USA > Indiana > Henry County > Hazzard's history of Henry county, Indiana, 1822-1906, Volume I > Part 11
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So vindictive was the feeling inspired in the South by the enrollment of negroes in the northern armies, that, in 1863, the Confederate Congress passed an act providing that "every white commissioned officer commanding negroes or mulattoes in arms against the Confederate states shall be deemed as inciting servile insurrection and shall, if captured, be put to death or be otherwise punished at the discretion of the court," and also providing that the negro and mulatto soldiers so captured should be delivered to the authorities of the states wherein captured, "to be dealt with according to the present or future laws of such state or states."
During the first two years of the war few could have been found in the South bold enough to advocate the dangerous experiment of arming the slaves and putting them into the Confederate armies. In the North, even at this day. many would probably be surprised to learn of the gradual change of sentiment in the South on this proposition. It affords most striking proof that, long before the close of the war, the desperate nature of the contest was appreciated by the southern leaders; for, in their eagerness to save the Confederacy, they were ready to throw overboard slavery itself.
The first significant evidence of this change of sentiment is found in the pro- ceedings of a meeting of the officers of the Confederate Army of the Tennessee at Dalton, Georgia, January 2, 1864. The meeting was attended by Joseph F .. Johnston, the general commanding, Generals Hardee, Walker, Stewart, and others. Patrick Cleburne, one of the most noted generals of the army, read an elaborate paper prepared for the evident purpose of being circulated in the army, if approved by the meeting.
The paper set forth the depletion of the Confederate armies, the constantly increasing number of desertions, and the discouragement of the Confederate soldiers, who were "growing weary of hardships and slaughters" which promised no results, and portrayed in strong language the impending danger of "subjuga- tion." One of the three great causes "operating to destroy" them was alleged to be slavery, which from being one of their "chief sources of strength at the commencement of the war," had now become, "in a military point of view, one of their chief sources of weakness." The paper emphasized the reasons for regarding slavery as a source of weakness to the Confederacy :
"Wherever slavery is once seriously disturbed, whether by the actual presence or the approach of the enemy, or even by a cavalry raid, the whites can no longer, with safety to their property, openly sympathize with our cause. The fear of their slaves is continually haunting them, and from silence and apprehension many of these soon learn to wish the war stopped on any terms. The next stage is to take the oath to save property, and they become dead to us, if not open enemies. To prevent raids we are forced to scatter our forces, and are not free to move and strike like the enemy; his vulnerable points are carefully selected and fortified depots. Ours are found in every point where there is a slave to set free. All along the lines slavery is comparatively valueless to us for labor, but of great and increasing worth to the enemy for information. It is an omnipresent spy system, pointing out our valuable men to the enemy, revealing our positions,
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purposes, and resources, and yet acting so safely and secretly that there is no means to guard against it. Even in the heart of our country, where our hold upon this secret espionage is firmest, it waits but the opening fire of the enemy's battle line to wake it, like a torpid serpent, into venomous activity."
In order, therefore, to fill the ranks of the Confederate armies, to insure the sympathy of foreign nations, and to infuse new life into the decaying Confederacy it was proposed "that we retain in service for the war all troops now in service and that we immediately commence training a large reserve of the most cour- ageous of our slaves, and further that we guarantee freedom within a reasonable time to every slave in the South who shall remain true to the Confederacy in this war."
General Cleburne recognized, not only the absurdity, but the danger, of arming the slaves without freeing them. It would be preposterous, he argued, to expect the negro to fight against the hope of freedom with any degree of enthusiasm :
"Therefore," he adds, "we must bind him to our cause by no doubtful bonds ; we must leave no possible loophole for treachery to creep in. The slaves are dangerous now, but armed, trained, and collected in an army, they would be a thousand-fold more dangerous ; therefore. when we make soldiers of them we must make free men of them beyond all question, and thus enlist their sympathies also."
General Patton Anderson, who attended the conference, felt moved to write General Leonidas Polk a confidential letter on the subject of Cleburne's "mon- strous proposition" and his own feelings "on being confronted by a project so startling in its character-may I say, so revolting to southern sentiment, southern pride, and southern honor." He adds: "Not the least painful of the emotions awakened by it was the consciousness which forced itself upon me that it met with favor by others, besides the author, in high station then present."
Somehow the matter reached the ears of Jefferson Davis and thereupon his Secretary of War, James A. Seddon, wrote a letter to General Johnston expressing the earnest convictions of the President that "the dissemination or even pro- mulgation of such opinions under the present circumstances of the Confederacy, whether in the army or among the people, can be productive only of discourage- ment. distraction, and dissension," and General Johnston was requested to com- municate the President's views to the officers present at the meeting "and urge on them the suppression, not only of the memorial itself, but likewise of all discussion and controversy respecting or growing out of it."
The question of arming the slaves continued to be agitated in the South, and was favorably considered, though public sentiment never quite reached the point of universal emancipation. The Richmond Enquirer, in an editorial, October 6, 1864, said :
"Whenever the subjugation of Virginia or the employment of her slaves as soldiers are alternative positions, then certainly we are for making them soldiers and giving freedom to those negroes that escape the casualities of battle."
Jefferson Davis foreshadowed his own views in a message to the Confederate Congress, November 7, 1864, in which he said :
"Should the alternative ever be presented of subjugation or of the employ- ment of the slave as a soldier, there seems to be no reason to doubt what should then be our decision."
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General Lee also became a convert to the proposition for arming the slaves, and, in a letter written January II, 1865, to Andrew Hunter, expressing his views on the subject, he said :
"I think, therefore, we must decide whether slavery shall be extinguished by our enemies and the slaves be used against us, or use them ourselves at the risk of the effects which may be produced upon our social institutions. My own opinion is that we should employ them without delay. I believe that, with proper regulations, they can be made effective soldiers. They possess the physical qualifications in an eminent degree. Long habits of obedience and subordination, coupled with that moral influence which in our country the white man possesses over the black, furnish the best foundation for that discipline which is the surest guarantee of military efficiency. Our chief aim should be to secure their fidelity. There have been formidable armies composed of men having no interests in the country for which they fought beyond their pay or the hope of plunder. But it is certain that the best foundation upon which the fidelity of any army can rest, especially in a service which imposes peculiar hardships and privations, is the personal interest of the soldier in the issue of the contest. Such an interest we can give our negroes by granting immediate freedom to all who enlist, and freedom at the end of the war to the families of those who discharge their duties faithfully, whether they survive or not, together with the privilege of residing at the South."
On February 7, 1865, a letter from General Lee to General Wise was published, thanking the latter's brigade for resolutions adopted declaring that they would consent to gradual emancipation for the sake of peace. Jefferson Davis, in the "Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government," vol. I, pp. 515-519, explaining his own change of mind, says: "Subsequent events advanced my views from a prospective to a present need for the enrollment of negroes to take their place in the ranks." On February 8, 1865, Senator Brown, of Mississippi, introduced a resolution in the Confederate Senate that, if adopted, would have freed 200,000 negroes and put them into the army, but this was defeated the next day in secret session. On February II, a bill was introduced in the Confederate House of Representatives, authorizing the enrollment of 200,000 slaves with the consent of their masters. While it was pending, General Lee wrote a letter to E. Barksdale of the House, urging its passage. On the subject of emancipation he said, "I think those who are employed should be freed. It would be neither just nor justice, in my opinion, to require them to serve as slaves." The proposed bill was defeated February 23 by the vote of Senator Hunter, of Virginia, who, while it was under discussion, made a bitter speech opposing it, in which he said :
"When we left the old government we thought we had got rid forever of the slavery agitation; but, to my surprise, I find that this (the Confederate) government assumes power to arm the slaves, which involves also the power of emancipation. This proposition would be regarded as a confession of despair. If we are right in passing this measure, we are wrong in denying to the old government the right to interfere with slavery and to emancipate slaves. If we offer the slaves their freedom as a boon, we confess that we were insincere and hypocritical in saying slavery was the best state for the negroes themselves. I believe that the arming and emancipating the slaves will be an abandonment of
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the contest. To arm the negroes is to give them freedom. When they come out scarred from the conflict they must be free."
On March 4, the bill was again taken up and passed, Senator Hunter voting for it under instructions from the Virginia legislature.
The negro soldier bill passed by the Confederate Congress March 9, 1865, authorized the President of the Confederacy "to ask for and accept from the owners of slaves the service of such number of able-bodied negro men as he may deem expedient for and during the war, to perform military services in whatever capacity he may direct." It also provided for the organization of such troops into companies, battalions, regiments, and brigades, and that while in the service they should "receive the same rations, clothing, and compensation as allowed troops in the same branch of service."
A proviso was added to the bill before its final passage, providing that "not more than 25 per cent. of the male slaves between the ages of 18 and 45 in any state should be called for under the provision of this act." Section 5 of the act expressly provided "that nothing in this act shall be construed to authorize a change in the relation of said slaves."
On February 25, 1865, the legislature of Virginia also passed an act authorizing the governor of the state "to call for volunteers from among the slaves and free negroes of the state to aid in the defense of the capital and such other points as may be threatened by the public enemy."
It will be observed that there was nothing in either the act of the Confederate Congress or in that of the Virginia legislature providing for emancipation, im- mediate or gradual. But, as had been pointed out by Generals Cleburne and Lee, it was futile to arm the slaves without giving them their freedom; it was worse than futile-it was suicidal. Nevertheless, the negro soldiers' bill held out some hope, and Mr. Jones, a Confederate in Richmond, Virginia, during the Civil War, records in his Diary under date of March 17 :
"We shall have a negro army. Letters are pouring into the department from men of military skill and character, asking authority to raise companies, battal- ions, and regiments of negro troops. It is the desperate remedy for the very desperate case-and may be successful. If 300,000 efficient soldiers can be made of this material, there is no conjecturing where the next campaign may end."
It was then too late to raise an army of Confederate negroes, with or without emancipation. There were not arms enough for them; there was not time suf- ficient to organize and drill them. The Confederacy was in the throes of dissolution. Pollard speaks with bitterness of this last puerile attempt of the southern leaders to galvanize into life the dying Confederacy :
"Such paltry legislation, indeed, may be taken as an indication of that vague desperation in the Confederacy which grasped at shadows; which conceived great measures, the actual results of which were yet insignificant; which showed its sense of insecurity-and yet, after all, had not nerve enough to make a practical and persistent effort at safety."
Calling on the negroes at this stage of the war to enlist in the Confederate armies was like calling spirits from the vasty deep. They did not come. A few were gathered together in Richmond, about twenty all told, including three slaves of Benjamin, the Confederate Secretary of State, and these were paraded through the streets as an illustration of the loyalty of the southern negroes to the cause
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of their masters and as an inspiring example to their fellows. The loyalty of the slaves or that of their masters had waned, and a draft was ordered. The 3d day of April, 1865, was appointed to begin the conscription of negroes for the Confederate armies.
But there were to be no more drafts in the South for either black or white men. Before the 3d day of April arrived, Lee had evacuated Richmond, Jefferson Davis and his cabinet had fled; the members of the Confederate Congress were fugitives, the Confederate government had disappeared, and the city of Richmond was on fire. On the day set for the draft, amidst the smoke and flames of the burning city, 10,000 black soldiers were marching through the streets singing "John Brown" and scattering broadcast the emancipation proclamation, and thousands upon thousands of the resident Richmond negroes were joining in the joyful chorus :
"Glory, glory hallelujah, Glory, glory hallelujah, Glory, glory hallelujah, We is free to-day."
The black soldiers who marched were not Confederate conscripts ; they wore the blue and carried the stars and stripes. Elsewhere in this history will be found a roster of the colored soldiers from Henry County who served in the Civil War, including those who served from other States and have since moved to Henry County.
CHAPTER VI.
THE STORY TOLD BY THE STATISTICS.
THE REBELLION RECORDS - COMPARISON OF FEDERAL AND CONFEDERATE STRENGTH IN THE CIVIL WAR-ESTIMATE OF FEDERAL AND CONFEDERATE LOSSES IN THE CIVIL WAR-APPALLING NUMBER OF DEATHS FROM DISEASES -STATISTICS OF THE MEXICAN WAR-WAR OF 1812-15-REVOLUTIONARY WVAR.
The United States government has published a great mass of records, both Federal and Confederate, relating to the Civil War, including reports of battles, military reports, correspondence, and documents of all kinds. The volumes, popularly known as the "Rebellion Records," are bulky and now number 130. These are the great storehouse of information relating to the war.
There is much diversity in the methods of citing these volumes. The official title printed on the back of each is : War of the Rebellion. Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. They are variously cited as Official Records, War Records, or Rebellion Records. To one not familiar with the method of citation there may also be difficulty in following references to volumes prior to the one now designated as "Serial Number 36" which, according to the original and cum- brous method of citation adopted by the government, was "Series I, Vol. XXIV, Part I." This and following volumes now have double labels, one designating the series, volumes and parts, and the other the serial number. The volumes subsequent to vol. 35 are usually referred to by the serial numbers; those prior to that volume by series, etc.
A large amount of information is to be gathered from the muster-out rolls on file in the United States war department and in the archives of the different states. Indiana has published eight large volumes, compiled by Adjutant General WVm. H. H. Terrell, containing not only the muster-out rolls of the various military organizations contributed by the state during the Civil War, but also a brief history of each. Other northern states have issued similar publications, but few are so complete as those of Indiana. North Carolina has published a roster of the Confederate organizations contributed by that state. But many states are still much behind in such work; some have not even printed their muster-rolls and the information contained in them can be found only in the unpublished records.
To make all this mass of facts available to the general reader requires long and laborious investigation and study. No single volume yet published gives such an exhaustive compilation of statistics as that of Colonel Fox, entitled Regimental Losses in the American Civil War, published in 1898. A smaller book, by Colonel Thomas L. Livermore, entitled Numbers and Losses in the Civil War in America.
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HAZZARD'S HISTORY OF HENRY COUNTY.
has recently passed to a second edition. It contains in a condensed form a great deal of information compiled from official records, the portion relating to the numbers and losses of the Confederates being especially valuable and interesting. Many statistics are also to be found in the Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, published by the Century Company, and in Phisterer's Statistical Records of the Armies of the United States. Besides these, there are multitudes of histories of the war, of particular campaigns and battles, regimental histories, etc., in which statistics of various kinds may be found.
It is difficult to determine the exact number of men enlisted on each side. Some of the records have been lost ; others were imperfectly kept ; the enlistments covered various periods, and some men enlisted more than once. Reducing the whole number to a three-years' basis, Colonel Fox's estimate of the total number of men enlisted in the northern armies is 2,326,168 while that of Colonel Livermore is 1,556,678.
It has been much more difficult to ascertain the total number of enlistments in the Confederate armies. For a long time those speaking from the Confederate standpoint assumed that it did not exceed 600,000, but Colonel Livermore has shown that it was much larger-nearer 1,000,000.
Whatever the number may have been, the Confederates were as strong in men as the Federals at every stage of the war, for it must be remembered that in every campaign, except General Lee's invasion of Maryland and Pennsylvania and General Bragg's invasion of Kentucky, the Confederates were on the defensive, mostly behind breastworks, on the inner line of the circle, where one man was equal to two, three, sometimes four on the outside line. This can be illustrated by the four-horse act in the circus ring, where the horse on the outside or nearest to the bank of the ring must gallop very fast, the horse next not so fast, the next horse still slower, while the fourth horse walks leisurely around. The last horse was the Confederates, the other three represent the different positions occupied by the Federals.
At Vicksburg, General Grant had in the end more than one hundred thousand men, besides the navy on the Mississippi River. When General Pemberton sur- rendered, it was found that he had only a few less than thirty one thousand men. To make the siege effective, General Grant had to maintain a line from the Mis- sissippi River near Haines' Bluff above Vicksburg to a point on the river below Vicksburg near where the Big Black River empties into the Mississippi, per- haps twelve miles in length, whereas the Confederate inner circle for the defense was a little more than one third of Grant's outer line. Aside from this the Navy had also to prevent the escape or withdrawal of General Pemberton's forces across the river into Louisiana.
At Appomattox, General Lee surrendered less than thirty thousand men to a Federal army of perhaps one hundred thousand men. It is true that between the time of Lee's departure from Petersburg and his surrender, he had lost fully one half of his men by capture and by their leaving for their homes, when they saw the end approaching, yet before he could be forced to surrender, he had to be surrounded and every avenue of escape cut off in a country with which he was perfectly familiar. His position might be likened to the center pole of the circus ring and the Federal position to that of the outside of the ring, which had to be
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completely lined with artillery, cavalry and infantry to compel the Confederate surrender.
The Confederate soldiers were gallant men who well defended their positions and maintained their lines on many bloody fields, yet all that has been said or written as to their inferiority in men and muskets is nonsense of the rankest kind. General Robert E. Lee was a defensive general only as is conclusively shown by the fact that every time he attempted the offensive, he was badly worsted. If the Civil War produced a great, offensive Confederate general, the author does not recall his name. The disastrous offensive campaigns of General Lee in Maryland and Pennsylvania have been mentioned. When General Albert Sidney Johnston left his entrenchments at Corinth, Mississippi, to attack the Federal forces at Shiloh, which he found greatly unprepared, he lost his life and on the second day, his army was forced to retire to their entrenchments twenty miles distant. When General Bragg, re-enforced by General E. Kirby Smith, made his offensive cam- paign in Kentucky in the Summer of 1862, the same ended in disaster and in the Fall of that year he was compelled to retreat into Tennessee. In the Atlanta Campaign, when General Hood left his entrenchments at Atlanta and marched to attack General Sherman's army, he also met with disaster and was soon forced to take refuge behind his entrenchments.
The author makes no pretensions to military knowledge or criticism but it is plain even to the civilian mind that the entire conduct of the war on the part of the Confederates should have been at all times defensive. In this they were at all points re-enforced by the negroes who were at the front in sufficient numbers to throw up fortifications and perform other manual labor and who were on the plantations to till the soil, reap the wheat, pick the cotton, plough the corn, making provisions for the army at the front and caring for the women and children of those who were in the army, and to their credit be it said there is no instance on record of their betrayal of the trust.
In the North, Grant was the great offensive general, not only of both armies but of the world. General Sherman was the great strategist, General Sheridan, the superb cavalry leader and General Thomas, the great defensive general, whose defense of Snodgrass Hill, having the inner line of the circle at Chickamauga, has bestowed upon him enduring fame as the "Rock of Chickamauga." In the South, Lee was the great general as long as he acted on the defensive; General Joseph E. Johnston, the great strategist ; General Fitzhugh Lee, the best cavalry leader, with Generals Forrest, Stuart and Wheeler as "raiders" unequaled in the art of war. We obtain a clearer conception of the great armies in the last year of the war, of their composition and dimensions, from General Webb's statement of the organization and strength of the army with which General Grant entered upon the Virginia campaign in April, 1864. He says :
"The total force under General Grant, including Burnside, was 4,409 officers and 114,360 enlisted men. For the artillery he had 9,945 enlisted men and 285 officers ; in the cavalry 11,839 enlisted men and 585 officers ; in the provost guards and engineers 120 officers and 3,274 enlisted men. His 118,000 men, properly disposed for battle, would have covered a front of twenty one miles, two ranks deep, with one third of them held in reserve; while Lee, with his 62,000 men, similarly disposed, would cover only twelve miles. Grant had a train which he
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