JULY 1, 1863—3.35
p.m.
General HANCOCK,
or General HOWARD:
I am moving the
Twelfth Corps so as to come in about 1 mile to the right of Gettysburg.
SOURCE: The War of
the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and
Confederate Armies, Series I, Volume 27, Part 3 (Serial No. 45), p. 465
This morning we move
our camp and shift around more to the left. Brisk skirmishing is now going on
along the river, with some cannonading. In the evening we again move our
position more to the left. The capitol of South Carolina is now in full view.
The Saluda river being pontooned, we cross this evening, which throws us
between two rivers, the Saluda and the Broad, which two form a junction at
Columbia and make the Congaree.
During the night,
under cover of Stone's Brigade, of the Fifteenth Corps, which was crossed in
the afternoon, a pontoon bridge was laid across the Broad River, three miles
above Columbia. On the morning of the seventeenth, Colonel Stone, of the
Twenty-fifth Iowa, commanding Third Brigade, First Division, Fifteenth Corps,
moves towards the city. At eleven o'clock the Mayor comes out and makes a
formal surrender of the city to Col. Stone. In anticipation of General Howard,
with the army of the Tennessee, entering the city, General Sherman's orders are
to spare all dwellings, colleges, asylums, and harmless private property.
General Logan, who
stood at the end of the pontoon bridge when the last pontoon was laid, says to
Howard, with his black eyes flashing: "I will now move into this hell of
treason. But say the word and I will sweep this city from the earth." It
is now past noon. Generals Sherman and Howard have rode into the city. The
Fifteenth Corps is now moving across Broad river. The Seventh is ordered to
stay back and guard the train.
It is now night; the
wind is raging furiously; the heavens are all aglow; Columbia is enveloped in
flames; her beautiful architecture is crumbling; her gorgeous mansions are
falling; the work and labor of a century is being destroyed.
SOURCE: abstracted from Daniel Leib Ambrose, History of the Seventh Regiment Illinois Volunteer Infantry, p. 296-7
We are ordered to Fort Brown, two miles from the city, where we go into a more permanent camp. During our first days at Savannah, the Seventh's boys are seen strolling everywhere, viewing the fortifications and the great guns; they are also seen pacing the streets of the beautiful city, looking with admiration upon her gorgeous buildings, and standing in awe in the shade of the peerless monument reared by a generous people to that noble Pole, Count Pulaski, who fought, bled and died in America's first revolution for independence. Can it be that traitors have walked around its base and sworn that the great Union for which this grand and liberal spirit sacrificed his life should be consigned to the wrecks of dead empires? As we stand and gaze upon this marble cenotaph, we are constrained to say, Oh! wicked men, why stood ye here above the dust of Poland's martyr, seeking to defame his name and tear down what he helped to rear! May God pity America's erring ones! In our wanderings we are made to stop, by an acre enclosed with a high but strong palisade, the work of Colonel G. F. Wiles, Seventy-eighth Ohio Veteran Volunteer Infantry, commanding Second Brigade, Third Division, Seventeenth Army Corps, and his gallant command. This is God's acre and liberty's, and emphatically can this be said, for here three hundred or more of our fallen comrades sleep death's silent sleep. Here in trenches, unknelled, uncoffined, but not alone, "life's fitful fever over," they sleep well.
They fell not in the deadly breach, nor yet on the grassy plain. For them no choir of musketry rattled, no anthem of cannon rolled, but unclad and unfed, their lamps of life flickered out in that worse than Egyptian bondage—a Confederate prison. For long weary months they suffered and waited for the time to come when they would inhale freedom's pure air; for long weary nights they watched the signal lights as they flashed upwards from the monitors to guide Sherman through the wilderness of pines, down to the sea; long did they wait to see the sunlight from the waters flash on his serried lines, but he came not. They suffered on, and died-died martyrs upon the altar of human freedom; died that not one single star, however wayward, should be erased from the Union's great banner of freedom. Has the world, in all its history of blood, from the creation to the christian era, from the reformation to the revolution, ever produced examples of such heroic endurance as this second revolution has given to the world? Echoes coming from the soft south winds that sweep along the Atlantic shore, answer no. These men were murdered! Yes, murdered because they wore the blue, and fought for the flag and freedom. The poet alludes most touchingly to an incident that caused the murder of one of these lonely sleepers who plead for his wife's letters.
"First pay the postage, whining wretch."
Despair had made the prisoner brave-
"I'm a captive, not a slave;
You took my money and my clothes,
Take my life too, but for the love of God
Let me know how Mary and the children are,
And I will bless you ere I go."
This plea proved fruitless, and across the dead-line the soldier passed, and soon a bullet passed through his brain, and his crushed spirit was free with God. What a sad picture.
We remember when we stood there and gazed upon that hallowed acre of God's and liberty's. We thought of those wicked men who whelmed this land into those dark nights of war; who told us then that the Union soldier died in vain; that the names of those uncoffined sleepers there would be forgotten and unsung, and as my comrades and myself stood there revolving these thoughts in our minds, we vowed over those graves, before heaven, to be the enemies of traitors. "Died in vain! sacrificed their lives for naught! their names to be forgotten and unsung!" Who uttered those words in application to the noble sleepers there? Who spoke thus to the weeping mother and stricken sister? Traitors in the North! Traitors on the legislative floors uttered these words! We speak the sentiment of the Seventh when we say that we would not take millions for what we hate these men, contemptible in nature, pusillanimous in soul, with hearts as black as the "steeds of night." Like Brownlow, were we not afraid of springing a theological question, we would say that better men have been going down with the wailing hosts for the last eighteen hundred years.
A few days after going into camp at Fort Brown, Major Johnson is ordered with Companies A, H and K, to proceed down the river to Bonniventure, about five miles from Savannah. Arriving, we take up our quarters in the old Bonniventure mansion, a fashionable resort for the chivalry in the days that have flown. During our stay here we live chiefly on oysters, which are obtained in great abundance by the boys. Major Johnson and his detachment will not soon forget how they gamboled and loitered beneath the shades of those live oaks down by the great Atlantic's shore.
The Seventh remains in camp at Fort Brown and Bonniventure until the latter part of January, 1865. In the mean time Captain Norton, with the mounted portion of the regiment, was ordered across the Savannah river into South Carolina, joining Howard's command at Pocataligo.
SOURCE: Daniel Leib Ambrose, History of the Seventh Regiment Illinois Volunteer Infantry, p. 290-93
This evening finds us at the base of Kenesaw. We are reminded that this
name has gone to history, associated with deeds of valor; where Logan's battle
flag flapped against the sky. The heavens are all aglow to-night; to the
southward red columns of smoke are curling upward. Signal lights are twinkling
upon Kenesaw. Evidently Sherman is conversing with Howard and Slocum, his right
and left bowers.
SOURCE: Daniel Leib Ambrose, History of the Seventh Regiment
Illinois Volunteer Infantry, p. 275
This morning the army moves upon four different roads. The Seventeenth
and Fifteenth A. C., comprising the right wing, commanded by Major General
Howard, the Twentieth and Fourteenth A. C. the left wing, commanded by Major
General Slocum. All eyes are now turned towards General Sherman, as he sits
upon his restless war steed, directing the perilous movements of a mighty army,
which if successful, will add a new chapter to the arts of war. Will he
succeed? Will he plant his banner upon the ocean strand? His countenance seems
to say “I will, if these seventy thousand warriors keep thundering at my
heels." To-night we camp upon the banks of Cotton River.
SOURCE: Daniel Leib Ambrose, History of the Seventh Regiment Illinois
Volunteer Infantry, p. 278
MEMPHIS, December 26, 1866.
DEAR UNCLE:— We are thus far on our way to New Orleans, with everything thus far the very pleasantest possible.
I last night experienced a new sensation. I went with General Howard to a meeting of colored people and made them a short talk. Their eager, earnest faces were very stimulating.
Sorry Buckland and his wife are not here. We meet the leading Rebels everywhere. The Rebel officers are particularly interesting. I get on with them famously. I talk negro suffrage and our extremest radicalism to all of them. They dissent but are polite and cordial.
Love to boys. Lucy very happy.
SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 3, p. 37
[St. Louis, March 24,
1866]
I am sorry to hear
that the President is likely to break with the party. It should not be, but
Congress should defer much to him, as an executive feels how much more
difficult to execute plans than a Congress dealing with abstract ideas. I still
hope that mutual concessions will result in a practical solution.
I have no doubt
myself, and Howard, Logan, Woods, and all who were in Columbia that night
concur with me. The fire which burned up the city, began about dawn, after I
had been in six hours, and I know that great exertions were made to stop it,
but there had been all day and continued till late at night, a perfect tempest
of wind, and I saw hundreds of bales of cotton on fire flying hundreds of
yards. It is barely possible some malicious soldier started the fire, but I
rather think this devilish spirit grew as the fire progressed. I know that the
general judgment of the country is that no matter how it began it was all
right, still I know that the cotton was the cause of the rapid spread of the
fire, and this resulted from the fact that the bales had been ripped open with
knives, so that long before the fire began the houses and trees were white with
it, and it was plain a spark would spread like gunpowder. It was not specially
my business, for Howard was in actual command of the troops in Columbia, but
being present in person the world holds me responsible. I should like you to
introduce the petition, and to say that I have no doubt as to the parties
responsible for all the consequences.
It was not until the
day after the conflagration that I destroyed the Arsenal and other public
factories which were in the suburbs and had escaped the fire that burned the
town.
HEADQUARTERS
MILITARY DIVISION OF THE MISSISSIPPI,
IN
THE FIELD NEAR COLUMBIA, S.C., Feb. 16, 1865.
Special
Field Orders,}
No.
EXTRACT.
The
next series of movements will be at Fayetteville, N.C., and thence to
Wilmington or Goldsboro, according to events. Great care must be taken to
collect forage and food, and at the same time in covering the wagon trains from
cavalry dashes.
General
Howard will cross the Saluda and Broad rivers as near their mouths as possible,
occupy Columbia, destroy the public buildings, railroad property, manufacturing
and machine shops, but will spare libraries, and asylums, and private
dwellings. He will then move to Winnsboro, destroying en route utterly that
section of the railroad.
By
order of Major-General
W.
T. SHERMAN.
L. M. DAYTON, Assistant Adjutant-General.
This order was made
the day before we entered Columbia, about the time the rebels were cannonading
our camps on the west side of the Congaree, and burning their three splendid
bridges (Saluda and Broad unite at Columbia and make the Congaree). During the
16th Howard crossed the Saluda at the factory above Columbia, and that night
crossed Stone's brigade to the east side of the Broad River, and under its
cover laid the pontoon bridge, completing it about noon of the 17th. Stone's
brigade went into Columbia about 11 A.M., the mayor having come out three miles
and notified him that Beauregard and Hampton had evacuated. They evacuated
because they knew that Slocum and Kilpatrick were moving straight for
Winnsboro, 26 miles in their rear, and I wanted them to stay in Columbia
another day. Their hasty evacuation was not to spare Columbia, but to save
being caught in the forks of the Congaree and Catawba, which would have
resulted, had they given time for Slocum to reach Winnsboro. Mayor Goodwin
complained to me of the cotton-burning order of Wade Hampton, and especially
that Hampton and Beauregard would not consent to his request that the liquor
(which had run the blockade and been transferred from the coast to Columbia for
safety) was not removed or destroyed. This liquor, which our men got in
bucketfuls, was an aggravation, and occasioned much of the disorder at night
after the fires had got headway. We all know how the soldiers and junior
officers hated South Carolina, and I can hardly say what excesses would have
resulted had the general officers allowed them free scope.
W. T. SHERMAN.
Cold, a little sleet. This evening we get the first message from Sherman's army. “So far all well,” says General Howard from camp five miles from Savannah. Rebel news is that a battle for the possession of Savannah was raging on the 12th. God protect the right!
SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 548
Drury's
Bluff, Va., May 9, 1865.
We were
reviewed by Howard, Logan and Hartsuff this morning as we passed through
Petersburg. We lie tonight along the outer line of Drury's Bluff defenses which
Butler took a year ago this month. Signs of a good deal of fighting; good many
roads, etc. The James river is about one mile to our right. I have been to some
very fine forts. Fort Wagner and Fort Stevens (or Stephens) are the best, on
the second and main line of Rebel works, which Butler was working against when
the Rebels came out and whipped him. From one fort I saw the spires of
Richmond, James river and Shipping, Fort Darling and Fort Harrison. Coming back
toward camp we found one of our soldiers unburied in the bushes. His skull was
brought in by our hospital steward.
SOURCE:
Charles Wright Wills, Army Life of an Illinois Soldier, p. 379
Manchester,
Va., May 10, 1865.
The rain
yesterday made the road, which is a splendid one fifty yards wide, just right
for traveling. We passed through three lines of Drury's Bluff and Fort Darling
defenses, and are now at the second and inside line of works for the defense of
Richmond. Hostile Yankees never saw either of these two lines at this point, or
any other, I guess, this side of the James River. It is
about 22 miles from Richmond to Petersburg. "Old Brains" (Halleck)
issued his proclamation that no soldier or officer of this army should enter
Richmond only when we pass through. Howard and Logan say they will pass around
if they can. I hope they will.
We have a
fine view of Richmond from here. It is situated much like Peoria and Columbia,
S. C. The burned district shows very plainly from here and makes the resemblance
to Columbia very striking. Several thousand men and officers of the corps made
a raid on Logan last night and got a little talk from him. He was very careful
not to say too much, all small talk. This got up a real elephant hunting mania,
and I guess every regiment commanded in the corps was called out. Colonel
Wright had to make a little talk. The 14th and 20th move out tomorrow.
SOURCE:
Charles Wright Wills, Army Life of an Illinois Soldier, p. 379-80
Beaman's
Cross Roads, March 17, 1865.
About 12
miles, more than half of which had to be corduroyed. Roads awful. If a wagon
pulls off the corduroy, it drops to the hub. There are two or three inches of
black sand on the surface covering quicksand unfathomable. No one need tell me
that bad roads will stop an army. The 20th corps had sharp little affair
yesterday. Hear their loss is over 400. Everyone is expecting a fight before we
reach Goldsboro. The whole corps is camped together to-night. Our division has
been in rear of the corps two days and has not had a fight in the advance since
we left Columbia. I believe I have not heard a hostile shot for 27 days. Howard
is here to-night. Whole corps is on this road.
SOURCE:
Charles Wright Wills, Army Life of an Illinois Soldier, p. 363
One hundred and twelve miles of steady rain, and the best country since
we left Central Georgia. Looks real Northern like. Small farms and nice white,
tidy dwellings. Wheat fields look very well. In the cornfields rows are five
feet apart, and one stalk the size of a candle, in a hill. But at every house
there were from 200 to 1,000 bushels of corn and an abundance of fodder.
Sherman said yesterday that our campaign is over, and to-day Howard issued an
order that all foraging for provisions shall cease, there being enough rations
in the wagons to last us through. I dreamed last night of being at home on
leave and seeing you all, and starting back to the army again. Only 90 miles
yet to mail.
SOURCE: Charles Wright Wills, Army Life of an Illinois Soldier,
p. 358-9
Made 14 miles a little south of east. We passed about a mile south of Gates' old battle ground. A dozen foragers of the 99th Indiana were captured to-day, but our foragers caught more Rebels than that, besides 50 wagons and 200 horses and mules belonging to refugees. Stringent orders from Howard, Logan and Wood about stealing. It has rained for 24 hours. No enemy in front to-day. Got out of the clay hills again on sand-pine flats.
SOURCE: Charles
Wright Wills, Army Life of an Illinois Soldier, p. 352
This day is set apart for fasting, humiliation, and prayer. There is much wretchedness and great humiliation in the land, and need of earnest prayer.
General Hooker has arrived from Atlanta, having left in a pet because General Howard was given McPherson's position. He is vain, has some good and fighting qualities and thinks highly and too much of himself.
SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 93
HEADQUARTERS DEPT. AND ARMY of THE TENNESSEE.,
GoRDON, GA., November 23d, 1864.
Mayor General Osterhaus, Com'dg 15th
Corps:
I take sincere pleasure in congratulating the Brigade of General Walcutt, of General Wood's Division of the 15th Corps, on its complete sucess in the action of yesterday.
Officers from other commands who were looking on say that there never was a better brigade of soldiers.
I am exceedingly sorry that any of our brave men should fall, and for the suffering of the wounded, the thanks of the army are doubly due to them.
I tender my sympathy through you to the brave and excellent commander of the brigade, Brigadier General Walcutt.
It is hoped that his wound will not disable him.
Very respectfully,
Your obedient servant,
O. O. HOWARD,
Major General.
P. S. The loss of the enemy is estimated from 1,500 to 2,000 killed, wounded, and prisoners. O. O. H., M. G.
We lay in camp until 4 p.m., when we started, and after three miles of miserable pine swamp we crossed the Oconee on pontoons. It was dark, but I noticed that the current was rapid and the water looked deep.
