Slavery and Four Years of War Part 36

(13) Official map, _Battles and Leaders_, vol. i., p. 598.

(14) Grant's _Memoirs_, vol. i., p. 351.

(15) _War Records_, vol. x., Part II., pp. 384-5, 424, 482 (407-8).

(16) _War Records_, vol. x., Part I., pp. 111, 105, 108, 391.

(17) _Battles and Leaders_, vol. i., p. 485.

(18) _Battles and Leaders_, vol. i., p. 460.

(19) _Battles and Leaders_, vol. i., pp. 446, etc.

CHAPTER VII Mitchel's Campaign to Northern Alabama--Andrews' Raid into Georgia, and Capture of a Locomotive--Affair at Bridgeport--Sacking of Athens, Alabama, and Court-Martial of Colonel Turchin--Burning of Paint Rock by Colonel Beatty--Other Incidents and Personal Mention --Mitchel Relieved

General Mitchel's division (to which I belonged) of the Army of the Ohio we left at Nashville, ready to move on an independent line. When the other divisions had started for Savannah, Mitchel, March 18, 1862, resumed his march southward, encamping the first night at Lavergne, fifteen miles from Nashville. The next day we marched on a road leading by old cotton fields, and felt we were in the heart of the slaveholding South. The slaves were of an apparently different type from those in Kentucky, though still of many shades of color, varying from pure African black to oily-white.

The eye, in many instances, had to be resorted to, to decide whether there was any black blood in them. But these negroes were shrewd, and had the idea of liberty uppermost in their minds. They had heard that the Northern army was coming to make them free. Their masters had probably talked of this in their hearing. They believed the time for their freedom had come. Untutored as they all were, they understood somehow they were the cause of the war. As our column advanced, regardless of s.e.x, and in families, they abandoned the fields and their homes, turning their backs on master and mistress, many bearing their bedding, clothing, and other effects on their heads and backs, and came to the roadsides, shouting and singing a medley of songs of freedom and religion, confidently expecting to follow the army to immediate liberty. Their number were so great we marched for a good part of a day between almost continuous lines of them. Their disappointment was sincere and deep when told they must return to their homes: that the Union Army could not take them. Of course some never returned, but the ma.s.s of them did, and remained until the final decree of the war was entered and their chains fell off, never to be welded in America on their race again. They shouted "_Glory_" on seeing the _Stars and Stripes_, as though it had been a banner of protection and liberty, instead of the emblem of a power which hitherto had kept them and their ancestors in bondage. The "_old flag_" has a peculiar charm for those who have served under it. It was noticeable that wherever we marched in the South, particularly in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia, we found men at the roadside who had fought in the Mexican War, often with tears streaming down their cheeks, who professed sincere loyalty to the flag and the Union.

We reached Murfreesboro on the 20th without a fight, the small Confederate force retiring and destroying bridges as we advanced.

The division was kept busy in repairing the railroad, and especially in rebuilding the recently destroyed railroad bridge near Murfreesboro across Stone's River. I worked industriously in charge of a detail of soldiers on this bridge. In ten days it was rebuilt, though the heavy timbers had to be cut and hewed from green timber in the nearby woods. The Union Army never called in vain for expert mechanics, civil or locomotive engineers.

I took a train of ninety wagons, starting to Nashville on the 31st, for quartermaster, commissary, and ordnance supplies, with instructions to repair, while on the way, broken places in the railroad. In consequence of the destruction of bridges the train and guard had to travel a longer route than the direct one, making the distance above forty miles. We repaired the railroad, and reached Nashville and loaded my wagons by the evening of the second day. The city was a demoralizing place for soldiers. A few of my men of the 10th Ohio became drunk, and while I was engaged in the night trying to move the train and guard out of the city, some one threw a stone which struck me in the back of the head, cutting the scalp and causing it to bleed freely. I got the train under way about midnight, and then searched for a surgeon, but at that hour could find none. Knowing that Mrs. McMeans, the wife of the surgeon of the 3d Ohio, was at the City Hotel, I had her called, and she performed the necessary surgery, and stopped the flow of blood.

Long before sunrise my train was far on the road, and by 8 P.M. of the 2d of April it was safely in our camps at Murfreesboro. It was attacked near Lavergne by some irregular cavalry, or guerillas, but they were easily driven off. Such troops did not, as a rule, care to fight. The conduct of a supply-train through a country infested by them is attended with much responsibility and danger, and requires much energy and skill.

Mitchel, now being supplied, marched south, April 3d, and we reached Shelbyville the next day--a town famed for its great number of Union people. Loyalty seemed there to be the rule, not the exception.

The Union flag was displayed on the road to and at Shelbyville by influential people. Our bands played as we entered the town, and there were many manifestations of joy over our coming. This is the only place in the South where I witnessed such a reception.

I recall among those who welcomed us the names of Warren, Gurnie, Story, Cooper, and Weasner.

While here Colonel John Kennett, with part of his 4th Ohio Cavalry, made a raid south and captured a train on the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad and some fifteen prisoners.

A short time before we reached Shelbyville, Mitchel sent a party of eight soldiers, in disguise, under the leaders.h.i.+p of a citizen of Kentucky, known as Captain J. J. Andrews, to enter the Confederate lines and proceed _via_ Chattanooga to Atlanta, with some vague idea of capturing a train of cars or a locomotive and escaping with it, burning the bridges behind them. The party reached its destination, but for want of an engineer who had promised to join it at Atlanta, the plan was abandoned, and each of the party returned in safety, joining their respective regiments at Shelbyville.

Andrews, still desiring to carry out the plan, organized a second party, composed of himself and another citizen of Kentucky, Wm.

Campbell, and twenty-four soldiers, detailed from Ohio regiments, seven from the 2d, eight from the 33d, and nine from the 21st.( 1) This party started from Shelbyville, Monday night, April 7, 1862, disguised as citizens, professing to be driven from their homes in Kentucky by the Union Army and going South to join the Confederate Army. They were to travel singly or in couples over roads not frequented by either army, but such as were usually taken by real Kentucky refugees to Chattanooga or some station where pa.s.sage on cars could be taken to Marietta, Georgia, where the whole party were to a.s.semble in four days ready to take a train northward the following (Friday) morning. Each man was furnished by Andrews with an abundance of Confederate money to pay bills. It was understood that if any were suspected and in danger of capture they were to enlist in the Southern army until an opportunity for escape presented.

Mitchel, it was known to Andrews and his party, was to start for Huntsville, Alabama, in a day or two, and Andrews hoped to be able to escape with his captured train through Chattanooga, thence west over the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, and join Mitchel at some point east of Huntsville.

The distance was too great for all the party to reach their destination before Friday, and on the way Andrews managed to notify most of his men that the enterprise would not be undertaken until Sat.u.r.day. About midnight of the 11th of April the members reached Marietta, and, with two exceptions, spent the night at a small hotel near the depot. Big Shanty (where pa.s.sengers on the early morning train were allowed to take breakfast), north of Marietta, was the place where the party proposed to seize the locomotive and such part of the train as might seem practicable, the engineer (Brown) of the party to run it north, stopping at intervals only long enough to cut telegraph wires, to prevent information being sent ahead, tear up short portions of the track to prevent pursuit, and to burn bridges, the latter being the princ.i.p.al object of the raid. Porter and Hawkins of the party, who had lodging at a different hotel from the others, were not awakened in time, and consequently did not partic.i.p.ate in the daring act for which the party was organized.

During the night Andrews carefully instructed those at his hotel, each man being told what was expected of him. The party were almost to a man strangers to him until five days before, and hardly two of them, though of the same regiment, until then knew each other.

Never before, for so extraordinary an attempt, was so incongruous a band a.s.sembled. I knew one of them--Sergeant-Major Marion A.

Ross, of the 2d Ohio. He had no previous training, and no special skill for such an expedition. He was a farmer boy (Champaign Co., Ohio) of more than ordinary retiring modesty, with no element of reckless daring in his nature. He had almost white silky flaxen hair, and at Antioch College, where I first met him, he rarely a.s.sociated with his schoolmates in play or amus.e.m.e.nt. He was called a ladies' man; and this because he did not care for the active pursuits usually enjoyed by young men.

It is said that when Ross ascertained the number of trains, regular and irregular, with which the exigencies of war had covered the railroad, and considered also the distance to be pa.s.sed over, he tried at the last moment to dissuade Andrews from undertaking the execution of the enterprise. In this he failed, but Andrews gave any of the party who regarded the design too hazardous the right to withdraw.( 2) Not one, however, availed himself of this liberty.

Ross saw that the scheme must fail, but was too manly to abandon his comrades.

Sat.u.r.day morning before daylight the party was seated in one pa.s.senger car, moving north. In this and other coaches there were several hundred pa.s.sengers.( 3) At sunrise, when eight miles from Marietta, the train stopped, and the trainmen shouted: "_Big Shanty --twenty minutes for breakfast_." At this, conductor, engineer, fireman, and train-hands, with most of the pa.s.sengers, left the train. Thus the desired opportunity of Andrews and his party was presented. They did not hesitate. Three cars back from the tender, including only box-cars, the coupling-pin was drawn, and the pa.s.senger cars cut off. Andrews mounted the engine, with Brown and Knight as engineers and Wilson as fireman. Others took places as brakemen, or as helpers and guards, and, to the amazement of the bystanders, the locomotive moved rapidly north. The conductor, engineer, and train-men were dazed. The capture was accomplished, but how were the trains and the stations to be pa.s.sed on the long journey to Chattanooga; and how was that place to be pa.s.sed, and still a run of a hundred miles made over the Memphis and Charleston Railroad before they were within the Union lines at Huntsville?

The train proceeded only a short distance when it was stopped and the telegraph wires cut, then it moved on again, stopping now and then long enough to enable Andrews and his men to tear up the track behind them. They reached Kingston, thirty-two miles north, where a stop had to be made, but by claiming their train was a powder train hastening to Beauregard's army, they were allowed to pa.s.s on; so the flight continued until Dalton and the tunnel north of it were pa.s.sed. The conductor, Fuller, started from Big Shanty with a small party on foot, then procured a hand-car and at Dalton a locomotive. His pursuit was both energetic and intelligent. At Dalton he succeeded in getting a telegram through to Chattanooga giving notice of the coming of the raiders. The locomotive seized, known as _General_, proved a poor one, and fuel soon gave out, and finally the pursuers came in sight. Cars were dropped and bridges were fired, but the pursuers pushed the cars ahead and put out the flames. At last, not far from Chattanooga, the _General_ was abandoned, and the raiders scattered to the woods and, generally singly, sought to evade capture; but as the whole country was aroused and Confederate soldiers were at hand, most of the party were soon captured; one or two evaded discovery by going boldly to recruiting stations and enlisting in the Confederate Army. The history of the suffering, trials, and fate of this daring band is one of the most thrilling and tragic of the war. It is too long to be here told. The captured were imprisoned at Chattanooga, and Andrews, the leader (after making one attempt to escape), was heavily ironed, and a scaffold was prepared at Chattanooga for his execution, but for some reason he and his companions were transferred to Atlanta, where, on the day of their arrival, he was taken to a scaffold and hung, and his body buried in an unmarked and still unknown grave.( 3) He died bravely, resigned to his fate. He was a man of quiet demeanor, of extraordinary resolution, and more than ordinary ability. He was tried and sentenced by a sort of drum- head court-martial, charged with being disloyal to the Confederacy and hanged as a spy.( 3) Other men of more fame have died on the gallows, and others of less merit have occupied high positions.

Seven of the band were taken to Knoxville, and in June, 1862, tried by court-martial and condemned to be hanged as spies. Campbell, Wilson, Ross, Shadrack, Slaven, Robinson, and Scott were hanged June 18th, by order of General E. Kirby Smith, at Atlanta.( 3) Their bodies were buried in a rude trench at the foot of the scaffold. A grateful government has caused this trench to be opened and the mortal remains of these unfortunate heroes of cruel war to be removed to the beautiful National Cemetery near Chattanooga and buried amidst the heroes of Chickamauga, there to rest until the Grand Army of Soldier-dead shall be summoned to rise on the resurrection morn.

Eight others, Brown, Knight, Porter, Wood, Wilson, Hawkins, Wallam, and Dorsey, after suffering more than the pangs of death in prison, in various ways and at different times escaped; and after like suffering, six others, Parrot, Buffem, Bensinger, Redd.i.c.k, Mason, and Pittenger were (March, 1863) exchanged. These fourteen were, save Wood and Buffem, living in 1881, honored and upright citizens.

Pittenger was a member of the New Jersey Methodist Episcopal Conference, and the author of _Capturing a Locomotive_, in which is given the story of the tragic affair in all its painful details.

Mitchel's division resumed its march southward April 9th, and reached Fayetteville the next day; two brigades--Turchin's and Sill's--continued the march towards Huntsville on the Memphis and Charleston Railroad. At Fayetteville the inhabitants seemed to be wholly disloyal, and extended no welcome. Huntsville was surprised and captured before daylight on April 11th. A large number of cars and fifteen locomotives were taken.( 4) One train was found at the depot loaded with recruits for Beauregard's army at Corinth.

Many Confederates who had been wounded at s.h.i.+loh were captured and paroled. The next day, at Stevenson, five more locomotives and a large amount of rolling stock were taken.( 4)

The only instance witnessed by me during the war of a body of soldiers refusing to obey orders was of the 10th Ohio when it was ordered at Fayetteville to prepare to march, each man carrying his knapsack. On some occasions prior to this time the company wagons carried the knapsacks of the men. Colonel Wm. H. Lytle (then commanding a brigade), being greatly chagrined and enraged at the insubordination of his regiment, ordered a section of a battery pointed on it, took out his watch, and gave the men two minutes to take up their knapsacks and be ready to march. The order was obeyed complainingly, and the incident was not again repeated. This regiment was a good one, and later it was distinguished for valor and good soldierly conduct.

As we proceeded south into the cotton regions, the slaves were more numerous and still flocked to the roadsides, seeking and desiring to follow the army. All believed the "Yankee army" had come solely to free them.

Colonel John Beatty was made Provost-Marshal and President of a Board of Administration for Huntsville.

Huntsville was a beautiful, aristocratic little Southern city. A feature of it was a large spring near its centre which furnished an abundant supply of water for the men and animals of a large army. It was the home of the Alabama Clays, all disloyal; of ex- Senator Jerry Clemens, who had early been a Union man, but later was disposed to accept secession as an accomplished fact; then, on the Union occupancy of Northern Alabama, he boldly advocated a restoration of the State to the Union. Colonel Nick Davis, likewise an original Union man, at first opposed secession; then, after Bull run, accepted a colonelcy in an Alabama rebel regiment; then declined it, and thereafter tried to remain loyal to the Union. The conduct of such strong men as Clemens and Davis is not to be wondered at when their surroundings are considered. There were many who, feeling bound to continue their residence in the South, and believing, after Bull Run, that the Confederacy was established, yielded their opposition to it.

Reverend Frederick A. Ross, a distinguished Presbyterian minister, who preached the divinity of slavery, resided here.( 5) Reverend Ross was arrested by General Rousseau and sent north to prison for publicly _praying_ in his church at Huntsville (while occupied by the Union Army) for the success of the Confederacy, the overthrow of the Union, and the defeat of its armies.

There were some men, among whom were Hon. George W. Lane (later appointed a United States Judge), who adhered firmly to the Union.

That part of Alabama north of the Tennessee had opposed secession.

Clement Comer Clay, a lawyer, who had been a soldier in the Creek Indian War, Chief-Justice of his State, and had served in both branches of Congress and as Governor of Alabama, was arrested and tried at Huntsville, when seventy-three years of age, by a military commission of which I was president. There were several charges against him, the most serious of which was for aiding and advising guerillas to secretly shoot down Union soldiers, cut telegraph lines, and wreck trains. This charge he vehemently denied until a letter in his own handwriting was produced, recently written to a guerilla chief, advising him and his band to do the things mentioned. He was not severely dealt with, but was sent to Camp Chase, Ohio, for detention. He was later liberated, and died in Huntsville in 1866. His son, Clement Claiborne Clay, had been a judge, and subsequently a United States Senator. He withdrew from the Senate in February, 1861, and was formally expelled in March, 1861. He became a Senator in the Confederate Congress in 1862, and during the last two years of the war was the secret agent of the Confederacy in Canada, where he plotted raids on the Northern frontier.

General O. M. Mitchel held advanced notions on the subject of the treatment and disposition of slaves of masters in arms against the government. The slaves of such masters, he thought, should be confiscated. He used some slaves as spies to gain information of the enemy, and to located secreted Confederate supplies, and to them he promised protection, if not freedom. Secretary Stanton approved his action and views in this matter.( 6)

But Buell, his immediate commander, wholly disapproved of all employment or use of slaves in any manner as instruments to put down the rebellion. Mitchel, therefore, soon fell into disfavor with him. Buell, on learning that Mitchel had employed some able- bodied escaped slaves to aid the soldiers in constructing stockades to protect railroad bridges, necessary to be maintained to enable supplies to be brought up, ordered Mitchel to send an officer to see that slaves thus employed were forthwith returned to their masters. I was accordingly directed by Mitchel to take a small guard, and, with a locomotive and car, go to the bridges west of Huntsville and north of the Tennessee River, on the line of railroad from Decatur through Athens towards Nashville, to execute this order of Buell's. I executed it to the _letter--only_. While on this unpleasant duty I came to a place where a scouting party, commanded by a lieutenant sent out by Mitchel, had two citizen- disguised Confederate guerillas, just taken in the act of cutting the telegraph wires, an offence, by a proclamation of Mitchel, punishable by death. The scouting party proceeded to hang them with wire to telegraph poles. I did not approve the summary punishment, but was powerless and without authority over the officer; and was then engaged only in returning slaves to their owners.

Prior to this order of Buell's, Congress had pa.s.sed an act, as an Article of War, prohibiting the employment of any of the United States forces "for the purpose of returning fugitives from service or labor who may have escaped, and any officer found guilty, by a court-martial, of violating this article to be dismissed from the service."( 7) The order, and my execution of it, were alike in violation of the law, for the issuing and execution of which both Buell and I could have been dismissed from the service. Just after the capture of Fort Donelson Grant issued an order prohibiting the return of the fugitive slaves with his army and of all slaves at Fort Donelson at the time of its capture.( 8)

Both Stevenson and Decatur, to the east and west of Huntsville, were, by the use of captured locomotives and cars, seized by Mitchel on the 12th of April, and his command was soon so extended as to hold the one hundred miles of railroad between Stevenson and Tusc.u.mbia. The last of the same month, however, the troops were withdrawn from Tusc.u.mbia and south of the Tennessee. The 3d and 10th Ohio being in occupancy of Decatur, evacuated it under orders, and, on the night of April 27th, burned the railroad bridge (one half mile in length) over the Tennessee River.

An expedition started the same day for Bridgeport, where the railroad again crosses the Tennessee, and where General Danville Leadbetter had command of a small force on the west side of the river, somewhat intrenched. The expedition consisted of two companies of cavalry, two pieces of artillery, and six regiments of infantry, Mitchel commanding. Owing to the destruction by the Confederates of a bridge over Widow's Creek, it was impossible to transport by rail the artillery with caissons and horses nearer than four miles of Bridgeport. By the use of cotton bales the two guns were floated over the deep stream, and the artillery horses and caissons with extra ammunition were left behind. The guns were dragged by two companies of the 3d Ohio, and the whole expedition pushed on to a ridge within about five hundred yards of Leadbetter's redoubts near the north end of the bridge. The enemy was surprised or demoralized, and Leadbetter did not decide either to retreat or fight until a shot or two from our cannon emptied his redoubts and intrenched position near the end of the bridge.

Precipitately his guns were loaded on a platform-car, and a hasty retreat was made across the Tennessee by the railroad bridge; but before all the Confederate troops had succeeded in crossing Leadbetter caused to be exploded two hundred pounds of powder, with a view of blowing up the east span of the bridge. The explosion did not do the work, hence the drawbridge at the east end was fired, to complete its destruction.( 9) But few captures were made. Leadbetter also abandoned his camp east of the river, and was forced to abandon two guns placed in position on the east bank. One of the Andrews raiders of the 33d Ohio, who, to save himself from capture and punishment, had joined Captain Kain's battery, and was acting as artillery sergeant with the two guns captured, hid under the river bank and signalled his desire to be allowed to surrender. He was permitted to cross over to us, and, his old regiment being present, he at once rejoined it.

Mitchel moved his command on Bridgeport with great rapidity and skill, but he showed a nervous temper, which gave the impression that in a great battle he would become too much excited for a commanding officer.

Just after Leadbetter's retreat a body of cavalry appeared below Bridgeport in an open field, not knowing the place had been taken, and would have been captured had Mitchel not ordered them fired on before they came near enough to be cut off.

I was sent on the morning of the 30th, in command of a detachment, across the Tennessee to reconnoitre towards Chattanooga. We improvised rafts from logs and timber to carry the men, and a few horses for mounted officers were forced into the stream, and by holding their heads to the rafts compelled to swim the east channel of the Tennessee. We secured the two guns mentioned, some muskets and supplies at the enemy's camps, and found evidence of a hasty flight of the Confederates. By a detour we came into a valley flanked to the east by Racc.o.o.n Mountain, and we visited a large saltpetre works at Nick-a-Jack Cave. These works we destroyed by breaking the large iron kettles and by burning all combustible structures. A portion of the detachment was sent under cover of the thick woods to the railroad east of Sh.e.l.lmound, a station near the river, where we expected to cut off a train of cars engaged in loading, for removal, supplies of provisions. The engineer, a few moments before the party reached the railroad, had run his engine to a water-station located east of the point of our intersection, and it thus escaped capture. We, however, captured one captain and about a dozen men; also the cars of the train and considerable supplies, all of which we were obliged to destroy, save some choice, much-needed hams. These we loaded on a flat car, which we pushed about ten miles to the east abutment of the broken bridge. This raid caused great consternation at Chattanooga for several days.

The detachment was reported as 5000 strong at Sh.e.l.lmound, and Leadbetter ordered "all bridges on the railroad and country roads"

burned, and a retreat to Lookout Mountain.(10) It would have been easy then to have taken Chattanooga. A year and a half later it cost many lives and became about the only Union trophy of the battle of Chickamauga.

I learned on this raid, from prisoners, that Farragut and Butler had, on April 29, 1862, obtained possession of New Orleans. This was the first information of their success received at the North.(11)

My expedition was the first armed one of the war upon the mainland of Georgia.

On my return to the west side of the river I found my regiment, with others, under orders to march at 9 o'clock at night for Stevenson, destination Athens, Alabama. The enemy, under Colonel J. S. Scott, attacked (May 1st) and drove out of Athens the 18th Ohio, under Colonel T. R. Stanley. The affair was not a creditable one to either side. The troops under Scott were said to have been harbored in houses from which they fired on Stanley's men as the latter fled through the streets, and it was claimed citizens aided in shooting down Union soldiers, though this was never shown to be true. Scott, in his report to Beauregard, dated the day of the fight, boasted that the "boys took few prisoners, their shots proving singularly fatal."(11)