Book IV. — The Phantoms
I. — Richmond by the Throat
I was again back at the “Cedars,” after the rapid and shifting scenes which I have endeavored to place before the reader.
The tragic incidents befalling the actors in this drama, had most absorbed my attention; but sitting now in my tent, with the newspapers before me, I looked at the fight in which I had participated, from the general and historic point of view.
That heavy advance on the Boydton road, beyond Lee’s right, had been simultaneous with a determined assault on the Confederate left, north of James River, and on Lee’s centre opposite Petersburg; and now the extracts from Northern journals clearly indicated that the movement was meant to be decisive.
“I have Richmond by the throat!” General Grant had telegraphed; but there was good ground to believe that the heavy attack, and the eloquent dispatch, were both meant to “make capital” for the approaching Presidential election.
These memoirs, my dear reader, are written chiefly to record some incidents which I witnessed during the war. I have neither time nor space for political comments. But I laid my hand yesterday, by accident, on an old number of the Examiner newspaper; and it chanced to contain an editorial on the fight just described, with some penetrating views on the “situation” at that time.
Shall I quote a paragraph from the yellow old paper? It will be bitter—we were all bitter in those days! though to-day we are so fraternal and harmonious. With his trenchant pen, Daniel pierced to the core of the matter; and the paper may give some idea of the spirit of the times.
I could fancy the great satirist sitting in his lonely study, and penning the lines I shall quote, not without grim smiles at his own mordant humor.
Here is the slip I cut out. The old familiar heading may recall those times to some readers, as clearly as the biting sentences, once read, perhaps, by the camp-fire.
* * * * * DAILY EXAMINER. * * * * * MONDAY MORNING OCT. 31, 1864. * * * * *
“Every day must now bring its brilliant bulletin to the Yankee nation. That nation does not regard the punctual rising of the sun as more lawfully due to it than a victory every morning. And those glorious achievements of SHERIDAN in the Valley were grown cold and stale, and even plainly hollow and rotten—insomuch that, after totally annihilating the army of EARLY at least three times, and so clearing the way to Lynchburg, instead of marching up to Lynchburg the heroick victor goes whirling down to Winchester. Then the superb victory obtained on Sunday of last week over PRICE in Missouri, has taken a certain bogus tint, which causes many to believe that there was, in fact, no victory and no battle. This would not do. Something fresh must be had; something electrifying; above all, something that would set the people to cheering and firing off salutes about the very day of the election;—something, too, that could not be plainly contradicted by the events till after that critical day—then let the contradiction come and welcome: your true Yankee will only laugh.
“From this necessity came the great ‘reconnoissance in force’ of last Thursday on our lines before Richmond and Petersburg; a ‘reconnoissance’ in very heavy force indeed upon three points of our front at once both north and south of the James river; so that it may be very properly considered as three reconnoissances in force; made with a view of feeling, as it were, LEE’S position; and the object of the three reconnoissances having been fully attained—that is, LEE having been felt—they retired. That is the way in which the transactions of Thursday last are to appear in STANTON’S bulletin, we may be all quite sure; and this representation, together with the occupation of a part of the Boydton plank-road (which road the newspapers can call for a few days the Southside Road) will cause every city from Boston to Milwaukee to fire off its inevitable hundred guns. Thus, the Presidential election will be served, just in the nick of time; for that emergency it is not the real victory which is wanted, so much as the jubilation, glorification and cannon salutes.
“Even when the truth comes to be fully known that this was the grand pre-election assault itself: the resistless advance on Richmond which was to lift the Abolitionists into power again upon a swelling high-tide of glory unutterable—easily repulsed and sent rolling back with a loss of about six or seven thousand men in killed, wounded and prisoners; even when this is known, does the reader imagine that the Yankee nation will be discouraged? Very far from it. On the contrary it will be easily made to appear that from these ‘reconnoissances in force,’ an advantage has been gained, which is to make the next advance a sure and overwhelming success. For the fact is, that a day was chosen for this mighty movement, when the wind was southerly, a soft and gentle breeze, which wafted the odour of the Yankee whiskey-rations to the nostrils of Confederate soldiers. The Confederates ought to have been taken by surprise that morning; but the moment they snuffed the tainted gale, they knew what was to be the morning’s work. Not more unerring is the instinct which calls the vulture to the battle-field before a drop of blood is shed; or that which makes the kites ‘know well the long stern swell, that bids the Romans close;’ than the sure induction of our army that the Yankees are coming on, when morn or noon or dewy eve breathes along the whole line a perfumed savour of the ancient rye. The way in which this discovery may be improved is plain. It will be felt and understood throughout the intelligent North, that it gives them at last the key to Richmond. They will say—Those rebels, to leeward of us, smell the rising valour of our loyal soldiers: the filling and emptying of a hundred thousand canteens perfumes the sweet South as if it had passed over a bed of violets, stealing and giving odours:—when the wind is southerly it will be said, rebels know a hawk from a handsaw. Therefore it is but making our next grand assault on some morning when they are to windward of us—creeping up, in the lee of LEE, as if he were a stag—and Richmond is ours.”
That is savage, and sounds unfraternal to-day, when peace and good feeling reign—when the walls of the Virginia capitol re-echo the stately voices of the conscript fathers of the great commonwealth and mother of States: conscript fathers bringing their wisdom, mature study, and experience to the work of still further improving the work of Jefferson, Mason, and Washington.
“I have Richmond by the throat!” General Grant wrote in October, 1864. In February, 1868, when these lines are written, black hands have got Virginia by the throat, and she is suffocating; Cuffee grins, Cuffee gabbles—the groans of the “Old Mother” make him laugh.
Messieurs of the great Northwest, she gave you being, and suckled you! Are you going to see her strangled before your very eyes?