Wednesday, February 21, 2024

Diary of Private William S. White, April 21, 1861

“THE PAWNEE WAR.”

For a day or so since there has been a report current that the United States steamer "Pawnee" was certainly on its way to Richmond, and we were ordered to hold ourselves in readiness to leave at a moment's notice. We have not yet been "mustered into service," and of course we spend our nights and spare moments at home, consequently there must be some preconcerted signal to call us together if we should be immediately wanted. That signal was the tolling of the public bell—three strokes, silence, then three strokes again. Last night I was "on guard," and this morning 'twas nearly midday before I arose. Having dressed myself I sauntered leisurely up Main street toward the Spotswood Hotel, where our battery was stationed, thinking sombrely of the great struggle before us, when hark! a bell tolls—once, twice, three times—silence; again it tolls. "Fall in, Howitzers!" The first command of the war!

With a shout the soldiers rush to their rendezvous and soon we are on our way to Wilton—a high bluff commanding the approach to Richmond, and some eight miles below. Of all the amusing spectacles this "Pawnee War" was the most amusing I ever beheld. It was a matter of utter impossibility for such a vessel as the "Pawnee" to come up the river any where near Richmond, yet no one thought of that—young and old, rich and poor, bond and free turned out en masse to drive back or sink with double-barrel shot guns, and long-let-off-from-duty horse-pistols, this formidable Northern War steamer. ’Tis said that one of our heaviest citizens paid Walsh, the gunsmith, five dollars in good and lawful Virginia currency to show him how to load his pistol. Walsh must have taken it for granted that somebody was going to be hurt.

The Richmond Howitzers, a battery of six guns; the Fayette Artillery, six guns; the Richmond Grays; Company "F," and a host of amateur warriors took position on the Wilton Bluffs and calmly awaited the war ship's approach, but no Pawnee came, and quietly we gathered our blankets around us, and, for the first time, "slept the warrior's sleep."

The "pale moon rose up slowly”—rose on a country just commencing a fratricidal war, and the twinkling stars seemed holding a "council of grief," as from their starry home they beheld sleeping men who would awake to a soldier's life.

SOURCE: William S. White, A Diary of the War; or What I Saw of It, p. 92-3

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