Daniel Harvey Hill. By A. C. Avery
Daniel Harvey Hill was born in the York District in the State of South Carolina on the 21st of July, 1821. He traced his descent neither from the Cavaliers of England nor from the Huguenots of France, but from the sturdy sons of liberty-loving Scotland, who migrated to the north of Ireland and ultimately planted colonies in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North and South Carolina, where they educated, elevated, and dominated the people with whom they came in contact. His paternal grandfather, William Hill, a native of Ireland, had landed in Pennsylvania, and moving south with the stream of Scotch-Irish that populated the valley of Virginia and Western North Carolina, built, with Colonel Hayne as his partner, in 1770, an iron foundry in York District, which, within the next decade, was the only point south of Virginia where cannons were cast for the use of the colonial armies. He was colonel of a regiment in Sumter’s Brigade, and fought gallantly under him in many engagements. While Colonel Hill was confined to his home by a wound received in battle a detachment was sent from the British force at Charleston to destroy his foundry, and he barely escaped with his life by hiding under a large log and covering himself with leaves. When the battle of King’s Mountain was fought Colonel Hill’s command had been disbanded, but he went to the field as a volunteer, and was honored by being invited to the council held by Campbell, Sevier, McDowell, and other distinguished regimental commanders, to determine the plan of attack. He made a number of suggestions that were adopted, which proved the value of his opinion as a soldier. For twenty years after the war Colonel Hill was the trusted representative of his district in the State Senate of South Carolina, and was the intimate friend of Patrick Calhoun, the father of the great statesman and orator, John C. Calhoun. General Hill’s mother was Nancy Cabeen, the daughter of Thomas Cabeen, a native Scotchman, who was Sumter’s trusted scout, and himself “the bravest man in his command,” as the General himself often declared. Two uncles of General Hill were soldiers in the second war with England, and one of them was the adjutant of Colonel Arthur P. Hayne’s Regiment. Solomon Hill, his father, died when his son Harvey was but four years old, leaving him, with four other children, to be reared by a mother who was noted for her piety, culture, common sense, and devotion. Like all Scotch and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians of the old school, she exacted of her sons the most rigid observance of the Sabbath. Dr. John Hill, a somewhat wayward brother of General Hill, often declared, after he had reached middle age, that during his boyhood he always “took the blues on Thursday morning because Sunday was coming.” The boys were required, each in his turn, to select and read a morning prayer when the family assembled for breakfast. Some of General Hill’s heartiest laughs were provoked by the recollection of the ludicrous mistakes made by his little brother in his efforts to find and read the shortest petition in the book, without regard to its fitness for the occasion.
Sprung from a race of soldiers by the paternal as well as the maternal line, it is not strange that the earliest ambition of D. H. Hill led him to seek a place at West Point and to look forward to a military career. Under the rigid physical examination now prescribed for an applicant, he would have been rejected without hesitation. He entered the institution in 1838, and but for feeble health would have pressed to the very front of a class of which Generals Longstreet, A. P. Stewart, G. W. Smith, R. H. Anderson, and Van Dorn of the Confederate, and Rosecrans, Pope, Sykes, Doubleday, Stone, and Reynolds of the Federal army were members.
Graduating in 1842, he was still a second lieutenant when he was ordered with his command into active service in Mexico in August, 1845. During the three succeeding years he participated in nearly every battle fought by our forces under the command of either Scott or Taylor, and always attracted the notice of his superior officers by his conspicuous courage. He soon rose to the rank of first lieutenant, and, for gallant conduct at Contreras and Churubusco, was breveted captain. At Chapultepec he volunteered with the storming party, and so distinguished himself among the scores of brave men who participated with him in that desperate assault as to win for himself a second brevet as major. He was one of the six officers in the whole force employed in Mexico who were twice breveted for meritorious service upon the field. Animosity, envy, and a disposition to indulge in carping criticism have led to many unjust reflections upon General Hill, but the most unscrupulous of his detractors never questioned his courage or his integrity. When the Legislature of his native State provided by law that three swords should be awarded to the three bravest of her soldiers who had survived the war with Mexico, many letters and testimonials from the officers of the old army were voluntarily sent to the Chief Executive, naming D. H. Hill as among the bravest soldiers in the army of the United States. Among a few of these testimonials still extant is the letter from the gallant Bee, who, in exclaiming, a moment before he fell at Manassas, “There stands Jackson like a stone wall,” gave to the great leader the pet name by which his soldiers called him and the world knows him, and thereby made himself immortal as its author. The letter addressed to General Dunavant on the 26th of October, 1856, is as follows:
It gives me great pleasure to add my mite of praise to that which has already been given to Mr. Hill by his military superiors. I had the pleasure of knowing him intimately and serving with him in the storming party detailed from Twiggs’ Division for the attack on Chapultepec. I can bear full testimony to his gallantry and to his ardent desire to do his duty well. In addition, I can testify to his State pride, evinced in his going up under a heavy fire to congratulate and praise a member of the Palmetto regiment who was behaving under fire most gallantly. For his services on that day he received honorable mention from his immediate commanders and also from Colonel Magruder, commanding a light battery, which battery Lieutenant Hill offered to support when it was menaced by a body of Mexican lancers. He received the brevet appointment of major, and was considered a loss to the service when he resigned.
Your obedient servant,
BERNARD BEE,
Captain U. S. Army.
From the scores of her surviving heroes of the Palmetto regiment and in the regular army the committee appointed by the State authorities selected Hill to receive one of the three swords awarded, and it is still preserved by his family.
After the close of the late war a Federal officer wrote to General Joseph E. Johnston, asking the name of a Confederate officer who, on the right of our army at Seven Pines, had made himself most conspicuous for his daring and indifference to danger. The only mark of distinction which he could give General Johnston was that he thought the officer rode a white horse. General Johnston replied that he supposed the officer referred to must have been General D. H. Hill. In writing to General Hill about the matter, General Johnston said: “I drew my conclusion that your horse might very well have been taken for white and that no man was more likely to expose himself than you. Do you know that in Mexico the young officers called you the bravest man in the army?”
When the war with Mexico ended Major Hill resigned his place in the army to accept the professorship of Mathematics in Washington College at Lexington, Virginia. Before assuming the duties of that place he was happily married, November 2d, 1852, to Isabella, oldest daughter of Rev. Dr. R. H. Morrison, and granddaughter of General Joseph Graham, who was a distinguished soldier of the Revolution and the father of Governor William A. Graham. Six years later, he was invited to take the same professorship at Davidson College, where for five years he was looked upon as the leading spirit amongst a corps of able and learned professors.
D. H. Hill was not a politician in the sense of aspiring to office or attempting to mould public opinion; but when he saw that the leaders of the North had determined that no Southerner should be allowed to take his slaves to the territory wrested from Mexico by the blood and treasure of the South as well as of the North, he believed that the irrepressible conflict, which Seward declared at a later day was being waged, had then begun, and would be settled only upon the bloody field of battle and after a prolonged, sanguinary, and doubtful struggle.
Fully persuaded that the inevitable conflict was near at hand, and that it was his solemn duty to prepare the rising generation of his adopted State to meet it he, in 1859, gave up his pleasant home and his congenial duties at Davidson College for those of commandant and manager of the Military Institute at Charlotte.
He harbored no unkind thought against the noble men and women of the North who held opinions different from his own. He respected even the honest fanatic, who fairly and openly contended for his convictions; but he hated cant and hypocrisy, despised duplicity and dishonesty, and leveled at them his most effective weapons, ridicule, and sarcasm. For that portion of our Northern brethren who came to the South to drive hard bargains with our people and cheat them by false pretenses, he felt and expressed the most sovereign contempt. For the men of the North who coveted the wealth of the Southern planter, and the women who envied their Southern sisters because of the ease and leisure incident to the ownership of slaves, he made no attempt to conceal his hatred and disgust.
Major Hill brought with him to Raleigh his three professors, Lee, Lane, and McKinney, two of whom fell later at the head of North Carolina regiments, and one of whom was the successor of the noble Branch as commander of one of our best and bravest brigades. He also brought with him almost the whole corps of cadets, whose services proved invaluable as drill-masters of the ten thousand volunteers then in the camp of instruction of which Hill took charge. For his services in the camp of instruction General Hill was allowed to select twelve companies to compose the first regiment of volunteers. The officers of these companies were all leading and influential citizens, and the rank and file were among the first young men in the State in intelligence, wealth, and social position. The service of six months proved a training-school for that splendid body of volunteers that ultimately placed them at the head of companies, regiments, brigades, and divisions. Among its original officers were Major-General Hoke, Brigadier-Generals Lane and Lewis, Colonels Avery, Bridgers, Hardy, W. W. McDowell, J. C. S. McDowell, Starr, Pemberton, Fuller, and a score of others, while a number from the rank and file fell at the head of both companies and regiments at later stages of the struggle.
In the outset of this discussion of the career of D. H. Hill as a Confederate soldier, I lay down and propose to maintain the proposition that from the time when he fought the first fight of the war with North Carolina soldiers on Virginia soil till the day he led the last attacking column of Confederates east of the Mississippi and checked Sherman’s advance at Bentonsville, whatever may have been the general result of any engagement, the command of General D. H. Hill was never found when the firing ceased at night in the rear of the position it occupied when the signal of attack sounded in the morning. Apparently reckless in the exposure of his own person, no officer in our armies was more anxious about the health, happiness, and safety of his soldiers. His theory was that spades were instruments of defensive, bayonets of offensive, warfare, and whether the emergency demanded the use of the one or the other, it was to be done with “might and main.” When his cadets had asked him whether they should join South Carolina regiments before their own State seceded he prophesied that the war would soon begin and would continue long enough to give every Southerner an opportunity to display his manhood. He rested his hope of success upon the belief that every son of the South would rush to the rescue; that our armies would be supplied by the labor of our slaves, and that we would thus be enabled to throw a force into the field sufficient to meet every Northern man who would tender his services to the Federal Government. Two important elements were wanting as a basis of his calculations—the Southern loyalist and the foreign substitute. When, therefore, General D. H. Hill reported to Colonel J. B. Magruder, then in charge of the Peninsula, and was assigned to the command of the defenses of Yorktown, he realized, in a measure at least, the magnitude of coming contest.
It has been said that a man who is himself born to command is quick to perceive in others the qualities that fit them for leadership. Colonel Hill seemed almost intuitively to descry in the ranks the coolness, courage, judgment, and power of prompt decision which others recognized in his favorites after they had led brigades and divisions to victory. On assuming command at Yorktown he soon discovered that the cavalry, which he looked upon as the “eye and the ear of the army,” was inefficient, because the force was composed of a number of detached companies without a trained or efficient commander. In this emergency an officer of the old army, who had been commissioned lieutenant in the regular army of the Confederate States, reported for duty. Marking him as a man of promise, Colonel Hill at once caused an order to be issued placing Major John B. Hood in command of all the cavalry, and waited for the War Department to ratify the promotion and thus protect him in practicing a pardonable ruse on the volunteers. That officer ultimately succeeded Lieutenant-General D. H. Hill as the commander of a corps, and was still later placed in charge of the army of Tennessee. The Providence that has provided homes for his orphan children will in its own good time bring to light all the facts, and then John B. Hood will stand vindicated before the world as one of the best and bravest of all our leaders. It was this same gift that enabled General Hill to select from the lieutenants of his regiment Robert F. Hoke to be made a major of his regiment over ten competent captains. It was this intuitive perception of persistent pluck, dash, and coolness that prompted him to love and honor George B. Anderson, William R. Cox, Bryan Grimes, Stephen D. Ramseur, and Robert D. Johnston, and led him later to urge the advancement of Gordon, Colquitt, and Doles, of Georgia. In June, 1861 (a few days after the fight at Bethel), in a letter to his wife he said of Stonewall Jackson, then a colonel in command of a brigade, “I see that Jackson has had an engagement and taken many prisoners. I have predicted all along that Colonel Jackson would have a prominent place in the war.”
On the 6th of June, 1861, Colonel Hill, then at Yorktown, was ordered to make a reconnaissance in force in the direction of Fortress Monroe, and he moved down with his own regiment and four companies of Richmond Howitzers under the command of Major G. W. Randolph (afterwards Secretary of War), to Little Bethel Church. Receiving information that Butler’s forces were preparing to move up the Peninsula, Colonel Hill fell back to Big Bethel Church, where, with a small branch of Black river on his front and right flank and an almost impenetrable forest on his left, he used twenty-five spades and several hundred bayonets during the night in making an enclosed work. Ben. Butler had started five thousand men in three columns, with the confident expectation that two of the detachments would travel by roads passing north and south of the position at Little Bethel and form a junction two or three miles in the rear of it, where the roads traveled by these two detachments came together, while Duryea’s Regiment of Zouaves would engage Hill in front till the other columns should unite and then press him in the rear in his expected retreat. Two of the detachments mistook each other in the night and engaged in a skirmish. The Zouaves, instead of following immediately upon the heels of the fugitive rebels, as contemplated by Butler, turned back and fled precipitately on hearing the firing in front of their own reserve line.
On the next day they again moved forward and attacked the force at Big Bethel, Colonel Magruder having meantime arrived with Cary’s battalion of infantry. The whole force engaged on the Confederate side was eight hundred North Carolinians and four hundred Virginians; on the Federal side, thirty-five hundred, with from fifteen hundred to twenty-five hundred in reserve. After preliminary skirmishing for about two hours, and an attack that lasted two and a half hours longer, the enemy retreated in great confusion, with a loss of probably fifty killed and three hundred wounded, and were so hotly pursued by our cavalry that they scattered guns, haversacks and knapsacks till they crossed a bridge and stopped the pursuit by destroying it. The names of no soldiers of North Carolina should be inscribed in a more prominent place on the monument to be erected to her heroic dead than those of Henry L. Wyatt, the first offering of the South to the Lost Cause, and his three comrades, who rushed forward in a hail of shot and shell to destroy a house where the sharpshooters of the enemy had taken shelter. Judging of its importance by the numbers engaged and the losses on both sides, the battle of Bethel scarcely rose above the dignity of a skirmish; yet few events in the early history of the war had a more important influence upon the contests of the following year. The splendid bearing of our soldiers sent a thrill of pride to every Southern heart, and when the first battle of Manassas was fought, less than a month later, our soldiers moved forward in the confidence that Southern pluck would again prevail over a foe that had shown so little dash and confidence in this encounter.
There was on the Federal side at least one stout leader who displayed the spirit of a hero. When Major Theodore Winthrop fell within fifteen feet of our line, bravely leading a regiment in the charge, even a generous foe felt that he was worthy to bear the name of the two Winthrops by whose courage and judgment Americans had first gained a foothold in this country.
To know D. H. Hill as the soldier of iron nerve, who rode unmoved in showers of shot and shell, or rebuked in scathing terms a laggard or a deserter, was to understand nothing of his true nature. When the battle of Bethel was over and others were feasting or carousing, Hill had fallen upon his knees and was returning thanks to Almighty God, Who, he believed, directed the course of every deadly missile hurled by the enemy with the same unerring certainty that ordered the movements of the multitudes of worlds in the universe, and into whose keeping he daily committed himself, his wife, and little ones, his staff and his soldiers with the calm reliance of a child, that as a kind father He would provide what was best for him and them.
On the day after the fight at Bethel he wrote his wife: “I have to thank God for a great and decided victory, and that I escaped with a slight contusion on the knee.... It is a little singular that my first battle in this war should be at Bethel, where I was baptized and worshiped till I was sixteen years old—the church of my mother. Was she not a guardian spirit in the battle, averting ball and shell? Oh God, give me gratitude to Thee, and may we never dishonor Thee by weak faith!” Still later he wrote his wife: “I look for a battle about the first of October. Pray for me that I may be well. (He was then in delicate health).... We are in the hands of God, and as safe on the battle-field as anywhere else. We will be exposed to a heavy fire, but the arm of God is mightier than the artillery of the enemy.”
After the battle Governor Ellis issued a commission of brigadier-general to him, as Governor Letcher had done at an earlier date in the case of Jackson, but President Davis delayed giving him the appointment till September, 1861. The response to a letter from his wife, written during this interval, in which she complained of the delay, shows how little the outer world understood his character or his motives: “You must not be concerned about my commission,” he wrote. “I feel too distrustful of my own skill, coolness, and judgment. I have never coveted, and always avoided, positions of trust and responsibility. The offices that I have held have not been of my seeking.”
Upon receiving his commission as a brigadier in September, 1861, the first work assigned to him was the command of the coast of North Carolina, with the duty, as far as possible, of constructing fortifications wherever necessary. Hopeless as was the task assigned, he brought all of his energies to bear upon it, and during the few months that he remained in North Carolina did so much to strengthen our forts and improve the discipline and spirit of the troops that the public men of the State asked for his return in every time of peril, until it became the custom of the general commanding to send him to his department south of the James when all was quiet on the Potomac, and recall him to the command of his division in the field when active operations were resumed.
His first connection with the Army of Northern Virginia was when, early in December, 1861, he was ordered to report to General Johnston at Manassas, and was assigned to command at Leesburg on the left of the line. While he was stationed there an incident occurred which evinced the strength and warmth of General Hill’s affection for his early friends, even in the Federal army. General Stone was in charge of the force on the opposite side of the river, and after writing an official letter, sent under a flag of truce, General Hill appended a postscript to the effect that, if the fortunes of war should place his old academy chum in his custody he should feel more inclined to take him into his own tent than to consign him to prison. This led to the interchange of several kind messages appended to similar communications. Unfortunately Stone was a pronounced Democrat, and, like McClellan, was unwilling to recant or repent. Seizing upon this excuse, Stanton arrested him on a charge of disloyalty, and gave him no opportunity to vindicate himself till the close of the war, when he resigned and spent his last days in command of the army of the Khedive of Egypt.
On the night of the battle of Gaines’ Mill, Major Clitz and General Reynolds, old army comrades of General Hill, were brought as prisoners to his quarters. He received both very kindly and sent for a surgeon to dress Major Clitz’s wound, while he comforted Reynolds, who was mortified at being caught asleep, by reminding him that his gallant conduct in Mexico and on the border would protect his good name from a shade of suspicion. Both were placed in an ambulance, paroled to report to General Winder at Richmond, and furnished with the address of a friend of General Hill’s who would honor their drafts for money. These incidents are reproduced because they bring to view traits of General Hill’s character of which the world generally knows so little, his warm sympathy for suffering and his lasting and unswerving fidelity to his friends.
From the moment when Johnston placed Hill, then a major-general, at the head of a division in March, 1862, till the last shock of arms at Bentonsville, Hill’s position on every march and in every battle, with scarcely a single exception, was the post of danger and honor. His was the first division of Johnston’s army to enter Yorktown and the last to leave it and pass with his command through the reserve line. When the vanguard of the enemy, led by Hancock, rushed upon our rear at Williamsburg, it was Basil C. Manly, of Ramseur’s Battery, who, seeing that a section of the enemy’s light artillery might beat him in the race to occupy an earthwork midway between the two, unlimbered on the way and by a well-directed shot disabled the enemy in transitu, and as quick as thought limbered up again and ran into the fortifications. It was the regiment of Duncan K. MacRae, of D. H. Hill’s Division, that extorted from the generous and gallant Hancock that memorable declaration, “The Fifth North Carolina and Twenty-fourth Virginia deserve to have the word immortal inscribed on their banners.” It was this charge which Early describes as “an attack upon the vastly superior forces of the enemy, which for its gallantry is unsurpassed in the annals of warfare.”
When McClellan moved his army over Bottom’s Bridge, threw a heavy column across the Chickahominy and extended his line towards the north of Richmond, General R. E. Lee was then acting as advisory commander of all the armies of the Confederacy. He concurred with Mr. Davis in the opinion that McClellan should be attacked on the other side of the Chickahominy before he matured his preparations for a siege of Richmond. (The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Vol. I, p. 120.) When General Lee communicated their views to General Johnston, he told Lee that his plan was to send A. P. Hill to the right and rear of the enemy and G. W. Smith to the left flank, with orders to make simultaneous attacks for the purpose of doubling up the army, and sending Longstreet to cross at Mechanicsville bridge and attack him in front. McClellan’s line on his right was not then well fortified, and the general disposition of the Federal forces was more favorable for a Confederate advance than a month later, when Lee concentrated a heavy force on the left and turned it. After McDowell’s movement to Hanover Court House, when his vanguard was checked by Branch, the blows stricken by Jackson in such rapid succession in the valley had excited apprehension so grave in the mind of Lincoln that, despite McClellan’s protest, he ordered the withdrawal of that command to Fredericksburg for the protection of Washington City. For reasons that were unsatisfactory to the President, General Johnston, after marching and countermarching G. W. Smith’s and Longstreet’s Divisions, abandoned his first plan of operations and ordered the troops to assume substantially their original positions. President Davis, in his work The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, takes the ground that after waiting a week and giving McClellan the opportunity to fortify, operations should have been delayed another day till the Chickahominy had risen high enough to sweep away the bridges and till Huger had had time to move up his artillery from his position near Richmond.
The popular impression that the bridges across the Chickahominy had already been swept away when the fight at Seven Pines began on the 30th of May, 1861, is totally unfounded. The corps of Heintzelman and Keyes were then south and that of Sumner north of the Chickahominy. The plan outlined by General Johnston was, briefly, that Huger should move from his camp near Richmond early on that morning down the Charles City road and vigorously attack the enemy’s right, and that Longstreet and Hill, moving on the same road, should attack the center and left of the force south of the bridge, while G. W. Smith’s Corps should advance on the Nine Mile Road and turn the left of Heintzelman and Keyes, if Sumner should not have arrived, or engage and prevent the junction of his with the other corps, if he should cross. Longstreet and Hill were in position to attack at an early hour, but waited till ten o’clock for the arrival of Huger, whose division, except two regiments of Rodes’ (which created a diversion by a vigorous attack on the right), did not arrive in time to participate in the action. Our failure to destroy an enemy who, by a concerted movement in the forenoon, would have been utterly routed and driven from the field or captured was, as is universally conceded, one of the most palpable blunders of the war, but the question upon whose shoulders the blame rests still confronts us. No engagement of the war has given rise to more acrimonious censure and crimination than Seven Pines. Mr. Davis, General Johnston, General Longstreet, General Smith, and General Huger have each in turn discussed the conduct of both the active and passive leaders of that memorable day.
The future historians who shall make up for posterity their verdict upon the controverted points of the battle of Seven Pines will find one fact admitted by all of the disputants: that D. H. Hill was the hero of the occasion, and with his own gallant division, aided by two of Longstreet’s brigades, drove the enemy in confusion from the breastworks and turned their own guns upon them as they retreated. Longstreet, who was in command on the right, generously said in his report: “The conduct of the attack was left entirely to Major-General Hill. The success of the affair is sufficient evidence of his ability, courage, and skill.” Commenting upon the language of Longstreet, President Davis said: “This tribute to General Hill was no more than has been accorded to him by others who knew of his services on that day, and was in keeping with the determined courage, vigilance, and daring exhibited by him on other fields.”
General Johnston’s language was not less unequivocal in according to Hill the credit of making a very gallant and the only successful attack upon the enemy’s works, when he said in his report: “The principal attack was made by Major-General Longstreet with his own and Major-General D. H. Hill’s Division—the latter mostly in advance. Hill’s brave troops, admirably commanded and most gallantly led, forced their way through the abattis which formed the enemy’s external defenses and stormed their entrenchments by a most determined rush. Such was the manner in which the enemy’s first line was carried. The operation was repented with the same gallantry and success as our troops pursued their victorious career through the enemy’s successive camps and entrenchments. At each new position they encountered fresh troops and reenforcements brought from the rear. Thus they had to repel repeated efforts to retake works which they had carried, but their advance was never successfully resisted.”
On the 31st of May, 1862, General R. E. Lee was assigned to the command of the army in place of General Johnston, who had been painfully wounded on the previous day, and immediately addressed himself to the arduous task of preparing for the decisive encounter, which could not be long delayed. His “exhibition of grand administrative talent and indomitable energy in bringing up that army in so short a time to that state of discipline which maintained its aggregation during those terrible seven days’ fight around Richmond,” says Colonel Chilton, was “his greatest achievement.”
The order of battle in the memorable seven days’ fight required A. P. Hill, when Jackson should pass down in rear of Mechanicsville, to cross at Meadow Bridge and drive the enemy so as to enable D. H. Hill to pass over the bridge at that village.
In obedience to messages from General Lee and President Davis, General Hill, after crossing, went forward with the brigade of Brigadier-General Ripley to cooperate with the division of General A. P. Hill. At the request of Brigadier-General Pender, Hill directed Ripley just at dark to act in concert with that dashing officer in the effort to turn the enemy’s position at Ellison’s Mill and drive him from it.
The desperate charge across an open field in the face of a murderous fire, in which that brave soldier and noble man, Colonel Montford S. Stokes of the First North Carolina Regiment, fell mortally wounded, was neither planned by General Hill nor executed under his directions. (Official Records, Series 1, Vol. XI, Part 2, p. 623.) The suggestion that General Hill deliberately and unnecessarily rushed those gallant men into danger is unfounded and unjust. The galling fire that had broken Pender’s left called for immediate action, and in the hurry of the moment it became necessary to develop the strength of the enemy’s position by assault instead of reconnaissance, but it was done under the orders of General Lee and the President, not of General Hill.
When on the second day Jackson had effected a junction with Lee, Hill was selected to relieve his tired troops by passing rapidly to his left and turning the extreme right of the enemy. A. P. Hill, Longstreet, Whiting, and Jackson had successively moved upon the double lines of infantry and artillery posted on the range of hills behind Powhite Creek from the McGehee to the Gaines house. The approach of the attacking columns of A. P. Hill and Whiting was in part over a plain about four hundred yards wide and was embarrassed by abattis and ditches in front of the first line. The struggle along the front of these divisions and that of Longstreet had become doubtful, and almost desperate, when the troops of Jackson and Hill created a diversion by engaging the extreme right of the enemy. The first of the lines of entrenchments had been taken, and Longstreet, Hood, Law, and other brave leaders were moving on the last stronghold in the enemy’s center, when the victorious shouts of Garland’s and G. B. Anderson’s Brigades of Hill’s Division were followed by the rapid retreat of the enemy and the surrender, first of the ridge at the McGehee house, and then of their whole line. Thus did it fall to the lot of Hill once more to strike the decisive blow at a critical moment. But claiming for him this distinction among a host of heroic commanders, it is proper that I should rely on the evidence of the lamented Garland, who sealed his devotion to the cause with his heart’s blood at South Mountain, and the corroborating accounts of Hill’s superiors, from Jackson to President Davis, and not on my own assertion.
“The effect of our appearance at this opportune moment upon the enemy’s flank, cheering and charging,” said Garland in his report, “decided the fate of the day. The enemy broke and retreated and made a second stand, which induced my immediate command to halt under cover of the roadside and return the fire, when charging forward again we broke and scattered them in every direction.” This discomfiture uncovered the left of the fortified line and left no obstacle between Hill and the McGehee house. (Official Records, Series 1, Vol. XI, Part 2, p. 626.)
General Jackson’s language is not less unmistakable: “Again pressing forward, the Federals fell back, but only to select a position for more obstinate defense, when at dark—under the pressure of our batteries and the dashing charge of General Hill’s infantry, in which the troops of General C. S. Winder joined—the enemy yielded the field and fled in confusion.” Of the part taken by Hill, General Lee said in his report (Official Records, Series 1, Vol. XI, Part 2, p. 493): “D. H. Hill charged across the open ground in his front, one of his regiments having first bravely carried a battery whose fire enfiladed his advance. Gallantly supported by the troops on his right, who pressed forward with unfaltering resolution, he reached the crest of the ridge (above the McGehee house), and after a sanguinary struggle broke the enemy’s line, captured several of his batteries and drove him in confusion towards the Chickahominy until darkness rendered further pursuit impossible.” Mr. Davis, in The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Vol. II, p. 138, adopts the exact language of General Lee. General McClellan refers to the report of Fitz John Porter, who was in command, for a detailed account of the affair at Gaines’ Mill. Porter admits that the withdrawal of his line was caused by the retreat on his right, but insists that the demoralization was due entirely to the stampede of the Federal cavalry, who were mistaken, as they fell back on the infantry line, for rebels. More candid, or better informed than General Porter, the French princes, who served on his staff on that day, admit that the charge of Hill and the discomfiture of the enemy’s right necessitated the abandonment of their line of entrenchments. If to double the right flank of an army suddenly back, so as to expose to an enfilade the flank of his last and strongest line of entrenchments, is to make his position untenable, then Hill’s charge was indeed decisive of the struggle at Gaines’ Mill.
Crossing the Chickahominy on the night of the 29th, in the advance of Jackson’s Corps, D. H. Hill passed Savage Station, where he took one thousand prisoners, exclusive of three thousand in and connected with the Federal Hospital. The progress of Jackson was arrested by obstructions and the stubborn resistance at White Oak Swamp, and he failed to effect a junction with Longstreet till after the fight at Frasier’s Farm.
D. H. Hill was again the first to reach and occupy the position which he was ordered to assume preparatory to a general advance on Malvern Hill. The other parts of the line were not formed till a much later hour in the day. General Lee says in his report, of the battle (Official Records, Series 1, Vol. XI, Part 2, p, 496): “Orders were issued for a general advance at a given signal, but the causes referred to prevented a proper concert of action among the troops. D. H. Hill pressed forward across the open field and engaged the enemy gallantly, breaking and driving back his first line; but a simultaneous advance of the other troops not taking place, he found himself unable to maintain the ground he had gained against the overwhelming numbers and numerous batteries of the enemy. Hill was therefore compelled to abandon a part of the ground he had gained after suffering severe loss and inflicting heavy damage upon the enemy.”
Prompt, vigilant, and obedient, he was always at his post at the appointed hour, and with the true conception of soldierly duty, moved upon order or signal of his superiors without waiting to count the cost. At Malvern Hill, as at Seven Pines, he charged the enemy under orders from the commanding general. The persistent pluck of his brave men, developed to the highest degree of his own unequaled coolness and courage, enabled him again to take and hold much of the enemy’s outer line till after the last gun was fired.
When Pope had twice been punished by Jackson and driven back upon the supposed stronghold at Manassas, the transfer of troops from the Federal army on the Peninsula made it necessary for General Lee to move with the bulk of his army to the support of his dashing lieutenant, who had already twice defeated an enemy much stronger numerically than himself. D. H. Hill, recalled from the command of his department south of the James, which included his own State, and placed at the head of his old division, was ordered to watch and check the movements of McDowell’s command, which was still occupying Fredericksburg, and consequently took no part in the second battle of Manassas.
Crossing over the Potomac with Longstreet to Fredericktown, Maryland, when our forces moved from that point south General Hill was ordered to occupy and hold a pass in the South Mountains, which, if gained by McClellan, would have enabled him to relieve Harper’s Ferry and possibly to prevent the junction of our scattered army and destroy the divisions in detail, or drive them precipitately south of the Potomac with great loss of artillery and transportation.
General Lee’s object in crossing the Potomac east of the Blue Ridge was to induce the enemy, by threatening Washington and Baltimore, to evacuate Martinsburg and Harper’s Ferry, and to establish his own line of communication through the valley, and then by advancing towards Pennsylvania to draw the enemy away from his own base of supplies. General Lee had not contemplated making a stand at South Mountain, probably not at Sharpsburg, or at any point north of the Potomac; but the continued occupation of Martinsburg and Harper’s Ferry made it necessary to move directly upon the former place and to invest the latter, where both garrisons ultimately united. In consequence of the delay in reducing the garrison it became essential to the safety of Lee’s army that McClellan’s entire force should be held in check for a whole day at the pass in the South Mountains by Hill’s depleted division, now numbering only four thousand, as a glance at the map with a knowledge of the disposition of Lee’s different divisions will show.
Longstreet, with his whole force, estimated at four thousand, was at Hagerstown, while Jackson had disposed his own command, including McLaws’ and A. P. Hill’s Divisions, either with a view to an attack on Harper’s Ferry or to cutting off the retreat of the force occupying it. Three days later McClellan, according to his own report, advanced to the attack at Sharpsburg with eighty-seven thousand men. Of this vast army probably thirty-three thousand were in the force actually engaged in the assault upon the little Spartan band of D. H. Hill for five hours, without cessation, before Longstreet’s advance brigade arrived at 3:30 o’clock, which was followed by others coming up from that time till dark.
The late Justice Ruffin, Colonel of the Thirteenth North Carolina, standing by the side of the gallant Garland when he was instantly killed, discovered a moment later that the other regiments of the brigade had retired, leaving his command surrounded by the enemy. Facing to the rear in an instant, he ordered his regiment to charge, and though embarrassed by a painful wound, performed the desperate feat of cutting his way through the serried ranks of the enemy. A few moments later that gallant officer was astonished to hear his intrepid commander express his delight at the discovery that McClellan’s whole army was approaching his front. The explanation afterwards given was one that could have been safely disclosed only to a kindred spirit, such as Ruffin had shown himself to be. Hill then said that he had at first feared the movement upon his front was a feint, and that the main body of the enemy had passed through another gap and might be thrown between Jackson and Lee. The situation was still further embarrassed by the fact that General Stuart had at daylight withdrawn his command, except the single regiment of Rosser, which afterwards did its duty so nobly, under the impression that but a small force was in General Hill’s front.
It was “with the stern joy” of an intrepid warrior waiting for the coming contest, that from an elevated pinnacle of the mountain he saw the four advance corps of the grand Army of the Potomac, one of which was forming at the foot of the mountain. The hour and the man had met when Lee entrusted to Hill the duty of holding the approach against that army with his little band of four thousand. From Seven Pines to Malvern Hill they had never turned their backs upon the foe. They believed that their leader would require them to endure no sacrifice or face no danger that was not demanded by the inevitable exigencies of the situation. With God’s help, Hill determined to save the army, as his chief ordered him to do at any sacrifice, and, if the emergency had demanded his own life, he would have met death, not as the decree of fate, but as the Providence of God, who had brought him face to face with a desperate duty. Captain Seaton Gales, the gallant Adjutant-General of George B. Anderson on that memorable day, summarized the important results of this battle as follows:
“It may be safely said that in its consequences, in the accomplishments of predetermined objects, and in the skillful disposition of small numbers to oppose overwhelming odds, it is without a parallel in the war. The division, unaided until a late hour in the afternoon, held in check the greater portion of McClellan’s vast army endeavoring with battering-ram impetus to force its way through the narrow gap, and thereby afforded time for the concentration of our various corps, dispersed in strategic directions, in season for the bloody issue at Sharpsburg.”
Imbued with an earnest devotion to the cause, which rose on occasion to the height of enthusiasm, Hill did not hesitate to denounce in unmeasured terms those who evaded duty in our armies, when the conditions were such as to plainly demand the active service of every able-bodied son of the South. One of his random shots at the “bomb-proofs” of the Confederacy wounded a gentleman who, having done nothing in the war worthy to be written, determined to write something, in the vain hope that it would be read by future generations. Prompted by petty revenge, he recklessly asserted that General D. H. Hill had thrown a copy of a general order upon the ground in his camp at Frederick City, which being afterwards picked up and handed to McClellan, gave him an idea of the movements and location of the different portions of Lee’s army.
It will appear from an inspection of its contents that on the day when McClellan attacked Hill at South Mountain, he had reason to believe, and must have thought, that Longstreet was occupying the mountains, supported by Hill. But we are not left to conjecture on that subject. McClellan wrote General Franklin from Frederick City on the 14th, just after he had read the “lost order,” that Longstreet was to move to Boonsborough, and there halt with D. H. Hill, and he therefore directed Franklin to make his dispositions with an eye both to the relief of the garrison at Harper’s Ferry and the capture of Longstreet and Hill. The plan outlined in the letter is predicated upon the supposition that Longstreet and Hill were together, and constituted the main body of an army, which he estimated in another report to General Halleck at one hundred and twenty thousand. If it were not manifest from this letter that McClellan was misled by the order, and his opinion corroborated by the skillful disposition of Hill’s troops, his report proves beyond all question that he thought the force in his front was thirty thousand strong, composed of Hill’s Division, fifteen thousand, with Longstreet’s and a portion of Jackson’s command (Official Records, Series 1, Vol. XIX, Part 1, p. 55). The skill of Hill, then, and the order combined to mislead McClellan by causing him to over-estimate our strength, and the cautious and dilatory movement which gave Longstreet time to come up in the afternoon, enabled Hill to escape with his little band, leaving the whole Army of the Potomac deployed before him.
The order issued by Lee and sent out from army headquarters was as follows:
Headquarters Army of Northern Virginia,
September 9, 1862.
Special Orders No. 191.
I. The citizens of Fredericktown being unwilling, while overrun by members of this army, to open their stores, in order to give them confidence, and to secure to officers and men purchasing supplies for benefit of this command, all officers and men of this army are strictly prohibited from visiting Fredericktown except on business, in which case they will bear evidence of this in writing from division commanders. The Provost Marshal in Fredericktown will see that his guard rigidly enforces this order.
II. Major Taylor will proceed to Leesburg, Va., and arrange for transportation of the sick and those unable to walk to Winchester, securing the transportation of the country for this purpose. The route between this and Culpeper Court House east of the mountains being unsafe, will no longer be traveled. Those on the way to this army already across the river will move up promptly, all others will proceed to Winchester collectively and under command of officers, at which point, being the general depot of the army, its movements will be known and instructions given by commanding officers regulating further movements.
III. The army will resume its march to-morrow, taking the Hagerstown road. General Jackson’s command will form the advance, and, after passing Middletown, with such portion as he may select, take the route to Sharpsburg, cross the Potomac at the most convenient point, and by Friday morning take possession of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, capture such of the enemy as may be at Martinsburg, and intercept such as may attempt to escape from Harper’s Ferry.
IV. General Longstreet’s command will pursue the main road as far as Boonsborough, where it will halt, with reserve, supply and baggage trains of the army.
V. General McLaws, with his own division and that of General R. H. Anderson, will follow General Longstreet. On reaching Middletown will take the route to Harper’s Ferry, and by Friday morning possess himself of the Maryland Heights and endeavor to capture the enemy at Harper’s Ferry and vicinity.
VI. General Walker, with his division, after accomplishing the object in which he is now engaged, will cross the Potomac at Cheek’s Ford, ascend its right bank to Lovettsville, take possession of the Loudoun Heights, if practicable, by Friday morning, Key’s Ford on his left, and the road between the end of the mountain and the Potomac on his right. He will, as far as practicable, co-operate with Generals McLaws and Jackson and intercept retreat of the enemy.
VII. General D. H. Hill’s Division will form the rear guard of the army, pursuing the road taken by the main body. The reserve artillery, ordnance, and supply trains, etc., will precede General Hill.
VIII. General Stuart will detach a squadron of cavalry to accompany the commands of Generals Longstreet, Jackson, and McLaws, and, with the main body of the cavalry, will cover the route of the army, bringing up all the stragglers that may have been left behind.
IX. The commands of Generals Jackson, McLaws, and Walker, after accomplishing the objects for which they have been detached, will join the main body of the army at Boonsborough or Hagerstown.
X. Each regiment on the march will habitually carry its axes in the regimental ordnance wagons, for use of the men at their encampments, to procure wood, etc.
By command of General R. E. Lee.
R. H. CHILTON,
Assistant Adjutant-General.
[The copy of the “lost order” given by McClellan, as far as it goes, is the same as the one above set forth, but it does not contain sections 1 and 2.]
If Pollard’s malignant charges, made to detract from the honor and glory of an achievement so brilliantly executed and so fruitful of benefit to the cause, were not shown by the most direct proof from the most honorable men to be false and unfounded, the marked discrepancy between the order published in the Official Records, as No. 191, copied from General Lee’s book of general orders, and that which McClellan declared in his report to be a copy of the order sent by him to Washington, suggests to a legal mind a solution of the dispute which corroborates in the strongest possible manner the sworn testimony of Major James W. Ratchford, Adjutant-General of Hill’s Division, that the custody of such papers was a part of his exclusive duty at that time, and that no such order was delivered to him, with the solemn statement of General Hill that he never saw or read a copy of the order in question, except one purporting to have been sent through General Jackson, to whose corps he was attached when it was issued, and which he still preserved among his private papers in 1886. It will be observed that the first of the two paragraphs, omitted in what purports to be the copy of the order that fell into the possession of the enemy, forbade the troops stationed around Frederick City from entering that town without permission, and the second directed that the sick and disabled of the army should be removed to Winchester. Halleck’s correspondence with McClellan on the same day, September 13, 1862 (Official Records, Series 1, Vol. XIX, Part 1, p. 41), evinces the greatest apprehension that the movement of the army was aimed at Washington City, and the demonstrations higher up the Potomac were intended to distract attention from the real design. Was it not more important that the chief officer of all the armies should know that Lee’s sick and disabled soldiers were to be moved to Winchester, as the general depot of the army, and that all recruits, returning or coming for the first time to the army were to rendezvous at Winchester, than to learn from the last paragraph of the copy sent him that Lee’s troops were to habitually carry in their regimental wagons axes to cut wood, etc.? The second paragraph seemed plainly to indicate that Lee’s purpose was what he afterwards declared in his report to have been his plan—to establish his base of operations by way of the valley of Virginia and invade or threaten Pennsylvania, not Washington, after taking Harper’s Ferry. (Official Records, Series 1, Vol. XIX. Part 1, p. 145.) This was McClellan’s own idea of Lee’s design, and if he could have convinced Halleck of the correctness of his views there would have been no reason for further hesitation about weakening the garrison of the capital city to swell the effective force in the field. McClellan did not get the whole order and omit a portion of it in his correspondence at the time because it tended to sustain his view against Halleck. He did not send his chief the full copy of his order and omit in his report, written after his removal from command, a section which proved that he (not Halleck) had divined Lee’s purpose from the beginning. The two paragraphs would not have been omitted in a copy intended for Hill, because it was Hill’s troops that at the time were stationed nearest to Frederick City, and were prohibited from entering it. It is evident that General Lee must have sent the whole order to Hill, and it is equally manifest that McClellan had every reason for inserting a full copy in his report if he received it.
The explanation which readily suggests itself, therefore, is that the original draft of the order contained only the portion beginning with the third section and was signed in that shape by Colonel Chilton, but was afterwards modified so as to prefix the two first paragraphs before it was issued. The “lost order” was found by an Indiana soldier, wrapped around three cigars. The first paper drawn would have become useless after the material additions made to it, and might well have been wrapped around cigars by some one at General Lee’s headquarters, with the purpose of using it to light them, and then lost before cigars or paper were disposed of, as intended. It will be more readily believed that a clerk or assistant in the office at army headquarters might have been guilty of carelessness than that Ratchford swore to and that Hill told a falsehood. If their positive statements are believed, only the one order, addressed as though sent through General Jackson’s headquarters, was received by General Hill. When Lee and Hill were encamped in sight of each other near Fredericktown, and General Lee was then and afterwards (as at South Mountain) habitually sending orders direct to General Hill, it does not seem probable that Lee, whose forte was the power of readily mobilizing his army, would have tolerated such circumlocution as making one courier ride across the Potomac to Jackson with an order which was to be sent back by another messenger to a camp in sight of its starting point on the next day. It would have been a fair compromise between extreme official courtesy and that common sense which always characterized the conduct of our great leaders, if Lee had recognized Jackson’s authority by addressing the order as though transmitted through him, and at the same time ordering its delivery directly to Hill, thus conforming his conduct to the conditions which demanded that Hill should know at the earliest possible moment of his proposed plan of operation, and of the prohibition against entering the neighboring town applying only to his own and Longstreet’s Division.
The direct testimony bearing upon the dispute in reference to the lost order was the sworn statement of Major James W. Ratchford, Adjutant-General, that only the single copy of the order reached him, which was preserved by General Hill till his death, and the solemn statement of Hill that he himself received no other copy. Leaving out of view the difference between the original paper recorded in Lee’s book and the supposed copy delivered to McClellan, there is nothing to contradict the testimony of one of the bravest and truest officers in the army of Virginia and the word of D. H. Hill. The attention of these two officers had been called to the loss of the paper within a few months after it passed into McClellan’s hands, when all that had occurred in Maryland was still fresh in their memories, and they then made the same statement that the one reiterates to-day and the other published in 1886. Lee himself charged no particular person with the loss of the dispatch. While he possibly magnified (says Longstreet in his article in the Century Magazine) its effect upon the Maryland campaign, he was inclined to attribute its loss to the fault of a courier. (Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Vol. II, p. 674.) In his report of the operations in Maryland he said: “The small command of General Hill repelled repeated assaults of the Federal army and held it in check for five hours.” The only contradicting testimony comes from Major Taylor of General Lee’s staff, and being negative in its character, is not entitled to the weight that should be attached to the positive evidence of gentlemen of equal reputation for veracity. The substance of his statement is, that it was his habit during that campaign to send such orders directly to the headquarters of Hill’s Division as well as through Jackson to Hill. But he neither recalls the fact of sending the particular paper in question, nor does he name any officer or courier who attests its actual delivery. Admitting the high character of Taylor, as well as that of Ratchford, the verdict of history, under the most familiar rules of evidence, must unquestionably acquit Hill of negligence, and accord to him the high honor of saving the army of Lee by his strategy, coolness, and courage.
At Sharpsburg, the last engagement in which D. H. Hill participated with that army, no figure was more conspicuous and no line firmer than his. As usual, he was the first to open and the last to quit the fight. General Lee said in his report: “The attack on our left was speedily followed by one in heavy force on the center. This was met by part of Walker’s Division and the brigades of G. B. Anderson and Rodes of D. H. Hill’s command, assisted by a few pieces of artillery. The enemy were repulsed and retired behind the crest of a hill, from which they kept up a desultory fire. At this time, by a mistake of orders, General Rodes’ Brigade was withdrawn from its position during the temporary absence of that officer at another part of the field. The enemy immediately passed through the gap thus created and G. B. Anderson’s Brigade was broken and retired, General Anderson himself being mortally wounded.... The heavy masses of the enemy again moved forward, being opposed by only four pieces of artillery, supported by a few hundred men belonging to different brigades, rallied by General D. H. Hill and other officers, and parts of Walker’s and R. H. Anderson’s commands, Colonel Cooke of the Twenty-seventh North Carolina Regiment, of Walker’s Brigade, standing boldly in line without a cartridge.” “At this critical moment, when the enemy was advancing on Cooke,” says General Longstreet, “a shot came across the Federal front, plowing the ground in a parallel line, then another and another, each nearer and nearer their line. This enfilade fire was from a battery on D. H. Hill’s line, and it soon beat back the attacking column.” (Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Vol. II, p. 670.)
On the right General Lee was stationed in person, and with Toombs’ Brigade (says General Longstreet) held the enemy in check till A. P. Hill’s Division rushed to the rescue, with Pender on the right and Branch on the left of his line, and aided by well-directed shots from a battery planted by D. H. Hill on his front, drove them back in confusion. Generals Lee, Longstreet, and D. H. Hill concluded during a short suspension of musketry fire to reconnoiter the position of the enemy from the crest of a ridge in front of the Confederate line, which was formed behind a fence. Lee and Longstreet giving General Hill a sufficiently wide berth, went out on foot, while Hill rode. In a few moments, says Longstreet, Hill was making vain and rather ludicrous efforts to dismount from the third horse killed under him in that engagement, the legs of the animal having been cut off at the knees by a cannon ball. When Major Ratchford, who himself was never known to quail in the face of the foe, but whose affection for his friend was unbounded, said to him on this occasion: “General, why do you expose yourself so recklessly? Do you never feel the sensation of fear?” General Hill replied that he would never require his men to go where he did not know the ground or would not go himself, and that he had no fear of death if he met it in the line of duty. His friend then inquired if he would not rather live than die. “Oh, yes,” said General Hill, “when I think of my wife and babies I would; but God will take care of them if he allows anything to happen to me.”
When, in November, 1862, Hill’s Division was ordered to take the lead in the march to Fredericksburg to meet Hooker, a large number of his men had been barefooted since the return of the army from Maryland, yet he accomplished the unusual feat of marching two hundred miles in twenty days without leaving on the way a single straggler. One of the remarkable features of the battle of December 13th, 1862, near Fredericksburg, which followed this sudden transfer of the seat of war, was the fact that D. H. Hill’s Division, Jubal A. Early’s and most of John B. Hood’s were in the reserve line. It was evidence of an easy victory that the services of three such fighting men were not needed in front.
In February, 1863, Hill bade a final adieu to his old division, when he was ordered to assume command in the State of North Carolina. Before the campaign opened in the following spring Hill had made a demonstration against New Bern, followed by an advance upon Washington in this State, which would have resulted in the capture of the latter place but for Lee’s order to send a portion of his command to Virginia.
Later in the spring of 1863, Hill was ordered to remove his headquarters to Petersburg, and was placed in command of the department extending from the James to the Cape Fear. When Lee invaded Pennsylvania the citizens of Richmond and the heads of the various departments became greatly alarmed for the safety of the place. The officers in charge of the defenses of the city and of the Peninsula had failed to inspire confidence in their vigilance, efficiency or capacity. When the troops of Dix began to move up the Peninsula from Yorktown and West Point, General Hill was ordered by the President to transfer all available troops from south of the James and assume command of the forces gathered for the defense of the capital city. With the brigades of Cooke and M. W. Ransom, and a few other regiments, General Hill met the army of Dix near Bottom’s Bridge, drove them back without serious difficulty in the direction of West Point, and in two or three days restored perfect confidence on the part of the panic-stricken people of the city.
About the 10th of July, 1863, President Davis called at General Hill’s quarters three miles east of Richmond, and, after many kind and complimentary comments upon his conduct as an officer during the preceding year, informed him that he was appointed a lieutenant-general, and would be ordered to report forthwith to General Joseph E. Johnston, near Vicksburg, Mississippi. Orders having been issued accordingly, on the 13th of July General Hill, with his staff, set out immediately for his new field. When he reached his home in Charlotte he was notified that his destination had been changed, and he would report for duty to General Braxton Bragg at Chattanooga.
Lieutenant-General D. H. Hill found the army of Bragg encamped along the Tennessee River in and around the small town which has since assumed the proportions of a city. Colonel Archer Anderson, chief of Hill’s staff, in his able address upon the battle of Chickamauga, says: “The corps of Hardee had lately gained as a commander a stern and dauntless soldier from the Army of Northern Virginia in D. H. Hill, whose vigor, coolness and unconquerable pertinacity in fight had already stamped him as a leader of heroic temper. Of the religious school of Stonewall Jackson, his earnest convictions never chilled his ardor for battle, and in another age he would have been worthy to charge with Cromwell at Dunbar, with the cry, ‘Let God arise and let his enemies be scattered.’”
Hill received from Bragg the warm welcome of a comrade who had seen his metal tried on the hard-fought fields of Mexico. Not less cordial was the greeting of his old classmate, A. P. Stewart, and of the plucky Pat. Cleburne, who seemed from the first to feel that he had found a soldier-affinity in the congenial spirit of Hill. When at last the scattered hosts had concentrated and confronted each other on the Chickamauga, it was not till after the night of the first day that Bragg made public his purpose to give the entire management of the right wing to Polk and the control of the left to Longstreet. If the enemy’s left, under the stalwart Thomas, could be driven from the Lafayette road the communication with Chattanooga would be cut off and the retreat and ruin of the enemy inevitable. To accomplish this end Bragg seemed more intent on hurried than concentrated effort. That grand man, officer and statesman, John C. Breckinridge, at his own request was allowed to take the extreme right, flanked by Forrest and supported in this forward movement by Cleburne on the left. Stewart having been transferred to Buckner, these two divisions constituted Hill’s Corps. In rear of the line from which Breckinridge and Cleburne moved to the attack at nine in the morning, on the last decisive day, was the corps of the old veteran known as “Fighting Bill” Walker, and as eager for the fray as a school-boy for frolic. His command was composed of his own and Liddell’s Divisions, embracing six brigades, led by such dashing soldiers as Ector, Gist, and Walthall. But the first lesson learned by a staff officer, who went from the East to the West, was that even an old war-horse like Walker dared not to fire a gun or move an inch, acting upon his own best judgment, without an order brought with due formality through all of the regular channels. The Virginia Brigadier struck his blows where opportunity offered and reported to his superior that he was striking. The Western Brigadier lost his opportunity to strike waiting for permission to do so. Still behind Walker stood Frank Cheatham, with his splendid division, like their leader, chafing under restraint.
Such were the dispositions in Hill’s rear when the impetuous charge of Breckinridge’s two right brigades broke the left of Thomas and crossed the fateful road. With two thousand infantry and a battery of artillery, Breckinridge swung his line around at a right angle to that of the enemy and started to sweep down upon their flank; but the left of Breckinridge had encountered an earthwork, as had Cleburne’s whole line, and their western foe standing firm, one or two brigades gave way. Another advancing line to fill the gap, and the day would be won before noon, and the enemy driven across the Tennessee or captured before night. In vain might Hill plead or Walker swear, when no orders came and no chief could be found to give them. Chafed and disappointed, the grand Kentuckian found himself for want of support at last exposed to destruction or capture, and slowly and stubbornly both he and Cleburne fell back and reformed, but much nearer to the enemy than the line from which they advanced. Scarcely had the decimated forces of Hill reformed when, all too late, Walker went forward with another single line, to be hurled back by the fresh troops that the enemy was rapidly massing on his left to meet the design now developed by our ill-managed movement. Cheatham, meanwhile, was not allowed to budge an inch or fire a gun. Thus was the plan frustrated and the attacking force driven back and cut to pieces in detail for want of a present, active, moving head to strike with the two arms of the right wing at one time. The fierce onslaught of Hill failed, as did the no less impetuous charge of Walker, because as a chain is no stronger than its most defective link, so a single advancing line is no stouter than its weakest point.
The splendid conduct of our troops on our right and the dread inspired by Breckinridge’s bold charge of the morning bore fruit, however, in a way entirely unexpected, when it led the enemy to mass so much of his force behind Thomas. This was the occupation of the enemy while Hill and Forrest were riding up and down in front of our line and drawing the fire of the enemy upon the young troop who followed at their heels, and when there was a temporary lull in front of Longstreet on the left and left center.
At last the thunder of artillery and the roar of musketry again burst upon us from along the whole front of the Virginia lieutenant, while Hill in vain sent messenger after messenger to beg that these lines be formed and a general advance ordered on the right as well as on the left. Just before night General Polk permitted Hill to take charge of the forward movement of the three lines, Walker in front, his own corps composing the second and Cheatham the third. The advance of our attacking column on the left, before that time steady, now became impetuous, and with a momentary wavering of a brigade on the right, we rushed over the breastworks of Thomas and caught 5,000 prisoners in the angle, where Longstreet and Hill met, as they had on many hard-fought fields before, to discuss the events of that day and prepare, as they had hoped, for a still more eventful one that was to follow. But a short time had elapsed when they were joined by Forrest, impatient for orders to pursue the flying foe. When some hours had been passed in the vain effort to learn where the headquarters of the commanding general were located, Longstreet and Hill agreed to divide the responsibility of ordering the immediate pursuit by Forrest, with an assurance that they would ask the privilege of pushing forward to his support at early dawn.
Unable by the most diligent inquiry to open communication with Bragg till the next afternoon, they failed to secure for Forrest the infantry support that would have swept the single division of Thomas out of the gap on Missionary Ridge, or flanked and captured it, without another obstruction in the road to Chattanooga and on to Nashville. Such might have been the fruits of our victory, which being lost by delay, the last hope of the tottering Confederacy to regain the prestige and restore the confidence lost at Gettysburg and Vicksburg was gone forever.
Scattered along the face of Missionary Ridge, waiting for the enemy to make Chattanooga impregnable, and then uniting the forces of Grant and Sherman with the reorganized army of Thomas to overwhelm them, were the disheartened Confederates, daily growing weaker from the desertion of men whose homes were exposed to devastation by the Federals.
It was at this juncture that Buckner drew up and Polk, Longstreet, Hill, Buckner, Cleburne, Cheatham, Brown, and other generals signed and sent to the president a petition stating that the commanding general had lost the confidence of the army, and asking that he be transferred to another command and replaced by a more acceptable leader. Hill was the last of the lieutenant-generals consulted, but, unfortunately for his future, his headquarters were located at a central point on the line and the paper was left there to be signed. Cheatham and Cleburne met at that point and put their names to the paper at the same time. After the battle at Murfreesboro, Bragg had addressed letters to the chiefs of divisions in his army, asking whether he retained the confidence of the troops, and intimating a willingness to resign if he had lost it. Breckinridge, Cleburne, and one or two others promptly answered that they thought he could no longer be useful in the position he occupied. The correspondence led to an open breach between Bragg and Breckinridge, and a newspaper controversy, in which each charged upon the other the responsibility of our failure at Murfreesboro. General Breckinridge, in a conversation with me, stated that his reason for declining to sign the paper was that his opinion of the commanding general was known, and, as their relations were already unfriendly, his motives might be misconstrued.
No better illustration of the prevailing opinion among the higher officers, as well as the rank and file of the army, in reference to the efficiency of the commanding general can be given than the substance of a conversation between Cheatham and Cleburne, as they joined in a social glass after signing the petition: “Here are my congratulations upon your recovery from your bad cold,” said Cleburne. “I have had no bad cold,” said Cheatham. “Let me tell you an old fable,” replied Cleburne. “The report had been circulated among the beasts of the forest that the lion had a bad breath; whereupon, as king, the lion summoned all to appear, and admitted them to his presence one by one. As each would answer, upon smelling his breath, that it was bad, the lion would devour him. When at length the fox was brought in, he replied to the question that he had a bad cold, and escaped. You had a bad cold when you wrote Bragg after the battle of Murfreesboro that you didn’t know whether he still retained the confidence of the army. You have at last recovered.”
Hill cherished no unkind feeling toward Bragg, and at the time reluctantly reached the conclusion that it was his duty to join his comrades in urging his removal, hoping that it might still be within the range of possibility to find a leader like Jackson, who could overcome superior numbers by vigilance, celerity, and strategy.
Mr. Davis was induced to believe that Hill was the originator and most active promoter of the plan to get rid of Bragg as a chief, and both the President and General Bragg determined to visit the whole sin of the insubordination of the inferior officers of that army on him. His name was not sent to the Senate for confirmation as lieutenant-general, and the repeated efforts of Johnston, backed by many of his subordinates, to have Hill returned to the command of a corps, were refused up to the last campaign of Johnston in North Carolina. In response to repeated demands made upon Bragg and the Adjutant for a court of inquiry to report upon any charge or criticism that the latter might make, Hill at last received the answer that there were no charges to be investigated.
But it is due to the memory of General Hill that the world should know how thoroughly he retained the confidence, respect and admiration of the officers and men of the army, which Bragg left after the next fight, never to rejoin till he found Hill on the soil of his own State leading its reduced regiments in their last forlorn charge against their old foe.
The following letters, for which he did not ask, but which he treasured as testimonials of his relations to his troops to the day of his death, are submitted for the first time for the vindication of his memory against the suspicion of negligence, inefficiency, incompetency or infidelity to his trust as commander of a corps:
Headquarters Cleburne’s Division,
Mission Ridge, October 9, 1863.
General:—In your departure from the army of Tennessee, allow me to offer you my grateful acknowledgments for the uniform kindness that has characterized all your official intercourse with my division. Allow me also to express to you the sincere regard and high confidence with which in so short a time you succeeded in inspiring both myself and, I believe, every officer and man in my command.
It gives me pleasure to add that now, though your connection with this army has ended, you still retain undiminished the love, respect and confidence of Cleburne’s Division.
Respectfully, your friend,
P. R. CLEBURNE,
Major-General.
Dear General:—I have just learned officially that you have been relieved from command in this army and ordered to report to Richmond.
I cannot see you go away without sending you, in an unofficial and friendly note, the expression of my sincere regret at our separation. It has the merit of at least being disinterested. I saw you for the first time on my way to this army from Mississippi, when my division became a part of your corps, and I have had more than one occasion to express my admiration for your fidelity to duty, your soldierly qualities, and your extraordinary courage on the field.
It may gratify you to know the opinion of one of your subordinates, and to be assured that, in his opinion, they are shared by his division. I am, General,
Very truly, your friend,
JOHN C. BRECKINRIDGE,
Major-General.
Headquarters Corps Army of Tennessee,
October 15, 1863.
My Dear General:—Your note of to-day is received. I am surprised and grieved to learn that you have been relieved from duty with this army. We have stood side by side on so many severely contested battle-fields that I have learned to lean upon you with great confidence.
I hope and trust that you may find some other position where your services may be as useful as they can be here. * * *
Very truly and sincerely yours,
J. LONGSTREET.
Headquarters Clayton’s Brigade,
Near Chattanooga, 3 November, 1863.
Lieutenant-General D. H. Hill:—Returning to my command a few days ago, I regretted to learn that you had left the command of our corps, and that I had not the opportunity of telling you farewell.
I have been in the military service since the 6th of February, 1861, and I have never been under a commander to whom I and my command formed so strong an attachment in so short a space of time. In the camp we were not afraid to approach you, and on the field you were not afraid to approach us and even go beyond us. This feeling was universal among privates as well as officers and to a greater degree than I have ever known towards any one except, perhaps, General Stuart. Those who have been in the military service and been frozen to death by a different class of officers, alone know how fully to appreciate this.
Your friend and obedient servant,
H. D. CLAYTON.
Headquarters Polk’s Brigade,
October 16, 1863.
General:—In behalf of myself and brigade, allow me to express to you our high appreciation of your uniform kindness in all of your official intercourse with us, and to say to you that although you have not been long with us, you have gained our love, confidence, and respect; and that it was with great regret that we heard of your being taken away from us; and in being so taken away our confidence in you as a soldier, gentleman, and patriot has not been in the least diminished. We part with you, General, with the greatest regret, and hope some new field may be given you for the display of that generalship that led us to victory at Chickamauga.
Respectfully, your friend,
L. E. POLK,
Brigadier-General.
Headquarters Lowery’s Brigade,
Mission Ridge, October 16, 1863.
Dear General:—Paragraph 2, Special Order No. 33, from Army Headquarters, relieving you from duty in this department has just been received by me. I take this opportunity to express to you my deep regret at this change. So far as I have heard an expression from the officers and men of this corps, your service with us has been most satisfactory. In the camp and on the march your orders were received and obeyed with the most cordial approval and with the greatest pleasure. The warm devotion that has been created in so short a time will not die while memory lives. In behalf of my brigade, permit me to express our regret on account of your separation from us, and the kindest wishes for your prosperity and happiness. For myself the memories of our short acquaintance will be warmly cherished in a devoted heart of friendship, and the guidance and protection of the Unseen Hand invoked on you wherever your lot may be cast.
May the glory of victorious fields form a wreath around your name in all time to come, and the memory of your deeds of gallantry and patriotism be cherished in the hearts of a grateful and free people.
Respectfully, General, your obedient servant,
M. P. LOWERY,
Brigadier-General.
Long after the war General J. E. Johnston addressed the following letter to General Hill, from which it will appear that the influence of Bragg, who was at the elbow of the President as his military adviser, was still omnipotent after he was transferred from the west to Richmond:
Washington, D. C., September 22, 1887.
General D. H. Hill:
Dear General:—Your conduct at Yorktown and at Seven Pines gave me an opinion (of you) which made me wish for your assistance in every subsequent command that I had during the war. When commanding the army of Tennessee, I applied for your assignment to a vacancy * * * * * * * *
Yours very truly,
J. E. JOHNSTON.
It is but just to President Davis, as well as to General Hill, to state that there was good reason to believe that the former, in his last days, became convinced that General Hill was not the author of the petition, or the principal promoter of the plan for Bragg’s removal, and that it dawned upon the great chieftain that the retention of Bragg was the one mistake of his own marvelous administration of the government of the Confederacy. When Johnston and others criticised the President, General Hill, then editing a magazine that was read by every Confederate, indignantly refused to utter one reproachful word, even in his own vindication, because, as he said, the time-servers who had turned their backs on the Lost Cause were making him the scapegoat to bear the supposed sin of a nation.
Misjudged, deprived of command and made to stand inactive in the midst of the stirring scenes of the last days of the Confederacy, Hill was not a man to sulk in his tent. Volunteering successively on the staff of his old friends, Beauregard and Hoke, who appreciated his advice and assistance, he showed himself ever ready to serve the cause in any capacity.
The repeated and urgent requests of both Johnston and Beauregard that Hill should be restored to command, resulted at last in his assignment to duty at Charleston, from which place he fell back with our forces to Augusta.
When the remnant of the grand army of Tennessee reached Augusta in charge of General Stevenson, Johnston ordered Hill to assume command and move in front of the vast and victorious hosts of Sherman. The greeting given him by the little bands of the old legions of Cleburne and Breckinridge now left was a fitting tribute to an old commander whom they loved and admired. Hoping against hope, Hill was the leader above all others to infuse new spirit into the forlorn band devoted to this desperate duty. At every stream and on every eminence in his native State he disputed the ground with Sherman’s vanguard till he developed a force that made it madness to contend further. Hill’s reputation as a soldier depends in nowise upon successful running. This final retreat was the first and last in which he took a leading part. When once more his foot was planted upon the soil of North Carolina it was eminently fitting that he who heard the first victorious shouts of her first regiment in the first fight in Virginia would lead her brave sons in the last charge of the grand army of the great West within her own borders. Again, as in the last onset of Cox at Appomattox, North Carolina soldiers stood the highest test of the hero by facing danger in a gallant charge when they knew that all hope of success was gone forever.
The last years of General Hill’s life were devoted to journalism and to teaching. As the editor of The Land We Love, and subsequently of The Southern Home, he wielded a trenchant pen and was a potent factor in putting down the post-bellum statesmen who proposed to relegate to the shades of private life the heroes and leaders of the Lost Cause. As a teacher, he soon placed himself in touch with his pupils and won their love and confidence, as he did that of the soldiers led by him to battle.
His opinions, whether upon political, religious or scientific subjects, were always the result of thought and study, and were expressed in terse and clear language. As a Christian, he constantly recurred to the cardinal doctrines of Christ’s divinity and His complete atonement. He wrote two religious works which evince at once his grace and force as a writer, and his unbounded trust in these fundamental truths. The subject of the one was The Sermon on the Mount; of the other, The Crucifixion.
Unmoved in the presence of danger, schooled to hide his emotion at suffering in the critical time of battle, and forced by a sense of duty to show his bitter scorn for cowardice and treachery, it was the exclusive privilege of his family, his staff and his closest friends to fathom the depths of his true nature. The soldiers who saw him in camp or on the field could as little conceive of the humble Christian who, in the long hours of the night, pleaded with his God to spare their lives and save their souls, as they could of the affectionate father, the loving husband, the sympathizing friend, and the bountiful benefactor of the poor and helpless, known only to the favored few. A writer who in his last days was admitted to the inner circle of his friends, has so beautifully expressed his idea of his true character that I cannot do better than reproduce it as not an overdrawn picture, from the standpoint of one who served on his staff, had free access to his home circle, and observed and studied his motives and conduct:
“Fancy a man in whom the grim determination of a veteran warrior is united to a gentle tenderness of manner which would not be inappropriate to the most womanly of women;... affix a pair of eyes that possess the most indisputably honest and kindly expression; animate him with a mind clear, deep, and comprehensive, and imbued with a humor as rich as it is deep and effective; infuse man and mind with a soul which in its lofty views compels subordination of the material to the spiritual, and holds a supreme trust in the wisdom and goodness of the Almighty—is zealous in the discharge of duty, and looks with scorn on all that is mean and sinful. Add to all these a carriage that is indomitable, and a love of truth and honor which is sublime, and you have the earthly embodiment of D. H. Hill.”
General Hill, though born in South Carolina, lived most of his life in North Carolina, the State of his adoption. In the early part of the war, if there was any hard fighting to do, Hill usually bore the brunt of it. He was essentially a “pounder,” was utterly fearless, believed in his cause with his whole heart, despised traitors, and ridiculed those who sought high places as bomb-proofs. It was this habit of thus ridiculing and condemning influential men that occasioned his quarrel with Jefferson Davis, for many of his victims sought to undermine the confidence of the Confederate chief in this grim old soldier. General Joe Johnston knew him, and knew his worth, and, when he was restored to the command of the army fighting Sherman, he gave Hill the prominence which he deserved. Hill’s address on the “Old South,” delivered in Baltimore, is one of the best and most interesting of its kind ever published. Like Julius Cæsar, he was a good writer as well as a good fighter.
The Old South
BY D. H. HILL.
Comrades of the Society of the Army and Navy of the Confederate States in the State of Maryland:
Ladies and Gentlemen:—Years and years ago, “the time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary,” I was a subaltern artillery officer in the United States Army. There was great striving with the young lieutenants of that day to be stationed at Fort McHenry, for they said that everybody in the world knew that the most beautiful and graceful ladies in the solar system were in the city near by. I give this as a reminiscence of the long-ago, and not as a piece of flattery, or as an endorsement of the astronomical opinions of the lieutenants of artillery of that prehistoric period.
But to-day, the battle-scarred veterans all over the South pay a higher and grander tribute than that to the mere beauty and grace of the ladies of the present generation, when they tell with tearful eyes and husky voices of the kindness and sympathy shown them while they were hungry, ragged, sick, and suffering prisoners of war. In all ages of the world poetry and song have embalmed the ministrations of mercy of the beautiful to the brave; but these offices of charity rise into the sublime, when the gentle ministrants receive scorn, contumely, and contempt for their gracious deeds to the friendless, the hated and the despised. May God bless the noble women of Baltimore forever and forever more.
But there came a time when my people owed a still deeper debt of gratitude to your generous city. It was the time of the gentle fanning of spring breezes, of the rustling of the new-born leaves on the trees, of the wafting of perfumery from buds and flowers, of the busy humming of freshly-awakened insect life, of the gladsome singing and love-wooing of birds. The booming of cannon and the ringing of church bells told of the rejoicing of twenty-five millions of people over a restored Union. There was a gladness everywhere but in the eleven States scorched and withered by the hot blasts of war. Lee had surrendered, and sorrow had filled the hearts of those stern warriors who had battled for four years with the world in arms. But the grief of surrender had turned into sullen despair, when they came back in this joyous springtime to their suffering families to find desolation and destruction everywhere; blackened ruins marked the sites of the stately mansions of once lordly planters; the fields, once white with the world’s greatest staple, were now fenceless and unplowed; “the fig-tree had not blossomed, neither was there fruit in the vine; the labor of the olive had failed, and the fields yielded no meat; the flocks had been cut off from the folds, and there were no herds in the stalls”; the cities were without business, trade, and commerce; and grass was growing in the streets of the villages almost deserted of inhabitants. “The elders had ceased from the gates, the young men from their music (yea, the best and the bravest of them filled bloody graves). The joy of their heart had ceased, and their dances had been turned into mourning. The crown had fallen from the head of their beautiful Southland, and the Lord of Hosts had seemed to cover himself with a thick cloud so that the prayers of widows and orphans could not pass through.”
It was at this time, when our whole people were shrouded with a pall of gloom and anguish, and absolute starvation was imminent in many places, that the generous heart of your city throbbed with one simultaneous pulsation of pity. Then both sexes, all classes and conditions, friends and foes alike, forgetting political and sectional differences, vied with one another in sending relief to the afflicted South.
In the name of my countrymen, thus rescued from despair and death, I invoke the blessings of Almighty God upon the heads of their deliverers, whatever be their religious creed or political faith; whatever be the skies of their nativity or their opinion of the righteousness or unrighteousness of the Southern cause.
My subject is the Old South; the Old South of pure women and brave men; the South of Washington and Jefferson; of Carroll and Rutledge; of Marshall and Taney; of the Pinckneys of Maryland and South Carolina (for they were of the same stock); of Andrew Jackson and Winfield Scott; of Decatur, Mcdonough, and Tattnall; the generous Old South, which, rich, prosperous, and peaceful under British domination, cried “The cause of Boston is the cause of us all,” and had her sons slain and her land desolated in defense of her Northern sister; the magnanimous Old South, which, without ships and commerce, hoisted in 1812, in the interest of the carrying trade, the banner inscribed “Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights”; the chivalrous Old South, crying out in the person of Randolph Ridgeley, when Charley May was about trying the novel experiment of a charge of cavalry upon a battery of Mexican artillery, “Hold on, Charley, till I draw their fire upon myself.” Ah! my countrymen, that Old South did many unselfish deeds which, in the slang of the day, “didn’t pay.” But the world was made purer, nobler, and better by them, and they should be as ointment poured forth, fragrant through all the ages.
Christopher Columbus has justly been considered mankind’s greatest benefactor, and surely no one ever did great deeds under more adverse circumstances. Crowned heads had tantalized him with hope but to baffle his expectations; jealous courtiers sneered at him; men of science called him a dreamer and a madman; his own sailors were insubordinate and mutinous. Through it all, this wonderful man had borne himself grandly, never losing heart or hope until success had crowned his efforts. The fame won by Columbus stimulated the enterprise of the world for the next three hundred and fifty years, until all the highways and byways of the ocean had been thoroughly explored, and all its creeks, bays, and estuaries had been thoroughly surveyed. Then discoveries ceased, and it was said that there were no more continents, no more islands, no more coral reefs, no more sand-bars to be found in all the wide waste of waters. This lull in discovery continued until 1868, when an enterprising brother from somewhere north of Mason and Dixon’s line announced to the startled world that he had discovered a hitherto unknown region of vast extent, with fertile soil, varied and wonderful products, the loveliest scenery and the finest climate on the globe—cities, towns, villages, and a vast rural population—all speaking the English language, though it was not told whether they were Christian or heathen. The great navigator had called his discovery the New World, and other navigators had called theirs New Caledonia, New Zealand, New Britain, New Hebrides, New Holland, etc.; this land navigator, of the year of grace 1868, called his discovery the “New South.” The thing stranger to me than even finding this hitherto unknown land is that the English-speaking race discovered there have adopted the name given them, are proud of it, brag about it, and roll it as a sweet morsel under their tongues. All other barbarians have resented the name imposed upon them by their discoverers, and have clung to their old names, their old ideas, and their old traditions.
It will be my business at this time to speak to you, Veterans of this Association, of the Old South for which we fought, and for which so many of our comrades, as dear to us as our own heart’s blood, laid down their precious lives. I would tell you, young people, of that dear Old South which has passed away, that you may admire and imitate whatever was grand and noble in its history and reject whatever was wrong and defective.
Dr. Channing, of Boston, one of the ablest and fairest of the many gifted men of the North, said more than forty years ago, that the great passion of the South was for political power and the great passion of the North was for wealth. I quote his words: “The South has abler politicians than the North, and almost necessarily so, because its opulent class makes politics the business of life.... In the South, an unnatural state of things turns men’s thoughts to political ascendency, but in the Free States men think little of it. Prosperity is the goal for which they toil perseveringly from morning until night. Even the political partisan among us (the Northern people) has an eye to property and seeks office as the best, perhaps the only way, of subsistence.”
This was a frank confession from a Northern scholar and thinker, that Northern politicians sought office with an eye to property and subsistence, while ambitious Southerners sought for place and power from love of political supremacy. Now, the motive of the latter class was not good, but these lovers of high position did have a restraining influence upon the lovers of money. The scandals that have brought shame upon the American name occurred when the Old South was out of power. Who has not heard of the Credit Mobilier swindle, in which high government officers, Senators and Representatives, were implicated? Then there were frauds known as Emma Mine stock, Seneca Stone contract, Whiskey Ring swindles, Pacific Mail subsidies, sales of Sutlers’ Posts, steals of Government lands, “back salary” grabs, Star Route robberies, etc., etc. When Southern statesmen had a controlling influence these knaveries were unknown, because they were impossible. No official from the Old South, whether in Cabinet, Congress, Foreign Mission or public position of any kind, was ever charged with roguery. No great statesman of that period ever corruptly made money out of his office. Calhoun, Clay, and Webster were comparatively poor. Some of our greatest Presidents were almost paupers, notably Jefferson, Monroe, and Harrison.
Dr. Channing gave the distinction between the North and the South with great candor and fairness. But we might still inquire: Why did the North seek property, and why did the South seek political supremacy, as the chief good? The reason of the differences between the two sections seems to me perfectly plain. It was not a race difference between the two peoples, for they were of the same blood and the same speech. The ambition of each section as to the avenues in which it should seek its own self-aggrandizement was determined by its surroundings. The Northern States of the old thirteen had magnificent bays and harbors, but a bleak, inhospitable climate, in which African slaves could not thrive, and a soil not adapted to producing the things which the world specially needed. The people of that region then freed or sold into the South the negroes whom they had brought from Africa and whom they found to be unprofitable slaves in their latitude. Naturally, these Northerners turned away from unremunerative agriculture to the wealth-giving sea and became the boldest and hardiest navigators the world had ever seen; but with all their courage, pluck, and energy they were averse to war and personal conflicts as interfering with the peaceful gains of trade. They were too busy to be turbulent. They put thousands of ships upon the ocean as fishing-smacks, whalers, and merchantmen. Their shipping interest called for great centers of trade and for foundries and machine-shops. They built great cities and huge dock-yards; they opened vast mines and established rich factories. They became a money-getting people from the situation in which their surroundings had placed them. Anglo-Saxon energy and indomitable will had made them masters of whatever was at first unfavorable in their situation.
The South had but few ports, and these were in unhealthy places; it had a climate well suited to the African, and a soil well adapted to produce those things which the world most needed. Hence the people of the Old South maintained slavery and devoted themselves almost exclusively to agriculture. They built no great cities, for they had no trade; they developed no mines and erected no factories, for their laborers were better at field work than at anything else. The Southern men of property went to the country and became feudal lords of black retainers, the best fed, the best clothed, the gayest, happiest, healthiest, strongest serfs the world had ever seen. The towns and villages at the South were shackly, mostly with unpaved and unlighted streets. The rural mansions were spacious and comfortable, seldom grand or elegant. An agricultural people are seldom rich and the profuse hospitality of the Southern planter kept him generally straitened in his means. The Old South labored under a more serious disadvantage; there were few literary and scientific men among them. History shows that the great men of the world have been born chiefly in the country, and that they gained distinction, not there, but in cities and towns. The fire may be hid in a flint for countless ages, and the spark only be given out when the flint is struck by the steel. So the intellectual giants reared in the free, fresh air of the country have only given out their grand thoughts under the influence of other minds in populous places.
Thus, the men of the Old South, being cut off from wealth, from mining, manufacture, commerce, art, science, and literature, found but two fields open in which they could distinguish themselves—war and politics—and into these they entered boldly and successfully and became leading statesmen and renowned warriors. So the surroundings of the Old South determined the destiny of its sons, just as the surroundings of the North determined that of its sons. Exceptional cases occurred at the South where fame was won outside of politics. Thus, Audubon, of Louisiana, was the first as he is the most distinguished, of American ornithologists. Washington Allston, of South Carolina, ranks among the foremost of American painters. M. F. Maury, of Virginia, has done more for navigation than any one of this century, and he received more medals, diplomas, and honors as a man of science from European nations than any other American. John Gill, of New Bern, N. C., is the true inventor of the revolver which has revolutionized the tactics of the world. Dr. Clemens, of Salisbury, N. C., is the true inventor of the telegraph, which has made almost instantaneous the intercourse between the most distant nations of the earth. McCormick, of Virginia, was the first to put the reaper into the field, which has done so much to develop the vast grain fields of the West. Stevens, of South Carolina, was the first to use iron as a protection against artillery, and thus the whole system of naval warfare has been changed. Dr. Reed, of Tuscaloosa, Ala., is the inventor of rifled cannon, which have made useless fortifications of stone and brick. Richard Jordan Gatling, of Hertford county, N. C., is the inventor of the terrible gun that bears his name. The Georgians claim that their countryman, Rev. F. R. Goulding, is the inventor of the sewing machine. General Gabriel J. Rains, by the construction of a peculiar friction primer, made the use of torpedoes successful in the Southern waters during the civil war, and demonstrated that weak maritime nations could be protected against the most powerful. The Le Contes, of Georgia, are to-day among our foremost men of science. Dr. J. Marion Sims, of South Carolina, had more reputation abroad than any other American physician. In literature, we have had such men as Marshall, Kennedy, Gayarre, Wirt, Gilmore Simms, Hawks, Legaré, Hayne, Ryan, Timrod, the Elliotts, of South Carolina, Ticknor, Lanier, Thornwell, Archibald Alexander and his sons, Addison and James W., A. T. Bledsoe, Mrs. Welby, Mrs. Terhune. Brooke, of Virginia, solved the problem of deep-sea sounding, which had so long baffled men of science. But the other day, General John Newton, of Virginia, was at the head of the Engineering Department of the United States. Stephen V. Benet, of Florida, is now head of the United States Ordnance Department, and Dr. Robert Murray, of Maryland, is Surgeon-General.
Most of the Southern inventions were lost to those whose genius devised them, because the Old South had no foundries and machine-shops in which they could be made, and no great centers of trade by which they could be put upon the market. With rare magnanimity, Southern Congressmen had voted for protective tariffs, fishing bounties and coast-trade regulations, which did so much to build up the big cities and great commerce of the North and to fill its coffers to overflowing. Even Mr. Calhoun had voted to protect “infant industries,” believing that the infants would in the course of time learn to crawl and walk, and do without pap. But that time has not yet come. Thomas Prentice Kettell, a Northern man, estimates that in these three ways the Old South contributed from 1789 to 1861 $2,770,000,000 of her wealth to Northern profits. Our statesmen knew, surely, that their own section would never get one dollar in return from this enormous expenditure. But they were patriotic enough to be willing to make the nation rich and prosperous, even at the expense, for a season, of their own beloved South. My Countrymen! that Old South was a generous Old South. The world scoffs at such generosity and says, “it don’t pay.” The Old South believed with the wise man that “A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and loving favor than gold and silver.” But the world does not think with Solomon and the Old South, and chooses great riches rather than the good name, and gives its loving favor to the holders of the gold and silver. But while the Old South had some success in literature, art, and science, the character of its people ought to be judged mainly by what they accomplished in two departments to which their efforts were mostly restricted—politics and war. Did the Old South give to the country wise statesmen and brave warriors? This will be the subject of the present investigation.
Mr. Bancroft says: “American Independence, like the great rivers of the country, had many sources, but the head-spring which colored all the stream was the Navigation Act.” The whole of New England was in a blaze of fury because of it. The effect of it upon their commerce and shipping interest was most disastrous, and they believed that ruin impended over them. The Old South was equally excited, though it had no carrying trade and was in nowise affected by the act. But an agricultural people, living much by themselves, develop large individuality, and are always liberty-loving. Hence, though in many respects the gainers by intercourse with England, the sons of the Old South stoutly resisted all encroachments upon their freedom by the Mother Country—a term of endearment they still loved to use. The Old South denounced the Navigation Act, which did not hurt its interests at all, just as severely as it did the Stamp and Revenue Acts. All were blows at the inalienable rights of freemen, and all were alike opposed. Christopher Gadsden, of South Carolina, in a speech delivered in Charleston in 1766, advocated the independence of the colonies, and he was the first American to proclaim that thought. The first American Congress met in Philadelphia on the 7th of October, 1774. Peyton Randolph, of Virginia, was elected President of that body. On the 20th of May, 1775, the Scotch-Irish of Mecklenburg county, N. C., absolved all allegiance to the crown of Great Britain, and set up a government of its own. On the 12th of April, 1776, the Provincial Congress of North Carolina took the lead of all the States in passing resolutions of independence. On the 7th of June that year, Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia, moved: “These United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.” It was upon this motion in the Continental Congress that the separation from Great Britain took place. It was a Virginian who wrote the Declaration of Independence. It was a Virginian who led the rebel armies to victory and to freedom. It was a Southerner, Charles Pinckney, of South Carolina, whose draft of the Constitution was mainly adopted.
Thus, independence was declared upon the motion of one Southerner; its principles were set forth in the declaration written by another Southerner. A third led the armies of the rebel colonies to victory, while a fourth framed the Constitution, which, though denounced at one time by the South-haters as “a covenant with death and a league with hell,” has lived for a hundred years, and is likely to live for many hundreds more.
You of this newly-discovered region need not be ashamed of your ancestors and blush that they lived in the Old Bourbon South. That Bourbon régime lasted for eighty years, the grandest and noblest of American history. Eleven of seventeen Presidents were of Southern birth. Fifty-seven of the eighty were spent under the administration of Southern-born Presidents. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Jackson, each served eight years, in all forty years—just one-half the life of the nation. Of the six Northern Presidents, John Quincy Adams was elected by the House of Representatives and not by the people and contrary to the wishes of the people. Nor was Mr. Fillmore elected to the Presidency, but on the death of General Taylor succeeded to the office and served out the unexpired term. So during the existence of the Old South, John Adams, Van Buren, Pierce, and Buchanan were the only Northern Presidents elected by the people. A remarkable thing is, that all the Southern Presidents were re-elected by the people except Mr. Polk, and he did not seek a renomination. This fact speaks volumes for the capacity of Southern men for the administration of affairs. Another curious fact is that every Northern President had associated with him as Vice-President a man from the Old South. Thus, the first Adams had Jefferson, the second Adams had Calhoun, Van Buren had R. M. Johnson, Pierce had W. R. King, and Buchanan had Breckinridge. On the other hand Jackson served one term as President with a Southern man, Calhoun, as Vice-President; Harrison and his associate were both born in Virginia; Lincoln and Johnson were both born in the South.
This period of eighty years has been called by the North: “The Era of the Domination of the Slave-power.” Without raising an objection to the discourteous phraseology, I would simply say that it is an admission that the South had marvelous success in its desire for political supremacy—one of the two objects of its ambition. Before passing to our second question: “Did the Old South produce brave and successful warriors?” I will allude to a few characteristic incidents, which do not bear materially upon either of the two questions under consideration.
“In the year 1765, on the passage of the Stamp Act, Colonel John Ashe, Speaker of the House of Commons of North Carolina, informed Governor Tryon that the law would be resisted to every extent. On the arrival of the British sloop-of-war Diligence in the Cape Fear river he and Colonel Waddell, at the head of a body of the citizens of New Hanover and Brunswick counties marched down together, and frightened the captain of the sloop so that he did not attempt to land the stamped paper. Then they seized the boat of the sloop, and carried it with flags flying to Wilmington, and the whole town was illuminated that night. On the next day they marched to the Governor’s house and demanded that Tryon should desist from all attempts to execute the Stamp Act, and forced him to deliver up Houston, the stampmaster for North Carolina. Having seized upon him, they carried him to the market-house, and there made him take an oath never to attempt to execute the duties of his office as stampmaster.
“It was nearly ten years after that the Boston tea-party assembled, when a number of citizens, disguised as Indians, went on board a ship and threw overboard the tea imported in her. This was done in the night by men in disguise, and was directed against a defenseless ship. But the North Carolina movement, ten years earlier in point of time, occurred in open day, and was made against the Governor himself, ensconced in his palace, and by men who scorned disguise.”—Senator T. L. Clingman.
Every schoolboy knows of the Boston tea-party of 1773; how many of my intelligent audience know of the Wilmington party of 1765? Yea, verily, the Old South has sorely needed historians of its own.
Virginia gave seven Presidents and many illustrious statesmen and warriors to the nation. She gave Patrick Henry, the war-trumpet of the Revolution, Washington, its sword, and Jefferson, its mouth-piece. When independence and white-winged peace came to the colonies, she gave to the Union that vast Northwest Territory, out of which have been carved the great States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. [New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut also ceded their claim to this territory.]
Oh, but generosity does not pay. Possibly the “mother of States and statesmen” thought so when the soldiers of these five great States swarmed over her soil, and grand old Virginia became District No. 1.
I’ll now take up the second question: “Did the Old South furnish brave soldiers?” The commander-in-chief in the rebellion against Great Britain was the Southern-born Washington, of whom Byron lamented that the earth had no more seed to produce another like unto him, and of whom Wellington said “He was the grandest, the sublimest, and yet withal the plainest and simplest character in the world’s history.” That the Old South did its duty in this war, I will try to show, notwithstanding imperfect records and deceptive pension rolls. The Old South went nobly to the assistance of their Northern brethren, who were first attacked, and nearly all the battle-fields of the North were drenched with Southern blood. In the retreat from Long Island, Smallwood’s Maryland regiment distinguished itself above all the continental troops, losing two hundred and fifty-nine in killed and wounded. The Virginians made up a large portion of the army of Washington at Trenton and Princeton, where the wails of despair of the American people were changed into shouts of victory. Two future Presidents of the United States of Southern birth were in those battles, one of whom was wounded. The only general officer there slain was in command of Virginia troops. Southern blood flowed freely at Brandywine and Germantown, and in the latter battle a North Carolina general was slain, whose troops suffered greatly. It was General George Rogers Clark, of Virginia, who, with a Virginia brigade, chastised the Indians that committed the massacre in the valley of Wyoming. He made a Stonewall Jackson march to the rear, penetrated to the upper Mississippi, captured the Governor of Detroit, and took large booty in his raid. At Monmouth and Saratoga, Southern blood was commingled with the Northern in the battles of freedom. In the battle of Saratoga, Morgan’s Virginia Riflemen greatly distinguished themselves and slew General Fraser, the inspiring spirit of the British army. The guerilla troops, under Sumter, Marion, Moultrie, Pickens, Clarke, and others, drove the British, step by step, back to Charleston, where they were cooped up till the end came.
It is my deliberate opinion that no battles of the Revolution will compare in brilliancy with the defense of Moultrie, the defeat of Ferguson at King’s Mountain, and the defeat of Tarleton at Cowpens, all fought by Southern troops on Southern soil. In the last fight the victory was won when almost lost by the cavalry charge of William Washington, and the free use of the bayonet by that peerless soldier, your own John Eager Howard. The old “tar-heel” State, on the 16th of May, 1771, in the Battle of Alamance, poured out the first blood of the Revolution in resistance to British tyranny. The battle of Guilford Court House, fought on her soil solely by Southern troops, gave Cornwallis his first check in his career of victory, and led eventually to his capture. The first victory of the Revolution was won at Moore’s Creek Bridge, in North Carolina, by Caswell and Lillington, in which one thousand Scotch loyalists were captured. Who knows of that battle? Oh, modest tar-heel State, in the slang of the newly-discovered country, “modesty does not pay!” Nevertheless, true courage and true modesty walk hand in hand. One word as to the misleading rolls of the Revolution. I was born in the Scotch-Irish settlement of Carolina, which furnished troops to Sumter, Pickens, Davie, Davidson, Shelby, and others. These men were never regularly enrolled; they gathered together for battle, and went back to their plows when the fight was over. There were no Tories in that regiment; it was thoroughly Whig. But I never heard of more than one pensioner in all that country. These men scorned the bounty of the Government for simply doing their duty. No official records ever bore the names of those gallant partisans, whose daring deeds are known only to the Omniscient. There were no horn-blowers and quill-drivers among them.
If we come to the war of 1812, all will concede that Jackson, of North Carolina, and Harrison, of Virginia, gained the most laurels, as shown by the elevation of both of them to the Presidency. All, too, readily concede that the brilliant land fights of that war were in defense of New Orleans, Mobile, Craney Island, and Baltimore, all fought by Southern troops on Southern soil.
Although the war was waged in the interest of the maritime rights of the North, it soon became unpopular in New England, because it seriously damaged trade and commerce. The Hartford Convention shows how deep was the defection in that region. The doctrine of secession was taught there half a century before the South took it up.2 Hence, in this war, the Old South furnished more than her proportion of troops. Southern troops flocked North, and in the battles in Canada a large number of general officers were from the Old South; Harrison, Scott, Wilkinson, Izard, Winder, Hampton, Gaines, Towson, Brooke, Drayton, and others. Kentucky sent more men for the invasion of Canada than did any other State.
All honor to the United States sailors of the North who had no sympathy with the Hartford Convention, and nobly did their duty—Perry, Bainbridge, Stewart, Lawrence, Porter, Preble, and others. The “Don’t give up the ship” of the dying Lawrence is a precious legacy to the whole American people.
But the unmaritime South claims among the naval heroes of that period Decatur, of Maryland; Macdonough, of Delaware; Jacob Jones, of same State; the two Shubricks of South Carolina; Jesse D. Elliott, of Maryland; Blakely, of North Carolina, and others. A very large proportion of the naval heroes of the war of 1812 came from Maryland.
In the Mexican war the commanders-in-chief on both lines were born in Virginia, one of whom became President for his exploits, and the other an unsuccessful candidate for the Presidency. This war was unpopular in the North, and hence the South furnished troops to carry it on out of all proportion to her population. The Old South, out of a total population of 9,521,437, gave 48,649 volunteers, and gave also the rifle regiment, recruited within her borders, making in all 50,000 soldiers. The North, out of a population of 13,676,439, gave but 24,698 volunteers. All New England gave 1,057 volunteers. (I use the American Almanac for these figures and the census report of 1850.)
It will be admitted, without question, that Butler’s South Carolina and Davis’ Mississippi gained more reputation than the other volunteer regiments. I think it will be equally admitted that Quitman’s Southern division of volunteers had the confidence of General Scott, next to his two divisions of regulars. Scott’s chief engineers on that wonderful march from Vera Cruz to the City of Mexico were Swift, of North Carolina, and R. E. Lee, of Virginia. His chief of ordnance was Huger, of South Carolina.
The most brilliant exploit of that war was the attack of Tattnall, of Georgia, in a little gunboat, upon the castle of San Juan D’Ulloa and the land batteries at Vera Cruz. If there was anything more daring in that war, so full of great deeds, my eyes were not so fortunate as to behold it.
The bold, bluff tar of that day had a gentle, loving heart, full of kindly sympathy with his own race and lineage, as shown by rowing through shot and shell to offer such assistance as international law permitted to the British Admiral suffering under the murderous fire of the Peiho forts in China. “Blood is thicker than water” was the grand sentiment of the grand sailor, as he hurried to the rescue of the sufferers of his own blood and race. These things don’t pay; nevertheless, it would be a cold, miserable, selfish world without them.
Maryland had no reason to suppose that her sons had degenerated from the days of Otho Williams, John Eager Howard, and William Smallwood when the Mexican war brought out such men as Ringgold, the first organizer of horse-artillery; Ridgeley, his dashing successor; and Charley May, the hero of the cavalry charge upon the Mexican battery.
Coming down to the Civil War, the President on the Union side was a Southern-born man, his successor was born in North Carolina, and the commanding general, who first organized his troops, was a Virginian. His great War Secretary, the Carnot of that day, was born in Edgecombe county, North Carolina, though he would never admit it.
The Union generals who struck us the heaviest blows, next to those of Grant and Sherman, were from our own soil. From West Point there came forth forty-five graduates of Southern birth, who became Federal generals. I have their names, from George H. Thomas and George Sykes to David Hunter and John Pope, with the States of their nativity, viz.: George H. Thomas, Va.; George Sykes, Del.; E. O. C. Ord, Md.; R. C. Buchanan, Md.; E. R. S. Canby, Ky.; Jesse L. Reno, Va.; John Newton, Va.; R. W. Johnson, Ky.; J. J. Reynolds, Ky.; J. M. Brannan, D. C.; John Buford, Ky.; Thomas J. Wood, Ky.; John W. Davidson, Va.; John C. Tidball, Va.; Alvan C. Gillenn, Tenn.; William R. Terrill, Va.; A. T. A. Torbert, Del.; Samuel L. Carroll, D. C.; N. B. Buford, Ky.; Alfred Pleasonton, D. C.; I. M. Mitchell, Ky.; George W. Getty, D. C.; William Hayes, Va.; A. B. Dyer, Va.; John J. Abercrombie, Tenn.; Robert Anderson, Ky.; Robert Williams, Va.; Henry E. Maynadier, Va.; Kenner Garrard, Ky.; H. C. Bankhead, Md.; H. C. Gibson, Md.; John C. McFerran, Ky.; B. S. Alexander, Ky.; E. B. Alexander, Ky.; Washington Seawell, Va.; P. St. G. Cooke, Va.; G. R. Paul, Mo.; W. H. Emory, Md.; R. H. K. Whitely, Md.; W. H. French, Md.; H. D. Wallen, Mo.; J. L. Donaldson, Md.; Fred. T. Dent, Mo.; David Hunter, Va.; John Pope, Ky. Most of these were good officers, and some of them were superb. I could name six or eight of them who did the very best they could for their native land by going on the Federal side. In addition to these forty-five West Point Southerners in the Federal army, some of the high officers of that army were born in the South, but not educated at West Point; Joseph R. Hawley (now Senator from Connecticut); John C. Frémont, the three Crittendens, and Frank Blair.
If we come to the United States Navy we find abundant proof of Southern prowess. Farragut, of Tennessee, was considered the hardest fighter and most successful commander, as shown by his elevation to the highest rank, that of Admiral—a rank specially created in order to honor him. Winslow, of North Carolina, was made a Rear-Admiral for sinking the Alabama. Goldsborough, of Maryland, was made a Rear-Admiral for the capture of Hatteras. Many other names of gallant Southerners will readily occur to you who are more familiar with the United States Navy than I am.
I will refer to but five points more in connection with the Civil War:
Disparity of numbers. The population of the eleven States that seceded was, in 1860, 8,710,098, of whom 3,520,840 were slaves. That of the other States and Territories was 22,733,223, giving an excess over the whole seceded population of 14,023,125, and over the white population, of 17,543,965; the excess of population being nearly double the whole population of the States in revolt, and more than three times the white population of those States. These are tremendous odds, my countrymen, and the Old South need not be ashamed of her sons who contended for four years against them.
But as the job of “suppressing the unnatural rebellion” still dragged its slow length along, 54,137 sympathetic Union men in the Rebel States joined the Federal army, and 186,017 “brothers in black” were in some way induced to enter the service. Secretary Stanton assured the world that the “colored troops fought nobly,” and that without them “the life of the nation could not have been saved.” There is another interesting aspect of the numerical statistics. The seceded States are supposed to have had, from first to last, seven hundred thousand men in the field, and you must admit that this is a very large number out of a population of five millions. The other belligerent had in the field from the first to last, 2,859,132, or more than four times the Confederate forces. Where did these immense hosts come from? The Southern States on the border, slave-holding States, furnished in all 301,062, and thus the entire South gave to the Union army 541,216 fighting men. From what quarter of the globe did the remaining two million three hundred thousand come?
Rosengarten, in his book, the German Soldier, puts down the number of Germans in the Federal army at 187,858. I don’t know certainly, but I suppose that the Irish soldiers were as numerous as the German in the Federal army, for the Irish seemed to lead every attack and cover every retreat—Sumner’s Bridge, Marye’s Heights, Sharpsburg, Chickamauga—always fighting with the indomitable pluck of their race. I once complimented for their gallantry some Irish troops in our service, and I modestly claimed that I had Irish blood in my veins. But as I had broken up some barrels of whiskey a short time before, they would not own me, and I heard that they said: “Af the owld hapocrit had one dhrop of Irish blood in his veins, he would never have smashed whasky as he did.” Then there were in the Federal army Russians, Austrians, Hungarians, Slavs, Magyars, and Teutons alike—Scandinavians, Englishmen, Scotchmen, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, Canadians, and the inhabitants of the far off isles of the sea. I think then that it is true that the seceded States and the border slave-holding States gave more native-born soldiers to the Union army than did the North give of her native-born sons to that army! Surely, then, General Sherman was mistaken in saying that the Civil War was a war of races, the South against the North. This is hardly fair to Farragut and Thomas and their gallant associates of the army and navy, and the half million of brave men who fought with them.
Disparity of resources. Oh! my brethren of the loyal North, do not taunt us with our poverty, when your own writer, Thomas Prentice Kettell, tells the world that the South gave $2,770,000,000 of her wealth to swell Northern profits. If that money were given back to us, we could get up a “big boom” sure enough, and become a veritable New South. As it was, we were poor in military resources in 1861. We were without mines, without factories, foundries, machine-shops, rolling-mills—without mechanical appliances of every kind. We rushed into war, not only without ships of war and trade, but without a single mill to make powder in the whole Confederacy, and without even a single machine to make percussion caps. We had been dependent upon the North for everything, even for the paper upon which the Ordinances of Secession were written, and for the ink and pens used in the writing. There never was a people on earth so destitute of all means of making war material and of supplying comforts and conveniences for those in camps and for those at home. From first to last, we had to depend largely upon the spoils taken from the enemy with Stonewall Jackson as Quartermaster and Commissary-General. From first to last, ours was the worst fed, worst clothed and worst equipped army in the world, deficient in medical stores, in ordnance stores, in wagons, tents, shoes—even in artillery and rifles. Theirs was the best organized, the best equipped and the most pampered army in the world, with abundant commissariat, medical supplies, transportation, ordnance stores, etc.
A young rebel lieutenant who had been accustomed at home to a dram before each meal, and at frequent intervals between these three periods, was asked when the war would be over. “I am no military man,” groaned he. “I know nothing of military affairs; but one thing I do know, and that is that the Confederacy has started the biggest temperance movement the world ever saw.”
You all know how readily the Irish of the two armies affiliated when they came together as captors and prisoners. At the second battle of Manassas I was amused at a conversation between some Federal Irishmen and their countrymen in my division, who were in charge of them. One of the Irish prisoners complained to one of my Irishmen that he had not had anything to eat in twenty-four hours. My man replied: “And are you after complaining of such a trifle as that? Why, Pat, me boy, in the Southern Confederacy we have one male (meal) a week and three fights a day.”
Confederate Navy. I wished to say a few words in regard to the Confederate navy, and I regret that I am so ignorant on this subject. I had the honor to know a few, and a few only, of our naval heroes, but these were all grand men. Among them were Semmes, the Chevalier Bayard of the ocean; J. I. Waddell (of an illustrious North Carolina lineage), almost the peer of Semmes as a successful cruiser: M. F. Maury, the greatest benefactor to the merchant and naval marine the world has ever known; the brave W. F. Lynch, the Christian scholar and explorer; the gallant Pegram, Hunter, Alexander. I was proud before the Civil War of the fame of Tattnall, Ingraham, and Hollins, and was glad that they cast in their lot with their own people. I always regretted that I never saw your own Franklin Buchanan, the hardest fighter on our side, as Farragut, of Tennessee, was on their side. These two Southerners rose to the highest rank in their respective navies. But in that of which I know so little I do not wish, in my ignorance, to make distinctions. I have introduced the subject merely to express a long-felt opinion, viz.: that it required a higher and nobler patriotism for our sailors to leave the navy than for our soldiers to leave the army, for very obvious reasons: 1st, the flag to the sailor not only told him in foreign lands of his country, but it spoke of his far-off home, with all its endearments. It was hard for him to give up the old flag with all these sacred associations. 2d. Our army officers gave up generally subordinate positions to command regiments, brigades, divisions, and armies. The naval officers gave up fine positions on great ships of war to serve in little tubs of vessels, of which they must have been ashamed. 3d. The true sailor is a sailor and not a land-lubber. He never gets off his sea-legs on shore. Our patriotic naval officers knew certainly that the failure of our cause would drive them from the sea and compel them to seek business on land, in which they would feel as awkward as Commodore Trunnion on the fox-hunt. All honor to the noble men who put country above self and self-interest. The Old South had thousands of unselfish men, but I put these in the foremost of them all.
Indebtedness of the nation to the Old South. The statesmen of the Old South were all broad-gauge men. They had fully the instincts of the Japhetic race for land-grabbing and they were eager to fulfill the prophecy in regard to the enlargement of Japhet’s borders. We find, accordingly, that every inch of territory that has been added to the area belonging to the original thirteen States has been added under Southern Presidents, and all has been acquired save Alaska, during the “Era of the domination of the slave-power.” When Jefferson came to the executive chair the whole Union comprised about 830,789 square miles. By wise policy and diplomacy, he won, without one drop of blood, for the paltry sum of fifteen million dollars, that vast territory out of which have been carved nine great States and six large Territories, embracing in all 1,282,005, or 415,216 square miles more than the United States possessed before his administration. That is, he doubled the area of the United States, and had this respectable slice left over. Mr. Blaine, in his recent speech at St. Louis, said in reference to this grand achievement: “In the annals of American greatness, Jefferson deserves to be ranked as the second Washington.”
Monroe found a troublesome neighbor in Florida, and by the payment of five million dollars, with a few hangings by Andrew Jackson thrown in, he made loyal citizens of the United States out of the Spaniards and mongrel breeds in that territory, and enlarged the area of the Union by 58,680 square miles. Next came the annexation of Texas, under Tyler, and the Mexican war, under Polk, which added to the Union two huge States and four huge Territories, and 855,410 square miles.
These were notoriously Southern measures, advocated by Southern statemen, and carried out by Southern Presidents, in spite of the opposition of the South-hating philanthropists. This policy enlarged our territory 2,196,095 square miles, nearly treble its area, extended the power of the government from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and gained the richest mineral, farming, and grazing grounds on the globe. With prophetic vision, Southern statesmen had seen that our country must extend to the Pacific, and from its ports carry on a trade with the populous nations of the East. Think of it, but for the Old South, a Spanish province would bound the United States on the South, and the Mississippi river, under the control of France, would bound it on the west. Compare, ye English-speaking Americans, the United States which Jefferson found with the United States which Polk left, and then you will form some conceptions of the indebtedness of the nation to the Old South.
Next came the purchase of Alaska, and the gain of 577,000 square miles of territory. By a singular providence, this acquisition was advocated by the South-hating philanthropists, and consummated by a Southern President. Southern men favored it, not that they expected to gain anything thereby, but the land-grabbing instinct was strong in them, and they knew that the wives of their neighbors in the loyal North would need furs and sealskin sacques. Thus we see, that, under Southern Presidents, the area of the United States has increased from 830,789 square miles to 3,603,884 square miles; that is, it is now four times as big as it was. There is not a man of intelligence in the Union who does not know that this vast increase has been due to Mr. Jefferson and the Old South.
Oh! men of the loyal North, in view of what the Old South has done in quadrupling the national domain, with all of the inestimable advantages, thereof, let us cry quits and stop talking about Jeff Davis and the sour-apple tree, and talk rather of Jefferson, Monroe, Tyler, and Johnson. Probably, too, a few words might be whispered in commendation of the Old South for its Japhetic proclivities, for its gift of Washington, and a long line of statesmen and warriors, and for its donation out of its poverty, up to this date, of more than three billions of dollars to swell the wealth of the North.
Results of the War. I would place first of these the general diffusion of love for the Constitution of the United States. Time was when the then South-hating philanthropists denounced it as “a covenant with death and league with hell,” gotten up by the slave-power in the interests of slavery. But in 1861 the philanthropists experienced a change of heart, and ever since have talked of the Constitution as that “sacred instrument,” that “bulwark of freedom,” that “palladium of liberty!” I am glad of their conversion, suspiciously sudden though it was, and I hope that they will never fall from grace. As a stalwart Presbyterian, I believe in the perseverance of the saints.
Second. Change of views in regard to the intellectual, moral, and social status of the negro. The philanthropists used to tell of the cruelty and brutality of slave-holders to their slaves, and said that they had reduced the negroes to the lowest state of ignorance, barbarism, and bestiality. But in the reconstruction period the philanthropists underwent a radical change of views and discovered that these negroes, whom they had described as more savage and degraded than the barbarians on the Congo, were not merely enlightened, and civilized enough to be freemen and voters, but also to be United States Senators and Congressmen, Foreign Ministers, Consuls and Marshals, Governors of States, Judges, Members of State Cabinets, etc. I am glad that the philanthropists found out that the Old South had trained its slaves so carefully for these high and responsible duties. No other masters in the world’s history ever gave such training to their slaves. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States are the grandest possible eulogies to the Old South.
But there was one great error in this training. The simple-hearted, confiding Southern masters, always careless of their own money, did not teach their slaves to be cautious about their investments, and tens of thousands of these credulous creatures put their money in a bank in Washington, established by the philanthropists, and lost it all.
Third. The development of great men. I love to hear the praises of the wonderful deeds of McClellan, Grant, Meade, and Hancock, for if they were such great warriors for crushing with their massive columns the thin lines of ragged Rebels, what must be said of Lee, the two Johnstons, Beauregard, and Jackson, who held millions at bay for four years with their fragments of shadowy armies?
Pile up huge pedestals and surmount them with bronze horses and riders in bronze. All the Union monuments are eloquent of the prowess of the ragged Rebels and their leaders. Suppose the tables had been turned, and that either of the five Southerners named above had been superior to his antagonists in all the appliances and inventions of war, and had been given, moreover, an excess of two million of men over them, how many statues, think ye, my countrymen, would there be of bronze warriors and prancing chargers?
The Congressmen from the Old South have voted liberally for all legitimate pension bills to Union Veterans, for they know what a tough job it was for the 2,859,132 Union soldiers, with their magnificent outfit, to overcome the seven hundred thousand Rebels, poorly fed, poorly clothed and poorly equipped. These pension bills are splendid tributes to the pluck, patience, perseverance, and fortitude of the chivalry of the Old South.
I love to hear the philanthropists praise Mr. Lincoln and call him the second Washington, for I remember that he was born in Kentucky, and was from first to last, as the Atlantic Monthly truly said, “a Southern man in all his characteristics.” I love to hear them say that George H. Thomas was the stoutest fighter in the Union army, for I remember that he was born in Virginia. When the old lady of the Old South hears the eulogies upon these men she pushes back her spectacles that she may have a better view of the eulogists, and says: “These were my children.” Then the old lady adds: “I have another son born in Kentucky, and he is not a stepson, nor did I raise him to die on a sour-apple tree.”
Notes
2 In Barnes’ History of the United States the author tells us (page 167) of the ravaging of the Southern coast in the war of 1812 by the noted Admiral Cockburn. He says: “Along the Virginia and Carolina coast, he (Cockburn) burned bridges, farm-houses, and villages; robbed the inhabitants of their crops, stock, and slaves; plundered churches of their communion services and murdered the sick in their beds.” And then the author explains why the Southern coast was devastated and the New England coast was not disturbed. This explanation is in a foot-note, which reads as follows: “New England was spared because of a belief that the Northern States were unfriendly to the war and would yet return to their allegiance to Great Britain.”
This is the statement of a Northern writer, and not the fabrication of an enemy. How did the belief start among the British people that New England wished to return to its allegiance to the “mother country?”