Showing posts with label Winfield Scott. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Winfield Scott. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Edwin M. Stanton to James Buchanan, March 16, 1861

WASHINGTON, March 16, 1861.

Every day affords proof of the absence of any settled policy or harmonious concert of action in the administration. Seward, Bates and Cameron form one wing; Chase, Miller, Blair, the opposite wing; Smith is on both sides, and Lincoln sometimes on one and sometimes on the other. There has been agreement in nothing. Lincoln, it is complained in the streets, has undertaken to distribute the whole patronage, small and great, leaving nothing to the chiefs of departments. Growls about Scott's "imbecility" are frequent The Republicans are beginning to think that a monstrous blunder was made in the tariff bill, and that it will cut off the trade of New York, build up New Orleans and the Southern ports, and leave the government no revenue; they see before them the prospect of some being without money and without credit. But with all this it is certain that Anderson will be withdrawn.

SOURCE: Lyon Gardiner Tyler, The Letters and Times of the Tylers, Volume 2, p. 636

John Tyler to Julia Gardiner Tyler, April 16, 1861

RICHMOND, April 16, 1861.

Well, dearest, your letter received this morning placed me much at ease relative to the dear children. I hope you will still keep an eye upon them, and not suffer them to expose themselves to the weather. Our noble boys are of high spirit, and if God spares them, I think they will reflect honor on our names.

The prospects now are that we shall have war, and a trying one. The battle at Charleston has aroused the whole North. I fear that division no longer exists in their ranks, and that they will break upon the South with an immense force. Virginia will deserve much credit for boldness, if in face of all this, in debt and without disciplined, troops, she throws herself into the melée, taking upon trust the action of the Border slave-States; but events press so rapidly on each others heels that we have, I think, no alternative. Submission or resistance is only left us. My hope is that the Border States will follow speedily our lead. If so, all will be safe. The convention is sitting with closed doors. Another day may decide our course. To-morrow night is fixed for a great torch-light procession and illumination for the battle at Charleston. If to this is added an ordinance of secession, there will be an immense outburst. I wish the boys could be here. But do not understand me as saying an ordinance will be passed. On the contrary, it will be in doubt until the vote. General Scott has resigned. It is as I always thought it would be. He comes to offer his sword to Virginia. I propose to offer suitable resolutions. We learn that the government has sent five hundred troops to the navy yard at Portsmouth.

These are dark times, dearest, and I think only of you and our little ones. But I trust in that same Providence that protected our fathers. These rascals who hold power leave us no alternative. I shall vote secession, and prefer to encounter any hazard to degrading Virginia. If the ordinance passes, it is to be submitted to the people.

Love and kisses to all.
Always your devoted,
J. TYLER.

After 8:30 P. M.—Just adjourned without taking the question.

SOURCE: Lyon Gardiner Tyler, The Letters and Times of the Tylers, Volume 2, p. 640

John Tyler to Julia Gardiner Tyler, April 18, 1861

RICHMOND, April 17,1 1861.

Well, my dearest one, Virginia has severed her connection with the Northern hive of abolitionists, and takes her stand as a sovereign and independent State. By a large vote she decided on yesterday, at about three o'clock, to resume the powers she had granted to the Federal government, and to stand before the world clothed in the full vestments of sovereignty. The die is thus cast, and her future is in the hands of the god of battle. The contest into which we enter is one full of peril, but there is a spirit abroad in Virginia which cannot be crushed until the life of the last man is trampled out. The numbers opposed to us are immense; but twelve thousand Grecians conquered the whole power of Xerxes at Marathon, and our fathers, a mere handful, overcame the enormous power of Great Britain.

The North seems to be thoroughly united against us. The Herald and the Express both give way and rally the hosts against us. Things have gone to that point in Philadelphia that no one is safe in the expression of a Southern sentiment. Poor Robert is threatened with mob violence. I wish most sincerely he was away from there. I attempted to telegraph him to-day, but no dispatch is permitted northward, so that no one knows there, except by secret agent, what has transpired here. At Washington a system of martial law must have been established. The report is that persons are not permitted to pass through the city to the South. I learn that Mrs. Orrick and her children, on her way here to join her husband, who is on the convention, has been arrested and detained. There is another report that General Scott resigned yesterday and was put under arrest. I hope it may be so, but I do not believe it. I have some fear that he will not resign. Reports are too conflicting about it.

Two expeditions are on foot,—the one directed against the Navy Yard at Gosport, the other Harper's Ferry. Several ships are up the river at the Navy Yard, and immense supplies of guns and powder; but there is no competent leader, and they have delayed it so long that the government has now a very strong force there. The hope is that Pickens will send two thousand men to aid in capturing it. From Harper's Ferry nothing is heard. The city is full of all sorts of rumors. To-morrow night is now fixed for the great procession; flags are raised all about town.

If possible I shall visit home on Saturday. Tell Gill that I shall send or bring down the sturgeon twine and six bushels of potatoes, which should be planted as soon as they reach home. I wish much to see you after so long an absence, and the dear children, since they have had the measles. Do, dearest, live as frugally as possible in the household,—trying times are before us.

Kisses to all.
Your devoted,
J. TYLER.
Julia is quite well.
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1 As the ordinance was passed on the 17th, this date ought to be 18th.

SOURCE: Lyon Gardiner Tyler, The Letters and Times of the Tylers, Volume 2, p. 641-2

Sunday, March 3, 2024

Diary of Adam Gurowski, March 1861

For the first time in my life I assisted at the simplest and grandest spectacle—the inauguration of a President. Lincoln's message good, according to circumstances, but not conclusive; it is not positive; it discusses questions, but avoids to assert. May his mind not be altogether of the same kind. Events will want and demand more positiveness and action than the message contains assertions. The immense majority around me seems to be satisfied. Well, well; I wait, and prefer to judge and to admire when actions will speak.

I am sure that a great drama will be played, equal to any one known in history, and that the insurrection of the slave-drivers will not end in smoke. So I now decide to keep a diary in my own way. I scarcely know any of those men who are considered as leaders; the more interesting to observe them, to analyze their mettle, their actions. This insurrection may turn very complicated; if so, it must generate more than one revolutionary manifestation. What will be its march—what stages? Curious; perhaps it may turn out more interesting than anything since that great renovation of humanity by the great French Revolution.

The old, brave warrior, Scott, watched at the door of the Union; his shadow made the infamous rats tremble and crawl off, and so Scott transmitted to Lincoln what was and could be saved during the treachery of Buchanan.

By the most propitious accident, I assisted at the throes among which Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet was born. They were very painful, but of the highest interest for me, and I suppose for others. I participated some little therein.

A pledge bound Mr. Lincoln to make Mr. Seward his Secretary of State. The radical and the puritanic elements in the Republican party were terribly scared. His speeches, or rather demeanor and repeated utterances since the opening of the Congress, his influence on Mr. Adams, who, under Seward's inspiration, made his speech de lana caprina, and voted for compromises and concessions, all this spread and fortified the general and firm belief that Mr. Seward was ready to give up many from among the cardinal articles of the Republican creed of which he was one of the most ardent apostles. They, the Republicans, speak of him in a way to remind me of the dictum, "omnia serviliter pro dominatione," as they accuse him now of subserviency to the slave power. The radical and puritan Republicans likewise dread him on account of his close intimacy with a Thurlow Weed, a Matteson, and with similar not over-cautious-as they call them-lobbyists.

Some days previous to the inauguration, Mr. Seward brought Mr. Lincoln on the Senate floor, of course on the Republican side; but soon Mr. Seward was busily running among Democrats, begging them to be introduced to Lincoln. It was a saddening, humiliating, and revolting sight for the galleries, where I was. Criminal as is Mason, for a minute I got reconciled to him for the scowl of horror and contempt with which he shook his head at Seward. The whole humiliating proceeding foreshadowed the future policy. Only two or three Democratic Senators were moved by Seward's humble entreaties. The criminal Mason has shown true manhood.

The first attempt of sincere Republicans was to persuade Lincoln to break his connection with Seward. This failed. To neutralize what was considered quickly to become a baneful influence in Mr. Lincoln's councils, the Republicans united on Gov. Chase. This Seward opposed with all his might. Mr. Lincoln wavered, hesitated, and was bending rather towards Mr. Seward. The struggle was terrific, lasted several days, when Chase was finally and triumphantly forced into the Cabinet. It was necessary not to leave him there alone against Seward, and perhaps Bates, the old cunning Whig. Again terrible opposition by Seward, but it was overcome by the radicals in the House, in the Senate, and outside of Congress by such men as Curtis Noyes, J. S. Wadsworth, Opdyke, Barney, &c., &c., and Blair was brought in. Cameron was variously opposed, but wished to be in by Seward; Welles was from the start considered sound and safe in every respect; Smith was considered a Seward man.

From what I witnessed of Cabinet-making in Europe, above all in France under Louis Philippe, I do not forebode anything good in the coming-on shocks and eruptions, and I am sure these must come. This Cabinet as it stands is not a fusion of various shadowings of a party, but it is a violent mixing or putting together of inimical and repulsive forces, which, if they do not devour, at the best will neutralize each other.

Senator Wilson answered Douglass in the Senate, that "when the Republican party took the power, treason was in the army, in the navy, in the administration," etc. Dreadful, but true assertion. It is to be seen how the administration will act to counteract this ramified treason.

What a run, a race for offices. This spectacle likewise new to me.

The Cabinet Ministers, or, as they call them here, the Secretaries, have old party debts to pay, old sores to avenge or to heal, and all this by distributing offices, or by what they call it here—patronage. Through patronage and offices everybody is to serve his friends and his party, and to secure his political position. Some of the party leaders seem to me similar to children enjoying a long-expected and ardently wished-for toy. Some of the leaders are as generals who abandon the troops in a campaign, and take to travel in foreign parts. Most of them act as if they were sure that the battle is over. It begins only, but nobody, or at least very few of the interested, seem to admit that the country is on fire, that a terrible struggle begins. (Wrote in this sense an article for the National Intelligencer; insertion refused.) They, the leaders, look to create engines for their own political security, but no one seems to look over Mason and Dixon's line to the terrible and with-lightning-like-velocity-spreading fire of hellish treason.

The diplomats utterly upset, confused, and do not know what god to worship. All their associations were with Southerners, now traitors. In Southern talk, or in that of treacherous Northern Democrats, the diplomats learned what they know about this country. Not one of them is familiar, is acquainted with the genuine people of the North; with its true, noble, grand, and pure character. It is for them a terra incognita, as is the moon. The little they know of the North is the few money or cotton bags of New York, Boston, Philadelphia,—these would-be betters, these dinner-givers, and whist-players. The diplomats consider Seward as the essence of Northern feeling.

How little the thus-called statesmen know Europe. Sumner, Seward, etc. already have under consideration if Europe will recognize the secesh. Europe recognizes faits accomplis, and a great deal of blood will run before secesh becomes un fait accompli. These Sewards, Sumners, etc. pay too much attention to the silly talk of the European diplomats in Washington; and by doing this these would-be statesmen prove how ignorant they are of history in general, and specially ignorant of the policy of European cabinets. Before a struggle decides a question a recognition is bosh, and I laugh at it.

The race, the race increases with a fearful rapidity. No flood does it so quick. Poor Senators! Some of them must spend nights and days to decide on whom to bestow this or that office. Secretaries or Ministers wrangle, fight (that is the word used), as if life and death depended upon it.

Poor (Carlylian-meaning) good-natured Senator Sumner, in his earnest, honest wish to be just and of service to everybody, looks as a hare tracked by hounds; so are at him office-seekers from the whole country. This hunting degrades the hounds, and enervates the patrons.

I am told that the President is wholly absorbed in adjusting, harmonizing the amount of various salaries bestowed on various States through its officeholders and office-seekers.

It were better if the President would devote his time to calculate the forces and resources needed to quench the fire. Over in Montgomery the slave-drivers proceed with the terrible, unrelenting, fearless earnestness of the most unflinching criminals.

After all, these crowds of office-hunters are far from representing the best element of the genuine, laborious, intelligent people,—of its true healthy stamina. This is consoling for me, who know the American people in the background of office-hunters.

Of course an alleviating circumstance is, that the method, the system, the routine, oblige, nay force, everybody to ask, to hunt. As in the Scriptures, "Ask, and you will get; or knock, and it will be opened." Of course, many worthy, honorable, deserving men, who would be ornaments to the office, must run the gauntlet together with the hounds.

It is reported, and I am sure of the truth of the report, that Governor Chase is for recognizing, or giving up the revolted Cotton States, so as to save by it the Border States, and eventually to fight for their remaining in the Union. What logic! If the treasonable revolt is conceded to the Cotton States, on what ground can it be denied to the thus called Border States? I am sorry that Chase has such notions.

It is positively asserted by those who ought to know, that Seward, having secured to himself the Secretaryship of State, offered to the Southern leaders in Congress compromise and concessions, to assure, by such step, his confirmation by the Democratic vote. The chiefs refused the bargain, distrusting him. All this was going on for weeks, nay months, previous to the inauguration, so it is asserted. But Seward might have been anxious to preserve the Union at any price. His enemies assert that if Seward's plan had succeeded, virtually the Democrats would have had the power. Thus the meaning of Lincoln's election would have been destroyed, and Buchanan's administration would have been continued in its most dirty features, the name only being changed.

Old Scott seems to be worried out by his laurels; he swallows incense, and I do not see that anything whatever is done to meet the military emergency. I see the cloud.

Were it true that Seward and Scott go hand in hand, and that both, and even Chase, are blunted axes!

I hear that Mr. Blair is the only one who swears, demands, asks for action, for getting at them without losing time. Brave fellow ! I am glad to have at Willard's many times piloted deputations to the doors of Lincoln on behalf of Blair's admission into the Cabinet. I do not know him, but will try to become nearer acquainted.

But for the New York radical Republicans, already named, neither Chase nor Blair would have entered the Cabinet. But for them Seward would have had it totally his own way. Members of Congress acted less than did the New Yorkers.

The South, or the rebels, slave-drivers, slave-breeders, constitute the most corrosive social decompositions and impurities; what the human race throughout countless ages successively toiled to purify itself from and throw off. Europe continually makes terrible and painful efforts, which at times are marked by bloody destruction. This I asserted in my various writings. This social, putrefied evil, and the accumulated matter in the South, pestilentially and in various ways influenced the North, poisoning its normal healthy condition. This abscess, undermining the national life, has burst now. Somebody, something must die, but this apparent death will generate a fresh and better life.

The month of March closes, but the administration seems to enjoy the most beatific security. I do not see one single sign of foresight, this cardinal criterion of statesmanship. Chase measures the empty abyss of the treasury. Senator Wilson spoke of treason everywhere, but the administration seems not to go to work and to reconstruct, to fill up what treason has disorganized and emptied. Nothing about reorganizing the army, the navy, refitting the arsenals. No foresight, no foresight! either statesmanlike or administrative. Curious to see these men at work. The whole efforts visible to me and to others, and the only signs given by the administration in concert, are the paltry preparations to send provisions to Fort Sumpter. What is the matter? what are they about?

SOURCE: Adam Gurowski, Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862, p. 13-21

Saturday, January 20, 2024

John W. Duncan to Senator Robert M. T. Hunter, October 23, 1852

MILLEDGEVILLE, GEORGIA, October 23rd, 1852.

MY DEAR SIR: I have just had the pleasure of reading, your speech, delivered some time ago in Richmond, and I assure you, I have rarely seen a clearer and more conclusive exemplification of true democratic principles and policy, than is contained in it. If it is published in pamphlet form, I wish you would be good enough to send me one or two copies. I am very glad, that you took the opportunity of giving your opinion upon two subjects, that seem now to form a prominent portion of the democratic creed, but which, you boldly and ably repudiate as most dangerous to our best interests. I mean Johnsons measure for giving away the public lands known as the Homestead Bill and the new doctrine of "Intervention." Either of these principles would destroy the best party on earth, and are certainly antagonistic to the recognized views of the "Virginia School." By the way was John Randolph a pupil of that school or an excrescence upon it. In what light is he held by its true disciples?

I suppose you begin to think by this time, that the politics of Georgia are perfectly inexplicable. The truth of the matter is we have a few leaders here, who are determined to sacrifice everything, even Pierce's election, to their own personal feelings. I told you when I saw you in July last in Washington, that I did not doubt, we should roll up a handsome majority for Pierce in Georgia. I then believed, that the elements of the democratic party, which had for a time been separated would harmoniously unite, but I am grievously disappointed. After the Baltimore Convention Gov [ernor] Cobb's friends held a separate meeting, and nominated a new Electoral Ticket, and thus put the democracy at defiance. The Whigs refused to sustain Cobb and went off into two wings, that of Scott and Webster and he soon began to see the anomalous position which he occupied, and he withdrew the ticket of Electors, composed one half of Whigs and the other of democrats. But he had carried his friends so far he found it would be more difficult to bring them back. So he began to beg and entreat but alas! the door was shut in his face and there he now stands at this eleventh hour a miserable suppliant at the threshold of the Party with none even to pity or reverence him.

His friends in the highlands of the State have again put out another ticket for Pierce and King, the effect of which will be to distract the Party and prevent the popular vote from being cast for our Candidates. We therefore expect that the Legislature must be specially called to unite the knot which the politicians have made. So much for York and Lancaster.

I see that Botts, the notorious nocturnal companion of Tyler, has been pledging your State to Scott. Don't you think he ought to be indicted? I look upon this as a slander upon the good old dominion that never once was known to "flush" in her devotion to democracy. I look upon Pierce's election as an absolute certainty, and then I have no doubt we shall have the government conducted on sound democratic and economical principles. What do you think about it?

SOURCE: Charles Henry Ambler, Editor, Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1916, in Two Volumes, Vol. II, Correspondence of Robert M. T. Hunter (1826-1876), p. 147-9

Thursday, December 7, 2023

General William T. Sherman to Senator John Sherman, July 8, 1871

HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF THE UNITED STATES,        
WASHINGTON, D.C., July 8, 1871.
Dear Brother:

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

I saw General Grant when he was here some days ago, and we talked about . . . and my published declination of a nomination by either party. I told him plainly that the South would go against him en masse, though he counts on South Carolina, Louisiana, and Arkansas; but I repeated my conviction, that all that was vital at the South was against him, and that negroes were generally quiescent and could not be relied on as voters when local questions become mixed up with political matters. I think, however, he will be renominated and re-elected, unless by personally doing small things, to alienate his party adherence of the North. . . .

My office has been by law stript of all the influence and prestige it possessed under Grant, and even in matters of discipline and army control I am neglected, overlooked, or snubbed. I have called General Grant's attention to the fact several times, but got no satisfactory redress.

The old regulations of 1853, made by Jeff Davis in hostility to General Scott, are now strictly construed and enforced; and in these regulations the War Department is everything, and the name of General, Lieutenant-General, or Commander-in-Chief even, does not appear in the book. Consequently, orders go to parts of the army supposed to be under my command, of which I know nothing till I read them in the newspapers; and when I call the attention of the Secretary to it, he simply refers to some paragraph of the Army Regulations. Some five years ago there was a law to revise these Regulations, and to make them conform to the new order of things, and to utilize the experiences of the war. A Board was appointed here in Washington, composed of Sherman, Sheridan, and Auger, that did so revise them, and they were submitted to Congress with the approval of General Grant; but no action was taken. But now a new Board is ordered to prepare another set, and this Board is composed of a set of officers hardly qualified to revise the judgment of the former Board. I propose patiently to await the action of this Board, though now that war is remote, there is little chance of Congress giving the army a thought at all; and if these new regulations were framed, as I suppose, to cripple the power of the General, and to foster the heads of staff departments, I will simply notify the President that I cannot undertake to command an army with all its staff independent of the Commander-in-Chief, and ask him. to allow me quietly to remove to St. Louis, to do such special matters as may be committed to me by the President, and leave the Army to be governed and commanded as now, by the Secretary of War, in person. This cannot occur for twelve months. . . .

I have said nothing of this to anybody, and will not do anything hasty or rash; but I do think that because some newspapers berate Grant about his military surroundings, he feels disposed to go to the other extreme. . . .

Affectionately,
W. T. SHERMAN.

SOURCE: Rachel Sherman Thorndike, Editor, The Sherman Letters: Correspondence Between General and Senator Sherman from 1837 to 1891, p. 331-2

Saturday, October 14, 2023

Lewis E. Harvie to Senator Robert M. T. Hunter, January 19, 1852

APPOMATTOX DEPOT, AMELIA CO[UNTY, VA.],        
January 19th, 1852.

DEAR HUNTER: I am very solicitous to procure an appointment as Cadet, for my second son Jno. Harvie, in the military Academy at West Point. My only chance of getting him in is as one of the appointments by the President. I have written to Mr. Mason on the subject and desired him to show you my letter. I would not write to you because I thought about this time you would be annoyed by your election. Since I wrote I have been to Richmond and learnt (with sincere gratification as you will believe) that your success was well nigh certain. I have concluded to write to you and let you understand that I am much interested in procuring this appointment, hoping that you will interest yourself in it and aid me as far as you can. I do not know what step to take and hope you will let me know. This boy has as I am informed by his teachers a considerable talent for Mathematics which I wish cultivated and this is one among various reasons why I wish him sent to West Point. It has been suggested to me to state to you (what I should certainly not have thought of but for the suggestion) that he is a grand nephew of Maj[o]r Ja[me]s Eggleston who served as Lieu[tenan]t in Lee's Legion during the Revolutionary war, and was afterwards elected to Congress, from this District. As you know he was a gallant officer and highly respected as a citizen and Public man. His Great Grand father Col. Harvie, was also an active Patriot during the same struggle and a member of the V[irginija Convention in 1775 and 76. He was afterwards in Congress and signed the Articles of Confederation in 1778, and was then made Register of the Land Office in V[irgini]a, showing that his services were appreciated. I mention these matters with reluctance and only because I have been urged to do so. I hope you will forget I have done so unless they can be made available in favouring this appointment. I am sure that Holliday, Edmundson, Caskie, Bocock, Strother, Meade and Genl. Millson will aid me if I know how to use their assistance. I am under the impression also that I may be able to procure the intervention of Genl. Scott and Mr. Crittenden on account of others and not myself. My main reliance tho' is on you and Strother and I shall expect you to work for me as I would under similar circumstances for you and him. If I can't get him in this year I would be content to get him in the next. Let me hear from you as soon as may be.

SOURCE: Charles Henry Ambler, Editor, Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1916, in Two Volumes, Vol. II, Correspondence of Robert M. T. Hunter (1826-1876), p. 134-5

Edmund W. Hubard* to Senator Robert M. T. Hunter, May 8, 1852

SARATOGA, [VA.], May 8th, 1852.

DEAR HUNTER: I received your very able and valuable report on “a change in the coinage,” and was highly delighted with this, and other evidences contained in the proceedings of the Senate of the manner, as well as distinguished talents with which you discharge the various duties of your high station. I have often said, that intellectually as well as in points of character, I thought you more resembled Mr. Madison than any other person. In some respects I think you will prove his superior. Madison in the abstract was sound, but he lacked either the elevation of character or the firmness of purpose to carry out his convictions. He gave to expediency what was due to principle. Without going beyond my candid convictions I may add, that I deem you will prove him superior in this respect. If the health of my Family will permit I wish to attend the Baltimore Convention.

For various reasons I decidedly prefer Buchanan. In our section as far as I can learn he is the choice of more than 40 to 1. In our District Convention we thought it improper to express our preference or instruct our Delegates. But we adopted a resolution approving of the two thirds rule in making our presidential nomination. As an evidence of fairness, delegates were selected without reference to their personal preferences. All that was desired was that the popular will would be reflected, let that be as it might. Thos. S. Bocock was appointed and Wm. C. Flournoy and others not agreeing with a decided majority. I might add not with one in 20 in the District Convention. We are dead against Genl. Cass. He cannot be elected. We will take any other Democrat rather than him. He cannot carry V[irginia. Many leading Democrats declare they will not vote for him if nominated. He stands in the same relation to our party that Genl. Scott does to the Whig. He has talents, but with all is deemed more of a demagogue than statesman. His strong proclivity to ride both sides of a sapling argues unsoundness or over ambition—either way he is not trust worthy. Besides he has had his day. The Democrats will settle down in favor both of one Canvass and the one term principle for the Presidency. Besides I am opposed to taking Senatorial Candidates and wish the Baltimore Convention to adopt a resolution excluding all holding office, from the field of selection. We must go to private life positions for our candidates for President and vice too. If we go to Congress for our candidates as well as for instructions as to whom to cast our votes, why Congress will soon absorb all the powers as well as all the honors of our republic. This policy unless averted will corrupt and revolutionize our government. The Executive must in inception, election, and action be distinct from Congress. Let the Congress indicate Candidates, which is tantamount to an election, the next step will be for the President to humble himself to his real master. Thus the judiciary will also fall under the influence of Congress. Then a congressional majority will decide and continue the fate of the country. I am opposed to all this. I want the President in all respects independent of both branches of Congress. The country people are daily becoming more disgusted with Congressional President making. That man will stand highest in the public estimation who keeps above all such extra official dictation. While the South held all the high honors, in truth got all the benefits of our government, they have fattened and grown strong upon the substantials, while we are starving and growing weak upon honors. Now I am for a change. Give me sound and reliable Northern or free State men, and so far as I am concerned they may enjoy all the honors. We want the real solid benefits of government and if they have the honors, it will be the most powerful motive with their aspirants on both sides to keep down the slavery agitation and also to so make the machinery of government as to rebuild the south. I look upon high honors as incompatible with sectional aggrandizement. We cannot get both at once. When the south held the Posts of honor, she had to throw all the crumbs of government to conciliate distant support. Now give the free States the honors and then they will do justice to gain our confidence and support, for without the slave state vote in Congress no Executive can honorably or properly administer the government.

I had rather see Buchanan, Marcy, or Douglas, or Dallas, or R[ichard] Rush by a great deal than Cass, under the latter [I] look upon our defeat as certain. With either of the others we may succeed. Cass is too much mixed up with all this Kossuth movement, and too strongly inclined to elevate himself not only above all our Diplomats, but above the wise policy upon foreign affairs of Washington and Jefferson to be trusted at this juncture. I look upon our Foreign relations at this time, as the most important point to guard in making our selection of candidates. Democratic measures are in the general to obtain either under a Whig or Democratic rule. But justice to the slave states, and a wise and peaceful Foreign policy is what we need. On neither of these points am I willing to confide in Cass. As for the Union and the upstart constitutional expounders from Tennessee, they had better put things in the ascendant at home, before they assume the leadership for the Union. That is either a Whig State, or else the least sound of any of the Democratic slave states. The Union is a high toned Federal organ but unlike other Federal papers, it does not seem to be aware that it is so. Now the Democratic editor from Tennessee is but. little short of our former Globe editors from Kentucky. What one did for knavery, the other is doing for folly. I am opposed to being doctrinated by such chaps from the New States. The Union was clearly for Cass from the start, and all the time. Genl. Cass on a recent occasion went out of his way to laud Genl. Jackson and especially his proclamation. He is the advocate of compulsory democracy, and dead against the voluntary system. He would establish the inquisition, if the Union would suggest it, or the alien and sedition laws. Should he be elected the country might look out for the most high handed measures, all proved by the editor of the Union to be in accordance with the doctrines of Jefferson, Madison, and Jackson. May the Lord deliver our party from the hands of the quacks of Tennessee and Michigan.

To change the subject, I stick closely to my planting and farming, take no part except to vote in politics. We have a son and daughter which I shall train up for a match for some of your children. You and lady are as great favorites with my wife as your humble servant, and she often says she is in favor of Mr. Hunter over all others for the presidency. Of all things we would be most happy to see you and Mrs. H. and all the under fry here. The South Side Railroad passes by me as near as Farmville twelve miles distant. In about twelve months it will be open to Farmville and a few more months to Lynchburg. Then, my dear sir, there will be no valid excuse for your not visiting this part of the state. If you will come, I will take, or go with you any where here abouts. Pray give my best respects to Judge Butler, Atchison, Douglas and Mason and believe me as ever with highest regard and consideration.
_______________

* Representative in Congress from Virginia, 1841-1847; resided at Curdsville, Buckingham County.

SOURCE: Charles Henry Ambler, Editor, Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1916, in Two Volumes, Vol. II, Correspondence of Robert M. T. Hunter (1826-1876), p. 140-2

Saturday, September 30, 2023

Diary of Private Theodore Reichardt, Monday, June 24, 1861

Grand review of the Rhode Island troops by President Lincoln and Gen. Scott. Marched in front of the White House and through the principal streets of Washington.

From this time up to the 4th of July, nothing of importance occurred; everything went on quiet and pleasant; battery drills and manual of the piece were the usual occupation. Sometimes the long roll would be beat during the night, or guards would fire at some imaginary object of suspicion. On such an occasion a cow was shot.

SOURCE: Theodore Reichardt, Diary of Battery A, First Regiment Rhode Island Light Artillery, p. 8

Diary of Private Theodore Reichardt, Thursday, July 11, 1861

Grand review before President Lincoln, Gens. Scott and Fremont. Salutes were fired.

SOURCE: Theodore Reichardt, Diary of Battery A, First Regiment Rhode Island Light Artillery, p. 9

Tuesday, July 11, 2023

Julia Gardiner Tyler to Juliana MacLachlan Gardiner, February 3, 1861

BROWN'S HOTEL, WASHINGTON, D. C., Feb. 3, 1861.

I hasten to write you this evening of my arrival, with the President, Alex., baby and Fanny. . . . I had several reasons for coming, apart from such enjoyments as you think I shall be disappointed in finding. To be on hand at such a trying and exciting time to the President, and observe and listen to the doings of the convention, which has for me the most intense interest. Perhaps I am here during the last days of the Republic. Everything in the political world is calculated to interest me, and I do not expect or desire gay entertainments under such circumstances as exist. A note has just been handed in to a dinner at Douglas' on Tuesday. . . I don't know that we shall accept. I was really in hopes to find you here on our arrival, and am really sorry to have hoped in vain. I sent this evening to enquire for a box at the express office, but it is not open to-day. I must send in the morning; peradventure you may have forwarded one.

The President has been surrounded with visitors from the moment he could appear to them, after refreshing himself with clean linen, etc. All the Virginia delegation, and a number of others, have just left, and he has retired upon a dose of hydrargum,1 quite tired out with the fatigues of the day; but he is in a stronger condition to bear up than for many a day, and looks well. They are all looking to him in the settlement of the vexed question. His superiority over everybody else is felt and admitted by all.

It would interest you to see how deferentially they gather around him. They will make him president of the Convention, I presume, from what I hear; but whether he will accept or not, is a question which his feelings at the time will determine. All of the South or border States will enter upon the deliberations with very little expectation of saving the Union, I think—there seems such a fixed determination to do mischief on the part of the Black Republicans. General Scott's absurd and high-handed course here in Washington is very much condemned. The rumor to-day is afloat that he is collecting there troops to overawe Virginia and Maryland. If the President concludes so, upon observation, I think he will recommend the Governor of Virginia to send five thousand troops at once to Alexandria to stand on the defensive side, and overawe General Scott's menacing attitude; but this is entre nous, and a "State secret."

We are very handsomely accommodated here—private parlors, etc. I left the children at home well, and, as you may suppose, everybody charged concerning them. Maria and Mrs. Clopton will keep a constant look-out and watch. . . .

The President's centre-table is loaded with correspondence from every quarter. There seems to be a general looking to him by those anxious to save the Union. I wish it might be possible for him to succeed in overcoming all obstacles. They all say, if through him it cannot be accomplished, it could not be through any one else. Mr. Rives remarked this evening that it was admitted his influence in the country at this time is in advance of all others. Mr. Barringer, of North Carolina, said to me to-day in the cars: "President Tyler has had the great happiness accorded him of living to see himself fully appreciated. All party feelings have faded away, and his old enemies are among his warmest friends."
_______________

1 Mercury. The correct spelling is hydrargyrum.

SOURCE: Lyon Gardiner Tyler, The Letters and Times of the Tylers, Volume 2, p. 596-7

Saturday, May 13, 2023

Lieutenant-General William T. Sherman to Andrew Johnson, January 31, 1868

CONFIDENTIAL.

LIBRARY ROOM, WAR DEPARTMENT,        
WASHINGTON, D.C., Jan. 31, 1868.
TO THE PRESIDENT:

Since our interview of yesterday I have given the subject of our conversation all my thoughts, and I beg you will pardon my reducing the result to writing.

My personal preferences, if expressed, were to be allowed to return to St. Louis to resume my present command; because my command was important, large, suited to my rank and inclination, and because my family was well provided for there, in house facilities, schools, living, and agreeable society.

Whilst, on the other hand, Washington was for many (to me) good reasons highly objectionable. Especially because it is the political capital of the country and focus of intrigue, gossip, and slander. Your personal preferences were, as expressed, to make a new department East adequate to my rank, with headquarters at Washington, and to assign me to its command — to remove my family here, and to avail myself of its schools, etc.; to remove Mr. Stanton from his office as Secretary of War, and have me to discharge the duties.

To effect this removal two modes were indicated: to simply cause him to quit the War Office building and notify the Treasury Department and the Army Staff Departments no longer to respect him as Secretary of War; or to remove him, and submit my name to the Senate for confirmation. Permit me to discuss these points a little, and I will premise by saying that I have spoken to no one on the subject, and have not even seen Mr. Ewing, Mr. Stanberry, or General Grant since I was with you.

It has been the rule and custom of our army since the organization of the Government that the second officer of the army should be at the second (in importance) command, and remote from general headquarters. To bring me to Washington would put three heads to an army, yourself, General Grant, and myself,— and we would be more than human if we were not to differ. In my judgment it would ruin the army, and would be fatal to one or two of us.

Generals Scott and Taylor proved themselves soldiers and patriots in the field, but Washington was fatal to both. This city and the influences that centred here defeated every army that had its head here from 1861 to 1865, and would have overwhelmed General Grant at Spottsylvania and Petersburg had he not been fortified by a strong reputation already hard earned, and because no one then living coveted the place. Whereas in the West we made progress from the start, because there was no political capital near enough to poison our minds and kindle into light that craving itching for fame which has killed more good men than bullets. I have been with General Grant in the midst of death and slaughter when the howls of people reached him after Shiloh; when messengers were speeding to and fro between his army and Washington, bearing slanders to induce his removal before he took Vicksburg; in Chattanooga, when the soldiers were stealing the corn of the starving mules to satisfy their own hunger; at Nashville, when he was ordered to the "forlorn hope" to command the army of the Potomac, so often defeated and yet I never saw him more troubled than since he has been in Washington, and been compelled to read himself a "sneak and deceiver," based on reports of four of the Cabinet, and apparently with your knowledge. If this political atmosphere can disturb the equanimity of one so guarded and so prudent as he is, what will be the result with one so careless, so outspoken as I am? Therefore, with my consent, Washington never.

As to the Secretary of War, his office is twofold. As Cabinet officer he should not be there without your hearty, cheerful consent, and I believe that is the judgment and opinion of every fair-minded man. As the holder of a civil office, having the supervision of monies appropriated by Congress, and of contracts for army supplies, I do think Congress, or the Senate by delegation from Congress, has a lawful right to be consulted. At all events, I would not risk a suit or contest on that phase of the question. The Law of Congress of March 2, 1867, prescribing the manner in which orders and instructions relating to "Military Movements" shall reach the army gives you, as Constitutional Commander-in-Chief, the very power you want to exercise, and enables you to prevent the Secretary from making any such orders and instructions, and consequently he cannot control the army, but is limited and restricted to a duty that an auditor of the Treasury could perform. You certainly can afford to await the result. The executive power is not weakened, but, rather, strengthened. Surely he is not such an obstruction as would warrant violence or even a show of force which could produce the very reaction and clamor that he hopes for, to save him from the absurdity of holding an empty office "for the safety of the country."

With great respect,
Yours truly,
W. T. SHERMAN.

SOURCE: Rachel Sherman Thorndike, Editor, The Sherman Letters: Correspondence Between General and Senator Sherman from 1837 to 1891, p. 300-3

Friday, September 9, 2022

Senator John Sherman to William T. Sherman, January 6, 1861

WASHINGTON, D.C., Jan. 6, 1861.

DEAR BROTHER: . . . I see some signs of hope, but it is probably a deceptive light. The very moment you feel uncomfortable in your position in Louisiana, come away. Don't for God's sake subject yourself to any slur, reproach, or indignity. I have spoken to General Scott, and he heartily seconds your desire to return to duty in the army. I am not at all sure but that, if you were here, you could get a position that would suit you. I see many of your friends of the army daily. . .

SOURCE: Walter L. Fleming, General W.T. Sherman as College President, p. 331

William T. Sherman to Ellen Ewing Sherman, January 13, 1861

SEMINARY, Jan. 13, 1861.

 . . . I see no change to note here in public sentiment, the fact that Seward has been named as secretary of state to Lincoln enables the leaders to show that their suspicions were right that the Republicans and abolitionists are identical. I am therefore confirmed in my opinion that the cotton states are off and it is an even chance with all the slave states. I take the Missouri Republican and National Intelligencer which seem to oppose secession but they cannot stem the torrent.

The revolution has begun and the national government has shown weakness in all its attempts. Anderson is the only one who has acted. General Scott in sending reinforcements ought not to have trusted the Star of the West, the same in which we went to California some [seven?] years ago. She could not venture to receive a fire. Frigates and strong war steamers should have gone, which could have forced their way past the land batteries. I hope still this will be done. It will be a triumph to South Carolina to beat Uncle Sam.

Still Charleston is nothing to New Orleans and I am satisfied the forts at the mouth1 and the lakes2 will be taken by order of Governor Moore of this state before they can be occupied by the U.S. All these are acts of War has begun. And it is idle to say the South is not in earnest. Louisiana has not yet seceded, yet the delegates favorable to such a course are elected, even in New Orleans where the Union feeling is thought to be strongest. I have no doubt that ultimately I will be turned off as unfaithful, but I must see my way clearer than I yet can before I leave from choice. . .
_______________

1 Of the Mississippi. – ED.

2 Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Borgne. – ED.

SOURCE: Walter L. Fleming, General W.T. Sherman as College President, p. 332-3

Tuesday, April 5, 2022

Diary of Gideon Welles: Wednesday, May 10, 1865

Senator Sumner called on me. We had a long conversation on matters pertaining to the affairs of Fort Sumter. He has been selected to deliver an oration on Mr. Lincoln's death to the citizens of Boston, and desired to post himself in some respects. I told him the influence of the Blairs, and especially of the elder, had done much to strengthen Mr. Lincoln in that matter, while Seward and General Scott had opposed.

Sumner assures me Chase has gone into Rebeldom to promote negro suffrage. I have no doubt that Chase has that and other schemes for Presidential preferment in hand in this voyage. S. says that President Johnson is aware of his (Chase's) object in behalf of the negroes, and favors the idea of their voting. On this point I am skeptical. He would not oppose any such movement, were any State to make it. I so expressed myself to Sumner, and he assented but intended to say the negroes were the people.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 304

Wednesday, December 15, 2021

Diary of Brigadier-General Rutherford B. Hayes: Sunday, December 25, 1864

A pleasant and “merry Christmas.” A good dinner. Captain Nye, Lieutenants Turner and Stanley, Dr. Webb, Majors Carey, Twenty-third, and McKown, Thirteenth. Wine, oysters, turkey, etc., etc. Read through [General Winfield] Scott's “Autobiography.” Weak and vain beyond compare.

SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 552

Saturday, October 10, 2020

Diary of Private Daniel L. Ambrose: Tuesday, April 8, 1862

Oh! what a terrible scene does Shiloh's field present this morning. It is a scene of death; its victims lay everywhere. The blood of about thirteen thousand warriors has been shed here in the last two days. My God! what a sacrifice, what a flow of blood. But liberty has claimed it for an emancipated mind, and may it water well the great tree of universal freedom, and cause it to extend its branches fosteringly over a struggling people. In these two days of battle the Seventh sustained a heavy loss. The following are the casualties: 

Major R. Rowett, wounded. 

Company A. — Captain Samuel G. Ward, killed; private Alden Bates, killed. 

Company B. — Captain Hector Perrin, wounded; private Charles Newton, killed; Michael O'Keep, killed. 

Company C. — Sergeant George Mitchell, killed; Samuel Wilson, wounded. 

Company D. — Private Andrew McKinnon, killed. 

Company E. — Private Edmund Keve, wounded. 

Company F. — Killed; private Isaac Britton. Mortally Wounded ; privates John Jackson, Chas. P. Laing, John P. Hale. Wounded ; Wallace Partridge, John Dell, James Harrington, Hugh H. Porter, John Larkin, James Close. 

Company G. — Private John Gibland, killed; Captain Henry W. Allen, wounded ; private George Harris, wounded. 

Company H. — Lieutenant Leo Wash. Myres, killed ; private John H. Duff, killed ; private Ernst H. Myres, wounded; private Charles Ward, wounded; Sergeant Laban Wheeler, wounded; private James Walker, wounded; private Geo. W. Fletcher, wounded; private Carol Hurt, wounded; private Thomas Taylor, wounded; private Charlie Halbert; wounded; private Elam Mills, wounded. 

Company I. — Corporal Seth Hamilton, killed ; private John Bollyjack, killed ; private James Craven, killed; private James Lacy, killed; Sergeant Charles M. Fellows, wounded; private James Crowley, wounded; private John Johnson, wounded; private George Marsh, wounded; private Wm. S. Rogers ; wounded; private Michael Toner, wounded; private George Vesey, wounded; private George W. Byron, wounded; private Marcus McKinnis, wounded; private Daniel J. Baker, wounded. 

Company K. — Private John Nixon, killed; private Charles P. Huffman, wounded; private Jacob Howe, wounded ; Sergeant J. B. Sanders, wounded ; Sergeant Wm. C. Gillson, wounded; private John M. Anderson, wounded; private Thos. J. R. Grant, wounded; private Green B. Johnson, wounded; private George Reiner, wounded; private Joseph White, wounded. Total killed, 14; total wonnded, 43; sum total of casualities, 57. 

Glorious record! Proud names! Yes, proud as any that will ever embellish our national escutcheon. Departed souls, as courageous as history can boast of. From Shiloh's dark wilderness, no nobler, no braver spirit took its flight into the skies than the spirit of Captain Ward, of Company A. He fell mortally wounded in the fiercest of the battle Sunday evening, while at the head of his company, cheering his men on to deeds of valor. Some of his company stop to carry him from the field; but while glory is beaming in the dying warrior's eye, he says to his gallant men: “There goes the flag; it will need all its noble defenders to hold it up in the terrible battle that is raging so fiercely. Boys, it is trembling now! Lay me down to die; leave me and follow the old Seventh's silken folds, and tell the boys of Company A, that ere the sun's light is hid from this field, their Captain will be no more; that I will be silently sleeping in death. Tell them to remember Captain Ward, and keep the old flag in the wind.” 

Fainting he falls; his features lose their glow; his eyes are closed forever to the light. Alone, he died—died in his glory. Noble sacrifices may be offered in this war for the Union, but no nobler sacrifice, no grander type of a man, of a soldier, will ever be offered than has been offered in Captain Samuel G. Ward, of Company A. Captain Ward was among the first to hearken to the first call of the President in April, 1861. From a private in Company A, he was promoted by Colonel Cook to Sergeant Major of the regiment. At the end of the three months' service, Sergeant Major Ward was unanimously chosen Captain of Company A, in which position he served faithfully until liberty claimed him as a sacrifice on Shiloh's field, April 6th, 1862. Every one saw in him the elements of a rising officer; a star that was already shining, the light of which would have been seen afar had not the wild tempest blown it out so early. Though he passed away in youth's hopeful morning, ere his aspirations were reached, immortality's royal messenger will take up his name, and while soft winds chant a requiem around his grave, will say of him: “Here sleeps Captain Ward, whom liberty claimed in its great struggle on Shiloh's plain. He lived, he died, for country, home, and flag.” 

Lieutenant Leo Washington Myres, of Company H, died as the warriors die-nobly. He stood manfully while the bolts of war around him rattled, but he is a silent sleeper now. Amid shooting flames and curling smoke, he bravely sacrificed his life—sacrificed it as one of the martyrs of freedom. Being among the first to rush to the standard when arch treason first lifted its mad head, he was elected Second Lieutenant of Company H, and at the end of the three months' service, he was unanimously chosen First Lieutenant, in which capacity he valiantly served until his life was sealed at Shiloh, April 6th, 1862. 

In the wild storm that swept over that field, no truer patriot soldier was borne down than Lieutenant Myres. As a lover of liberty he followed the flag southward and stood beneath its folds where the gulf winds blew across the plains of Mexico. With Taylor and Scott, he fought for it there. With Wallace he died for it down by the Tennesssee. Oh ! how can it be that stars that gave such brilliant light should go out so soon. The providences of God are indeed mysterious. 

But all died in their glory. Sergeant Mitchell, company C, Corporal Seth Hamilton, company I, privates Alden Bates, company A, John H. Duff, company H, Charles Newton, Company B, Andrew McKennon, company D, Isaac Britton, company F, John Gibland, company G, Corporal J. Nixon, company K, and many others, died crowned with laurels as bright as the midnight stars. Though they carried the musket, we will ascribe no less praise to them, for heroes they proved themselves to be. From Thermopylæ to Shiloh, the world has never produced grander types of gallantry than has been produced in these private soldiers, who fell on this battle-field. Of all the fallen of the Seventh who went down in Shiloh's two days of battle, I can only say of them as Mark Anthony said of Julias Cæsar, “Their lives were grand; the elements so mixed in them that all the world might stand up and say, they were men; they were heroes; they were soldiers.” 

While on the battle-field, Sergeant S. F. Flint, Company I, writes: 

Soft fall the dews of midnight and morning, 
O’er the green hills where slumber the brave, 
Fall on each nameless and desolate grave; 
And soft be the song of the slow flowing river, 
As it pours by the shores they have hallowed forever. 

In peace and off duty the soldier is sleeping, 
No more will he wake at the shrill reveille, 
As it rings through the vales of the old Tennessee; 
But the wail of the wind, and the roll of the river, 
As it thrills o'er the hills his requiem forever, 

Oh! the homes in their own northern prairies and valleys, 
More lonely and dark than those desolate graves, 
O! the wailings that answer the winds and the waves ; 
O! the tears that will flow like the fall of the river, 
As it swells through the dells where they slumber forever. 

But lift up the old flag they died in defending, 
And swear by each nameless but glorious grave, 
That hallowed with triumph its free folds shall wave 
O'er the hills and the vales and the bright flowing river, 
O'er the whole lovely land of our fathers forever. 

We will now pass to yonder hospital steamer. The Seventh's wounded lay here; among the noble company lies the gallant Captain Hector Perrin, wounded badly in the thigh. Though a son of France, he loved freedom, and being one from the school of La Fayette, he fought bravely on Shiloh's field. Among this company we find heroes, all of whom have shown and yet show that they have in them the element of steel. Patiently and silently they endure their suffering. Who ever witnessed such fortitude ? The world will fail in its annals of blood to exhibit grander types. Some have lost a leg, others have frightful wounds in the face; but these are their patents of nobility. Dr. Hamilton, our popular Assistant Surgeon, as ever, has a care for the unfortunate ones. He is now, with his usual promptness, preparing to send them north. Some of them will never return again; but may a grateful people open wide to them their generous hearts, and leave them not to drift through the world in storm. Returning we mingle with the living. Of the noble survivors we can only say of them, they did well; they played their part as nobly as the most gallant warriors have ever done on any battle-field. In these two days of battle Major Rowett, who is now in his tent slightly wounded, but prostrated upon his cot, worn out by excessive toil, proved himself worthy the leadership of brave men. Where danger most threatened, there he was always found. None moved amid the carnage with a more dashing force. Full of fire and life, with a reckless contempt for danger, he stemmed the wild storm. He was wounded twice and had his horse shot but nothing could check him. At the head of his regiment he was always found, and it is conceded by those who knew, that no regimental commander handled his command on Shiloh's field better than Major Rowett handled the Seventh, At no time was the regiment driven into confusion, though many times its line was broken, but each time was reformed promptly, and be it said to the credit of the regiment, not a prisoner was taken in consequence of straggling. Captain Monroe, acting Major, has won the encomiums of all. Fight and battle seem to be his element. He carries with him triumph and glory. Enthusiastic as are all the brave, his voice was ever heard cheering the men and telling them never to let the flag go down. Captains Lawyer, Hunter, Estabrook, Church, Lieutenants Ring, Smith, Roberts, Ellis, Sullivan, Sweeny and Ahern were ever foremost in the battle and ever found encouraging their men, bidding them to stand firm for the flag and freedom. The color bearer, Sergeant Coles Barney, of company H, won for himself the admiration of his officers and comrades, for the gallant manner in which he bore his banner through the wild tempest. 

But all were brave, and all fought valiantly. They marched in blood, and threw themselves against arch treason until the Union's proud banner waved upon a triumphant field. At times it was fearfully dark, and the flag seemed to droop, but our noble men stood around it, and while blood was ebbing, they formed a defense of steel backed by hearts that never faltered. And thus defended, their flag, the pride of the mighty millions, shed glorious light around the noble men of the Seventh. 

Large parties are now at work burying the dead of both armies. Shiloh will be one vast grave-yard, but it will be destitute of marble slabs. Hundreds of Union soldiers will sleep here, and in the years to come, the patriot pilgrims will tread the earth above them, and know not that beneath sleeps Shiloh's martyrs. But should they chance to see some graves that are arched, so that they can be recognized as the graves of the lone soldiers, they will not know whether the sleepers fought for or against the old flag, and the friends of the loved and lost will not know upon which graves to throw their flowers or drop their tears, 

SOURCES: Daniel Leib Ambrose, History of the Seventh Regiment Illinois Volunteer Infantry, p. 57-65

Thursday, December 5, 2019

Brigadier-General Benjamin F. Butler to Major-General Robert Patterson, May 1, 1861

DRAFT.
Dept. of Annapolis, May 1st, 1861
Major General PATTERSON

SIR: You will find enclosed an open letter from General Scott.

General Scott is mistaken in his information in regard to the reinforcement of McHenry. I will do so however, tomorrow, with the right wing of Col. Hartrauft's regiment, about 500 men, unless I receive orders from you not so to do. Genl. Scott evidently supposes it to be done. I have the provisions for their subsistence. We are now in receipt of full supplies save camp equipage in which we cannot much aid Washington.

If any different disposition has been made at McHenry please send word by telegraph as follows, “Do not see Henry.” I shall understand it, and not go forward; otherwise I shall send reinforcements tomorrow. Can you send me 100,000 caps for the musket.

Truly your most obt. servant,
(BENJ. F. BUTLER)

SOURCE: Jessie Ames Marshall, Editor, Private and Official Correspondence of Gen. Benjamin F. Butler During the Period of the Civil War, Volume 1: April 1860 – June 1862, p. 61

Wednesday, December 4, 2019

Diary of William Howard Russell: July 21, 1861

Punctual to time, our carriage appeared at the door, with a spare horse, followed by the black quadruped on which the negro boy sat with difficulty, in consequence of its high spirits and excessively hard mouth. I swallowed a cup of tea and a morsel of bread, put the remainder of the tea into a bottle, got a flask of light Bordeaux, a bottle of water, a paper of sandwiches, and having replenished my small flask with brandy, stowed them all away in the bottom of the gig; but my friend, who is not accustomed to rise very early in the morning, did not make his appearance, and I was obliged to send several times to the Legation to quicken his movements. Each time I was assured he would be over presently; but it was not till two hours had elapsed, and when I had just resolved to leave him behind, that he appeared in person, quite unprovided with viaticum, so that my slender store had now to meet demands of two instead of one. We are off at last. The amicus and self find contracted space behind the driver. The negro boy, grinning half with pain and u the balance with pleasure, as the Americans say, held on his rampant charger, which made continual efforts to leap into the gig, and thus through the deserted city we proceeded towards the Long Bridge, where a sentry examined our papers, and said with a grin, You'll find plenty of congressmen on before you.” And then our driver whipped his horses through the embankment of Fort Runyon, and dashed off along a country road, much cut up with gun and cart-wheels, towards the main turnpike.

The promise of a lovely day, given by the early dawn, was likely to be realized to the fullest, and the placid beauty of the scenery as we drove through the woods below Arlington, and beheld the white buildings shining in the early sunlight, and the Potomac, like a broad silver ribbon dividing the picture breathed of peace. The silence close to the city was unbroken. From the time we passed the guard beyond the Long Bridge, for several miles, we did not meet a human being, except a few soldiers in the neighborhood of the deserted camps, and when we passed beyond the range of tents we drove for nearly two hours through a densely-wooded, undulating country; the houses, close to the roadside, shut up and deserted, window-high in the crops of Indian corn, fast ripening for the sickle; alternate field and forest, the latter generally still holding possession of the hollows, and, except when the road, deep and filled with loose stones, passed over the summit of the ridges, the eye caught on either side little but fir-trees and maize, and the deserted wooden houses, standing amidst the slave-quarters.

The residences close to the lines gave signs and tokens that the Federals had recently visited them. But at the best of times the inhabitants could not be very well off. Some of the farms were small, the houses tumbling to decay, with unpainted roofs and sidewalls, and windows where the want of glass was supplemented by panes of wood. As we get farther into the country the traces of the debatable land between the two armies vanished, and negroes looked out from their quarters, or sickly-looking women and children were summoned forth by the rattle of the wheels to see who was hurrying to the war. Now and then a white man looked out, with an ugly scowl on his face, but the country seemed drained of the adult male population, and such of the inhabitants as we saw were neither as comfortably dressed nor as healthy-looking as the shambling slaves who shuffled about the plantations. The road was so cut up by gun-wheels, ammunition and commissariat wagons, that our horses made but slow way against the continual draft upon the collar; but at last the driver, who had known the country in happier times, announced that we had entered the high-road for Fairfax Court House. Unfortunately my watch had gone down, but I guessed it was then a little before nine o'clock. In a few minutes afterwards I thought I heard, through the eternal clatter and jingle of the old gig, a sound which made me call the driver to stop. He pulled up, and we listened. In a minute or so, the well-known boom of a gun, followed by two or three in rapid succession, but at a considerable distance, reached my ear. “Did you hear that?” The driver heard nothing, nor did my companion, but the black boy on the led-horse, with eyes starting out of his head, cried, “I hear them, massa; I hear them, sure enough, like de gun in de navy yard;” and as he spoke the thudding noise, like taps with a gentle hand upon a muffled drum, were repeated, which were heard both by Mr. Warre and the driver. “They are at it! We shall be late! Drive on as fast as you can!” We rattled on still faster, and presently came up to a farmhouse, where a man and woman, with some negroes beside them, were standing out by the hedgerow above us, looking up the road in the direction of a cloud of dust, which we could see rising above the tops of the trees. We halted for a moment. “How long have the guns been going, sir?” “Well, ever since early this morning,” said he; “they've been having a fight. And I do really believe some of our poor Union chaps have had enough of it already. For here's some of them darned Secessionists marching down to go into Alexandery.” The driver did not seem altogether content with this explanation of the dust in front of us, and presently, when a turn of the road brought to view a body of armed men, stretching to an interminable distance, with bayonets glittering in the sunlight through the clouds of dust, seemed inclined to halt or turn back again. A nearer approach satisfied me they were friends, and as soon as we came up with the head of the column I saw that they could not be engaged in the performance of any military duty. The men were marching without any resemblance of order, in twos and threes or larger troops. Some without arms, carrying great bundles on their backs; others with their coats hung from their firelocks; many footsore. They were all talking, and in haste; many plodding along laughing, so I concluded that they could not belong to a defeated army, and imagined McDowell was effecting some flank movement. “Where are you going to, may I ask?”

“If this is the road to Alexandria, we are going there.”

“There is an action going on in front, is there not?”

“Well, so we believe, but we have not been fighting.”

Although they were in such good spirits, they were not communicative, and we resumed our journey, impeded by the straggling troops and by the country cars containing their baggage and chairs, and tables and domestic furniture, which had never belonged to a regiment in the field. Still they came pouring on. I ordered, the driver to stop at a rivulet, where a number of men were seated in the shade, drinking the water and bathing their hands and feet. On getting out I asked an officer, “May I beg to know, sir, where your regiment is going to?” “Well, I reckon, sir, we are going home to Pennsylvania.” “This is the 4th Pennsylvania Regiment, is it not, sir?” “It is so, sir; that's the fact.” “I should think there is severe fighting going on behind you, judging from the firing?” (for every moment the sound of the cannon had been growing more distinct and more heavy). “Well, I reckon, sir, there is.” I paused for a moment, not knowing what to say, and yet anxious for an explanation; and the epauletted gentleman, after a few seconds' awkward hesitation, added, “We are going home because, as you see, the men's time's up, sir. We have had three months of this sort of work, and that's quite enough of it.” The men who were listening to the conversation expressed their assent to the noble and patriotic utterances of the centurion, and, making him a low bow, we resumed our journey.

It was fully three and a half miles before the last of the regiment passed, and then the road presented a more animated scene, for white-covered commissariat wagons were visible, wending towards the front, and one or two hack carriages, laden with civilians, were hastening in the same direction. Before the doors of the wooden farm-houses the colored people were assembled, listening with outstretched necks to the repeated reports of the guns. At one time, as we were descending the wooded road, a huge blue dome, agitated by some internal convulsion, appeared to bar our progress, and it was only after infinite persuasion of rein and whip that the horses approached the terrific object, which was an inflated balloon, attached to a wagon, and defying the efforts of the men in charge to jockey it safely through the trees.

It must have been about eleven o'clock when we came to the first traces of the Confederate camp, in front of Fairfax Court House, where they had cut a few trenches and levelled the trees across the road, so as to form a rude abattis; but the works were of a most superficial character, and would scarcely have given cover either to the guns, for which embrasures were left at the flanks to sweep the road, or to the infantry intended to defend them.

The Confederate force stationed here must have consisted, to a considerable extent, of cavalry. The bowers of branches, which, they had made to shelter their tents, camp-tables, empty boxes, and packing-cases, in the debris one usually sees around an encampment, showed they had not been destitute of creature comforts.

Some time before noon the driver, urged continually by adjurations to get on, whipped his horses into Fairfax Court House, a village which derives its name from a large brick building, in which the sessions of the county are held. Some thirty or forty houses, for the most part detached, with gardens or small strips of land about them, form the main street. The inhabitants who remained had by no means an agreeable expression of countenance, and did not seem on very good terms with the Federal soldiers, who were lounging up and down the streets, or standing in the shade of the trees and doorways. I asked the sergeant of a picket in the street how long the firing had been going on. He replied that it had commenced at half-past seven or eight, and had been increasing ever since. “Some of them will lose their eyes and back teeth,” he added, “before it is over.” The driver, pulling up at a roadside inn in the town, here made the startling announcement, that both he and his horses must have something to eat, and although we would have been happy to join him, seeing that we had no breakfast, we could not afford the time, and were not displeased when a thin-faced, shrewish woman, in black, came out into the veranda, and said she could not let us have anything unless we liked to wait till the regular dinner hour of the house, which was at one o'clock. The horses got a bucket of water, which they needed in that broiling sun; and the cannonade, which by this time had increased into a respectable tumult that gave evidence of a well-sustained action, added vigor to the driver's arm, and in a mile or two more we dashed in to a village of burnt houses, the charred brick chimney stacks standing amidst the blackened embers being all that remained of what once was Germantown. The firing of this village was severely censured by General McDowell, who probably does not appreciate the value of such agencies employed “by our glorious Union army to develop loyal sentiments among the people of Virginia.”

The driver, passing through the town, drove straight on, but after some time I fancied the sound of the guns seemed dying away towards our left. A big negro came shambling along the roadside — the driver stopped and asked him, “is this the road to Centreville?” “Yes, sir; right on, sir; good road to Centreville, massa,” and so we proceeded, till I became satisfied from the appearance of the road that we had altogether left the track of the army. At the first cottage we halted, and inquired of a Virginian, who came out to look at us, whether the road led to Centreville. “You're going to Centreville, are you?” “Yes, by the shortest road we can.” “Well, then — you're going wrong—right away! Some people say there's a bend of road leading through the wood a mile farther on, but those who have tried it lately have come back to Germantown and don't think it leads to Centreville at all.” This was very provoking, as the horses were much fatigued and we had driven several miles out of our way. The driver, who was an Englishman, said, “I think it would be best for us to go on and try the road anyhow. There's not likely to be any Seceshers about there, are there, sir?”

“What did you say, sir,” inquired the Virginian, with a vacant stare upon his face.

“I merely asked whether you think we are likely to meet with any Secessionists if we go along that road?”

“Secessionists!” repeated the Virginian, slowly pronouncing each syllable as if pondering on the meaning of the word — “Secessionists! Oh no, sir; I don't believe there's such a thing as a Secessionist in the whole of this country.”

The boldness of this assertion, in the very hearing of Beauregard's cannon, completely shook the faith of our Jehu in any information from that source, and we retraced our steps to Germantown, and were directed into the proper road by some negroes, who were engaged exchanging Confederate money at very low rates for Federal copper with a few straggling soldiers. The faithful Muley Moloch, who had been capering in our rear so long, now complained that he was very much burned, but on further inquiry it was ascertained he was merely suffering from the abrading of his skin against an English saddle.

In an hour more we had gained the high road to Centreville, on which were many buggies, commissariat carts, and wagons full of civilians, and a brisk canter brought us in sight of a rising ground, over which the road led directly through a few houses on each side, and dipped out of sight, the slopes of the hill being covered with men, carts, and horses, and the summit crested with spectators, with their back turned towards us, and gazing on the valley beyond. “There's Centreville,” says the driver, and on our poor panting horses were forced, passing directly through the Confederate bivouacs, commissariat parks, folds of oxen, and two German regiments, with a battery of artillery, halting on the rising-ground by the road-side. The heat was intense. Our driver complained of hunger and thirst, to which neither I nor my companion were insensible; and so pulling up on the top of the hill, I sent the boy down to the village which we had passed, to see if he could find shelter for the horses, and a morsel for our breakfastless selves.

It was a strange scene before us. From the hill a densely wooded country, dotted at intervals with green fields and cleared lands, spread five or six miles in front, bounded by a line of blue and purple ridges, terminating abruptly in escarpment towards the left front, and swelling gradually towards the right into the lower spines of an offshoot from the Blue Ridge Mountains. On our left the view was circumscribed by a forest which clothed the side of the ridge on which we stood, and covered its shoulder far down into the plain. A gap in the nearest chain of the hills in our front was pointed out by the by-standers as the Pass of Manassas, by which the railway from the West is carried into the plain, and still nearer at hand, before us, is the junction of that rail with the line from Alexandria, and with the railway leading southwards to Richmond. The intervening space was not a deal level; undulating lines of forest, marked the course of the streams which intersected it, and gave, by their variety of color and shading an additional charm to the landscape which, enclosed in a framework of blue and purple hills, softened into violet in the extreme distance, presented one of the most agreeable displays of simple pastoral woodland scenery that could be conceived.

But the sounds which came upon the breeze, and the sights which met our eyes, were in terrible variance with the tranquil character of the landscape. The woods far and near echoed to the roar of cannon, and thin frayed lines of blue smoke marked the spots whence came the muttering sound of rolling musketry; the white puffs of smoke burst high above the tree-tops, and the gunners' rings from shell and howitzer marked the fire of the artillery.

Clouds of dust shifted and moved through the forest; and through the wavering mists of light-blue smoke, and the thicker masses which rose commingling from the feet of men and the mouths of cannon, I could see the gleam of arms and the twinkling of bayonets.

On the hill beside me there was a crowd of civilians on horseback, and in all sorts of vehicles, with a few of the fairer, if not gentler sex. A few officers and some soldiers, who had straggled from the regiments in reserve, moved about among the spectators, and pretended to explain the movements of the troops below, of which they were profoundly ignorant.

The cannonade and musketry had been exaggerated by the distance and by the rolling echoes of the hills; and sweeping the position narrowly with my glass from point to point, I failed to discover any traces of close encounter or very severe fighting. The spectators were all excited, and a lady with an opera-glass who was near me, was quite beside herself when an unusually heavy discharge roused the current of her blood — “That is splendid. Oh, my! Is not that first-rate? I guess we will be in Richmond this time to-morrow.” These, mingled with coarser exclamations, burst from the politicians who had come out to see the triumph of the Union arms. I was particularly irritated by constant applications for the loan of my glass. One broken-down looking soldier observing my flask, asked me for a drink, and took a startling pull, which left but little between the bottom and utter vacuity.

“Stranger, that's good stuff and no mistake. I have not had such a drink since I come South. I feel now as if I’d like to whip ten Seceshers.”

From the line of the smoke it appeared to me that the action was in an oblique line from our left, extending farther outwards towards the right, bisected by a road from Centreville, which descended the hill close at hand and ran right across the undulating plain, its course being marked by the white covers of the baggage and commissariat wagons as far as a turn of the road, where the trees closed in upon them. Beyond the right of the curling smoke clouds of dust appeared from time to time in the distance, as if bodies of cavalry were moving over a sandy plain.

Notwithstanding all the exultation and boastings of the people at Centreville, I was well convinced no advance of any importance or any great success had been achieved, because the ammunition and baggage wagons had never moved, nor had the reserves received any orders to follow in the line of the army.

The clouds of dust on the right were quite inexplicable. As we were looking, my philosophic companion asked me in perfect seriousness, “Are we really seeing a battle now? Are they supposed to be fighting where all that smoke is going on? This is rather interesting, you know.”

Up came our black boy. “Not find a bit to eat, sir, in all the place.” We had, however, my little paper of sandwiches, and descended the hill to a by-lane off the village, where, seated in the shade of the gig, Mr. Warre and myself, dividing our provision with the driver, wound up a very scanty, but much relished, repast with a bottle of tea and half the bottle of Bordeaux and water, the remainder being prudently reserved at my request for contingent remainders. Leaving orders for the saddle-horse, which was eating his first meal, to be brought up the moment he was ready — I went with Mr Warre to the hill once more and observed that the line had not sensibly altered whilst we were away.

An English gentleman, who came up flushed and heated from the plain, told us that the Federals had been advancing steadily, in spite of a stubborn resistance, and had behaved most gallantly.

Loud cheers suddenly burst from the spectators, as a man dressed in the uniform of an officer, whom I had seen riding violently across the plain in an open space below, galloped along the front, waving his cap and shouting at the top of his voice. He was brought up by the press of people round his horse close to where I stood. “We've whipped them on all points,” he cried. “We have taken all their batteries. They are retreating as fast as they can, and we are after, them.” Such cheers as rent the welkin! The congressmen shook hands with each other, and cried out, “Bully for us. Bravo! didn't I tell you so.” The Germans uttered their martial cheers and the Irish hurrahed wildly. At this moment my horse was brought up the hill, and I mounted and turned towards the road to the front, whilst Mr. Warre and his companion proceeded straight down the hill.

By the time I reached the lane, already mentioned, which was in a few minutes, the string of commissariat wagons was moving onwards pretty briskly, and I was detained until my friends appeared at the roadside. I told Mr. Warre I was going forward to the front as fast as I could, but that I would come back, under any circumstances, about an hour before dusk, and would go straight to the spot where we had put up the gig by the road-side, in order to return to Washington. Then getting into the fields, I pressed my horse, which was quite recovered from his twenty-seven miles' ride and full of spirit and mettle, as fast as I could, making detours here and there to get through the ox fences, and by the small streams which cut up the country. The firing did not increase but rather diminished in volume, though it now sounded close at hand.

I had ridden between three and a half and four miles, as well as I could judge, when I was obliged to turn for the third and fourth time into the road by a considerable stream, which was spanned by a bridge, towards which I was threading my way, when my attention was attracted by loud shouts in advance, and I perceived several wagons coming from the direction of the battle-field, the drivers of which were endeavoring to force their horses past the ammunition carts going in the contrary direction near the bridge; a thick cloud of dust rose behind them, and running by the side of the wagons, were a number of men in uniform whom I supposed to be the guard. My first impression was that the wagons were returning for fresh supplies of ammunition. But every moment the crowd increased, drivers and men cried out with the most vehement gestures, “Turn back! Turn back! We are whipped.” They seized the heads of the horses and swore at the opposing drivers. Emerging from the crowd a breathless man in the uniform of an officer with an empty scabbard dangling by his side, was cut off by getting between my horse and a cart for a moment. “What is the matter, sir? What is all this about?” “Why it means we are pretty badly whipped, that's the truth,” and continued.

By this time the confusion had been communicating itself through the line of wagons towards the rear, and the drivers endeavored to turn round their vehicles in the narrow road, which caused the usual amount of imprecations from the men and plunging and kicking from the horses.

The crowd from the front continually increased, the heat, the uproar, and the dust were beyond description, and these were augmented when some cavalry soldiers, flourishing their sabres and preceded by an officer who cried out, “Make way there — make way there for the General,” attempted to force a covered wagon in which was seated a man with a bloody handkerchief round his head through the press.

I had succeeded in getting across the bridge with great difficulty before the wagon came up, and I saw the crowd on the road was still gathering thicker and thicker. Again I asked an officer, who was on foot, with his sword under his arm, “What is all this for?” “We are whipped, sir. We are all in retreat. You are all to go back.” “Can you tell me where I can find General McDowell?” “No! nor can any one else.”

A few shells could be heard bursting not very far off, but there was nothing to account for such an extraordinary scene. A third officer, however, confirmed the report that the whole army was in retreat, and that the Federals were beaten on all points, but there was nothing in this disorder to indicate a general rout. All these things took place in a few seconds. I got up out of the road into a corn-field, through which men were hastily walking or running, their faces streaming with perspiration, and generally without arms, and worked my way for about half a mile or so, as well as I could judge, against an increasing stream of fugitives, the ground being strewed with coats, blankets, firelocks, cooking tins, caps, belts, bayonets — asking in vain where General McDowell was.

Again I was compelled by the condition of the fields to come into the road; and having passed a piece of wood and a regiment which seemed to be moving back in column of march in tolerably good order, I turned once more into an opening close to a white house, not far from the lane, beyond which there was a belt of forest. Two field-pieces unlimbered near the house, with panting horses in the rear, were pointed towards the front, and along the road beside them there swept a tolerably steady column of men mingled with field ambulances and light baggage carts, back to Centreville. I had just stretched out my hand to get a cigar-light from a German gunner, when the dropping shots which had been sounding through the woods in front of us, suddenly swelled into an animated fire. In a few seconds a crowd of men rushed out of the wood down toward the guns, and the artillerymen near me seized the trail of a piece, and were wheeling it round to fire, when an officer or sergeant called out, “Stop! stop! They are our own men;” and in two or three minutes the whole battalion came sweeping past the guns at the double, and in the utmost disorder. Some of the artillerymen dragged the horses out of the tumbrils; and for a moment the confusion was so great I could not understand what had taken place; but a soldier whom I stopped, said, “We are pursued by their cavalry; they have cut us all to pieces.”

Murat himself would not have dared to move a squadron on such ground. However, if could not be doubted that something serious was taking place; and at that moment a shell burst in front of the house, scattering the soldiers near it, which was followed by another that bounded along the road; and in a few minutes more out came another regiment from the wood, almost as broken as the first. The scene on the road had now assumed an aspect which has not a parallel in any description I have ever read. Infantry soldiers on mules and draught horses, with the harness clinging to their heels, as much frightened as their riders; negro servants on their masters' chargers; ambulances crowded with unwounded soldiers; wagons swarming with men who threw out the contents in the road to make room, grinding through a shouting, screaming mass of men on foot, who were literally yelling with rage at every halt, and shrieking out, “Here are the cavalry! Will you get on?” This portion of the force was evidently in discord.

There was nothing left for it but to go with the current one could not stem. I turned round my horse from the deserted guns, and endeavored to find out what had occurred as I rode quietly back on the skirts of the crowd. I talked with those on all sides of me. Some uttered prodigious nonsense, describing batteries tier over tier, and ambuscades, and blood running knee-deep. Others described how their boys had carried whole lines of intrenchments, but were beaten back for want of reinforcements. The names of many regiments were mentioned as being utterly destroyed. Cavalry and bayonet charges and masked batteries played prominent parts in all the narrations. Some of the officers seemed to feel the disgrace of defeat; but the strangest thing was the general indifference with which the event seemed to be regarded by those who collected their senses as soon as they got out of fire, and who said they were just going as far as Centreville, and would have a big fight to-morrow.

By this time I was unwillingly approaching Centreville in the midst of heat, dust, confusions, imprecations inconceivable. On arriving at the place where a small rivulet crossed the road, the throng increased still more. The ground over which I had passed going out was now covered with arms, clothing of all kinds, accoutrements thrown off and left to be trampled in the dust under the hoofs of men and horses. The runaways ran along-side the wagons, striving to force themselves in among the occupants, who resisted tooth and nail. The drivers spurred and whipped and urged the horses to the utmost of their bent. I felt an inclination to laugh, which was overcome by disgust, and by that vague sense of something extraordinary taking place which is experienced when a man sees a number of people acting as if driven by some unknown terror. As I rode in the crowd with men clinging to the stirrup-leathers, or holding on by anything they could lay hands on, so that I had some apprehension of being pulled off, I spoke to the men, and asked them over and over again not to be in such a hurry. There's no enemy to pursue you. All the cavalry in the world could not get at you.” But I might as well have talked to the stones.

For my own part, I wanted to get out of the ruck as fast as I could, for the heat and dust were very distressing, particularly to a half-starved man. Many of the fugitives were in the last stages of exhaustion, and some actually sank down by the fences, at the risk of being trampled to death. Above the roar of the flight, which was like the rush of a great river, the guns burst forth from time to time.

The road at last became somewhat clearer; for I had got ahead of some of the ammunition train and wagons, and the others were dashing up the hill towards Centreville. The men's great-coats and blankets had been stowed in the trains; but the fugitives had apparently thrown them out on the road, to make room for themselves. Just beyond the stream I saw a heap of clothing tumble out of a large covered cart, and cried out after the driver, “Stop! stop! All the things are tumbling out of the cart.” But my zeal was checked by a scoundrel putting his head out, and shouting with a curse, “If you try to stop the team, I'll blow your ——brains out.” My brains advised me to adopt the principle of non-intervention.

It never occurred to me that this was a grand debacle. All along I believed the mass of the army was not broken, and that all I saw around was the result of confusion created in a crude organization by a forced retreat; and knowing the reserves were at Centreville and beyond, I said to myself, “Let us see how this will be when we get to the hill.” I indulged in a quiet chuckle, too, at the idea of my philosophical friend and his stout companion finding themselves suddenly enveloped in the crowd of fugitives; but knew they could easily have regained their original position on the hill. Trotting along briskly through the fields, I arrived at the foot of the slope on which Centreville stands, and met a German regiment just deploying into line very well and steadily — the men in the rear companies laughing, smoking, singing, and jesting with the fugitives, who were filing past; but no thought of stopping the wagons, as the orders repeated from mouth to mouth were that they were to fall back beyond Centreville.

The air of the men was good. The officers were cheerful, and one big German with a great pipe in his bearded mouth, with spectacles on nose, amused himself by pricking the horses with his sabre point, as he passed, to the sore discomfiture of the riders. Behind the regiment came a battery of brass field-pieces, and another regiment in column of march was following the guns. They were going to form line at the end of the slope, and no fairer position could well be offered for a defensive attitude, although it might be turned. But it was getting too late for the enemy wherever they were to attempt such an extensive operation. Several times I had been asked by officers and men, “Where do you think we will halt? Where are the rest of the army?” I always replied “Centreville,” and I had heard hundreds of the fugitives say they were going to Centreville.

I rode up the road, turned into the little street which carries the road on the right-hand side to Fairfax Court House and the hill, and went straight to the place where I had left the buggy in a lane on the left of the road beside a small house and shed, expecting to find Mr. Warre ready for a start, as I had faithfully promised Lord Lyons he should be back that night in Washington. The buggy was not there. I pulled open the door of the shed in which the horses had been sheltered out of the sun. They were gone. “Oh,” said I, to myself, “of course! What a stupid fellow I am. Warre has had the horses put in and taken the gig to the top of the hill, in order to see the last of it before we go.” And so I rode over to the ridge; but arriving there, could see no sign of our vehicle far or near. There were two carriages of some kind or other still remaining on the hill, and a few spectators, civilians and military, gazing on the scene below, which was softened in the golden rays of the declining sun. The smoke wreaths had ceased to curl over the green sheets of billowy forest as sea-foam crisping in a gentle breeze breaks the lines of the ocean. But far and near yellow and dun-colored piles of dust seamed the landscape, leaving behind them long trailing clouds of lighter vapors which were dotted now and then by white puff-balls from the bursting of shell On the right these clouds were very heavy and seemed to approach rapidly, and it occurred to me they might be caused by an advance of the much spoken-of and little seen cavalry; and remembering the cross road from Germantown, it seemed a very fine and very feasible operation for the Confederates to cut right in on the line of retreat and communication, in which case the fate of the army and of Washington could not be dubious. There were now few civilians on the hill, and these were thinning away. Some were gesticulating and explaining to one another the causes of the retreat, looking very hot and red. The confusion among the last-portion of the carriages and fugitives on the road, which I had outstripped, had been renewed again, and the crowd there presented a remarkable and ludicrous aspect through the glass; but there were two strong battalions in good order near the foot of the hill, a battery on the slope, another on the top, and a portion of a regiment in and about the houses of the village.

A farewell look at the scene presented no new features. Still the clouds of dust moved onwards denser and higher; flashes of arms lighted them up at times; the fields were dotted by fugitives, among whom many mounted men were marked by their greater speed, and the little flecks of dust rising from the horses' feet.

I put up my glass, and turning from the hill, with difficulty forced my way through the crowd of vehicles which were making their way towards the main road in the direction of the lane, hoping that by some lucky accident I might find the gig in waiting for me. But I sought in vain; a sick soldier who was on a stretcher in front of the house near the corner of the lane, leaning on his elbow and looking at the stream of men and carriages, asked me if I could tell him what they were in such a hurry for, and I said they were merely getting back to their bivouacs. A man dressed in civilian's clothes grinned as I spoke. “I think they'll go farther than that,” said he; and then added, “If you're looking for the wagon you came in, it's pretty well back to Washington by this time. I think I saw you down there with a nigger and two men.” Yes.” “They're all off, gone more than an hour and a half ago, I think, and a stout man — I thought was you at first — along with them.”

Nothing was left for it but to brace up the girths for a ride to the Capitol, for which, hungry and fagged as I was, I felt very little inclination. I was trotting quietly down the hill road beyond Centreville, when suddenly the guns on the other side, or from a battery very near, opened fire, and a fresh outburst of artillery sounded through the woods. In an instant the mass of vehicles and retreating soldiers, teamsters, and civilians, as if agonized by an electric shock, quivered throughout the tortuous line. With dreadful shouts and cursings, the drivers lashed their maddened horses, and leaping from the carts, left them to their fate, and ran on foot. Artillerymen and foot soldiers, and negroes mounted on gun horses, with the chain traces and loose trappings trailing in the dust, spurred and flogged their steeds down the road or by the side paths. The firing continued and seemed to approach the hill, and at every report the agitated body of horsemen and wagons was seized, as it were, with a fresh convulsion.

Once more the dreaded cry, “The cavalry! cavalry are coming!” rang through the crowd, and looking back to Centreville I perceived coming down the hill, between me and the sky, a number of mounted men, who might at a hasty glance be taken for horsemen in the act of sabreing the fugitives. In reality they were soldiers and civilians, with, I regret to say, some officers among them, who were whipping and striking their horses with sticks or whatever else they could lay hands on. I called out to the men who were frantic with terror beside me, “They are not cavalry at all; they're your own men” — but they did not heed me. A fellow who was shouting out, “Run! run!” as loud as he could beside me, seemed to take delight in creating alarm; and as he was perfectly collected as far as I could judge, I said, “What on earth are you running for? What are you afraid of?” He was in the roadside below me, and at once turning on me, and exclaiming, “I'm not afraid of you,” presented his piece and pulled the trigger so instantaneously, that had it gone off I could not have swerved from the ball. As the scoundrel deliberately drew up to examine the nipple, I judged it best not to give him another chance, and spurred on through the crowd, where any man could have shot as many as he pleased without interruption. The only conclusion I came to was, that he was mad or drunken. When I was passing by the line of the bivouacs a battalion of men came tumbling down the bank from the field into the road, with fixed bayonets, and as some fell in the road and others tumbled on top .of them, there must have been a few ingloriously wounded.

I galloped on for a short distance to head the ruck, for I could not tell whether this body of infantry intended moving back towards Centreville or were coming down the road; but the mounted men galloping furiously past me, with a cry of “Cavalry! Cavalry!” on their lips, swept on faster than I did, augmenting the alarm and excitement. I came up with two officers who were riding more leisurely; and touching my hat, said, “I venture to suggest that these men should be stopped, sir. If not, they will alarm the whole of the post and pickets on to Washington. They will fly next, and the consequences will be most disastrous.” One of the two, looking at me for a moment, nodded his head without saying a word, spurred his horse to full speed, and dashed on in front along the road. Following more leisurely I observed the fugitives in front were suddenly checked in their speed; and as I turned my horse into the wood by the road side to get on so as to prevent the chance of another block-up, I passed several private vehicles, in one of which Mr. Raymond, of the “New York Times,” was seated with some friends, looking by no means happy. He says in his report to his paper, “About a mile this side of Centreville a stampede took place amongst the teamsters and others, which threw everything into the utmost confusion, and inflicted very serious” injuries. Mr. Eaton, of Michigan, in trying to arrest the flight of some of these men, was shot by one of them the ball taking effect in his hand.” He asked me, in some anxiety, what I thought would happen. I replied, “No doubt McDowell will stand fast at Centreville to-night. These are mere runaways, and unless the enemy's cavalry succeed in getting through at this' road, there is nothing to apprehend.”

And I continued through the wood till I got a clear space in front on the road, along which a regiment of infantry was advancing towards me. They halted ere I came up, and with levelled firelocks arrested the men on horses and the carts and wagons galloping towards them, and blocked up the road to stop their progress. As I tried to edge by on the right of the column by the left of the road, a soldier presented his firelock at my head from the higher ground on which he stood, for the road had a deep trench cut on the side by which I was endeavoring to pass, and sung out, “Halt! Stop — or I fire!” The officers in front were waving their swords and shouting out, “Don't let a soul pass! Keep back! keep back!” Bowing to the officer who was near me, I said, “I beg to assure you, sir, I am not running away. I am a civilian and a British subject. I have done my best as I came along to stop this disgraceful rout. I am in no hurry; I merely want to get back to Washington to-night. I have been telling them all along there are no cavalry near us.” The officer to whom I was speaking, young and somewhat excited, kept repeating, “Keep back, sir! keep back! you must keep back.” Again I said to him, “I assure you I am not with this crowd; my pulse is as cool as your own.” But as he paid no attention to what I said, I suddenly bethought me of General Scott's letter, and addressing another officer, said, “I am a civilian going to Washington; will you be kind enough to look at this pass, specially given to me by General Scott.” The officer looked at it, and handed it to a mounted man, either adjutant or colonel, who, having examined it, returned it to me, saying, “Oh, yes! certainly. Pass that man!” And with a cry of “Pass that man!” along the line, I rode down the trench very leisurely, and got out on the road, which was now clear, though some fugitives had stolen through the woods on the flanks of the column and were in front of me.

A little further on there was a cart on the right-hand side of the road, surrounded by a group of soldiers. I was trotting past when a respectable-looking man in a semi-military garb, coming out from the group, said, in a tone of much doubt and distress — “Can you tell me, sir, for God's sake, where the 69th New York are? These men tell me they are all cut to pieces.” “And so they are,” exclaimed one of the fellows, who had the number of the regiment on his cap.

“You hear what they say, sir?” exclaimed the man.

“I do, but I really cannot tell you where the 69th are.”

“I'm in charge of these mails, and I'll deliver them if I die for it; but is it safe for me to go on? You are a gentleman, and I can depend on your word.”

His assistant and himself were in the greatest perplexity of mind, but all I could say was, “I really can't tell you; I believe the army will halt at Centreville to-night, and I think you may go on there with the greatest safety, if you can get through the crowd.” “Faith, then, he can't,” exclaimed one of the soldiers.

“Why not?” “Shure, arn't we cut to pieces. Didn't I hear the kurnel himsilf saying we was all of us to cut and run, every man on his own hook, as well as he could. Stop at Cinthreville, indeed!"
I bade the mail agent* good evening and rode on, but even in this short colloquy stragglers on foot and on horseback, who had turned the flanks of the regiment by side-paths or through the woods, came pouring along the road once more.

Somewhere about this I was accosted by a stout, elderly man, with the air and appearance of a respectable mechanic, or, small tavern-keeper, who introduced himself as having met me at Cairo. He poured out a, flood of woes on me, how he had lost his friend and companion, nearly lost his seat several times, was unaccustomed to riding, was suffering much pain from the unusual position and exercise, did not know the road, feared he would never be able to get on, dreaded he might be captured and ill-treated if he was known, and such topics as a selfish man in a good deal of pain or fear is likely to indulge in. I calmed his apprehensions as well as I could, by saying, “I had no doubt McDowell would halt and show fight at Centreville, and be able to advance from it in a day or two to renew the fight again; that he couldn't miss the road; whiskey and tallow were good for abrasions;” and as I was riding very slowly, he jogged along, for he was a bur, and would stick, with many “Oh dears! Oh! dear me!” for most part of the way joining me at intervals till I reached Fairfax Court House. A body of infantry were under arms in a grove near the Court House, on the right-hand side of the road. The door and windows of the houses presented crowds of faces black and white; and men and women stood out upon the porch, who asked me as I passed, “Have you been at the fight?” “What are they all running for?” “Are the rest of them coming on?” to which I gave the same replies as before.

Arrived at the little inn where I had halted in the morning, I perceived the sharp-faced woman in black standing in the veranda with an elderly man, a taller and younger one dressed in black, a little girl, and a woman who stood in the passage of the door. I asked if I could get anything to eat. “Not a morsel; there's not a bit left in the house, but you can get something, perhaps, if you like to stay till supper-time.” “Would you oblige me by telling me where I can get some water for my horse?” “Oh, certainly,” said the elder man, and calling to a negro he directed him to bring a bucket from the well or pump, into which the thirsty brute buried its head to the eyes. Whilst the horse was drinking, the taller or younger man, leaning over the veranda, asked me quietly “What are all the people coming back for? — what's set them a-running towards Alexandria?”

“Oh, it's only a fright the drivers of the commissariat wagons have had; they are afraid of the enemy's cavalry.”

“Ah!” said the man, and looking at me narrowly he inquired, after a pause, “Are you an American?”

“No, I am not, thank God; I'm an Englishman.”

“Well then,” said he, nodding his head and speaking slowly through his teeth; “there will be cavalry after them soon enough; there is 20,000 of the best horsemen in the world in old Virginny.”

Having received full directions from the people at the inn for the road to the Long Bridge, which I was most anxious to reach instead of going to Alexandria or to Georgetown, I bade the Virginian good-evening; and seeing that my stout friend, who had also watered his horse by my advice at the inn, was still clinging along-side, I excused myself by saying I must press on to Washington, and galloped on for a mile, until I got into the cover of a wood, where I dismounted to examine the horse's hoofs and shift the saddle for a moment, wipe the sweat off his back, and make him and myself as comfortable as could be for our ride into Washington, which was still seventeen or eighteen miles before me. I passed groups of men, some on horseback, others on foot, going at a more leisurely rate towards the capital; and as I was smoking my last cigar by the side of the wood, I observed the number had rather increased, and that among the retreating stragglers were some men who appeared to be wounded.

The sun had set, but the rising moon was adding every moment to the lightness of the road as I mounted once more and set out at a long trot for the capital. Presently I was overtaken by a wagon with a small escort of cavalry and an officer riding in front. I had seen the same vehicle once or twice along the road, and observed an officer seated in it with his head bound up with a handkerchief, looking very pale and ghastly. The mounted officer leading the escort asked me if I was going into Washington and knew the road. I told him I had never been on it before, but thought I could find my way, “at any rate we'll find plenty to tell us.” That's Colonel Hunter inside the carriage, he's shot through the throat and jaw, and I want to get him to the doctor's in Washington as soon as I can. Have you been to the fight?”

“No, sir,”

“A member of Congress, I suppose, sir?”

“No sir; I'm an Englishman.”

“Oh, indeed, sir, then I'm glad you did not see it; so mean a fight, sir, I never saw; we whipped the cusses and drove them before us, and took their batteries and spiked their guns, and got right up in among all their dirt works and great batteries and forts, driving them before us like sheep, when up more of them would get, as if out of the ground, then our boys would drive them again till we were fairly worn out; they had nothing to eat since last night and nothing to drink. I myself have not tasted a morsel since two o'clock last night. Well, there we were waiting for reinforcements and expecting McDowell and the rest of the army, when whish! they threw open a whole lot of masked batteries on us, and then came down such swarms of horsemen on black horses, all black as you never saw, and slashed our boys over finely. The colonel was hit, and I thought it best to get him off as well as I could, before it was too late. And, my God! when they did take to running they did it first-rate, I can tell you;” and so, the officer, who had evidently taken enough to affect his empty stomach and head, chattering about the fight, we trotted on in the moonlight: dipping down into the valleys on the road, which seemed like inky lakes in the shadows of the black trees, then mounting up again along the white road, which shone like a river in the moonlight — the country silent as death, though once as we crossed a small watercourse and the noise of the carriage-wheels ceased, I called the attention of my companions to a distant sound, as of a great multitude of people mingled with a faint report of cannon. “Do you hear that?” “No, I don't. But it's our chaps, no doubt. They're coming along fine, I can promise you.” At last some miles further on we came to a picket, or main guard, on the roadside, who ran forward, crying out, “What's the news — anything fresh — are we whipped ? — is it a fact?” “Well, gentlemen,” exclaimed the Major, reining up for a moment, “we are knocked into a cocked hat — licked to h--1.” “Oh, pray, don't say that,” I exclaimed, “it's not quite so bad; it's only a drawn battle, and the troops will occupy Centreville to-night, and the posts they started from this morning.”

A little further on we met a line of commissariat carts, and my excited and rather injudicious military friend appeared to take the greatest pleasure in replying to their anxious queries for news, “We are whipped! Whipped like h--1.”

At the cross-roads now and then we were perplexed, for no one knew the bearings of Washington, though the stars were bright enough; but good fortune favored us and kept us straight, and at a deserted little village, with a solitary church on the roadside, I increased my pace, bade good-night and good speed to the officer, and having kept company with two men in a gig for some time, got at length on the guarded road leading towards the capital, and was stopped by the pickets, patrols, and grand rounds, making repeated demands for the last accounts from the field. The houses by the roadside were all closed up and in darkness, I knocked in vain at several for a drink of water, but was answered only by the angry barkings of the watch-dogs from the slave quarters. It was a peculiarity of the road that the people, and soldiers I met, at points several miles apart, always insisted that I was twelve miles from, Washington. Up hills, down valleys, with the silent grim woods forever by my side, the white roads and the black shadows of men, still I was twelve miles from the Long Bridge, but suddenly I came upon a grand guard under arms, who had quite different ideas, and who said I was only about four miles from the river; they crowded round me. “Well, man, and how is the fight going?” I repeated my tale. “What does he say?” “Oh, begorra, he says we're not bet at all; it's all lies they have been telling us; we're only going back to the ould lines for the greater convaniency of fighting to-morrow again; that's illigant, hooro!”

All by the sides of the old camps the men were standing, lining the road, and I was obliged to evade many a grasp at my bridle by shouting out “Don't stop me; I've important news; it's all well!” and still the good horse, refreshed by the cool night air, went clattering on, till from the top of the road beyond Arlington I caught a sight of the lights of Washington and the white buildings of the Capitol, and of the Executive Mansion, glittering like snow in the moonlight. At the entrance to the Long Bridge the sentry challenged and asked for the countersign. “I have not got it, but I've a pass from General Scott.” An officer advanced from the guard, and on reading the pass permitted me to go on without difficulty. He said, “I have been obliged to let a good many go over to-night before you, congressmen and others. I suppose you did not expect to be coming back so soon. I fear it's a bad business.” “Oh, not so bad after all; I expected to have been back tonight before nine o'clock, and crossed over this morning without the countersign.” “Well, I guess,” said he, “we don't do such quick fighting as that in this country.”

As I crossed the Long Bridge there was scarce a sound to dispute the possession of its echoes with my horse's hoofs. The poor beast had carried me nobly and well, and I made up my mind to buy him, as I had no doubt he would answer perfectly to carry me back in a day or two to McDowell's army by the time he had organized it for a new attack upon the enemy's position. Little did I conceive the greatness of the defeat, the magnitude of the disasters which it had entailed upon the United States or the interval that would elapse before another army set out from the banks of the Potomac onward to Richmond. Had I sat down that night to write my letter, quite ignorant at the time of the great calamity which had befallen his army, in all probability I would have stated that McDowell had received a severe repulse, and had fallen back upon Centreville, that a disgraceful panic and confusion had attended the retreat of a portion of his army, but that the appearance of the reserves would probably prevent the enemy taking any advantage of the disorder; and as I would have merely been able to describe such incidents as came under my own observation, and would have left the American journals to narrate the actual details, and the despatches of the American Generals the strategical events of the day, I should have led the world at home to believe, as, in fact, I believed myself that McDowell's retrograde movement would be arrested at some point between Centreville and Fairfax Court House.

The letter that I was to write occupied my mind whilst I was crossing the Long Bridge, gazing at the lights reflected in the Potomac from the city. The night had become overcast, and heavy clouds rising up rapidly obscured the moon, forming a most fantastic mass of shapes in the sky.

At the Washington end of the bridge I was challenged again by the men of a whole regiment, who, with piled arms, were halted on the chaussĂ©e, smoking, laughing, and singing, “Stranger, have you been to the fight?” “I have been only a little beyond Centreville.” But that was quite enough. Soldiers, civilians, and women, who seemed to be out unusually late, crowded round the horse, and again I told my stereotyped story of the unsuccessful attempt to carry the Confederate position, and the retreat to Centreville to await better luck next time. The soldiers along-side me cheered, and those next them took it up till it ran through the whole line, and must have awoke the night owls.

As I passed Willard's Hotel a little further on, a clock — I think the only public clock which strikes the hours in Washington — tolled out the hour; and I supposed, from what the sentry told me, though I did not count the strokes, that it was eleven; o'clock. All the rooms in the hotel were a blaze of light. The pavement before the door was crowded, and some mounted men and the clattering of sabres on the pavement led me to infer that the escort of the wounded officer had arrived before me. I passed on to the livery-stables, where every one was alive and stirring.

“I'm sure,” said the man, “I thought I'd never see you nor the horse back again. The gig and the other gentleman has been back a long time. How did he carry you?”

“Oh, pretty well; what's his price?”

“Well, now that I look at him, and to you, it will be 100 dollars less than I said, I'm in good heart to-night.”

“Why so? A number of your horses and carriages have not come back yet, you tell me.”

“Oh, well, I'll get paid for them some time or another. Oh, such news! such news!” said he, rubbing his hands. “Twenty thousand of them killed and wounded! Maybe they're not having fits in the White House tonight!”

I walked to my lodgings, and just as I turned the key in the door a flash of light made me pause for a moment, in expectation of the report of a gun; for I. could not help thinking it quite possible that, somehow or another, the Confederate cavalry would try to beat up the lines, but no sound followed. It must' have been lightning. I walked up-stairs, and saw a most welcome supper ready on the table — an enormous piece of cheese, a sausage of unknown components, a knuckle-bone of ham, and a bottle of a very light wine of France; but I would not have exchanged that repast and have waited half an hour for any banquet that Soyer or Careme could have prepared at their best. Then, having pulled off my boots, bathed my head, trimmed candles, and lighted a pipe, I sat down to write. I made some feeble sentences, but the pen went flying about the paper as if the spirits were playing tricks with it. When I screwed up my utmost resolution, the “y’s” would still run into long streaks, and the letters combine most curiously, and my eyes closed, and my pen slipped, and just as I was aroused from a nap, and settled into a stern determination to hold my pen straight, I was interrupted by a messenger from Lord Lyons, to inquire whether I had returned, and if so, to ask me to go up to the Legation and get something to eat. I explained, with my thanks, that I was quite safe, and had eaten supper, and learned from the servant “that Mr. Warre and his companion had arrived about two hours previously. I resumed my seat once more, haunted by the memory of the Boston mail, which would be closed in a few hours, and I had much to tell, although I had not seen the battle. Again and again I woke up, but at last the greatest conqueror but death overcame me, and with my head on the blotted paper, I fell fast asleep.
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* I have since met the person referred to, an Englishman living in Washington, and well known at the Legation and elsewhere. Mr. Dawson came to tell me that he had seen a letter in an American journal, which was copied extensively all over the Union, in which the writer stated he accompanied me on my return to Fairfax Court House, and that the incident I related in my account of Bull Run did not occur, but that he was the individual referred to, and could swear with his assistant that every word I wrote was true. I did not need any such corroboration for the satisfaction of any who know me; and I was quite well aware that if one came from the dead to bear testimony in my favor before the American journals and public, the evidence would not countervail the slander of any characterless scribe who sought to gain a moment's notoriety by a flat contradiction of my narrative. I may add, that Dawson begged of me not to bring him before the public, “because I am now sutler to the ——th, over in Virginia, and they would dismiss me.” “What! For certifying to the truth?” “You know, sir, it might do me harm.” Whilst on this subject, let me remark that some time afterwards I was in Mr. Brady's photographic studio in Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, when the very intelligent and obliging manager introduced himself to me, and said that he wished to have an opportunity of repeating to me personally what he had frequently told persons in the place, that he could bear the fullest testimony to the complete accuracy of my account of the panic from Centreville down the road at the time I left, and that he and his assistants, who were on the spot trying to get away their photographic van and apparatus, could certify that my description fell far short of the disgraceful spectacle and of the excesses of the flight.

SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, Vol. 1, p. 442-66