decorated with wreaths, stars, and crosses of evergreens and flowers : and there were other indications on the tables that Christmas and the holiday season had not been forgotten. SOME OF the DISTINGUISHED GUESTS. Prominent among the military guests we noticed General Robert Anderson, Major-General John HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 7 A. Dix, and two members of his staff; together •with Generals "W. S. Hancock, Hunter, Hooker, W. F. Smith, Hartsuff, Butterfield, Averell, Gal- ium, Webb, Colonel James A. Hardie, Inspector- General, and several minor lights of the profession militaire. Of civilians and naval officers there was a choice but not inconvenient number present, covers having been ordered only for sixty, and this limit being adhered to, despite a very strong outside pressure to have the margin extended. Among those in the non-military class we noticed Messrs. Thurlow Weed, John Yan Buren, Gover- nor Andrew, of Massachusetts ; Captains Drayton and Daniel Ammen, United States Navy ; W^m. F. Havemeyer, James T. Brady, Senator Conness, of California; John A. Kennedy, Judge Ingraham, Charles A. Dana, Assistant Secretary of War; Royal Phelps, the Rev. Morgan Dix, Robert B. Roosevelt, Edwards Pierrepont, Richard O'Gorman, Sydney H. Gay, Captain Worden, United States Navy ; Edward Cooper, Hamilton Fish, William Stuart, Thomas J. Durant, A. T. Stewart, Thos. C. Acton, Captain Rodgers, United States Navy ; Clarence Seward, Henry Ward Beecher, Professor Doremus, Henry Hilton, Samuel L. M. Barlow, Charles Nordhoff, Henry J. Raymond, Colonel Sandford, of the telegraph companies; Edwin Booth ; Vice-President elect, Andrew Johnson, of 8 HONOR TO OUR HEROES. Tennessee; and Captain G. V. Scott, Assistant Secretary of the Navy. OBJECT OF THE DINNER CELEBRATION. The cards of invitation from the Kew York National Club set forth that this dinner was to celebrate the successful termination of the first problem of General W. T. Sherman's last and greatest campaign, by the capture of Savannah ; and the overwhelming destruction of the rebel forces under General Hood by General Geo. H. Thomas ; as also to express the hope of all true patriots, irrespective of party, that, "through the trium- phant energy of our military and naval heroes, this desolating civil war may soon be brought into a condition that will allow a liberal margin to statesmanship and diplomacy for the settlement of all differences between the North and South on the one essential basis of a restored Union." OPENING SPEECH BY PRINCE JOHN VAN BUREN — THE HEALTH OF GENERAL SHERMAN. After full justice had been done to the viands — Dodworth's band discoursing eloquent music during the progress of the feast — the distinguished Prince John Yan Buren, as President of the Club, gave notice that there would be no succes- sion of " regular toasts " that evening, this habit HONOB TO OUR HEROES. 9 having become a mere form, which had lost all significance, and only tending to bore convivial assemblages with too copious streams of eloquence elaborately rehearsed. They had met to acknow^- ledge their indebtedness to two noble Generals, and to express hopes for their continued success. He would therefore, now propose, in due order of seniority, the health of that gallant officer. General William Tecumseh Sherman, and call upon the honored friend on his left — General Eobert Ander- son, of Fort Sumter — to respond in behalf of the absent hero. (Loud applause, the whole company rising and drinking the health of General Sherman w4th " three times three and a tiger," Dodworth's band striking up, ^'Lo, the Conquering Hero Comes," and "Hail Columbia.") General Anderson, whose rising was hailed with fervent demonstrations of applause, spoke slowly, and as if still suffering from the effects of pro- tracted illness ; but he spoke with an unrivalled tenderness of sincerity, his plea for the foundation of a Soldier's Home, towards the close of his remarks, having in all its words, accents, and ges- tures, a most cogent impressiveness. GENERAL ANDERSON'S SPEECH. General Anderson declared it to be the proudest thought of his life that he had been the humble means, under Divine Providence, of bringing into 1* 10 HONOR TO OUR HEROES. early prominence before the country the two generals whose names were at the present moment most gratefully on the lips of every patriot — he referred to his old lieutenant, "Wm. T. Sherman, whose health they had just honored; and to that noblest of all noble Southrons now in the active service of our country, General George H. Thomas, of Virginia. (Applause.) Early in the war, when assigned to the command of his own native State, Kentucky, General Anderson felt that his nervous system had been injured by the enormous weight of anxieties and responsibilities which had pressed upon him for the two months preceding the attack upon his forces in Fort Sumter. He was only over- ruled into accepting the command by the represen- tations of such noble patriots of his native State as the late John J. Crittenden, Mr. Leslie Coombs, Secretary Guthrie, and others of like stamp, who expressed to him their belief that his name might be made useful in heightening the loyalty of those Kentuckians who were already for the Union, and of turning into the true path many who were still wavering or in doubt. (Loud applause.) Thus pressed, he accepted ; but, fearing that his health might again break down, it was the primary con- dition of his taking the command in question, that his tried and honored friend, General William T. Sherman, should be assigned to him as his next in rank. (Applause.) Sherman had served for HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 11 years under him as lieutenant of his company ; and Greneral George H. Thomas, he was proud to say, had been a lieutenant in the same regiment. In regard to General Thomas, he desired to claim some credit, but only for having expedited the inevitable. Men of the stamp of George H. Thomas push themselves upward and onward in times like these as irresistibly as water seeks its own level ; or, to use a metaphor more appropri- ate to a certain alleged portion of the aristocracy of to-day, as inevitably as a great petroleum foun- tain underneath the earth, will bubble to the sur- face and make all rich around it. (Loud applause and laughter.) But it was through his humble ministry that General Thomas, early in the war, received an opportunity worthy of his talents ; and the manner of this incident he would now relate. He (General Anderson) saw with pain in the early days of the war, a disposition on the part of certain prominent friends of the Adminis- tration to look with suspicion upon officers of Southern birth, who still remained faithful to the old flag. From the South himself, he felt this keenly ; and at an early interview with the Presi- dent, having stated his views, he asked that he might be given a brigadier's commission for George H. Thomas — (applause) — an officer for whose un- alterable loyalty he would answer with his head ; and whose natural and acquired qualities of sol- 12 HONOR TO OUR HEROES. diership he esteemed, after long opportunities for judging, as second to those of no officer in our own or any other army. (Loud applause, in the midst of which Greneral Butterfield proposed " The health of General Thomas," which was drunk with enthusiasm, and with all the honors.) Gene- ral Anderson then regretted that the condition of his health would not allow him to review the splendid career of General Sherman — a task which he found himself obliged to delegate to younger, and more active heads. lie knew Sherman well, and loved him with all his heart; and would only express the hope, before resuming his seat, that the great and generous American people, filled with thanks to the Giver of all Goodness for the victories which had recently blessed our arms, would now make their gratitude take the practical form of erecting a great "National Soldiers' Home" for our crippled and disabled veterans, as the noblest and most appropriate monument they could erect in commemoration of the Divine mercies for which we have all, this day, so much cause to be thankful. (Applause.) The General then recited the labors he had undergone in procuring the pre- sent Soldiers' Home at Washington to be created, regretting that it had been located upon a misera- bly contracted patch of ground, near Washington, and that it consequently could afford no means of giving any healthful and self-supporting employ- HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 13 ment to its inmates. He wished to see the first great National Soldiers' Home, to be erected by popular action, located either in the vicinity of Carlisle, Pa., or near the beautiful Adirondack region of New York. It should have at least a thousand acres of land attached to its endowment; and with this properly cultivated by the easy labor of the inmates, and with the trifling pensions now allowed to them by government, such an establishment would be self-supporting, and need make no appeal for any further contribution. As to the present Soldiers' Home near Washington, it should be purchased by Congress as a residence for the President and such Cabinet officers as might choose to reside there — the present miserably un- healthy and contracted White House becoming merely the Presidential suite of public offices. With the money obtained from Congress by such a sale, the land he wanted for his new, popular and National Soldiers' Home might be readily pur- chased. In this connection he desired to express his indebtedness to the various papers of New York, and to the New York Herald more parti- cularly, for the cordial, generous, and active sup- port they had given to this project. Himself a disabled soldier, he thanked all the conductors of our press, in the name of his crippled comrades, for their disinterested humanity in this matter. Thanking the members of the Club and his fellow- M HONOR TO OUR HEROES. guests for tlie patience with whicli they had heard him, General Anderson resumed his seat in the midst of deafening applause. COLONEL M'MAHON's SONG — ITS AUTHORSHIP STILL IN DOUBT. Lieutenant-Colonel Martin T. McMahon, late Adjutant-General on the staff of the ever-glorious and lamented Major-General Sedgwick, was next introduced to the company by President Yan Buren, who said that as they had all met to cele- brate General Sherman's success, he would be glad for them to hear from his friend, the Colonel, who had a most excellent voice, a song he had just received from Sherman's army, via the Ogee- chee — the authorship of which was pretty clearly, though not yet quite definitely, traced to a young cavalry oflGicer of distinction, and holding an im- portant command in Sherman's army (Loud applause and cheers). Thus introduced, Colonel McMahon, a very fine-looking young soldier, and one possessing a record of service as enviable as his voice and other social talents, proceeded to give the following to an original accompaniment, which was played for him on the guitar by Gene- ral William Averell, of the cavalry, who proved himself a most accomplished master of that instru- ment — a true troubadour of the old Provence type, HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 15 alike familiar with serenade and sabre. He called it: THE SONG OF A pillar of fire by night, A pillar of smoke by day, Some hours of march — then a halt to fight, And so we hold our way. Chorus — Some hours of march, &c. Over mountain and plain and stream, To some bright Atlantic bay, With our arms aflash in the morning beam, We hold our festal way. Chorus — With our arms aflash, &c. There is terror wherever we come, There is terror and wild dismay, When they see the Old Flag and hear the drum Announce us on the way. Chorus — When they see the Old Flag, &c. Never unlimber a g-un For those villainous Hues in gray Draw sabres ! and at 'em upon the run ! 'Tis thus we clear our way. Chorus — Draw sabres ! and at 'em, &c. The loyal, who long have been dumb. Are loud in their cheers to-day, And the old men out on their crutches come, To see us hold our way. Chorus — And the old men out, &c. 16 HONOR TO OUR HEROES. Around us, in rear and flanks, Their futile squadrons play ; With a sixty mile front of steady ranks, We hold our checkless way. Chorus — With a sixty mile front, &c. Hear the spattering fire that starts From the woods and copses gray ; There is just enough fighting to quicken our hearts, As we frolic along the way. Chorus — There is just enough fighting, &c. Upon different roads abreast The heads of our columns gay. With fluttering flags, all forward pressed, Hold on their conquering way. Chorus — With fluttering flags, &c. Ah, traitors ! who bragged so bold In the sad war's early day. Did nothing predict ye should ever behold The Old Flag come this way ? Chorus — Did nothing predict, &c. By Heaven I 'tis a gala march, 'Tis a picnic, or a play ; Of all our long war 'tis the crowning arch ; Hip, hip ! for Sherman's way ! Chorus — Of all our long war, &c. The verses, sung with great melody, fire, and feeling, were warmly received ; and it may gratify the friends of tlie unknown author to be here informed that, in response to a brief but telling HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 17 and witty address from Senator Conness, of Cali- fornia, the health of the author of " Sherman's Way," received the complimentary and enthusi- astic baptism of some of the best French and Khenish vintages to be found upon Manhattan Island. LEARNED AND ELOQUENT ADDRESS OF MAJOR- GENERAL JOHN A. DIX. General Dix, being loudly called for, remarked that it was but rarely, since re-entering the army, that he had found either time or inclination for post-prandial speeches. lie was out of practice, and might possibly be dull ; but he promised he should not be prolix. lie was not one of those who looked upon war as an unmixed evil. It cost much pain and waste, but these were more than compensated by its calling forth all that is heroic in our natures : Si tritura absit paleis sunt abdita grana, Nos crux mundanis separat a paleis, — or " for the benefit of country members." — As the precious corn is separated from worthless straw only by severe threshing, so by crosses and afflic- tions the true life of a nation is separated from its chaff. (Applause.) It required the dark days of a Eepublic to bring out such hero-characters as we 18 HOKOR TO OUR HEROES. have found in Sherman, Thomas, Farragut, and that youngest but not least of the jewels gilding the bright crown of our war — Lieutenant Gush- ing, of the navy. (Loud applause.) These names are lights of our country, emulating in lustre the stars under which they fight, and capable of chal- lenging — were history truly written — the demi- gods of mythology to a comparison of records : Emilia nomina stellis, Nomina qusepossent solicitare deos! Greneral Dix desired to endorse the eloquent and practical appeal of his honored friend, Gene- ral Anderson, in behalf of founding a great National Soldiers' Home as the most fitting monu- ment with which the American people can record their appreciation of the services of Generals Sherman and Tliomas, and their gratitude to the Heavenly Father who has vouchsafed so much success to the efforts of their enterprise and genius. If there be any objects which should appeal to the public sympathy with irresistible force, it is such as we have daily presented in all the highways and byways of our land — crippled soldiers who have fought the battles of their country, yet are now reduced to sit on stoops and by the wayside, exposing their truncated limbs and honorable scars while asking for an oboliis. (Emotion and HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 19 applause.) Every time these sights came before him — and they came too often — he was reminded of those most touching lines of the Latin poet : Per ego has lachrymas, dextramque tuam te, Si quidqaam te merui, fait aut tibi quidquam Dulce meum miserere mei ! The soldier in his day of strength is a noble object. Satisfied of the justice of his cause, and filled with the thought that the peace, honor, and well-being of his country depend upon his prow- ess, he is regardless of death, and rushes upon hostile swords : Haud timet mortem, cupit ire in ipsos Obvius enses! But when recoiling, fiiint with loss of blood, from the tempestuous onset, holding up in his left hand the shattered right arm that never again may strike for the cause as dear to him as life, or car- ried rearward with a broken thigh on one of those canvas stretchers already purple with the blood of dozens who have pressed it before him—Oh, then, if there be hearts in those at home to feel grateful for self-sacrifices, they should surround his couch of pain with everything that can miti- gate his sufferings ; and as he issues, alive but for 20 HONOR TO OUR HEROES. ever crippled, from the door of the hospital, they should be there to take him in their arms and comfort him with the assurance that the Nation in whose cause he has given the glorj of his man- hood, will provide him with an honorable and happy home during the balance of his life. (Ap- plause and deep emotion.) Occupied as our chief authorities are in the main business of crushing the armed forces of the rebellion, allowance must be made for their neglect or inability to attend to such matters of after consideration and detail as this of a Soldiers' Home. They are troubled with many things ; nunc hcec nunc ilia cogitant i and they very possibly feel that while all their energies are directed to the front, the care of those who are permanently disabled in the nation's cause should be freely and proudly undertaken by the non-bel- ligerent classes of our people. (Cries of " Hear, hear." A voice — " We accept the trust.") General Dix had been led aside from his pur- pose of speaking directly to the object which had called them together ; but if he knew General Sherman well, and he thought he did so, that offi- cer would be the last to grudge any moments taken from his own praise to plead the cause of the gal- lant men who had been riddled with balls and pierced with bayonets since General Anderson first heard the hollow booming of the guns which announced the birth — monstrara horrendum^ ingens^ HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 21 atque informe — of this rebellion. (Loud applause, General Anderson bowing.) It was a good thing to praise men publicly who had been publicly deserving. It strengthened virtue, and gave it the additional stimulus of admiring sympathy : Laudataque virtus Crescit, et immensum gloria calcar habet. Or, again — for the benefit of members from the ru- ral districts — applauded virtue grows by praise, and glory has a mighty impulse. (Loud cheers.) This impulse a generous people would not fail to supply abundantly to such true hero-hearts as Farragut and Sherman. (Loud applause.) The one has proved that an iron-clad admiral is superior to an iron-clad navy, illi robur et ces triplex — (applause and laughter) — while the other, like some new Colos- sus, has bestridden our continent from the moun- tain ranges of Tennessee to the long, shelving shores of the Atlantic, the thunderbolts of war in his right hand, and the olive branch of peace in the other, offering its shadow and protection to all who would again swear fealty to the banner which it is his noble mission to uphold. (Loud applause.) Before concluding. General Dix would briefly refer to his order directing our troops to pursue all rebel burglars and cut-throats across the Canadian frontier, if essential to their capture. (Shouts of 22 HONOR TO OUR HEROES. applause, tlie health of General Dix being pro- posed by a dozen voices, and receiving all the honors as if by universal impulse.) That order, they were aware, for which he felt proud to receive their plaudits, had been revoked ; and to the deci- sion which revoked it, he, as a soldier, bowed with all due humility. (Peals of derisive laughter, the General giving this last sentence, as Artemus Ward would say, " with intense suckkasm.") But in his private capacity he respectfully differed from those in authority over him as to the merits of the question when judged by the standard of international law. (Loud Cheers.) " The right of hot pursuit," as it is called, or as Grotius ex- presses it, dumfervet opus^ is one of the best esta- blished in the code of international obligations. It was asserted by General Jackson against the Spaniards in regard to the frontiers of Florida; and it remained for our present Secretary of State to repudiate this great democratic authority in regard to Great Britain. (Patriots applaud again, with some hisses for the " little silver bell.") Gene- ral Dix had no doubt that the policy which revoked his order might be abundantly justified by considerations of immediate expediency : but, if so, the revocation should have avowed as its motive a mere temporary pressure, rendering the present enforcement of the right impolitic, while broadly reaffirming as a principle "the right of HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 23 hot pursuit " which had formed the basis of his order. (Ringing applause, and cries of " Good, good." " We think as you do." " Their neutra- lity be damned," &c.) General Dix felt that, though the order had been revoked, it yet had its effect, and that effect a good one. He felt that in it he had reared himself a monument which should not pass away — Exegi monumentum cere jperennius — and was already satisfied that the American people would do justice to his motives, and that history would date a new era in our relations with England from the promulgation of that order, in which he was happy to add, the honorable Secre- tary of War had m.ost cordially supported him. (Intense applause, Mr. Brady proposing " Success to the Fenian Brotherhood : the day of our war with England enrols every able-bodied true Irish- man, both here and in Canada, under the banner of the Union !") General Dix felt that he had detained them longer than he had intended, and yet had done but scanty justice to his subject. For his classical quotations he pleaded the exam- ple of his Commander-in-Chief, the President ; and all who heard him should believe that it was not the wish to do full justice to his subject which was wanting, but the long want of practice in speeches of this kind. Non deerat voluntas sed facidtas. (Loud applause, amid which the General resumed his seat, being warmly complimented by Messrs. 24 HONOR TO OUR HEROES. Bradj, O'Gorman, Yan Buren, Doremus, Cham- berlain, Frederick Hudson, and many others.) AN ARMY AND NAVY TOAST — HEALTHS OF FAR- RAGUT AND THOMAS. The joint healths of Admiral Farragut and General George H. Thomas were now formally proposed by General Hancock, and were drunk with all the honors, the whole company standing up, waving their napkins and cheering until the room rang again, while the band played elo- quently " Our army and our navy for ever, And the flag of the red, white, and blue I" A SONG FROM GOV. ANDREW, OF MASSACHUSETTS. Apropos to the toast they had just drunk, Mr. Yan Buren would have much pleasure in calling upon their honored guest. Governor Andrew of Massachusetts, for a song or sentiment, earnestly hoping it might be the former. In addition to a memory so stored with songs and poems, that those who knew him could only wonder how he found room in his head for the many thousand other interests which so constantly pressed upon him, and of which, in all situations, he had proved himself so complete a master, — their friend, the HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 25 Governor, was blessed with a voice of unusual compass, flexibility, and culture; and although aware that he could rarely be tempted to display his vocal powers in public, the Chairman would still hope that the greatness of this occasion, their desire to pay all possible honor to the names that have been introdaiced, and the semi-private cha- racter of the entertainment, might induce their dis- tinguished guest to relax his usual rule of silence. (Loud applause, and vehement urgings followed, with which Governor Andrew at last good-na- turedly complied.) The Governor is one of those broad-chested, large-throated men, with a noble baritone voice ; and although he is, by repeated election, the special representative of a Puritan State, few of our most light-hearted youth could have given the following words with more drollery or fire. " Play," he said, sending by one of the waiters to the bandmaster; " play that one of Moore's Melo- dies called 'Fill the Bumper Fair,' and I'll try what I can do with it. Gentlemen," he added, addressing the company, with a smile of infectious merriment ; " You must be sure you never let my blue-light, Old Bay State constituents know what I have been doing." (Loud cries of " They shall never know it from us," with a suggestion from Colonel Hardie that General Dix should issue an order to " shoot on the spot " any reporter who 26 HONOR TO OUR HEROES. should be guilty of making public this deeply in- teresting incident. (Loud laughter.) Governor Andrew then cleared his throat with a glass of Muscatelle, and sang as follows. He called it his SONG OF THE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS. Fill the bumper high. Showing, without shrinking, Patriotic joy By patriotic drinking ! Sherman's noble host Well they keep tiieir promise, But, for a bully toast, We drink the health of Thomas 1 Chorus — Fill the bumper high, &c. Bumpers to the brink ! Scarce can we determine Whether we should drink To Thomas or to Sherman ? We cannot pause or wait, 'Tis cold and wintry weather, And so, to end debate, We'll drink 'em both together ! Chorm — Fill the bumper high, &c. With them let us mix Others you are wishing — Here's to those naval bricks, Farraout and Cusliins: I HONOK TO OUR HEROES. 27 May our heroes' choice, O'er land and ocean straying, Blend as does my voice With the music playing I Chorus — Fill the bumper high, &c. Fill again — who recks? Our last shall be a thumper ; To Stanton's beard and specs We pledge the present bumper ! Quick I the bottles pass ! Old Time is shpping from us ; Let's pledge a final glass To Farragut and Thomas ! Chorus — Fill the bumper high, &c. A BAY STATE TRIUMPH — HOW THE SONG WAS RE- CEIVED. No song that we have heard for many years could be pronounced, including all its accessories, a more decided triumph than this ; all the com- pany, with the exception of the two reverend gentlemen present, joining enthusiastically in the chorus, which was led by Captain Barstow, A.D.C., and Messrs. Theodore and K. B. Eoosevelt, who have voices of great compass and delightful cul- ture. On its conclusion a number of gentlemen pressed round Governor Andrew with congratula- tions and thanks, prominent among whom we noticed Dr. Duvant, of the Pacific Eailroad ; Col. 28 HONOR TO OUR HEROES. Frank E. Howe, of the New England Eelief Eooms ; Colonel Sandford, of the American Tele- graph ; and S. L. M. Barlow, Esq., gold controller and democratic politician, of Madison Square and "William street. SLIGHT ODOR OF COPPER— MR. o'GORMAN SPEAKS. Mr. Eichard 0' Gorman, being now called for, desired briefly to remark that, in every word that had fi^illen from the gallant and learned gentleman (bowing to Greneral Dix) who had addressed them just previous to the pleasure (bowing to Governor Andrew) they had just had, he (Mr. O'Gorman) desired most cordially to concur — (applause) — ^per- haps most cordially in those portions of the Gene- ral's glowing peroration which referred to the "right of hot pursuit'' over British soil; and to General Sherman as holding the " ohve branch" in one hand, while wielding a sword in the other. (Applause, and some dissent.) The olive was a brin}^ vegetable, which, to-night, they had all found pleasant with their wine (applause and merriment) ; but about the metaphorical "olive branch," to which General Dix had made allusion, no trace of bitterness, or "the salt rheum of grief," could be found. It was the healer of miseries ; the only fan by which eventually the briny tears of our civil discord could be dried away. There was a HONOE TO OUR HEROES. 29 time for the sword and a time for the oKve branch, and he rejoiced in the victories they had met to celebrate. But, brilliant as were our late suc- cesses, he feared they could never be made to blos- som into the peace of a restored Union, unless properly supported by liberal and catholic proffers of amnesty, oblivion, and the restoration of civil rights. (Applause and some dissent.) OIL (" OLIVE ") ox THE TROUBLED WATERS. The Chairman desired to state that, if he were called upon to express his opinions, he would con- cur with every sentiment uttered by the last speak- er, whom he hoped to see elected Counsel to the Corporation next year. But as they had met to pay honor to two gallant and successful soldiers, and as he saw around him men of all political creeds, it might be best to avoid the discussion of such topics ; and he would therefore call upon Captain Blake, of the headquarters in Bleecker street, for one of those humorous Irish songs which had made him so famous in the social circle. All knew that the Blakes, Burkes, and Bodkins, were the three great Gal way families; and he would beg to introduce to the company his friend Captain Blake as 'a wortliy representative of that Milesian ilk. HONOR TO OUR HEROES. -A SONG FOR HIS SUPPER. Captain Blake, who is tall and sinewj, with a Wellington nose, and hair of that peculiar tinge now so popular at the Parisian Court and with all our hairdressers, at once complied with the request — only hesitating a moment as to whether he should "rowl out "for them the Gruiskeen Lawn^ the Shann Van Voght, or the jSuilj Suil^ Sail Aroon, in his native Irish tongue ; or the " Groves of Blarney " in Anglo-Saxon. Being told, however, that, after the flood of foreign learning in a pre- ceding speech, the company would not now object to a little English, and learning also that the " Groves of Blarney " must be held in reserve to be sung by Judge John R. Brady, the gallant Captain decided upon another lyric — supposed to be from the pen of Private Miles O'Reilly, Forty-seventh regiment, New York Volunteers — a copy of which we subjoin. He sang it to the air of " How happy could I be with either," and it was called : MY STHRONG WAKENESS FOR WIDDIES. Arrah, none o' your boordin' school misses, Your sweet, timid craytliurs for me, Who rave about cupid an' blisses. Yet know not what ayther may be ; HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 81 I don't feel at all sintimintal, For romance I care niver a rap, But give me a plump, jolly, an' gintle Young widdy in weeds an' a cap. To her I would offer my juty, For in thrulh all belief it exceeds, To see how the blossom o' beauty Is hoigthened by peepin' from weeds I She is armed cap-a-pie for the sthruggle, To her cap I a captive belong, And the charm of her shly httle ogle Is a challenge to coortship an' song I The thremors o' girlhood are over, Love's blossom has ripened to fruit, An' her firsht love, ashleep undher clover, Is the sile where my passion sthrikes root ; It is pleasant to know the departed Was tindherly cared tD the last. An' that she will not die broken-hearted If I should pop off jast as fasti Her timper is never so restive, Her juty she knows; an' a shape Is never so sweetly suggestive As whin it peeps out undher crape ; The girl wears wan ring whin she marries In proof she all others discards, But the widdy- wife, wiselier, carries A pair o' these marital guards. An' so, none o' your boordin' school misses, Your sweet, timid era^thurs for me, 82 HONOR TO OUR HEROES. Who rave about ciipid an' blisses, Yet know not what ayther may be ; I don't feel at all sintimintal, JSTor care I for Byron a rap — So give me a plump, jolly, an' gintle Young widdy in weeds an' a cap ! Every stanza of the foregoing called forth its full share of applause and merriment, Prince John Yan Buren remarking that a copy should at once be sent to General Joe Hooker, who, as he heard, was about marrying a Mv widow hailing from Cincinnati, Chicago, or some of our western vil- lages. GEN. HOOKER ABOUT ASSUMING- A NEW COMMAND. Senator Conn ess begged to correct the honor- able gentleman who had spoken last. The in- tended bride of "Fighting Joe" was young, ar- dent, beautiful, and in the first sweet roseate flush of her maiden purity. "She loved Joe for the perils he had passed, and he loved her because she pitied him." The marriage would take place be- fore the crocus broke through the snows of our earliest spring ; and General Hooker, lifted into the seventh heaven of his desires, would have another " battle above the clouds." (Eoars of laughter.) Mr. O'Gorman only desired to protest against HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 33 the quotation Mr. Conness had used — a quotation from the scandalous plav of Othello, describing the marriage of a colored soldier to the white daughter of a Yenetian Senator. He regarded that play as the earliest " miscegenation document " of our last campaign for the Presidency. (Loud laughter and applause, the Kev. Mr. Beecher cry- ing "A hit — a most palpable hit!") SECRETARY STANTON ON THE RAMPAGE — HIS LET- TER TO MR. BRADY. In response to repeated invitations, Mr. James T. Brady said that he had no speech to make, but would gladly read to them a letter from Secretary Stanton, which he had received just as he was leaving home that evening to attend this patriotic festival. It was a good letter, and had in it all its writer's characteristic brevity and point. It ran as follows : "War Department, Washingto^t, Dec. 29, 1864. My Dear Brady — Yours of the 16th, covering an inyi- tation of the ISTew York National Club, to pay honor to G-enerals Sherman and Thomas, has come to hand; but I cannot be with you, though the movement has all my sympathies. We had great difficulty in finding the right kind of tools at first ; but they are now being discovered by experience : and in Sherman and Thomas, as you sa}'", we have two of the keenest edge and finest mettle. Even had I time, why should I attend jour festival ? Things are 3i HONOR TO OUR HEROES. all going well to-day ; and it is only when disaster happens that the Secretary of War is asked after or remembered by an indignant public. Your sincere friend, Edwin M. Stanton. The laconic and tart humor of this characteristic note created much amusing comment ; Governor Andrew remarking that the sting of the affiiir could not, fortunately, apply to him, as he had made honorable mention of Mr. Stanton's beard and spectacles in his " Song of the Christmas Holidays." (Loud laughter.) ENTRANCE OF THE TWELVE CHORISTERS. Just at this moment the door on the chairman's right was flung open, and Mr. Stuart, of the Winter Garden, appeared, ushering in twelve happy -looking boys arrayed as choristers. They were all attired in white linen surplices, with cleri- cal sleeves, small red woollen hoods hanging back between their shoulders, and a broad blue band of satin passing round the neck of each and fall- ing down in double lappels over the white surplice until almost touching the ground. Each of these little fellows carried a bouquet in his hand, and as they filed off in sixes, half upon each side of Prince Van Buren's chair, at the head of the table, the tableau was extremely picturesque, and created not a little surprise. HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 35 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS BY MR. STUART. JVIr. Stuart explained tliat, on belialf of the Club, of which he was an unworthy member, he had volunteered to superintend the production of a little choral duct, or New Year's anthem, appro- priate to the happy prospects of peace we have now before us. The words of this choral duet, or anthem — he scarcely knew what to call it — he be- lieved he would commit no indiscretion in stating, had been furnished by one of the reverend gentle- men at present in this room. (Questioning looks from the guests toward Mr. Beecher and the Eev. Morgan Dix, but neither made any sign.) With the good leave of the company — all of whom he should be delighted to see at the Winter Garden any evening, or at his sea-side villa near New London, on any Friday afternoon they could run down to spend a couple of days with him — he would now call upon the first chorus of his young and interesting charge to commence, the band being requested to accompany them slowly, and only on their softest instruments. (Hushed ap- plause, the company evidently awaiting with much curiosity and interest to hear what was to come.) SONG OF THE CHORISTERS. The little choristers being divided into two equal bands, the first chorus of six sang the first S6 HONOR TO OUR HEROES. two of the following stanzas ; the second chorus of six, the next two ; and then all twelve sweet young voices joined in giving pathos and sublimi- ty to the tvv^o final verses. It was, like all that Mr. Stuart produces, " an immense success" — its idea having been given to him by some " games of Christmas " that he had long ago witnessed at the house of his honored friend, Mr. Gladstone, the celebrated Enghsh scholar, orator, and states- man. With these matters explained before-hand, — thus bringing the whole scene before the reader as vividly as it was brought before the guests, — we now give the words of this peculiar and striking anthem, which was sung to the well known old English air of "Art Thou not Fondly My Own :"— ANTHEM OF PEACE AND WAR. First CIi07'i(s of Six Voices. We have watched through the -weariest midnights That curtained our hope of Peace ; We have waded the deepest waters That ran between us and Peace ; We have chmbed o'er the roughest mountains That rose between us and Peace ! It hath cost us woes unnumbered, This promise we have of Peace ; Labors and bitter privations Because there was no Peace; HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 87 And the bones of our bravest bleaching On fields that were not of Peace ! Second Chorus of Six Voices. Famine and red-eyed murder Are leashed in the hands of "War ; Walls that are blackened and roofles=! Lie in the wake of War ; The worm and the flapping buzzard — Oh, these are the Kings of War I Hollow-eyed women are weeping The waste and the scourge of War ; Wringing their pitiful fingers And wailing the woes of War ; As their children wither around tliem Beneath the wan blight of War ! Full Qhorus of Twelve Voices. Oh. wives, with your husbands in battle, Think, think of the day of Peace I Oh, mothers, with sons in battle, Cling close to the hope of Peace I Oh, little ones, needing your fathers. Pray, pray for the hour of Peace 1 Grlory to God in the Highest ! He giveth us promise of Peace ! He will not be wrathful for ever, He yet will restore to us Peace — We see from the Wings of His Healing Down flutter the White Dove of Peace ! 88 HONOR TO OUR HEROES. PRESENTATION OF BOUQUETS BY THE CHORISTERS. This anthem was received with the compliment of breathless attention during its progress ; and fervent, but not noisy approval, as the echoes of the last lines died slowly away, as if trembling reluctantly into silence. Mr. Stuart received the thanks, and his young charge the compliments, of all present — six of the young choristers then filing off and presenting their bouquets to General Anderson, the first hero of our war; and the others giving one bouquet each to the three senior military and three senior naval officers who were present. In their dresses of " red, white and blue," and with their young, bright, happy faces, this scene was not only pretty, but impressive to a degree seldom realized. The eyes of General Anderson filled with happy tears, and his voice was quite broken with emotion as he attempted to thank and address them. LAST SCENE OF ALL BREAKING UP OF A DELIGHT- FUL PARTY. The conclusion of this ceremony appeared the signal for a breaking up of the graver part of the audience ; Generals Dix, Hunter, and Anderson, Governor Andrew, the reverend gentlemen, and many others at once retiring — as shortly after did HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 89 your reporter, being in a hurry to prepare these notes. AVhen he left, Dr. Darant was discoursing about the Adirondacks ; George Francis Train about the Pacific Railroad ; Captain Fox about Monitor-built Iron-clads ; Greneral Webb about bounty-swindling in New York, and the ojDera- tions of Gen. F. B. Spinola in that connection at Lafayette Hall ; Mr. Dana, with General Hart- sufif, on the true principles of strategy; while Swinton was growing eloquen.t and pugnacious (all by himself) over Hooker's fight at Lookout Mountain. Messrs. Brady, Pierrepont, Yan Buren, Barlow and the other young bucks of that ilk kept sloshing around indiscriminately, each satisfied that his own speech was a capital speech and full of interest, and that if all the others in the room would not stop talking to listen to it — why so much the worse for them ! Thus endeth our account of one of the pleasant- est and most perfectly successful public entertain- ments we have attended in many years ; but we feel that our account of this noble banquet would be imperfect if we failed here to insert the power- ful and brilliant editorial in which, on the same date, the veteran Editor of the Herald called atten- tion to the feast and its importance, both in rela- tion to the Soldiers' Home and our relations with France and England. Thus wrote Mr. Bennett : ''We call the attention of all patriotic and 40 HONOR TO OUR HEROES. charitable citizens to the eloquent appeal of Gene- ral Eobert Anderson and the eruditely splendid oration of Major-General Dix, elsewhere published, in favor of the immediate establishment of a great E'ational Soldiers' Home, as the fittest monument that can be raised in token of our gratitude as a people for the recent blessings of victory which have been borne to us on the standards of Gene- rals Sherman and Thomas. It is clear enough from Dr. Agnew's letter, published yesterday, that nothing in the way of making a permanent provi- sion for our disabled heroes can be hoped for from the Sanitary Commission, whose resources are represented to be already overtaxed. It therefore becomes the duty of all our patriotic fellow-citizens to at once commence organizing a committee hav- ing this matter of a National Soldiers' Home for the objective point of its beneficent campaign, there being already a grand nucleus for such a charity to gather around, in the legacy of one million dollars from the Roosevelt estate, which the members of that loyal and distinguished family are anxious to devote to such a purpose, as was stated by Mr. R. B. Eoosevelt, on their behalf, at the banquet of the New York National Club last evening. '' The speech of General Dix, and more espe- cially that portion of it referring to our difficulties with Canada will be read with intense interest. HONOR TO OUR HEROES. 41 both in the British provinces and empire. It is the utterance of a frank and accomplished soldier, paying implicit obedience to the authority which revoked his recent order, but still not afraid to reassert, with firmness and dignity, his individual judgment in favor of a stronger and less hesitating course. The tumultuous applause with which this portion of the General's speech was received, by an audience embracing representative men of all ranks and classes, should be a lesson not without significance and results to Mr. Secretary Seward." FALL OF FOET FISHER. trow THE NEWS WAS RECEIVED IN THE CITY PRIVATE o'rEILLY ON A RAMPAGE. From the Herald, Jan. 18, 18G5. The city was startled yesterday about noon by the cheering news of the fall of Fort Fisher. It was so unexpected by the people, and so sudden, that the effect was electric. As usual on such occasions, the bulletin-boards were crowded, the extras were in demand, and the victory was the subject of general congratulation in the public offices and other places of resort. Criticisms on General Butler and his previous fiasco \nqvq nume- rous, and hardly just in this particular ; but the compliments to General Grant were numerous and flattering, and General Terry was not forgot- ten. There was a general inquiry of " What next ?" and the thirst for news was only sharp- ened not quenched. We are deeply chagrined, however, upon a fes- tive occasion of this kind, to be obliged to record the fact that a person of whom we have heretofore tried to think well, should have brought himself to sudden grief by giving way to a too liberal FALL OF FORT FISHER. 43 spirit of rejoicing — the '' spirit," especially — on ac- count of the success of his old commander, Grene- ral A. H. Terry. We refer to that eccentric war- rior and bard of the old Tenth Army Corps, Private Miles O'Reilly, Forty-seventh Regiment I^ew York Volunteer Infantry, who, about nine o'clock last evening, was arrested on the complaint of Mr. George Roberts, proprietor of the American Club House, corner of Seventeenth street and Broadway, charged with disorderly and riotous conduct, the use of much profane language, and a general chal- lenge to any one who would tread on the tail of his coat, or knock an imaginary chip off his shoulder. It seems that Private O'Reilly, in a state of high excitement, entered the premises of Mr. Roberts about eight P. M., with a large crowd at his heels, all of whom he insisted upon treating ; while in re- turn they were patiently waiting to hear him sing a song he had just composed in honor of the cap- ture of Fort Fisher. All the efforts of Mr. Roberts, and several of his friends who were present, were inadequate to clear the room of this noisy and un- desirable company, who were vociferous in their demands that " the boy should be let sing his song out" — a demand which they enforced by threaten- ing to break the decanters and mirrors (two of which were cracked in the final scufiie), if any interference were attempted. Mr. Roberts on this. 44 FALL OF FORT FISHER. seeing present resistance to be vain, appeared to submit contentedly, only taking the precaution, while Miles was singing, to send down to police headquarters in Mulberry street for a detachment of the Broadway squad to clear the premises. The crowd, having thus secured a temporary posses- sion of the bar and billiard-rooms, proceeded to help themselves indiscriminately to all the liquors they desired — Mr. Eoberts, as his only means of keeping his house from being gutted, directing the two bar-keepers to give the mob all they asked for. The whole rabble being thus bounteously supplied. Private O'Reilly was lifted upon the table usually occupied as a cigar stand, and sang as follows : SHERRY, TERRY AND PORTER A LYRIC OF MIXED LIQUORS. Let us drink in golden sherry ! As we oft have drank before, Let us drink to General Terry, Long of head and body — very ; To our own, dear Alfred Terry, Of the old Tenth Army Corps I Mixing drinks is dangerous — very, Bringing headaches we deplore ; But to Porter, feeling merry, We drink deep in golden sherry — Be it long ere Charon's wherry That grim Admiral ferries o'er I FALL OF FORT FISHER. 45 Fill to Porter and to Terry, They are names that we adore ; From Connecticut to Kerry, Some in grog and some in sherry, " To the Admiral and lo Terry" — Deep libations let us pour ! Bring the picks, and let us bury On New England's rugged shore, General Butler, who is very Far from feeling extra merry, As he reads about Alf. Terry, Of the old Tenth Army Corps ! Mr. Lincoln, who is very Deeply skilled in classic lore, Is devoted to his " Terry'' — His "Terentius Afer," very; But we better like Alf. Terry, Of the old Tenth Army Corps ! These absurd verses — mere dogjo-rel when criti- cally examined — the noisy and much excited crowd appeared to relish extremely, and persisted in encoring many times, the room growing more densely packed every moment, as the orgie pro- ceeded, by swarms of idle passers-by, who were attracted within by the singing, vociferations, stampings, and other indications of a "real good time " going on. At length, just as the choral but rather unsteady Private was commencing the song again for the fifth or sixth time. Sergeant Young, 46 FALL OF FORT FISHER. chief of tlie detectives, appeared upon the scene, followed by some half-dozen of the burly Broad- way squad, and an immediate scattering followed, the police (who were all heavy men in need of "Banting,") being only able to take three pri- soners — one Luke Clark, of the Fifth "Ward ; James O'Eeilly, of the Sixteenth Ward, a cousin to the boy Miles ; and Private Miles himself— the latter in- sisting vigorously that he had only been " amusin' his mind by a pathriotic ditty," and threatening the policemen who were carrying him off to the station-house with Fort Lafayette for an unlimited number of years, " whiniver his Kiverence's Ex- cellency, the President, should hear what kind of a game they had been up to." The trial of these parties — continued the Herald — will take place this morning at the Tombs, being set down for eleven o'clock, and will doubtless be largely attended. Mr. Eoberts esti- mates his loss in liquors and broken furniture at about five hundred and eighty dollars, which the county will, in all probability, be eventually taxed to pay. The last heard of O'Reilly, last evening, he was extremely noisy in his cell and was bellow- ing snatches of military and patriotic ditties to the great annoyance of various somnolent policemen who were on duty in the station-house, as also of the more peaceful, respectable, and quietly disposed of his fellow-prisoners. Of the songs he thus FALL OF FORT FISHER. 47 sang, we have only room at present for the fol- lowing, which he declares to have been written by one Corporal Florence Mulcahy, of some Connecti- cut regiment : HOW WE TALK AT OUR CAMP FIRES. We have heard the rebel yell, We have given the Union shout, We have weighed the matter very well And mean to fight it out; la victory's happy glow, In the gloom of utter rout. We have pledged ourselves — " Come weal or woe, We fight this quarrel out." 'Tis now too late to question What brought the war about, 'Tis a thing of pride and passion. And we mean to fight it out ; Let the big-wigs use the pen. Let them caucus, let them spout. We are half a million weaponed men And mean to fight it out. Our dead, our loved, are crying From many a stormed redoubt. In the swamps and trenches lying — " Oh, comrades, fight it out ! 'Twas our comfort as we fell To hear your gathering shout. Rolling back the rebels' weaker yell— God-speed you, fight it out I" 48 FALL OF FORT FISHER. The coUud pusson — free or slave — We care no curse about, But for the Jflag our fathers gave We mean to fight it out ; And while that banner brave One rebel rag shall flout, With volleying arm and flashing glaive We fight the quarrel out ! Oh, we've heard the rebel yell, We have given the Union shout, We know all the sounds of battle, And we mean to fight it out ; In the flush of perfect triumph, And the gloom of utter rout, We have sworn on many a bloody field " By Heaven ! we fight it out I" THE MONKOE DOCTEINE. THEORY OF THE ORBITS OF POWER. From the New York Herald^ February 27, 1865. That history is continually repeating itself is not a remarkably new observation ; but is one, the truth of which is so continually forced upon us, that again and again it rises to our lips or trickles from our pen as if spontaneously. *' What has been shall be, and what is has been," may be taken as a summary of the entire history of the earth, both in its past and in its prophetic applica- tions. The same causes operating upon similar nations invariably produce like results ; and if the Emperor of the French, in place of writing books about Julius Caesar, would only condescend to study the history and results of the three Punic wars, he might learn from the fate of Carthage in that struggle a lesson of unspeakable value at the present time to the prospects of his dynasty. The Eoman commonwealth, like our own, had established a regular Monroe Doctrine for all the islands and lands adjacent to it ; and indeed for its own, or the European side of the Mediterranean. It had its own orbit of power, and was content 50 THE MONEOE DOCTRINE. that Carthage should sway the destinies of Africa, and be its great commercial rival on the seas ; but as to allowing Carthage, or any other Power, to come as a disturbing element within its own sphere of political action, or to meddle with the affairs either of Italy or the dependencies of the Italian Peninsula, or to cross the Mediterranean and esta- blish ascendancy in any of the countries on the European side adjoining Eome, " Why that," — said the Conscript Fathers, very gravely — "that would be an infringement of our Monroe Doc- trine ; and we hereby pledge our lives, our honors, and our sacred fortunes, that we will give our last man and our last dollar rather than submit to any such intermeddling." This resolution of the Eoman Senate was doubt- less forwarded with all due formalities to the Car- thaginian Gerusia, or Council of State; but the Gerusians comniitted the very egregious blunder of believing that the Senators of the Seven -Hilled City were only talking for buncombe in this par- ticular declaration. They did not, or could not realize that the Monroe Doctrine of those days lay at the very roots of the Eoman character ; and that, no matter how long its professors might be compelled by domestic trouble or rebellion to hold it in subordination, and keep it out of sight, the very moment they could attain peace and stable government at home, all their efforts and sacrifices THE MONROE DOCTRINE. 51 would instantly be turned towards a vigorous and relentless enforcement of Prince Henry's darling theory : Two stars keep not their courses in one sphere, Nor can one England brook the double reign Of Harry Percy and the Prince of Wales. These facts and these passions the Grerusians of Carthage appeared as utterly to overlook as the French Emperor seems to be overlooking, or ignor- ing, similar facts and similar passions in the pre- sent day, with regard to ourselves. Finding the Komans inVolved in a succession of civil wars and domestic troubles, the Carthaginians first seized upon Sardinia, after a fierce struggle, and subse- quently upon Syracuse, in both of which fruitful islands they established friendly governments and most wealthy colonies — Eome the while looking on grimly, but without power to interfere. At length — disembarrassed of her civil troubles, and probably regarding, as we shall soon, a for- eign war as offering the best means for reuniting her lately belligerent component parts — the Eo- man republic, about two hundred and sixty years before the commencement of the Christian era, gave ear to the cry of the Messinians, upon whose soil the Carthaginians were attempting a fresh vio- lation of the Monroe Doctrine. War was at once declai'ed with all proper pomp, and pushed with 62 THE MONROE DOCTRINE. every energy of the Koman people. In a year Syracuse was rescued from beneath the shadow of foreign domination ; the Eomans, heretofore with- out a navy, built an enormous fleet ; and, in the twenty-second year of this first War for the Monroe Doctrine, after the Carthaginians had been defeat- ed in a heavy sea fight by the Eomans under Vice-Admiral Lutatius Catulus, the Gerusians of Carthage " gave a receipt for the maize," so to speak — acknowledged the Monroe Doctrine of the Koman republic in its full integrity, withdrew from all islands and territories on the European side of the Mediterranean, released all Roman prisoners without ransom, and finally paid a very handsome sum towards defraying the expenses of this war for the vindication of the orbit of Roman power — or the Monroe Doctrine of the present day. The second Punic war had a similar origin, and was waged on the Roman side for the vindication of the self-same principle. The Carthaginians and their mercenaries, under Hannibal, captured Sa- guntum, a town on the eastern coast of Spain, and consequently on that side of the Mediterranean which the Romans claimed to be within the exclu- sive orbit of their empire. " Two stars hold not their courses in one sphere ;" nor, in the case of two great and progressive nationalities, can one infringe upon the circuit or orbit of the other without lead- ing to inevitable and most disastrous collisions. THE MONKOE DOCTRINE. 53 This trutli neither the Carthaginian wise men of old nor the French Emperor, at the present day- have shown any ability to realize. The second Punic war, commenced at Saguntum, lasted for sixteen years, with varying fortunes — two of the greatest generals the world has ever seen, Han- nibal, on behalf of the Carthaginians and Con- quest, and Scipio Africanus, shouting the battle- cry of Eome and the Monroe Doctrine, being op- posed to each other up to the battle of Zaraa, in which the cohorts of the " Gerusians" went heavilj to the ground. Carthage was then stripped of all her navy, except ten triremes, or first-class vessels of war ; was deprived of every inch of her foreign territory, and was compelled to pay a heavy tribute for some years towards defraying the expenses of her conqueror. The third Punic war was short, sharp, and de- cisive. The " Gerusians" of Carthage apparently could not or would not learn wisdom from the past, but still kept intermeddling at every oppor- tunity with affairs and with territories which clear- ly fell within the orbit or grand circle of the pro- gress of the Eoman Empire. At length went forth the dread decree, delenda est Carthago^ or Car- thage is to be blotted out — an order terribly and brutally executed by Major-General Scipio JSmi- lianus on behalf of the Romans, the walls and houses of the city being razed to their very founda- 54 THE MONROE DOCTRINE. tions, and all of Africa that once owned the sway of Carthage becoming thenceforth annexed as a Eoman province. Such was the fate, in ancient times, of the country which would not respect the " Monroe Doctrine" of a growing and powerful republic — that doctrine, in a word, which forbids any foreign Power to intrude itself within the orbit of another, if it be wished to avoid collisions. . In these days of steam the Atlantic is no more to our navies than was the Mediterranean to the galleys and triremes of the ancient Pceni and Qui- rites of Africa and Italy. The so-called Monroe Doctrine is not a new-fangled American discovery or claim, but an eternal principle essential to the preservation of peace between all progressive nations. "We must, at any cost, keep the orbit through which our star of empire has to move, free from all foreign obstructions or interference. With peace reestablished at home, we shall need employment for several hundred thousand soldiers, drawn from both armies, who have accepted the military calling as the profession of their lives. We cannot with honor, and we cannot with safety, permit the erection of a vast French colony on our Southern frontier — for to that Maximilian's empire amounts, and to nothing more — and it is now for the French Emperor to say, knowing how unstable in France are the elements beneath his throne, whether he will challenge us to a modern THE MONROE DOCTRINE. 55 Punic war, in which will inevitably go forth the decree — not, indeed, that Paris is to be blotted out and France annexed — that the Napoleonic dynasty shall be suppressed and kicked into obscurity a3 common disturbers of the peace of the human, family, and of the grand imperial orbit of the " manifest destiny" of these United States. "NEWS FROM PARNASSUS." Under this attractive heading a paper called Mrs, Grundy signalized her first issue by a gross attack on the literary character of a somewhat notorious contributor to the columns of this paper — The New YoEk Citizen. What the Old Lady meant by it, we are at a loss to imagine. We never trod on her toes, injured her umbrella, poked fun at her poke-bonnet, or mislaid her pattens. On the con- trary, our notices of her debut were most generous — perhaps far more kindly than she deserved ; and should have been paid for at five dollars a line : but no such price, nor price of any kind, was given. Fancy our feelings, then, when we found the Old Lady, in her very first issue, thus accusing poor Private O'Reilly of plagiarism, piracy, " pri- vate-eering," and other nameless offences. The following is the attack, which we reproduce verba- tim before appending our reply : " LITERARY PRIVATE-EERING. " Of all impositions on a confiding public, literary deceptions are perhaps the most odious. The man who obtains money by false pretences is liable to legal punishment. But before what court, other 57 than that of public opinion, can we arraign the obtainer, on false pretences, of literary fame ? " Into these reflections we have been led by the receipt of a letter from the Keverend and Yene- rable Father Gulielmus Henricus Au-Eelius, an eminent and learned monk of the Huron Theolo- gical Institute, in Canada West, calling attention to the fact that certain songs relative to our late war are now obtaining currency, both here and in Europe, as original productions ; whereas, in fact, they are but poor translations from certain of the less known Latin poets of the Second Empire. " As a very flagrant instance of this species of misappropriation, father Au-Eelius sends us the original Militum Carmen^ from the works of Clau- dius Claudianus {Amsterdam edition hy Burmann, 1760), the last of the Latin Classic Poets, who flourished in the time of Theodosius, enjoying the patronage of the Empress Serena, and who finally had a statue of honor erected to his memory in the Forum of Trajan. " This beautiful relic of antique genius, which originally appeared in the De hello Oildonico — an unfinished historical poem, by Claudianus, on the war in Africa against Gildo — has been rather poorly translated quite recently, and has obtained wide currency in literature as the * Song of the Soldiers,' its translator — one Soldier O'Keilly, or Miles Au-Eelius, as the learned Father calls him 3* 58 — impudently palming off his coarse English ren- dering as an effort of his own muse. "Here is the true Militum Carmen of Claudianus ; and that every reader may be able to judge for himself how grossly it has suffered in the Miles Au-Eelian or O'Reillyan translation, we follow it with the lame English version of the classical * Private,' who must hereafter change his title to that of ' Pirate ' in the minds of all scholarly men: " ' MILITUM CARMEN". " ' Agmine in crebro comites probati, Cogniti multis socii periclis, Semper ut fratres memori fideles Corde revincti. " ' Distrahat vulnus maciesque turpi s, Distraliat jussu subito Imperator, Accidat quidvis, sumus usque fido Pectore fratres. " ' Cogniti vinclo fidei serense, Morte in extrema socii probati, Cogimur fratrum pietate sacr^ Omne per sevum. " ' Sin Deus plures hiemes det aequus, Stabimns fortes acieque recta, Semper et fraternus amor calebit Pectore in imo. "NEWS FROM PARNASSUS." 59 « " ' Per fidem signi laceri duello, Per fidem signi dominantis orbem, Jungimur vinclo fidei tenaci Semper eodem. " * Symbolum, partes, nihilum valebunt, Lingua nee gentes diriment amorem, Accidat quidvis, aquilee tonantis Inclyta proles.' " ' SONG OF THE SOLDIERS. [" Translation of the foregoing, audaciously claimed as origi' nal hy Private Miles O'Reilly.] " ' Comrades known in marches many, Comrades tried in dangers many, Comrades bound by memories many, Brothers evermore are we ; Wounds or sickness may divide us. Marching orders may divide us. But, whatever fate betide us, Brothers of the heart are we. " * Comrades known by faith the clearest. Tried when death was near and nearest, Bound we are by ties the dearest, Brothers evermore to be ; And, if spared and growing older. Shoulder stiU in line with shoulder, And with hearts no thrill the colder, Brothers ever we shall be. 60 *' * By communion of tbo banner, Battle-scarretl but victor banner, B3- the baptism of the banner, Brothers of one church are we ; Creed nor faction cjm divide us ; Race nor language can divide us ; Stil, whatever iat hon mot ; but the General couldn't see it in any such light. RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAE. 801 " By gar," lie exclaimed, " I vill not haaf beo- ples zayin' dem kind o' tings ! By gar, I pelief dere are beoples on mein staff who are not griefed to zee me dearin' down de 'pike ! By gar, Colonel Strodare must not zay dem kind o' tings, or he veel be court-martial !" Let me add, in justice to our Teutonic General, against whom this story rather tells, that Colonel Strother was at all times emphatic in speaking of the perfectly reckless manner in which General Sigel exposed himself and staff in the last hours of the battle of Newmarket — the gallant Colonel, now Adjutant-General of Virginia on Governor Pierpont's staff, equally asserting that there was no trace of cowardice in General Sigel, as there certainly was none of generalship. And now to return from our digression, and hasten on to Lexington as fast as possible. BATTLE OF PIEDMONT. — A BAD CASE OF WHIP. Quitting Harrisonburgh, which we had entered with only some inconsiderable skirmishing, we amused the enemy for a few days by some feints on their strong — indeed, nearly impregnable — lines at Mount Crawford, just in front of us; and then suddenly wheeling to the left — our move- ments covered by a cloud of cavalry, under the guidance of poor young Meigs of the Engineers, 302 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. since killed, son of the Quartermaster- General — we crossed the Shenandoah at Port Eepublic on pontoons and by wading; and then found our- selves in a virgin part of the valley, which had never previously seen our uniforms except on prisoners being sent to Lynchburgh by Lee or Jackson. This was on the 4:th of June, 1864, — a miserable day, the rain pouring in torrents ; and well for us that it did so, as it helped to mislead the enem}^ Next morning, at daylight, commenced the bat- tle of Piedmont, or Stanton, as the enemy more properly called it — Stanton being the prize at which we aimed. The forces actually engaged were about equal. General Hunter having some nine thousand men actually in action, while the enemy had about the same — strongly posted, how- ever, on a range of hills, horse-shoe shaped, and heavily timbered, and further protected by rifle- pits and rail-fence barricades, hastily thrown up the night before. The rebel morning report of the day previous, found on the dead body of General Jones that afternoon, showed that he had then under him 6,800 regular Confederate sol- diers, while we knew that he was joined on the morning of the engagement by Yaughan's brigade from East Tennessee, and also by about fifteen hundred militia — old men and young boys, not worth the powder required to kill them — hurried RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 803 forward from Stanton and Lynchburgli on news of our advance. The fight, though not large in numbers, was singularly obstinate and fluctuating, the enemy beating back repeated charges of our infantry and cavalry, under Generals Sullivan and Stahl — for neither the divisions of Crook and Averell had then joined us ; and it was quite late in the after- noon, after a long and sweltering day of battle, when the movement of the gallant Colonel Tho- burne's division across the narrow valley and its charge up hill upon the enemy's right flank, decided the contest in our favor. Greneral Wm. E. Jones, their commander, was killed, as also five colonels, thirty or forty officers, and some seven or eight hundred men killed or wounded ; and we had about eighteen hundred prisoners, including the worthless reserve militia, seventy regular oflfi.cers, and twenty-eight hundred stand of arms, as the spoils attesting our success. But for the coming on of night, and the broken, heavily-timbered nature of the country, the famous feat of "bagging" that army — so popular with Congressional orators and enthusiastic editors — might have been easily accomplished ; for a worse whipped or more utterly demoralized crowd of beaten men never fled from any field. 304 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. ALEXANDER H. H. STUART. — ONE LOYAL POLITI- CIAN IN VIRGINIA. Next day we entered Stanton without any regu- lar opposition, destroying the railroad thoroughly on each side of it, and also enormous quantities of quartermaster, commissary, and ordnance stores there accumulated ; and, riding into town, the first person the writer had any conversation with was the Hon. Alexander H. H. Stuart, once a Whig member of the Washington Cabinet, and now again becoming prominent in Virginia politics. He ;svas a handsome, portly, tall, middle-aged and gray-headed gentleman, a good deal resembling Mayor Berret, of Washington ; and one observa- tion that he made to us — indeed, almost the first — was memorable in that land of secession pro- clivities : We were sitting, with Mr. Stuart, the Mayor, County Clerk, and other dignitaries of the town, on the stoop of the Stanton Bank, when the head of our infantry column appeared, preceded by a band of music, playing " Hail Columbia," and an enormous banner of the Stars and Stripes, almost breaking the long pole — for there was a thunder- storm just then — on which the soldiers carried it. " That's a grand old tune," said Mr. Stuart, somewhat huskily, and with a slight quaver in his voice. " A grand old tune, and a grand old flag. EECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 805 It's long since I have seen tlie one, or "heard the other " — and he looked as if he were not sorry. It is but justice to Mr. Stuart to add, that he was one of those who had vehemently opposed the ordinance of secession, and was always regarded as being so much a Union man as it was safe for any one to be in those parts, during the entire rebellion. A SONG BY OUR IRREPRESSIBLE ORDERLY. While referring again to our field note-book for these particulars — hastily jotted down at the time, and jumbled up with all manner of army and private memoranda — we find in pencil, on the back of a rough morning report sent in by Gene- ral Sullivan, the following lines, hastily scribbled, and which we now publish for the first time, as some indication of the kind of thoughts with which the mind amuses itself and seeks relaxation in the midst of scenes like these. It is a soldier- song in verity — a song of the rank and file, rough and wholly unpolished ; but not, we think, with- out some true spirit of the camp in its hasty stanzas : 806 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. THE CANTEEN. BY PRIVATE MILES o'rEILLT. There are bonds of all sorts in this world of ours, Petters of friendship and ties of flowers, And true-lovers' knots, I ween ; The girl and the boy are bound by a kiss, But there's never a bond, old friend, like this — We have drunk from the same canteen I It was sometimes water, and sometimes milk, And sometimes apple-jack, fine as silk, But whatever the tipple has been, "We shared it together, in bane or bliss, And I warm to you, friend, when I think of this- We have drunk from the same canteen ! The rich and the great sit down to dine, And they quaff to each other in sparkhng wine, From glasses of crystal and green; But I guess in their golden potations they miss The warmth of regard to be found in this — We have drunk from the same canteen. We have shared our blankets and tents together. And have marched and fought in all kinds of weather, And hungry and full we have been ; Had days of battle and days of rest. But this memory I cling to and love the best — We have drunk from the same canteen { EECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAK. 807 For when wounded I lay on the outer slope, With my blood flowing fast, and but little hope Upon which my faint spirit could lean ; Oh, then, I remember, you crawled to my side, And, bleeding so fast, it seemed both must have died, We drank from the same canteen. MARCH FROM STANTON", AND CAPTURE OF LEX- INGTON. At Stanton we were soon joined by the infan- try division under General Crook, and the ca- valry under Greneral Averell; our force being thus raised — allowing for what we had to send back from here with the prisoners and trains — to an effective body of some twenty thousand men ; and it was with this force we were advancing against Lexington when this paper of "recollec- tions" opened. Our first day's march of twenty miles from Stanton brought us to a little hamlet variously styled Midway or Steele's Tavern ; and the next day's march, notwithstanding all the vehement though irregular opposition offered by McCaus- land, brought us b}'- noon on a hill overlooking the pretty city of Lexington. Here we found that McCausland was making what promised to be a resolute stand — the Lynch- burgh canal defending his right flank, while a branch of the Shenandoah river, sweeping round 808 KECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. a higli perpendicular bluff of rock on which was situated the Lexington Military Institute, offered a serious barrier to our progress. The bridge by which he had crossed into the town was now a pile of smoking ruins, and all our efforts to find a ford or lay our pontoons were met with deter- mined opposition. From every house and emi- nence commanding the river and its approaches, and from the windows and grounds of the Mili- tary Institute, a close and deadly fire both of mus- ketry and artillery was kept up against us ; and it was not until late in the afternoon that McCaus- land abandoned this defence, finding his left flank in danger of being turned, and his retreat cut off by General Averell, who had found a ford some miles higher up and crossed with his cavalry. It thus came to pass that it was late that even- ing before we entered Lexington ; and now, before speaking of Stonewall Jackson's grave, let the writer be permitted a few words of explanation as to two acts committed at this place, for which Greneral Hunter has been most acrimoniously, and, as we shall prove, most senselessly and un- justly abused. We refer to the burning of Gov. Letcher's house and the Virginia Military Insti- tute. 4 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 809 BURNING OF EX-GOVERNOR LETCHER'S HOUSE. The West Yirgioia troops, formingj with some regiments from Maryland, the elite of our little army, were furious beyond measure against John Letcher. He had been a Union man, they said, who had sold his principles for promotion in the rebel service ; and, as was the case with all apos- tates of this kind, had then signalized his devo- tion to his new faith by unheard-of oppressions and cruelties against all of his former associates who persisted in remaining faithful to their creed of loyalty. They charged against him gross and wanton outrages upon the liberties, lives, and pro- perty of all the loyal men within his reach ; and so strongly was their desire for retaliation manifested, that General Hunter, in order to protect the family of the fugitive ex-Governor, who had only fled the night before, directed that a guard of two companies from some Ohio regiment — the 116th, if we remember rightly — should be detailed for the security of Mr. Letcher's residence. Several officers of General Hunter's staff, also — of whom Captain Towne, chief signal officer, was one, and Captain Prendergast, since killed, another — took up their quarters with the Letchers — partly as it was a pleasant, though small and rather modest mansion ; and partly to give additional protection to the frightened family of females — ex-Governor 310 KECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. LetcTier having fled the night previous to our entrance. Thus matters stood until next day, when some soldiers of the 9th West Virginia, under Colonel — now G-eneral — Duvall, happened to find in an abandoned printing-office, already half set up in type — the manuscript in John Letcher's hand, and over his signature, of a proclamation to the citizens of " Rockbridge and other Counties," call- ing upon them to " arise and slay the foul Yankee invader ;" and if unable to offer any organized re- sistance, then from behind every tree and stone in the valley, to kill us as they could. It was, in other words, a direct incitation to bushwhacking and murder ; and if Mr. John Letcher had been caught, not only would his house have been burned — as the houses of four other bushwhackers, and only four, had previously been — but he would have been hung on the first tree with a little paper pinned on his breast bearing this brief but preg- nant legend : " Hung for organizing bushwhacking. " By command of Maj.-G-en. Hunter." What folly and something worse it is, while General Sherman goes blameless for having burned down whole towns and cities that offered any resistance, to censure Hunter for his course in this valley campaign, wherein — at least, so far as we RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 811 have knowledge — he only caused five private dwellings to be destroyed, and these on conviction that the proprietors were assassins and bush- whackers ! BURNING OF THE VIRGINIA MILITARY INSTITUTE. As to the cry raised against " Uncle David " for the destruction of the Virginia Military Institute, that is still, if possible, more senseless and unjust. General Smith, commanding the Institute, as we have good evidence, protested to General McCaus- land against defending Lexington, and more espe- cially against using the Institute as one of the points of defence — stating the town to be wholly indefensible, in his judgment, and that it would be made liable to bombardment and destruction by such a course ; and especially pleading that to fire from the windows of the Institute on our troops, or to use it in any manner as a military point, would likewise, and still more strongly, necessitate its destruction. To this McCausland replied by showing his orders from General Lee, which were to contest every mile of our advance with the utmost obsti- nacy, every hour gained against us being impor- tant, as the division of Breckinridge and the corps of Ewell under General Jubal Early, were then hastening forward by rail from Richmond to 812 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. his relief. General Smith, as we have heard, still maintained that using the Military Institute (ot which, by the way, Yaughan, Imboden, McCaus- land, and nearly all the other Virginia leaders of prominence had been graduates,) could do no good, but would certainly result in its destruction ; " and finally, when McCausland persisted in his course, General Smith asked to be relieved from service under him, and marched away with his cadets down the canal tow-path to Lynchburgh. As to the order of General Lee, we are certain — the original telegram having been captured next day in the house of General Smith, at which McCausland and the other generals had stopped over-night ; and as to General Smith's protest and subsequent action in the matter, they were rekted to us next morning by a very intelligent and respectable old black man — General Smith's butler or steward — to whom we were indebted for many comfortable meals during the next two days. This Institute, at the burning of which the writer looked with feelings of inexpressible regret though fully satisfied of the justice of the act, was an exact copy of the West Point Academy in architecture, and perhaps more handsome — cer- tainly more modern, elegant and commodious in the houses of its professors, of whom the great Stonewall Jackson had been one. The more valuable books of its library, however, and instru- RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 313 ments of its scientific, astronomical, and chemical departments, had been removed before our advent. It contained large quantities of arms and ordnance stores, and it must be remembered that its stu- dents had been organized into a battalion of infan- try and had fought against us, not many days before, at Newmarket. On its roll of graduates, too, could be found the names of hundreds of prominent rebel officers ; and this, en parenihese^ opened our eyes to comprehend how it came to pass that the South had such good officers uni- formly on the breaking out of the war, while ours, except the regulars from West Point, were then so ignorant — nearly all the young aristocracy of the South having been trained to arms in just such institutions as this of Lexington, Baton Eouge, and so forth. This burning took place on the 12th of June, 1864. STONEWALL JACKSON'S GRAVE AND ITS PECU- LIAR MONUMENT. And now for a visit to Stonewall Jackson's grave — Jackson who has always impressed us as one of the most veritable heroes of these degene- rate days. We know not who wrote that magni- ficent soldier-lyric in his honor, entitled " Stone- wall Jackson's Way ; " but do know, despite its roughness, that it is ore of the grandest tributes 14 814 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. ever paid by the Muse to the character of a Hero. It is fiery, and loving, and droll, and full of pathos — a song for the full appreciation of which, per- haps, one should have made a campaign or two in the Shenandoah, and beheld all the monuments of his genius. " Ah," said an old rebel prisoner to us once, when we asked him which of their generals he had most faith in : " Ah, Colonel ! Johnsing we guess to be the retreatin'est general we ever had ; but the grittiest and the flankin'est was Stonewall Jackson." The churchyard in which poor Stonewall lies is just on the borders of the town, and must have been a pretty and neat little place of burial before the war. It has heavy borders of moss roses and the dark roses of the South along its walks, and these were in richest bloom when we paid our visit. Beautiful white marble monuments are scattered around in profusion ; but looking at their dates it will be seen that few of these have been erected since the breaking out of the rebel- lion. Death has been since then too busy in the South to receive such honors ; and the long, close rows of freshly-made graves — more especially those of a dozen young cadets killed at New- market — had no other trophy or memorial than a small shingle at the head of each, bearing a brief and rudely painted inscription. Exactly in the centre of the churchyard is the RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 815 grave of tlie great rebel leader — a little bank of earth sodded over with green clover, and with two little dark boards (now probably chipped away by relic-hunters) at its head and foot. Near to its head, also, a tall pine flag-staff sprang nakedly up into the air ; and on this, until carried away by McCausland in his retreat, had waved a Confede- rate battle-flag, worked in threads of silk, and gold, and silver, by certain secession-sympathizing peeresses of England — the Countess of Arundel and Surrey, if we remember rightly, having been prominent in the work. This battle-flag, with a sentry in gray walking up and down beneath it, had formed Stonewall Jackson's only monument ; and now both had disappeared ! Suppose McCausland had left both sentry and flag on guard by that solitary grave, who believes that either would have been disturbed ? Would not both have been held sacred as portions of the tomb of a good and gallant soldier ? At any rate this thing is very sure : that, if either or both had to be taken away, the writer would have striven hard to shirk in his own person that particular tour of duty ; and this feeling, so far as he could ascertain, was unanimous amongst all his younger associates. Just in rear of the flag-staff were two handsome white marble tombs enclosed within an iron rail- ing — one sacred to the memory of the wife, and 816 BECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. the other to that of a beloved child of " Professor T. J. Jackson of the Yirginia Military Institute." Doubtless had the rebellion prospered, a splendid tomb would in time have arisen to Jackson's me- mory ; and, even as things are — so catholic is the admiration which valor rouses — we would gladly contribute our mite towards the erection of some substantial memento to the great Genius — as Gene- ral Lee was the great Respectability — of the Southern war. Let it not harm us in the esteem of our friends of the Loyal League if we confess the weakness of having pulled some dark roses of the South and strewed them on Jackson's grave, taking away in return — reverently and with uncovered heads — some few blades of clover which we have still preserved in a locket as one of the war's most precious relics, — our flagrant " treason " in this act having been shared at the time by an officer of far higher position, whose name as a cavalry leader on the Union side was then a terror through- out the Shenandoah and Kanawha valleys. ODD TOMB OF AN ECCENTRIC OLD LADY. It is when we feel most grave and sentimental that a sudden presentation of any ludicrous thought or object becomes most irresistible to the nerves of laughter ; and of this we had an illustration on RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 817 letting our eyes rest for a moment upon tlie tomb of an old lady whose remains are deposited pre- cisely opposite Stonewall Jackson's feet. This tomb is a square house of granite, probably ten or twelve feet square ; and into its door- way this eccentric old dame — a Mrs. Hammond or Ham- mel, we think — had caused the hall-door of her house, painted green, with her name regularly engraved on a brass plate, and with a brass han- dle, a brass keyhole, and a brass bell-handle in the adjacent wall, to be inserted ; so that it just looked as if we had nothing to do but pull the bell and ask was the defunct occupant witliin. No tomb more quietly ludicrous have we ever seen ; and though it shocked us to laugh in the vicinity of Jackson's grave, we could not but laugh heartily in spite of all our efforts to be serious. -IMPORTANCE OF THIS RAID. As to what were Greneral Grant's orders in this campaign, contrasted with what were General Hunter's acts, we find our space already so largely occupied by this hurried memoir, that we must hold over their consideration for another article ; in which will also be given the two days of battle before Lynchburgh, with the engagements of 318 KECOLLECTIONS OF TFE WAR. Liberty, Salem, and the retreat across the Alle- ghanies and up the Kanawha valley, terminating at Gauley Bridge. Of this raid — so much mis- understood by the public, for the reason that we had cut loose from communications, and the only reports that were heard of our " miscreancies " reached the Korth through the Lynchburgh and Kichmond rebel papers — it must suffice for this chapter to say : that General Grant has borne his official testimony to its being, in his judgment, the greatest, most daring, and most ably conducted raid of the war up to that time, and the most important in its results. Hunter's only fault was that his tender and noble heart did not allow him to execute one- tenth part of the severity of his orders ; but of this in full hereafter. Let us also add that it has now been ascertained that General Lee, at the time of this raid, had set apart 35,000 picked men under General Early to hurry for- ward to reinforce Johnson, who was then facing Sherman opposite Atlanta, with nearly balanced forces ; and that, had those reinforcements reached Johnson at that time, Sherman might have fared ill in the retreat he would have been compelled to undertake towards Nashville. It was Hunter's success in the Yalley, which was Lee's arsenal and granary, that compelled Early with his men to be sent to save Lynchburgh ; and thus it was, and thus only, that Sherman was enabled to carry out RECOLLECTION'S OF THE WAR. 319 his superb strategetical conception of the march from Atlanta through the bowels of the Confe- deracy. CHAPTER II. CAUSE OF THE HALT AT LEXINGTON. — SHERIDAN EXPECTED. Hunter's raiding party of about eighteen thou- sand effective men entered Lexington on the even- ing of the 11th of June last year, and remained theise until the morning of the 14th — a delay for which the General has been blamed in certain quarters. This blame, of course, makes no differ- ence, as had he not been censured for this — it being then the fashion to abuse himr— his candid accusers would readily have found some other source of accusation. For the delay, however, there were many valid and peremptory reasons — General Duffie's cavalry column of about three thousand men, detached at Stanton and sent across the Blue Kidge to cut the railroad between Amherst Court- House and Lynchburgh, having lost its way in the moun- tains, as was usual with its leader, and not rejoin- ing the main command at Lexington until late in the evening of the 13th. This expedition had not been successful, only slightly damaging the rail- road, capturing three hundred wagons and teams, 320 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. and taking some seventy or eighty prisoners. It brought news, however, that Sheridan had had a heavy fight with Fitz-Hugh Lee's cavalry at Char- lottesville some two or three days before; and herein — that we were waiting for Duffie — lies a partial explanation of our delay at a juncture so critical. Cut off from our communications, and hearing only through Kichmond papers and con- trabands of Sheridan's march toward Charlottes- ville, Hunter naturally, and we believe rightly, supposed that Sheridan was attempting to join his expedition against Lynchburgh ; and it was partly to await his arrival, and partly to give time for Dufl&e's cavalry to rejoin us, that the halt in question had been made. REASONS FOR A NON-DIRECT ADVANCE. But there were yet other and manifold reasons for the delay. From our central position while at Lexington, the enemy were puzzled to guess in what direction would be our next advance — whe- ther still directly up the valley against Lynch- burgh, or across the Blue Kidge to Charlottesville, and from thence across country to join General Grant, destroying all the railroads connecting Lynchburgh with Eichmond on our line of march. It was also requisite at this point to still further strip the army of all superfluous stores and equip- RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 821 ments, placing it in the lightest marching order, as we were substantially with a railroad terminus in front of us at Lynchburgh, and another in our rear at Rock Fish Gap ; so that if General Grant had been repulsed, of which we heard many and curiously circumstantial accounts, General Lee could in twenty-four hours have enveloped us with veteran forces more numerous than our own, in addition to the troops we were already contending with — and the forces thus united would be in com- munication with their base, while we were wholly cut off from ours, and already beginning to run short of everything which our foraging parties could not hunt up and bring in from the sur- rounding country. For these considerations, and in order to destroy the enormous branch of the Tredegar Iron Works, then in full activity at Buchanan, General Hunter decided not to move directly up the valley against Lynchburgh, but to cross the James at Buchanan, thence strike for the town of Liberty on the Vir- ginia and East Tennessee railroad, and so approach Lynchburgh on the south-west side, which was reported to be the side least heavily fortified. This would still keep open to us, if unsuccessful before our objective point, or forced to withdraw under pressure of superior numbers, two lines of retreat : one northward across the Alleghanies, and via the Kanawha to Parkersburgh on the Ohio ; 14* 822 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. the otlier towards East Tennessee, destroying the great salt works near Salem, of such vital import- ance to the rebels, as we passed. To retreat down the Shenandoah from Lynchburgh, as we had come up, would have been simply absurd and im- possible—the country being thoroughly eaten out, for one reason, and the railroad on the east side of the Blue Kidge, running from Lynchburgh to Waynesboro', offering to whatever force might be able to repulse us the means of intercepting our retreat in the strong positions afforded by Stanton and its surroundina: hills and earthworks. BUCHANAN AND ITS FOUNDRIES. Starting from Lexington on the morning of the 14th, and driving the routed valley-forces easily before us, we entered Buchanan that evening, and had much trouble in saving the town from a con- flagration which McCausland's retreating and demoralized forces had left behind them as a sou- venir. Here a vast branch of the Tredegar L'on Works, owned by Gen. Anderson, together with many other furnaces and foundries casting shot, shell, and ordnance for General Lee, was de- stroyed ; and next day, though with severe diffi- culties, and at a great expense of pioneering labor and bush-fighting, our column crossed the Blue Eidcre between the shadows of the Peaks of Otter EECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 823 — the narrow road over which we trailed in ser- pent-fashion looking down continually over pre- cipices of from five to fifteen hundred feet in depth, while immediately above us towered the highest and sharpest of the Otter peaks— forming the loftiest point of the Blue Eidge Kange — clothed with dense timber and undergrowth to within some two hundred feet of its topmost pinnacle. At Buchanan we captured, amongst other pri- soners, Colonel Angus McDonald, formerly of the Union army — a cruel and hoary-headed rebel com- missary, who had caused the death of Colonel Strother's father by arresting that gallant old patriot for his avowed Unionism, and casting him — an old man over seventy years of age, with whom his tormentor had previously held most friendly social relations — into a dark cellar-cell in the common jail of Martinsburg, there to languish on damp straw for a few days, until death put an end to his life and miseries together. " I can only regret my civilization," said the Colonel, when the capture of this miscreant was announced. " Just for this one morning, Miles, I should like to be a Camanche or Sioux Indian, and have their privilege of vengeance." Not being a Camanche but a gentleman, however, he took no other notice of the prisoner than to see that he was no better and no worse treated than his fellow-captives of hisrher and lower rank. o 324: RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. THE BLUE RIDGE AND ITS BEAUTIES. From the peaks of Otter the view over "the Piedmont of Virginia," as it is called, can nowhere be surpassed on this continent — perhaps not in the world. The lessening hills of the Blue Kidge, with many a lovely valley and brawling stream between, roll downward from our feet in woody and billowy undulations, ever diminishing until they merge and fade away in the noble champagne country beyond, dotted with still handsome villas and farm-houses that were both happy and pros- perous before the war. In our upward march that day the obstructions left behind by the enemy had been of the most annoying nature. At every five hundred yards a few strokes of the axe would drop enormous trees across the narrow road, scarcely wide enough to prop both wheels of a wagon ; while at turning- points, or other places offering natural facilities for such work, this narrow and precipice-sided causeway would be either cut away altogether or blown up with gunpowder, leaving us no alterna- tive but to rebuild the same before proceeding. It was not without severe bushwhacking and the loss of many wagons and ambulances that this march was accomplished — the mules and horses frequently becoming restive, either from harness- chafing or some other irritant ; and in such cases, RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 325 where the drivers were not particularly nimble and steady, wagon and mules, or ambulances and horses, would go crashing down over the yawning chasms on our left, until either shattered and stopped against some trees, or rent into insignifi- cant fragments by the downward process of at- trition. Despite all these annoyances, however, the view from the signal-station overlooking the Piedmont of Yirginia was one that can never fade from recollection. Beautiful little farms in the vales between the spurs of the hills, nestling beneath us in frightened silence — so many doves with the hawks swooping in circles over their helpless heads. Beautiful sunlight patches floating over the massive and varying verdures of the moun- tains ; clear springs bubbling out from beneath every moss-grown rock; rich flowers shedding brilliancy and perfume even from the topmost cliffs ; and dense woods of unmatchable shadow and stateliest growth giving the coolness and repose of perpetual twilight, even in the noon and glare of that toilsome summer day. PREFACE TO A SKETCH. And now, before describing our descent on the Yirginia and Tennessee railroad at Liberty ; the two days of engagement in front of Lynchburg ; 826 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. the subsequent actions at Liberty and Salem, and the arduous withdrawal of our nearly starving and ammunitionless forces across the sterile tract of the Catawba and other mountain ranges of the Alleghanies, our route leading us through the famous Sweet, and White, and Red Sulphur Springs of the Kanawha, and past the Hawk's Nest, that loveliest and most unique of all the views in this region of rugged beauty — perhaps the writer may be pardoned a digression in order to answer the many inquiries that have from time to time been addressed to him in regard to the character and calibre of the remarkable officer who was the leader and supporting strength of this daring and most exhaustive expedition — his inflexible will seeming to supply continued energy and endurance to his whole command, and his soldiers being cheered by witnessing a veteran of sixty sharing aU their privations, under- going more than their share of labors, and appa- rently becoming fresher, hardier, and more light- spirited the more our prospects darkened, and the more lofty and unending appeared the hills we had to cross before either food or respite could be gained. It is of Gen. David Hunter the writer desires to say some few words — words, indeed, essential to a full comprehension of this hurried narrative, and also designed to quiet the many of his Demo- RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 827 cratic friends who continually do cry, but not like the Seraphim and Cherubim : " What could you have seen in such a leader to excite your admi- ration ? And why do you embarrass yourself by supporting one against whom so large a part of the public stand arrayed, either from judgment or prejudice?" GENERAL DAVID HUNTER. — WHO HE IS AND WHAT? To the questions thus roughly embodied, we now answer collectively and in writing, as we have grown weary of answering verbally and separately, that in our whole experience of human nature — and it has been considerably varied — the purest, gentlest, bravest, and most honest gentle- man we have ever had the means of knowing thoroughly, is the officer in question. Too fear- less and sincere to be politic — too warm to be always wise — too innately noble and truthful to be what is called " successful " in these miserable latter-days of intrigue and fraud — David Hunter yet lives in our memory, and must while memory lasts, as a character so free from any vice, so incapable of any baseness, that we have often thought four years of life not wasted, if only for enabling us by their experience to realize that such a manhood as his was yet possible in this soiled and dusty world. 828 RECOLLECTIOlSrS OF THE WAR. " Hunter is the noblest of all noble fellows," remarked Fleet- Captain Eamon Rogers one day (during an interview, bj the way, in which he and the writer were endeavoring to prevent a personal collision between Admiral Du Pont and "Uncle David" — both of sensitive and choleric tempers). " He is both gentle and fierce," conti- nued Rogers, "if you can reconcile that contra- diction of terms ; and there can be no finer mettle for any soldier." Of course, with this spirit on the part of the officer representing Du Pont, and an equally sincere admiration of the Admiral on the part of the officer representing Hunter, nego- tiations on the point of difficulty were quickly adjusted ; and thus the only breeze that ever ruffled, or even threatened to ruffle, the otherwise invariably pleasant relations of Army headquar- ters and the Kavy flag-ship in the Department of the South, faded away, leaving the surface of conjoint operations as bright and cloudless as before. General Hunter is a soldier — not a politician, not a writer, not a controversialist, not a lawyer ; and as a soldier should be judged. He served over thirty years, in the saddle and on the fron- tier, as captain of dragoons ; nor is there an In- dian tribe from the Canadian line to Mexico that has not its own stories of his rule, and with whose habits and temperament he is not familior. He RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 829 was in command of Fort Leavenwortli and the Indian Territories nearly forty years ago ; served on the staff of General Taylor as chief paymaster, and was his confidential oflScer during the whole Mexican war; fought several duels during his first year in the army, and was once dismissed for having challenged his superior officer, Colonel Snelling — being subsequently restored to the ser- vice by President Adams, in an order of high compliment, very damaging to Colonel Snelling, and one of the most remarkable General Orders ever seen. Jefferson Davis served many years under him as Adjutant of the First Dragoons, while Hunter was Captain commanding; and " Black David Hunter," as his West Point com- panions called him from boyhood, and General Nathaniel Lyon, were about the only two avowed anti-slavery officers in the army previous to the breaking out of the late rebellion. Both had gone to Kansas as tolerators, if not supporters of slavery ; and both had been there converted to the anti-slavery faith by witnessing the atrocities of the Border Euffians from Platte and Doniphan counties in Missouri, the frauds of Sheriff " Can- dlebox " Calhoun, and the open prostitution of all President Pierce's and Buchanan's power to coerce the reluctant residents of that Territory to accept a slaveholding constitution. In appearance and physique. General Hunter 830 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. is a most remarkable illustration of how far and how long the good habits of a lifetime can pre- serve high spirits, virility, and vigor. Standing about five feet eight inches high, his shoulders are broad and powerful, his chest deep, and his limbs still sinewy and active. Swarthy and Indian-like both in complexion and of feature, his grey eyes dilate into blackness and brilliancy under excite- ment ; his nostrils expand, while his lips are com- pressed tightly together under their curling mous- tache ; and, taking him for all in all — not for- getting his perfect horsemanship — if there be any finer ideal of a veteran soldier the writer has never seen it, not even excepting Generals Hooker, Sheridan, or Hancock. Not a Puritan, though of deeply religious convictions ; not a strait-laced nor jaundiced moralist in judging those faults in others from which he has been free himself; one to whose lips a single phrase of profanity is as impossible as one of falsehood ; one whose still white and perfect teeth give evidence of a stomach never disarranged by strong potations, a mouth never misused as a receptacle for tobacco or its fumes ; able to share and even enjoy the roughest food and severest privations of the humblest private soldier under his command, although noted in civilized life for good-living and a generous hos- pitality ; a pliant wrist for the sabre exercise, a EECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAE. 831 steady finger on the trigger ; eyes of the farthest and keenest vision after sixty years of use that we have ever known ; a heart overflowing with kindliness, though liable to sudden fits of rage ; always with a tendency to side with the '' under-dog " in every fight, — misfortune and helplessness appearing to have the same attrac- tions for his chivalrous nature that success and strength have for men of more worldly and pru- dent characters ; endowed with an utter scorn of expediency, when opposed to his convictions of principle ; and with a pride of character which can neither be purchased, bullied, nor cajoled into anything which his judgment or prejudice may regard as of questionable integrity, — such is Major-Greneral David Hunter, as he was revealed to us in personal relationship and by correspond- ence, during a vicarious but most intimate asso- ciation of over three years — the writer during about one-half of that time serving on his staff, and when not so serving, but on the staffs of other generals, being in the receipt of frequent and confidential letters from his old commander. This eulogy is warm — the warmest and most unreserved we have ever written — the roseate ink of hero-worship not often suiting the hard and angular steel pens with which faithful verbo- graphs have to be drawn in this practical and unromantic age. That " Uncle David " has many 332 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. opinions wholly opposed to our own is quite suffi- ciently known ; that he, for example, particularly disliked and distrusted McClellan, for whom the writer is proud to say he voted ; as also that he is to-day in favor of extending the right of suffrage to every negro of the South, and disfranchising every white man in the least degree prominent on the rebel side — two points with neither of which the writer can agree. There are, however, so many to find fault with this well-abused gentleman, and they appear to do their work so heartily, that we feel the darker side of his picture stands in no need of further shadowing from our hands; while, should any excuse be needed for the unrestrained and fervent admiration seeking brief embodiment in this hur- ried sketch, let it be found in the fact that the cha- racter of a loved and honored friend — the most absolutely pure gentleman of our entire acquaint- ance — has been made systematically the prey either of Southern traitors, or the meaner class of their Northern allies, seeking expression for their hatred of the Union by abusing one of the Union's most fervent, if not always wisest, champions; as also by the time-serviDg, vacillating, cowardly, corrupt, and shuffling elements of the Eepublican party, ever as ready to surrender any honest leader whose strides may have outstripped immediate party- expediency, as they subsequently were to RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 883 adopt the inspirations of his honest genius, and to claim credit for having originated those very ideas for the first announcement of which the true author had been both rebuked and punished. We claim for Hunter that the most vital and conquering ideas of our late struggle had their origin in his tent, and that every forward step of our Government was but an acceptance — often slow and semi-reluctant — of some point of policy for which, on its first promulgation, said govern- ment had officially reprimanded its author. Hun- ter first armed and organized negro troops. His conduct was disapproved and his experimental regiment disbanded without the pay of soldiers. But we have had in the service since then not less than two hundred thousand black men. Hunter declared that slavery — only existing by civil and municipal law — was "incompatible with martial law," and that slavery^ therefore, must cease in all parts of Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida within the lines of his command. This order was immediately and publicly revoked by President Lincoln ; and yet within a month after its recall, out came the first Decree of Emancipation, cover- ing not only the three States named, but the en- tire South, with an announcement of the self-same principle ! General Hunter, too, was the first to declare that rebels conld have no rights of property which 334 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. loyal men were bound to respect, and that our armies should subsist, free of charge, upon any country through which they passed. For this, though never officially rebuked, he was for a long time held up to public odium — all the rebel and rebel-sympathizing press denouncing him as a "barbarian;" while but few of the Kepublic^n journals had the courage or good heart to say ten manly words in defence of our ablest champion. The same journals, however, " saw a great light" some short time after, when the Confiscation Bill passed both Houses of Congress and received the Presidential signature. Lastly, let us say, it was Hunter who introduced and pressed upon the authorities the importance of vast raids through the interior of the Confede- racy, in lieu of that other policy of attacking the rebels in their strongholds and precisely where they invited and dared us to assault their works ; and here, without wishing to take a leaf from Sherman's nobly-earned chaplet, let us only re- mark, in conclusion, that a programme similar to William Tecumseh's mighty raid from the south- west to the Atlantic was in the hands of the Hon. Secretary of War at least one year before Sherman undertook or even proposed it — its first proposer having been General David Hunter, and his only request in connexion therewith, that he might be allowed to make the experiment, of which he even KECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 335 then foretold — as if endowed with prophecy — the magnificent and all but bloodless success that must immediately follow. And now, are our many anxious Democratic friends, who have occasionally hinted that Hunter must have given us "love-powders," any better satisfied? Or can they now any more clearly understand why and how it is, that — without any effort " to fight an unpopular man into popular- ity" — we refuse either to give up or conceal our deep and heartfelt admiration of the very noblest and purest gentleman upon whose aspect we have looked since the coffin-lid was shut down over the cold face and straightened limbs of a father who sleeps his last sleep under the green turf and pleasant dews of an Irish hillside ? CHAPTER III. THE SOUTHERN" GUERILLAS. — REALITY VS, ROMANCE. From the Peaks of Otter, through Fancy Farm to Liberty, our march was substantially unop- posed, only McCausland's rear-guard of guerillas under Mosby, Grilmer, and McNeil, and some scattering squadrons of Imboden's cavalry offer- ing any resistance ; and these were quickly over- come — in fact, never amounted to enough to retard our movements. And here, perhaps, some few 336 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. words relative to tliose famed guerillas of the Vir- ginia valleys may not be out of place. It was the fashion in secession circles, down to the very closing of the rebellion, to magnify these free-lances of the Southern cause into little less than chivalric paladins, or knights-errant, all mounted upon high-mettled chargers gorgeously caparisoned, their persons sumptuously clothed from the spoils of a hundred forays, their swords glittering and their revolvers infallible ; all heroes sans peur et sans reproche^ and each not only able and eager to whip, but constantly in the habit of whipping, from ten to a dozen of our lN"orthern mud-sills in open fight. We have so few pleasant illusions left in con- nexion with the late war, that nothing but a strong sense of the reverence due to the truth of history could induce us to give another side to this picture, and paint these guerillas, both as they fell under our own observation and as they were uni- formly described to us by scores of officers who had served for years against them in the Shenan- doah and Kanawha valleys. Those Maryland ladies of secession sympathies, therefore, who crowned the "Noble Mosby" and "Brave Harry Gilmer" with flowers, while the followers of those illustrious chiefs were rifling trunks and picking pockets on the train between Baltimore and Wash- ington, had better, perhaps, for their own peace RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAK. 837 of mind, skip the following paragraph; as we mean it to be the simple truth told in language as plain as common decency and the respect due to vanquished foes will permit. These guerillas, then, we say, as they appeared in fact, and not in the rhapsodical letters of such correspondents as " Druid," of the World, were about the filthiest, drunkenest, meanest, most ill- looking, ragged, mutinous, diseased, undisciplined, lousy, and utterly cowardly gang of horse and chicken-thieves, highway robbers, grand and petty larcenists, that the Lord, for some inscrutable pur- pose — probably to punish rebellion by a stick of its own growth and cutting — ever permitted to disgrace the noble calling of the soldier, or the fair surface of American soil, to which neither thieves nor cowards appear indigenous in any extended degree. They were terrible, indeed, to the stampeded muleteers, sutlers, and camp-fol- lowers of some unprotected train ; but still more terrible to the wretched residents of their own section in the regions through which they ope- rated. As to standing up in fair fight, however, before any body of our troops, well-officered and even half so numerous as themselves, the thing was out of the question, and they never tried it. K a report came in that Mosby, or Gihner, or McNeil were hidden at any gap in the mountains, waiting 15 838 KECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. for our troops to pass that they might swocp down without fear of molestation on our exposed train and sutler- wagons, the orders given to the famous Captain Blazer of "West Virginia; or Captain Prendergast (since killed), of the 1st New York cavalry ; or Major Timothy Quinn, of the same regiment ; or that most dashing of all our young cavalry offi.cers, Captain Berry ; or Captain Elli- cott, of the Scouts, would be : " Take a company, or squadron, or platoon of your men, about so many" — never assigning for this duty more than one-third or one-fourth of what the guerilla strength was reported to be — " and go chase those scallywags over the mountains until our train has got well up." And chased in this manner they were, and always allowed themselves to be, with- out offering any soldierly resistance whenever and wherever our troops in pursuit, if even decently officered, were one-third as numerous as them- selves. This, however, is a digression; and now to return to our lost sheep, from these rank-smell- ing, cowardly, and thievish mountain-goats. RECOLLECTIONS OF THE 'WAR. 839 DESTROYING RAILROAD TRACKS AS ONE OF THE "exact SCIENCES." At Liberty we struck the Virginia and East Ten- nessee railroad, running south-east from Lynch- burgh to Salem, and thence via Wytheville and Abingdon into the north-eastern section of that State which contains the grave of Andrew Jackson and the birth-place of Jackson's illustrious succes- sor and fellow-confessor. President Andrew John- son. It was a sight, indeed, worth going far to see — though one, we trust, never to be repeated in the history of this country — Crook's veteran infan- try, consisting of twelve West Virginia regiments, all hurrying to the work of destruction on that road, with the same delighted hum and buzz that we hear from a young swarm of wandering bees when they settle down on the white and well- sugared table-cloth which the careful farmer has spread for their detention. Up went the rails for miles and miles along the road ; soon the ties were gathered in separate piles and set on fire; next the rails were laid across these blazing bonfires, taking care to have the centre of each rail above the burning pile ; and then, when the iron at a white heat was soft and ductile, one or more sol- diers at each end would seize the cold extremity of each rail-bar, rush with it to the nearest tree, bringing the heated part against the trunk, and 840 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. twist the writhing metal into rings or semicircles, or true-lovers' -knots, as best pleased their fancy. The torch would then be applied to all trestle- work bridges along the line, while bridges of stone or iron would be " sent kiting " by gunpowder. It was the illustrious Stonewall Jackson, who first invented and taught our boys how to destroy a railroad scientifically and thoroughly ; but the scholars soon improved on their teacher ; and in the veterans of Crook's division — all infantry, for cavalry are but hasty hands at such a workmanlike business — he had pupils of whom any master could have found no reason to be ashamed. It was, indeed, surprising — the pleasure taken by our foot soldiers in this species of labor. Whether, if Lavater or Mr. Fowler had examined the rank and file of our armies, either would have pro- nounced the bump of destructiveness unusually developed in our men, or not, we have no means of judging ; but of this fact we are sure : that no matter how long the march, how hot the day, how short the rations or water, how imminent and menacing soever might be the enemy's movements — the very moment our infantry struck a railroad their fatigue, thirst, hunger, and sense of danger all seemed to fall from them with their dropping knapsacks ; and they buckled down to the busi- ness of rendering that line of transportation of no further avail to the enemy for at least some EECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 841 months, with all the eager, joyous, and untiring energy of a flock of school-boys pelting snowballs at some detested usher. ON TO LYNCHBURG ! THE MINERAL WEALTH OF THIS SECTION. Marching from Liberty towards Lynchburgh along this line of railroad, and destroying it as we advanced, the indications became every hour more clear that General Lee had begun to pour down heavy reinforcements against us by the Lynch- burgh and Eichmond railroad, which General DufSe's cavalry column had been dispatched to destroy — a mission it had not been able to fulfil. At New London our friends in grey first showed in line of battle since Piedmont, but made no determined stand there — Averell's cavalry deve- loping to feel and drive them, while Sullivan's infantry demonstrated as if for a direct attack, and Crook sought to wheel round on their right flank and rear — a movement only thwarted by their withdrawal after some few hours of rather heavy but desultory fighting. We halted that night on the Big Otter, and had headquarters at a house alleged to be haunted — a large, and once hand- some, but now deserted red brick dwelling, of which the negroes in the vicinity told some tales that Mrs. Crowe might have been glad to gather 842 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. for any new edition of that banquet of ghostly horrors — her '' ISTight-side of ITature." It is at New London that the famous Alum-spring throws up its mineral and healing treasures ; and indeed, many, if not most of the springs in this part of the country, are more or less strongly tinctured with the same astringent chemical. Perhaps, in the new development of wealth which awaits this entire section, the alum bed, which evidently underlies the fertile surface for a distance of many square miles, may play no inconspicuous part. It was not far from here that the house of a Mr. Mosby was burned — he being some kind of a cousin to Mosby the guerilla, and the bodies of two of our men, treacherously shot in cold blood in his yard as they were drawing water from his well, attesting that he" was not unworthy to claim kinship with his bushwhacking relative. Next day, the 17th of June, we started at ear- liest daylight in the direction of Lynchburgh, our way lying through a country more densely covered and obstructed by wood and underbrush than any we had yet seen. The roads were our only resource, even the skirmishers failing to make more than slow headway through the timber on either hand of them, and our advance being con- EECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 343 sequently much delayed. Meantime, the enemy were not inattentive to our operations, their light batteries and sharpshooters incessantly annoying the heads of our various columns ; and their skir- mishers keeping up a continual crackle of mus- ketry from behind the trees in the vicinity of our advance-guard and pioneers. It was therefore not until about two in the afternoon that we came upon their first line of irregular rifle-pits and rail-fence barricades, at a place variously styled by the negroes Diamond Hill, or the Old Stone Church; and here they succeeded in holding us until about eight p.m. that evening, when they were finally broken by a dash in of Averell's cavalry upon their right, and a splendid charge of Crook's infantry, under a heavy fire of grape, across some open fields and over their defences — the West Virginia boys clearing the rebel barricades with a vault, and using their clubbed muskets and bayonets in close quarters. Here, and at this moment, the rout of our grey-back friends became suddenly complete — two guns, four or five caissons, and many hun- dred prisoners falling into our hands ; and had it not been for the rapid coming on of night, and the necessity of removing our own and the ene- my's wounded out of the woods, which had caught fire during the action, and were now burn- ing fiercely with a mighty crackling and roar, 844 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. only pierced by tlie terror-stricken screams of the mangled men who lay beneath the flaming canopy of leaves and branches — we might have pushed on into Lynchburgh that night, for as yet not more than a third of Early's corps (formerly Ewell's) had joined the forces under McCausland, and these were again as utterly beaten and demoralized as they had been on the fifth of the month, pre- vious to our having been joined by Crook and Averell from the Kanawha. BELLIGERENT RELATIVES. — A TRUE SOUTHERN BELLE. That night we lay in line of battle before the enemy's second and main line of works for the defence of Lynchburgh, on the south-eastern side — two powerful and regular earthwork forts, carefully built in 1861 and mounted with siege artillery crowning the slopes in front of us ; and a regular chain of heavy rifle-pits connecting these two together, and running off beyond them to join yet other regular forts on right and left. Our headquarters that night were at the beautiful residence of an aged gentleman named Hutter, formerly a major and paymaster in the United States army, and some kind of distant relative to General Hunter — as, by the way, in some degree of cousinship, more or less remote, were pretty nearly all the good families whose barns we had EECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 845 been emptying, and whose cattle we had been eating and driving off during the entire march. Indeed it was often ludicrously, though painfully amusing, to hear Colonel David Hunter Strother ("Porte Crayon"), or the old Greneral himself, inquiring anxiously after the health of " Cousin Kitty," "Aunt Sallie," "Cousin Joe," or "Uncle Bob," from some nice old Virginia lady with smoothed apron, silver spectacles, and in tears, or some pretty young rebel beauty in homespun, without hoops and in a towering passion, — our soldiers meanwhile cleaning out smoke-houses and granaries by wholesale ; and the end of the con- versation, as the affectionate though politically sundered relatives parted, usually finding those of the rebel side without a week's food in the house, without a single slave to do their bidding, and with horses, cattle, sheep, bacon, pigs, poul- try, and so forth, things only to be recalled in ecstatic dreams. This Major Hutter "had one only daughter, the divine " — but her name escaped us. For the inexpressible sweetness of her pure silvery voice and exquisite repose of manner, however, the lady's image is yet a thing of vivid force in our faithful memory — her eyes shedding no tear as she saw in that hour of the gloaming, all the refined surroundings of a costly and luxurious home swept into ruin ; and her cheek blanching 15* 346 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. no shade of its clear olive-pink, though aware that with the earliest dawn the heretofore splendid and happy home of her childhood — the shrine to which, we have no doubt, proud wooers must have come from far and near to court the sun- shine of her smile — would in all human proba- bility become the central position for which two infuriate armies must contend. " Oh, how I pray for peace," she exclaimed, as we opened a blind in the drawing-room (metamorphosed the preced- ing night into an Adjutant-General's ofl&ce), to see if the east yet gave any signs of dawn. " Do not misunderstand me, however," she continued, in that silvery voice of inextinguishable sweet- ness. " Do not think I crave, or would accept, that peace you talk about — the peace of subjuga- tion ; for I am Southern in every fibre;" and her bright eyes kindled brighter, her cheek took a deeper flush, and her musical voice swept upward into a yet higher treble as if to give assurance of her faith. " This dress I wear " — a plain grey homespun, but made beautiful by the wo- manhood it covered — " I have carded, and spun, and cut out, and put together with my own hands. Oh, we have given up everything for the cause, save the barest necessaries of life; and I cannot believe that God would allow a people to suffer so much as we have done, if not intending to reward us with final victory." RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 847 SECOND day's ENGAGEMENT BEFORE LYNCH- BURGH. Next morning, at daylight, the skirmishers began amusing each other, and by seven o'clock the work was lively. All night long we had heard the incessant screaming of trains on the Lynchburgh and Eichmond railroad, as the rein- forcements sent by G-eneral Lee continued to arrive in steady stream — General Duffie's attempt, made the preceding night, to destroy the long bridge across the James Eiver, having been de- feated by superior forces. Yarious charges that we made up the hills on which the earthworks stood were 'heavily repulsed — only part of one Ohio regiment getting over their works, and that part remaining therein — either from pride in their achievement, or because unable to fight their way out again. Our men, too, now began to suffer se- verely for want of proper food — General Sullivan having reported the night before that his men were then eating their last rations, a piece of informa- tion which General Hunter answered by the laco- nic remark : " Tell them there is plenty of food in Lynchburgh." It is true we had yet with us plenty of beef cattle collected as we marched along, for we had been mainly subsisting on the country ; but from the rapid movements of the past few days, and the activity all round us of 348 BECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAE. the enemy's cavalry, we had not been able to gather in any corn or materials for making bread. Our coffee and sugar, too, were giving out — and what are soldiers good for without their coffee ? By noon it became evident that the enemy's forces were gaining. a large numerical ascendancy, a continual stream of Early's corps flowing from the railroad terminus to the scene of action, and their right flank beginning to overlap our left with some danger of turning it. It was then, after a brief consultation with Generals Crook^ Averell, and Sullivan, that Hunter gave orders for our trains to commence falling back rapidly towards Salem, on the Tennessee and Lynchburgh railroad line; but of this — for the orders were secret, and the trains far in our rear — neither our own soldiers nor the enemy knew anything until nightfall, the battle being thereafter continued on our side with even greater activity, in order to cover this movement, and our men believing firmly that they were to enter Lynchburgh as conquerors if it cost them a week's steady fight- ing. Our situation, however, was indeed critical, and fully justified the belief entertained both by Generals Lee and Grant, that none of Hunter's expedition could return save as prisoners. We were but fifteen or sixteen thousand effective men at the outside, cut off from our communications, RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 849 rapidly running short of ammunition, wholly destitute of forage and rations, operating in a country intensely hostile to us, with no hope of any reinforcements, no hope of supplies nearer than the far side of the Alleghanies, in presence of an enemy already amounting to thirty-two thousand well-supplied men, and at the terminus of a good railroad in working order, by which General Lee could have poured down upon us thirty thousand more of his veterans, had such been his judgment or pleasure. Back the road we had come we could not go, as the country was eaten out, in the first place ; as an inferior force cannot collect supplies in presence of a supe- rior, even if supplies lay around them as thick as in that mythical town whose roofs were of pan- cake, and through whose streets little roast pigs ran crying out, " Come eat me ;" and lastly, be- cause the enemy had another good railroad from Lynchburg to Stanton, or rather to Waynesboro', just twelve miles therefrom, by means of which they could throw any force they pleased across our front, while still pressing us in rear with equal or even stronger forces. . These were the considerations which caused the order, issued secretly at noon, for our trains to commence retreating toward Salem; and it was doubtless the hope of " bagging us," body and boots, when his full reinforcements should have come 350 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. up, and wlieii (as lie expected) we should com- mence to fall back down the Shenandoah, that in- duced Early not to press us any harder than he did during the balance of this 18th day of June, 1864 — anniversary of that most memorable world- battle which sent the first Napoleon to St. Helena. Press us, however, and rather heavily, Gen. Early did on several occasions that day — more especially about 3 P.M., when, with a charge over his works and down the hill, he broke Sullivan's infantry on our left, and drove the gallant Thoburne's brigade (Thoburne since killed), and the brigade of Col. Wells, of Massachusetts (also " dead on the field of honour"), pell-mell through the woods. This dis- aster, however, was but of short duration, though extremely threatening at one time, two brigades from Crook in the right-centre reinforcing our left ; and the engagement after that sullenly set- tling down into an artillery and skirmishing duel, with no charges though many demonstrations, and consequently no repulses or heavy losses upon either side. Averell's cavalry took no part in it, that officer wishing to keep his men fresh for a raid toward Danville which he projected under Hun- ter's directions, but failed to put in practice ; and Duffie's cavalry doing but little on the extreme left, from the woody and broken nature of the ground, as also from the fact that there were earthworks to contend against, and that Early's RECOLLFOTIONS OF THE WAR. 351 veteran infantry were not the kind of troops with whom it would b:^ safe work for a forageless cav- alry to play tricks. Before concluding this chapter, we cannot for- bear inserting heru, though a little out of its place, the brief and simple, yet how significant dispatch, in which the great Lieut. -General of our Armies frowned down and quietly trod into the mire Tinder his feet an attempt made in certain inter- ested quarters to luake Hunter a scape-goat for all the flurry and fus?: of Gren. Early's subsequent raid into "Maryland, My Maryland," and the demon- strations of that bibulous, one-legged warrior in front of the walls of Washington. It was thus wrote our good n,nd gallant Lieut. -General at a time when attempts were being made to blame Hunter, who was then crossing the Alleghanies with a starving command and with horses dying by the thousand for want of forage, for not checking in the Shenandoah with his fourteen or fifteen thousand worn, vrasted, shoeless, and nearly am- munitionless troops, the thirty-five thousand well- supplied veterans under General Jubal Early, for whose proper reception in Maryland and around the District of Co^vimbia, no proper provision had been either made or makable by the authorities : 352 KECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAE. " Headquarters, Armies of the IJ. S., ) City Point, Va., July 15th, 1864. f " Eon, C. A. Dana, Assist. Sec. of War : "I am sorry to see such a disposition, to con- demn a brave old soldier, as General Hunter is known to be, without a hearing. " He is known to have advanced into the ene- my's country towards their main army, inflicted a much greater damage upon them than they, with double his force, have inflicted upon us, and they moving directly away from our main army. '' Hunter acted, too, in a country where we had no friends, whilst the enemy have only operated in territory where, to say the least, many of the inhabitants are their friends. " If General Hunter has made war on the news- papers* of Western Virginia, probably he has done right. " I fail to see yet that General Hunter has not acted with great promptness and great success. Even the enemy give him great credit for courage, and congratulate themselves that he will give them a chance of getting even with him. " (Signed) U. S. Grant, Lieut- General " Ojfficial: Geo. K Leet, A. A. Gen." * The only newspaper G-eneral Huntor suppressed in West Virginia was one at Parkersburgh, tbe editor of which— a loyal RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 853 CHAPTER IT. END OF THE RAID. — NOW FOR FOOD AND SAFETY. Hunter had done a noble work up tlie valley — how noble did not become known until the cap- ture of the rebel archives showed that Early's corps of thirty thousand picked men, thrown upon us finally by Lee, had been collected and were designed as a reinforcement for General Johnson, who was then facing our Sherman before Atlanta — a reinforcement which, about equally balanced as the opposing forces in the south-west then were, might very materially, and to our detriment, have altered the results in that region, had Lee's pri- mary intention been carried out. But Hunter's successful raid beyond the bar- rier-lines of Mount Crawford, never passed before by any Union army, nor ever afterwards passed until the close of the war, summoned Lee to de- fend instantly and at any cost, the valley whose maiden soil — untrodden heretofore, at least south of Harrisonburgh — contained, in a very great measure, the granary and armory of the main rebel army holding Grant in check before Eich- mond. The cloth-mills to clothe his men, the man — on being shown the falsity and public injury of his state- ments, fully and cheerfully acknowledged that he "had been served just right." 854 EECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. flour mills to feed them, the gun-stock factories, shoe-shops, saddle and harness factories, the count- less furnaces and foundries from which came the main munitions for his army — ill-able to afford such a loss — all these had been ^' going up in a balloon" incessantly, with every mile of our march from Port Kepublic to Lynchburgh ; and it was, indeed, as a picture of the scenes of this raid, considered in a generic light, and as symbolizing all other raids, that the following lines were sub- sequently written by our distinguished Ex-Orderly, in regard to General Sherman^s yet more famous march from Atlanta to the Atlantic : THE SONG OP SHERMAN S ARMY. A pillar of fire by night, A pillar of smoke by day, Some hours of march — then a halt to fight, And so we hold our way ; Some hours of march — then a halt to fight, As on we hold our way. Over mountain and plain and stream, To some bright Atlantic bay, With our arms aflash in the morning beam, We hold our festal way ; With our arms aflash in the morning beam, We hold our checkless way I RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 355 There is terror wherever we come. There i« terror and wild dismay When they see the Old Flag and hear the drum Annour oe us on the way ; When they see the Old Flag, and hear the drum Beating time to our onward way. Never unlimber a gun For thi..:;e villanous lines in grey, Draw sabres ! and at 'em upon the run I 'Tis thus we clear our way Draw sabres and soon you will see them run, As we hold our conquering way. The loyal, who long have been dumb, Are loud in their cheers to-day ; And the old mcL. out on their crutches come, To see us hold our way ; And the old men out on their crutches come, To bless us on our way. Around us in rear and flanks. Their futile squadrons play , With a sixty-mile front of steady ranks, We hold our checkless way ; With a sixty-mile front of serried ranks, Our banner clears the way. Hear the spattering fire that starts From the woods and copses grey, There is just enough fighting to quicken our hearts, As we ^roHc along the way ! There is just enough fighting to warm our hearts, As we rattle along the way. 856 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAB. Upon different roads abreast The heads of our columns gay, With fluttering flags, all forward pressed, Hold on their conquering way. With fluttering flags to victory pressed, We hold our glorious way. Ah, traitors ! who bragged so bold In the sad war's early day, Did nothing predict you should ever behold The Old Flag come this way ? Did nothing predict you should yet behold Our banner come back this way ? By heaven I 'tis a gala march, 'Tis a pic-nic or a play ; Of all our long war 'tis the crowning arch, Hip, hip ! for Sherman's way ! Of all our long war this crowns the arch — For Sherman and Grant hurrah I THE RETURN" COMMENCES. — WAS IT A DEFEAT OR VICTORY? That we could not capture Lynchburgh became very painfully evident during the operations of June 18th, some details of which were given in the preceding chapter. Indeed the question now to be considered — and with all the odds heavily against any answer in our favor — was : whether Lynchburgh would not capture us ? Short of am- munition, cut off by hundreds of miles and two RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 857 ranges of m dud tains from our base, and wholly out of supplies save a little coffee and sugar left in the train of that excellent ofl&cer, Major-Gen- George Crook, we were in presence of an enemy already heavily superior to us in numbers, close to his main army, operating in his own country, and every moment being further reinforced from Eich- mond, as we could both see and hear by the trains incessantly arriving, and the steady stream of troops hurrying from the railroad terminus to the scene of action during the torrid day — day hot in a double sense : and neither pleasant. It was in view of these facts, that our trains had been sent back on the road towards Salem at about noon on the 18th, although the fighting — sometimes furious, sometimes desultory — conti- nued with but slight intermission until after sun- down ; every possible demonstration being made, and indeed our own soldiers firmly believing, that we meant to renew the attack next morning. But that night about ten o'clock, with our picket-line doubled and in the strictest silence, that nothing might be known of our movements, the march of our little army away from Lynchburgh and to- wards Salem began — our poor boys trudging along wearily enough, after a long day of incessant con- flict, or preparation for conflict ; and with the de- pressing conviction of defeat upon their spirits which soldiers can never shake off when failing to 858 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. attain any point against wiiicli their efforts — even in a feint — have been directed. It may only have been a feint or a diversion to the general, but all such matters are solemn verities to the rank and file. They knew they had not been either broken or beaten ; but still they had not entered Lynch- burgh ; and this, therefore, was to them a defeat — an opinion in which the wise JST^rthern newspapers seemed fully to agree. But was it a defeat? — a question only, but easily to be answered by referring to the instruc- tions under which the expedition had been organ- ized, and the objective point at which it struck. The orders of Lieut-General Grant to Hunter, on that ofi&cer's relieving Sigel, we.e to the effect that he should " reorganize Sigel's beaten army, and with it readvance up the valley, demonstrating for the capture of Stanton, but not attacking it in case either the enemy or the fortifications, or both together, should appear too strong ; in which case he was to avoid any general engagement, but keep his column moving, and find employment for as many of the enemy as possible, in various direc- tions." EECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAE. 859 " ONE OF THE MOST BRILLIANT AND IMPORTANT SUCCESSES OF THE ENTIRE WAR." This formed the substance, and the whole sub- stance, of Grant's original instructions ; and with these data kept in view, the public will at once perceive how much better than he had been or- dered to do, General Hunter did. He not only captured Stanton, as the result of the battle of Piedmont, but Lexington, Buchanan, Liberty, and all the intermediate towns from Port Kepublic to Lynchburgh — towns heretofore inviolable, and all busily engaged in pouring eastward to Lee sup- plies of everything that commander required for his army. He had not only employ ed all the Yal- ley Forces, but beaten them into a disorganized rabble ; and finally drew off to check him thirty thousand picked men of the veteran army of Northern Virginia under General Early, who had been collected and were designed by the rebel general-in-chief for the reinforcement of General Joe Johnson before Atlanta. He had given to the flames the better half of Lee's commissary, quartermaster, and ordnance departments — cer- tainly all of these that lay between Harrisonburgh and Lynchburgh ; and no wonder, knowing and appreciating the inestimable value of these ser- vices (as, it would seem, the Hon. Charles A. Dana did not), that General Grant wrote the very 860 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. noble eulogy of Hunter's success whicli was, for the first time, published in our last chapter. As to the alleged barbarity of General Hunter in " burning private houses" during this expedi- tion, we have already shown that he burned but five — each on a specific charge and proof that its owner was a bushwhacker ; but what would the pensive public have thought had he received in time Greneral Grant's subsequent instructions, or had he been able to retreat down the Shenandoah on his return, in which case they would have been most faithfully complied with? These second instructions were — in order to prevent another incursion by the enemy down the valley into Maryland, such as Early subsequently made — to " make the Shenandoah a wilderness over which the crow purposing to fly would have to carry his own provender in his claws" — orders afi;erward partly carried out by Sheridan, who never, how- ever, got up the valley any further than Harrison- burgh, though a raiding party of his cavalry are said to have been for some few hours in Stanton. So, also. Hunter was blamed for an order that wherever any of his men or officers were assassi- nated by bushwhackers, the country for five miles around the spot should be laid utterly waste ; and yet when young Lieut. Meigs, of the Engineers, was murdered by some roving miscreants, the gal- lant Sheridan caused that precise order to be pre- RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 361 cisely executed, and there was general approval through the Northern press; so true is it that " one cat will be praised for doing what another cat will be killed for looking at." But now to cast aside these digressions, and re- sume the story of our return from Lynchburgh : THE ENEMY AWAKE AT LAST. — ACTIONS AT LIBER- TY AND ELSEWHERE. So perfectly had our retrograde movement been concealed, and so fully convinced were the enemy of our determination to fall back, if at all, down the Shenandoah, that it was not until the morning of the 20th — as our rear-guard were repassing through Liberty — that their cavalry and mounted infantry came up in sufficient force to make us halt. Greneral Averell held them, with his and Duffie's cavalry divisions, as long as possible ; but finally Crook's infantry had to be sent back to his support — the carbines of the cavalry being of but little use against the long-range muskets of Early's mounted infantry, of course dismounted for action. At this time, taking our whole little army through, we had left but twelve rounds of car- tridges per man, while at least one of the cavalry brigades was entirely out of ammunition ; and as we had no means of judging how long, or in what force, the enemy would hang around our skirts to 16 362 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. harass "us, the prospects were not encouraging. All efforts were now directed to making our lads reserve their fire as long as possible, so that not a cartridge might be wasted; and whenever a man fell, either killed or wounded, there would be a dozen squabbling over him in a moment for the precious contents of the cartridge-box which he could use no more. That night we crossed the Alleghanies through Buford's Gap, and halted within some seven or eight miles of Salem, after a march of twenty- seven miles — some few dozen men and many hun- dreds of the horses giving out ; but the spirits of the army, as a whole, being much better than might have been expected, when our destitute condition was considered, the mountainous and utterly sterile character of the country which yet lay before us, and the incessant heavy skirmishing, both by night and day, which the enemy — as if to harass us and drive away all sleep — kept up around our rear and flanks. At Salem we saw the debris and railroad ruins of Averell's famous raid made during the preceding January, in which he " rode, slid, climbed, and swam" seven hundred miles in an incredibly brief number of days — how many, or rather how few, we forget ; but such is fame. That expedition, we may here remark, used up a great many hundred men, chiefly frost- bitten, and many thousand horses — indeed pretty RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 863 nearly every horse that was engaged in it ; while Its results— only such injury as cavalry could in- flict on a railroad track in a few hours— were not, perhaps, in any substantial degree commensurate with Its enormous cost; nor had it any military value otherwise than as a proof of what our Northern men could endure and yet survive. The day following came rumors of the enemy at Fmcastle in great force, threatening our right flank, and, indeed, to cut off our retreat altoge- ther—a rumor rather supported by the increasing seventy of the skirmishing— which soon amount^ ed to quite a skirmish as we neared Newcastle, where some supplies were found; but only a mouthful, so to speak, for an army already begin- nmg to starve. It was just beyond Newcastle, and while crossing Craig's mountain— a portion of the Catawba range— that we lost, though the enemy did not gain, six pieces of artillery belong- mg to Sullivan's division; and as this matter has been much discussed, and almost invariably mis- represented, we may as well here set the story at rest as allow it to travel further. 364 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. hunter's only disaster. — SIX OF HIS GUNS DESTROYED. Our march was over wild, waterless, and abrupt mountains — forest-clad precipices yawning beneath us on either side of the road, while forest-covered mountains towered thousands of feet above us on the other. All the soft and beautiful characteris- tics of the Blue Kidge were missing here. The valleys were rocky, sterile, scrubby, and repulsive, and water could only be found in some of the largest creeks in the deepest ravines ; whereas on the Blue Eidge clear springs gushed forth in cool and crystal abundance from beneath every jutting stone almost to the highest peaks of the moun- tains. But few tracts of reclaimed land could anywhere be seen except in the Catawba valley. The few houses along our line were for the most part deserted and in ruins — three years of inces- sant military operations, and guerilla and bush- whacking fighting, having apparently convinced the inhabitants that "green fields and pastures new" in some other region had become a necessity. With the heavy skirmish or engagement near Newcastle, we appeared to have shaken off the greater part of the enemy's pursuing force, but flying squadrons or columns of their cavalry still appeared at intervals; and General Duffie, who led the advance, was ordered to strongly picket RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 865 all side-roads and bridle-paths leading in upon our main line of march. This duty in one instance he neglected ; and the result was that the enemy, who could see all our movements from the sur- rounding hills, suddenly sent in a picked force of about two hundred mounted men, upon an un- guarded side-road, to attack the artillery of Sullivan's division — said artillery having, by a blunder, got mixed up with the wagon-train. Of these mounted men, about fifty carried hatchets, with which they hacked the wheels of about ten pieces of the artillery train of our first division. While they were at work, however, a section of Captain Du Pout's regular battery wheeled into position and sent grape and spherical case through the bodies of over thirty of them. Col. Schoon- maker's brigade of General Averell's division also arrived quickly on the scene from the rear, which Averell was guarding ; and of the two hundred picked men who formed the attacking force, it is questionable if over seventy got back to their camp. Four of the ten injured guns were imme- diately remounted on the spare wheels of the ba- lance of the artillery ; and the six guns that could not be toted away were so efiectually destroyed as to remain mere lumber on the road, of no possible future use in warfare. This disaster, so much paraded and prated about, formed the sole injury of materiel inflicted S66 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. bj the enemy upon Hunter's command during the expedition. They never captured one of our wagons or ambulances, though we had to burn or destroy greater part of both on our return, in con- sequence of the horses that should draw them dying off for want of forage. They never broke our lines in any engagement, save the brief disor- der on our left in the second day's struggle before Lynchburgh ; and they never took a prisoner from us, except those of the Ohio men who got over their works and could not get back ; and some wounded, sick, and starving stragglers who fell to the rear — in considerable numbers, it must be confessed — during the terrible marches of the next half-dozen days. What we lost of materiel^ however, they did not gain. Even the saddles were taken off the dying cavalry horses — dying now by many hundreds daily — and either thrown into the empty commissary and quartermasters' wagons and brought along, or burned in con- venient piles. None of the men threw away their arms. NothiDg could be more admirable than their conduct ; and nothing but the pinched faces of those who were continually falling out of line and to the rear, told the story of their hunger and weakness, for there was no grumbling save in the headquarters of one conspicuously grumbling brigadier ; and even he too good, brave, and care- ful a soldier in other respects to be censured by RECOLLECTIONS OP THE WAR. 367 name even for this. But he was ''an almighty grumbler." CROSSING THE ALLEGHANIES. — TERRIBLE SUF- FERINGS FROM HUNGER. Beautiful, indeed, in its wild and forest-covered sublimity and ruggedness was the country through which we were now passing, had any of us been in the mood to enjoy such scenery. None of us were, however — at least not much ; for some pounded corn, with a rasher of bacon or an onion, formed a feast only too rarely attainable even by the highest officers ; while day by day the few cat- tle we had driven along ahead of each division began to fail, and there was literally no food — no cattle, sheep, hogs, or corn — in the ever-rising, ever-falling wilderness of mountains through which our diminishing column trailed its weary- length like a wounded, all but dying, serpent. Each mountain-ridge that had risen before us seemed of interminable height ; but to be — thank Heaven! — the last we should have to climb. " Meadow Bluffs" was the cry and thought in every heart. " Meadow Bluffs " where, as was reported, there were a million rations left by Crook and Averell only some fifteen or twenty days be- fore under charge of a battalion of the Ohio One Hundred Days' Militia. "Never mind, boys! bear up as well as you can. Only three more — 368 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. only two more — only one more day's march to Meadow Bluffs, and then — a million rations !" Ah, how the hunger-pinched faces brightened up at those glad but deceptive words ! How the struggling men bent their breasts against the next hill, scorning to throw away the burden of arms or knapsacks — yea, even the burdens of useless relics or plunder which some of them had picked up along their line of march. We found one company, sharp-set by the pangs of hunger and half dead from fatigue, but carrying along with it a wooden-bedded billiard table which the boys thought would be "a nice thing to have in the house" if they ever got back to any Christian camp. "Hang me," said Captain Towne, our chief signal officer, " hang me, if I don't expect to see my rascals carrying a privy along with them, plank by plank, in hopes of setting it up for gene- ral delectation when they reach Meadow Bluffs !" It was the grotesqueness of the thought, perhaps, which impressed this sentence, as one irresistibly ludicrous, on a memory from which many brighter and better things have faded. But mountain still towered above mountain, each apparently taller than the last ; and from the top of each as we gained it, our saddened and sickening eyes dropped down into the deep gulfs of valleys, beyond which towered mountain-walls apparently blacker, steeper, loftier, more sterile EECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 869 and waterless than any we had yet traversed. The limited diet of mere fresh beef, too, without salt, corn, biscuit, or vegetables of any kind, be- gan to revolt the stomachs of the weary men, and cases of aggravated diarrhoea soon became an epi- demic. Still, as a whole, the men bore up won- derfully, such of the infantry as were not actually sickened growing more rugged, sinewy, bronzed, and soldierlike — confident that their sufferings were not in vain; that they had inflicted far greater loss on the enemy than paid for all they were enduring; that Grant would not overlook the help their division had given to his main ope- rations — as he did not ; and that in a few days more— a few miles more — there would be plenty for all of them, and a fortnight's — perhaps a month's — rest in well-provisioned camps before any renewed assumption of the war-path. SWEET SPRINGS AND THE WHITE SULPHUR. — SOUTHERN WATERING PLACES DURING THE WAR. At length, on the 24:th, we reached Sweet Springs — that loveliest watering-place of the in- land, and with the sweetest water ; and on the day following, after a long and tedious march over hills apparently interminable and through forests of the densest shade, we descended into the little valley of the White Sulphur Springs, where at 16* 370 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. least and at last our horses were able to enjoy one day's good grazing. A glorious place the White Sulphur must have been — will be again — in days of peace, despite the sickening stench of its yet pure and wholesome waters. Surrounded by vast hills bearing the finest and largest timber conceiv- able, the nestling valley lies like an emerald bot- tom to a great bowl of green and purple porphyry. Here were immense hotels of red brick and white stucco-work, with terraces and rows of tributary Italian and Swiss villas farmed out to separate fami- lies, but all depending on the now empty hotels for such proud and joyous life as they contained in the happy days gone by. As to the waters — the main well was pellucid and pure, but emitted such an odor of sulphuretted hydrogen, as if a thousand baskets of the rottenest eggs or worst- decayed mackerel ever known lay festering at its bottom. The hotels had been closed and deserted from the commencement of the war — the largest one, able to accommodate with its sub-buildings over one thousand guests, standing open, but not inviting, as our soldiers crowded and shouted through its deserted rooms and corridors. The mirrors remained on the walls, as useless and not portable lumber. So the iron bedsteads and beds, pitchers and basins, remained in the multitudinous rooms ; but the carpets and curtains had been long since cut up to furnish clothing or bedding RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 871 to the rebel troops, and tlie furniture had either been carried awaj or burned. Alas ! there was nothing to eat in the vast dining-room, once so hospitable; and the scene, perhaps, appeared to the writer all the sadder for the reason that it was witnessed in company with " Porte Crayon," who never wearied of relating droll and varied anec- dotes of its former greatness and splendor before the "chivalry" had determined that Southern rights must be achieved by war. At Sweet Springs, the White Sulphur, and the Hed Springs — all tenantless, all deserted — a con- trast with our own Newport, Saratoga, and Cape May, not favorable to the men, nor eke the ladies of the North, was forced on the attention. These resorts had been abandoned from the first day of the war — as much abandoned in 1861 and 1862, when the South was practically triumphant and the North covered with disgrace and threatened with defeat, as in 1863 and 1864, when the tide began visibly turning. Was this so at Newport, Cape May, Saratoga, Lake George ? Did not the women of the South give more help, more sym- pathy, more passionate devotion, more self-sacri- ficing denial and heroism to their side of the strug- gle than did our colder Northern dames? How often have we been told in various parts of the South, when asking some lady at whose house we had made headquarters, to sing : " You would not 372 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. like my songs. Since the war, we Southern wo- men have sung only the songs of our country ;" and then, when assured that those, of all others, were the songs we most wished to hear — with what dazzling passion — almost frenzy — of voice, eye, swelling figure, and gesture, as of an inspired Pythoness, would be sent shrilling forth " Stone- wall Jackson's Way," " The Bonnie Blue Flag," "On to Richmond, " or that noblest lyric of the war, " Maryland ! my Maryland !" Indeed the women of the South were the back- bone — the life and soul of the rebellion. They made it disgraceful for any able-bodied man to remain out of the ranks. All members of the Home Guard Brigade were presented with bon- nets, fans, petticoats, and rouge-boxes, by commit- tees of patriotic belles. They wore no foreign goods, nor coveted any, throwing away their silks at the beginning of the contest, and writing " Shoddy" on the brows of all their sex who were too lazy to make homespun cloth, or too proud to wear it. Even hoops were discarded from an early date, and their jewel-ornaments were melted down in local treasuries for the equipment of volunteers. That our Northern women might not have done as well and as bravely, had we been the invaded side, the writer has no disposition either to question or assert. He only avers that they did not ; and that few of them — save when KECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 873 actually compelled by the absence of their male supporters in the ill-paid ranks of the army— made any voluntary, or even visible, reduction in their expenditures or style of living. " Madam," we once heard Major Sam Stockton say, with a graceful and well-turned compliment, to a beauti- ful young rebel girl who had just finished an ex- quisitely rendered but very furious song against the "Yankee Invader," and then asked him, as she rose with flushed cheeks from the piano, what he thought of it — " Madam, I think," said Sam, "that if we had only had a few such ladies as yourself in the North, we would have driven all your armies into the Gulf of Mexico before the second year of this distressing war." And now to return to our muttons — or rather to our army which had neither mutton nor bread. NO FOOD AT MEADOW BLUFFS. — GEN. GRANT's REBELLIOUS AUNT. But why enter in detail upon the sufferings of our further march across the Greenbrier river, through Lewisburgh, where we found some food in a few stores, and past Bunger's Mill, where also was a little corn-meal. We had a sickening dis- appointment at Meadow Bluffs, from which the stores had been removed — partly back to Loup's Creek on the Kanawha, and partly had been burned by the militia battalion left to guard them, 374 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. under some sudden stampede created by a hun- dred or so of mounted bushwhackers appearing in the vicinity. At the Bluffs, however, we got some score or two of sheep and a few hogs, the country now growing more level, and with more numerous signs (partly in the deserted fortifica- tions thrown up by General Henry A. Wise) of having once been inhabited. It was a tough ride and march across the last high spurs of the Alleghanies that brought us to Meadow Bluffs ; but on the next day — June 26, 1864 — a march of nearly thirty miles brought us to the house of " the widow Jones," who is an aunt to General Grant, and was then — we fervently hope still is — a remarkably bright, hospitable, and kindly old body, though excessively rebelliouSj at whose well-furnished table for the first time in many weeks our nearly famishing party sat down to a meal having no stint of scarcity ; and with such gorgeous accompaniments as iron forks, a table-cloth, sweet milk in glasses, and tea — actual tea — in cups, as made our recent existence seem only a preparative whetting of our appetites to this banquet of the immortal gods ! Next morning Generals Hunter and Crook, with an escort of such staff of&cers and mounted men as still had horses and could keep up, crossed the Big and Little Sewell mountains — Hunter being specially anxious to meet and hurry for- RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 375 ward the supply-trains previously ordered up from Gauley Bridge, or rather Loup Creek, which was our then base of supplies in the Kanawha, being close to the head of navigation on that river. Half way on the road we met the first of these trains, lumbering along under a guard of some Ohio militia — a train with 20,000 rations; and closely followed by another larger one with 75,000 rations more 1 Better and better ! we learn that there are a million rations and 12,000 new and complete sets of uniforms and equipments — for our entire command was shoeless and in rags — only ten miles ahead of us, at Loup Creek ; and here — at the Hawk's Nest, looking down into the loveliest and most perfect triangle of scenery our eyes ever rested upon, and with the wild shouts of our poor boys, some miles yet in the rear, as they meet the first train and empty its contents into their stomachs, this narrative may most rightly and welcomelybe brought to its conclusion. Here ended Hunter's campaign of the Shenandoah proper — the movement of his troops down the Kanawha to Charleston, and from thence up the Ohio to Parkersburgh, where we first heard of Early's invasion of Maryland, and from thence to Harper's Ferry and Maryland, forming a distinct episode or branch of history. 376 KECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. ROMANCE OF THE WAR IN THE SHENANDOAH — END OF THE RAID AT THE HAWK's NEST. In conclusion, let us say that this narrative has grown upon our hands into far larger proportions than we either expected or have wished ; and yet we have condensed and suppressed everything that appeared in anywise compressible or suppress- ive with due deference to truth and maintaining the interest of our readers. In our pocket-book — a very poorly-kept diary, briefly scribbled in the scanty moments of leisure that duty did not occu- py — there are many passages of but a few lines that might well be expanded, with their surround- ing circumstances, into chapters of absorbing and instructive interest. It is in the beautiful but bushwhacking, inviting but treacherous, moun- tain-girdled but yet most insecure valleys of the Shenandoah and Kanawha, that the romance writers of the war will hereafter find their most fitting ground and appropriate traditions and in- spirations. Great armies like that of the Potomac, are monstrous hives of men, needing infinite quan- tities of pork and beans, wearing out infinite stacks of quartermasters' clothing, and covering an immeasurable space of country. They have, how- ever, but few individual adventures, but few rapid transitions from scene to scene ; and the men who composed them were brought but little into con- RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. 377 tact with any of the Southern people residing on their own farms, as thej lived before the war. In the Shenandoah and Kanawha valleys, on the contrary, every movement had the swift vibrations of a shaken kaleidoscope ; forays, surprises, and feats of individual prowess or adventure were the order of the day ; and love-making in the towns through which our banners and those of the rebels fluctuated in alternate waves, was a regular business with the soldiers on both sides — in which, truth to say, both seemed to become most perfect proficients under the tutelage of such able and charming mistresses as those valleys yield. In another page of these Eecollections, but not as a continuation of the Yalley Eaid, we shall describe the country from Gauley Bridge to Par- kersburgh — the great oil, salt, and coal producing region of "West Virginia and Ohio — in which Gen. Averell, Colonel Yance, the writer, and many others who took part in the expedition we have just described, now hold landed interests very large, and — as the writer fondly hopes — ^yet to become very lucrative. In this connexion, too, will come in the history of the transfer of Hunter's command from Parkersburgh back to Harper's Perry, to resist, or try to capture General Early's column of invasion — the last rebel forces ever seen on Maryland soil ; together with secret dis- patches from General Hunter, President Lincoln, 878 RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR. General Grant, Secretary Stanton, and General Halleck, throwing much light over that still mys- terious episode in our more recent history, and none of which have ever yet been published. Meanwhile let us conclude by advising all lovers of the picturesque, while there is yet time this Fall, and while the forests wear their richest and most varied verdure, to hasten up the Kanawha to the Hawk's Nest, where the last pages of this hurried and imperfect, but honest history may be supposed to be written. Here, outlying on a vast ledge of rock, they will look down over a sheer descent of fifteen hundred feet — the rock-base on which they rest forming the apex of a right-angled triangle, the sidQS of which are sharp precipitous mountains covered from ridge to foot with all the foliage of the forest, and "with the dark, wild foam- ing waters of the New River or Green River, as it is variously styled, plunging on in mad and roaring race beneath them — the mountain-echoes multiplying and thunder-toning all the chafings and many- voiced leaps of the imprisoned stream, and the overhanging mountains for ever gloriously mirrored in the deep, swift, and narrow channel through which — striking against the foot of the Hawk's Nest, and then glancing sharply off— this impetuous river rushes to join the Gauley, a few miles further down; these united streams there- after forming the bright Kanawha. 31^77 -2X