USA > Indiana > The soldier of Indiana in the war for the union, Vol. I > Part 2
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60
Immediately after the election of Lincoln, South Carolina with dramatic dignity announced her determination to secede from the Union. Secession was assumed to be a Constitu- tional right, and the provocation sufficient to warrant the assertion of that right. The North was incredulous and amused. Amusement became derision ; derision intensified itself to scorn, and scorn blazed into a vast indignation when the little arrogant sovereignty officially and formally carried her announcement into effect; and one by one nearly every other slave State followed her leading.
* Speech of Jeff. Davis in Stevenson, Alabama, February, 1861.
·
11
THE UPRISING.
CHAPTER II.
THE UPRISING.
APRIL 12, 1861, the telegraph flashed through the Union the intelligence that a United States fort on the coast of South Carolina - Fort Sumter - was bombarded. No man living within the limits of America will ever forget that des- patch. The old earth itself seemed to reel under a blow, and no longer to afford a sure foothold. Through the long Satur- day that followed, business was at a stand ; business houses were closed, and men with clinched fists and high-beating hearts stood on the street-corners and at the doors of the telegraph office. That night, from the knobs of the Ohio to the sand-hills of Lake Michigan, from the Quaker towns on the eastern border to the prairie farms on the western line, the streets of Indiana were black with breathless multi- tudes still awaiting tidings of the seventy loyal men in an unfinished fort, bombarded by ten thousand raging rebels ! When the banner appeared, - the banner which within the memory of the present generation had only idly fluttered in holiday breezes, - a new meaning seemed to stream from its folds : hats were taken off as in the presence of something sacred; and shouts, beginning, it might be, brokenly and in tears, rose and swelled and made walls and skies resound.
At ten o'clock a despatch was announced : " Sumter has fallen." Young men and men in middle life looked at the white faces and wet eyes of old and venerated citizens who stood in the street waiting for tidings, and a great stillness fell upon all. They turned to separate and creep silently to their homes. Another despatch! " Mr. Lincoln will issue a Proclamation to-morrow, calling for seventy-five thousand . volunteers." Cheer upon cheer, roar upon roar responded. The white-faced old men grew red : they stamped, pounded, wept, roared with the loudest, wildest, and maddest. Good,
12
THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
cold-blooded people who had gone to bed, sprang up, threw open their windows, screamed to passers-by for information, and joined, too, in the national shout.
Sunday the tidings and events of the preceding day and night seemed like an insane dream; and the crowd again hung about the doors of telegraph and newspaper offices, but with anxious sickening hearts they turned away, when the night's intelligence was confirmed past the shadow of a doubt, and laid their grief and dread at the foot of the God of Na- tions. The voice of congregation and choir this day reunited in the utterance of national songs, and sanctified them.
Governor Morton's proclamation followed the President's. Indiana's quota of the seventy-five thousand was six thou- sand. Governor Morton's proclamation was the blast of a war- trumpet. The clerk dropped his pen, the woodman his axe, the ploughman left his plough in the furrow, the machinist his hammer beside the locomotive boiler; and before the blast had died away in the forest and over the waves of Lake Michigan, fifteen thousand stalwart soldiers stood ready for war. Gray-haired men who had thought themselves pre- pared to depart in peace prayed that they might be longer spared. Not content with prayers, many a shaking hand took down the rusted rifle.
" No, no. You have served your country long enough," replied a captain to an applicant who had fought in the battle of the Thames. By dint of colored hair and beard, one old soldier of the war of 1812 found his way into the ranks, and was mustered in with men young enough to be his grandsons. " If I were only four years younger ! " sighed Major Whitlock, the contemporary of General Harrison. " Ninety is not too old in such a cause ; and the young people know nothing of war. Fifty years of profound peace have made no soldiers."
Men who had more money than muscle did not lag behind in generosity. Winslow and Lanier of New York, the latter · formerly an Indiana man, offered Governor Morton twenty- five thousand dollars. William Morrison of Indianapolis, one thousand. T. J. Brooks of Loogootee, to Captain Kimball's company, one thousand dollars. The Indianapolis Branch of
13
UNANIMITY OF FEELING.
the Bank of the State, donated one thousand dollars for the use of Marion County volunteers and their families. Evans- ville gave fifteen thousand dollars. Madison, six thousand dollars. The little towns gave without stint to the families of volunteers. Union City, with a population of less than one thousand, and not a rich man in the number, gave four- teen hundred dollars. Noblesville, twenty-five thousand dol- lars, collected at an evening meeting, within a few minutes. Cass County, six thousand dollars ; Elkhart County, eight thousand dollars; Greensburg, two thousand dollars; Win- chester, almost one thousand. The limits of a Gazetteer, alone, would suffice for a full enumeration. Farmers, without the slightest thought or desire for remuneration, bestowed their best horses; women robbed their chests of well-preserved blankets, and, dropping household needlework, sewed day and night on soldiers' shirts and drawers.
The legislature, which met in pursuance of a call from Governor Morton, April 24, transacted business without the utterance of a party-word. The officers in both Senate and House were elected unanimously ; - perhaps the State-House of Indiana will never again present such a spectacle.
In agreement with a suggestion in the Message of Gover- nor Morton, arrangements were made for the disposal of sur- plus troops, and an appropriation of one million dollars for army purposes.
The volunteers, almost without exception, made pecuniary sacrifices : leaving positions on railroads and farms, in shops and offices, all of which were respectable, and if not lucrative, were at least comfortable. They rose in haste at their coun- try's call, with no time nor heart to count the cost, but ready to give all. Would the means be forthcoming? Would the way to action be opened? In the words of the adjutant- general: " The citizens of Indiana, belonging almost exclu- sively to the agricultural class, had been devotedly engaged, - since the earliest settlement of the State, beginning with the close of the war of 1812,- in the peaceful pursuit of clearing away the forests, cutting roads, and in various ways devel- oping the vast resources of her fertile soil. Thus for nearly fifty years peace had held her willing sway, until the convic-
14
THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
tion had almost escaped the minds of men that every able- bodied man in the nation was bound to do his country mili- tary service in times of threatened public danger. Probably at no period in the world's history has a people been found so little prepared for war."
The military institutions of Indiana consisted of a quar- termaster-general and an adjutant-general, - who filled the offices for some such sum as one hundred dollars annually, - and of a militia which existed only in name.
The preceding winter Hon. Lewis Wallace, now General Wallace, drew up a bill modelled after the law of Massa- chusetts, and labored earnestly to have it pass the legislature for the organization of State militia. It failed, and when the outbreak came there were, perhaps, five independent compa- nies in existence. There was not a shotted cartridge in the State; not enough effective arms for a single regiment; no knapsacks, haversacks, canteens, - in short, a total lack of camp and garrison equipage. The States are each entitled to a certain allowance of arms; but Indiana had made no requisition on the Government, and in consequence had not for several years received any arms.
The finances of Indiana were in a lower condition than they had been for twenty years. The State treasury was empty. The school-fund had been largely drawn upon to defray the expenses of the Government, including the pay of the legislature. Moreover the new governor had not been elected to the office. It had fallen upon him because his superior had accepted a place in the United States Senate. His executive abilities were unknown. Under these circum- stances, it was a hundred-fold more difficult to raise means for the subsistence, equipment, and transportation of six thou- sand troops, than it would have been to form an army of twenty thousand men. But if any man in the United States has a right to look the nation in the face and say, " I have done my duty," that man is Governor Morton.
The day before the President's Proclamation was issued he sent two agents to the eastern cities and one to Canada, to make arrangements for procuring arms and equipments. Immediately after the Proclamation he summoned Lewis
15
ORGANIZING.
Wallace, Esq., of Crawfordsville, to assume the office of adjutant-general. Before the 27th of April the six required regiments were organized and formed into a brigade, with Thomas A. Morris, brigadier-general; John Love, brigade inspector with the rank of major; and Milo S. Hascall, aide- de-camp, with the rank of captain. These gentlemen were all educated at West Point, and possessed of experience and ability. They assembled the throngs of volunteers, who were streaming to the capital from every part of the State, in a beautiful grove north of the city, where for many years Meth- odist camp-meetings had been held; established a military camp, and named the formerly sacred spot, in honor of the governor, Camp Morton.
The regiments were numbered not from one, but from six, out of respect, it was publicly said, for the five regiments en- gaged in the Mexican war, and for the purpose of preventing historical confusion. It was privately suggested, that the cause lay deeper in the unenviable reputation gained by the Indiana Second in the Mexican war, - a reputation now understood to have been undeservedly bestowed by Jeff Da- vis, in the selfish desire to exonerate himself and his Missis- sippians. But not even a slandered number should be affixed to an Indiana regiment. Not the stern Roman of unrivalled renown was more jealous of his honor, than the young State which had yet no history.
The subordinate officers knew little or nothing of military rules or discipline, but they made up in diligence for what was lacking in intelligence. Men who had scarcely opened a book since freed from the trammels of school, became vio- lent devotees to learning. Hardee's " Tactics " came sud- denly into requisition ; dictionaries, English and French, were equally in demand. Pupils and teachers alternated ; and every· secluded spot in the neighborhood of Camp Morton was converted either into a class-room or a private study. Privates were often not more ignorant than their officers ; yet being more numerous were the butt of many a good- natured jest, especially the strapping farmer youths who were following the plough in their bare feet when the war sum- mons came, and joined the ranks unshod. It was said, that
16
THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
the technical terms "right and left" were entirely above their comprehension, and that it was necessary to substitute the familiar words "gee and haw."
Between the words traitor and poison there seems to be a relationship, at least one is suggestive of the other; and as it was known that traitors existed even in Indianapolis, - al- though now the boldest traitor dared not utter a word in the face of the tempest of public opinion, - rumors of poisoning soon excited attention and suspicion. The power of imagi- nation was never better illustrated than by the sudden convul- sions into which some in camp were thrown, in consequence of eating oranges and drinking water reported to be poisoned ; and by the instantaneous cure effected by the sight of the young post-surgeon coolly and with impunity partaking of the poisoned fruit and water. Men were actually cast into and snatched from the very gripe of death.
There was, however, genuine sickness in camp. The rough impromptu hospital was soon filled, and one stormy midnight a man died. Poor soul; he had done nothing for the cause which had stirred his enthusiasm, but then he had had no long marches, no hungry days, no weary, sleepless nights, no neglect and abuse as hundreds and thousands of others have had who since have died like him seemingly to no pur- pose !
The President's Proclamation, which stirred Indiana and all the North to their very depths, was to the unruly spirits of Virginia and Maryland, which -together encircle the Dis- trict of Columbia, what the spark is to the well-laid train of gunpowder. Without awaiting the action of convention or legislature they threatened the capital, and made it necessary to order troops to Washington immediately after an army had been called into existence. In obedience to the summons a regiment of Massachusetts soldiers arrived at Baltimore, on the way to the capital, - April 19, as it happened, - the anniversary of the day on which the first blow for indepen- dence was struck in 1775. A mob, excited to madness by individuals who themselves remained quiet and undiscovered, attacked the soldiers before they had left the train and while they were still unarmed, and shed there, -in the streets of a
17
THE FIRST BLOOD.
city of Maryland, Massachusetts blood. Sacred blood! The first to be poured out in the assertion of independence, - the first in defence of the Constitution!
Five weeks later a whisper thrilled all the North, - a whisper (for no man dared say aloud) that a Rebel hand had fired into the heart of Ellsworth. Ellsworth was a poor, laborious young student, and small was the circle of his acquaintance; but with his uplifted hand tearing down, his eager foot trampling on, the emblem of the traitor, his im- pulsive heart pierced and bleeding, he stood to the nation a type of the greatness and the woe which now hung over her youth.
18
THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
CHAPTER III.
WEST VIRGINIA.
VIRGINIA was dragged out of the Union. Her people were opposed to Secession. When the Convention, elected by a large Union majority to discuss the subject, passed the Ordi- nance of Secession, the State presented, what was now no longer an anomaly, the spectacle of the executive officers of the Government, elected by the people, on one side, and the people themselves on the other. Emissaries, however, with arguments as various as the minds which form a community, - a pistol ostentatiously worn, -a Minie ball, with a hole perfo- rated, tied to a button,-a promise of position or a specious misrepresentation,-achieved unanimity of opinion in East Virginia and in the Valley. But west of the Alleghanies lay a district which defied treason, however it might be enforced, or in whatever guise it might be arrayed. This region, in its alienation from the older parts of the State, affords not the least among the many striking proofs of the preservation or restoration of medieval traits in the slave States. In Europe, in those times when communication between lands separated by mountains was so difficult as to be almost impossible, nations lay side by side in entire ignorance - or in ignorance enlightened only by travelling monks-each of the laws, cus- toms, and language of the other; even the same nation, divided by the emigration of a colony, or a roving tribe, beyond a mountain-chain, grew in its parts unlike and often inimical. It might be imagined that, in our new country, time had not sufficed to alienate any one portion of the population, espe- cially of the same State, from any other portion. But with the assistance of numerous secondary agents, not much time is necessary to rust the strongest bonds of union.
Poor sons of Virginia climbed the Alleghanies, settled on the Cheat, the Kanawha, and the Big Sandy, and grew to be
19
ESTRANGEMENT.
another people. In the course of time, it is true, two fine roads were made across the mountains : the northern, over the triple ranges of Laurel Hill, Cheat, and Alleghany, from Parkersburg on the Ohio, through Clarksburg, Philippi, Buck- hannon, and Beverly, to Staunton, in the Valley ; the southern, from Charleston across the Gauley to Lewisburg; but the journey along these roads was long and laborious, and never could be undertaken unless prompted by necessity or the de- mands of the warmest affection. No railroad to this day dis- turbs the old-time quiet which prevails in all but the northern line of West Virginia. There was little then of intercourse to keep alive old affections, or to preserve old ties of any char- acter.
Much, on the contrary, tended to dissimilarity in character and estrangement in feeling. Scarcity of slaves obliged the new settlers. to regard free labor with favor. An abundance of salt-springs, coal-beds, and oil-wells induced respect for commerce and manufactures, and for mechanical and trading intelligence. A magnificent railroad, the work of Northern enterprise, in connecting the Ohio with the seaboard, unites West Virginia with both. The rivers of West Virginia rise and run their whole course within her own borders, and all flow into the free Ohio. The odd-shaped, prolonged district, squeezed between Ohio and Pennsylvania, and called the Pan-Handle, contains the busiest, most flourishing, and most intelligent town in the State, and is full of emigrants and the descendants of emigrants from New England, New York, and Pennsylvania. Thus shut off in her youth by bulwarks and fastnesses of nature's own engineering and handiwork from the blooming valley and fruitful plains of Old Virginia, and con- nected by rivers, railroad, community of interests, and con- geniality of pursuits with the ready and enterprising North, it could not be that West Virginia should remain indissolubly attached to the East; and it is quite conceivable that even before the Secession movement the two portions of the State regarded each other with no friendly eyes.
Yet the new territory was proud of the grand old historical name; and the Old Dominion appreciated a region which has nowhere its superior, if its equal, in beauty, in grandeur, in variety, and in capacity for wealth.
·
20
THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
These last and only ties the hand of loyalty was forced to cut. A Convention, representing the counties west of the Alleghanies, met at Wheeling after the passage of the Ordi- nance of Secession, and honestly carried out the wishes of the people. Consequently, twenty-nine counties of Virginia remained true to the United States Government.
These proceedings vastly increased the disgust of the old families of the East to the upstarts of the West, while they did not at all diminish their appreciation of the remunerative valleys and the tax-paying manufactories between the Ohio and the Alleghanies. They sent politicians to pursue dili- gently and cunningly the work of conversion, while they lost no time in preparing an army to take forcible possession.
It may be thought, from their loyalty, from their comparative enterprise, from the small number of their slaves, and from their freedom from the most vicious influences of slavery, that the West Virginians are a peculiarly intelligent people. On the contrary, while here and there are highly cultivated indi- viduals and families, large numbers of the people are very ignorant, -victims of the hatred borne by the Southern States to free schools. At the taking of the last census, the Virgin- ians unable to read were reckoned at a hundred thousand. The proportion of this number found in the Western valleys is not small. More than four fifths of the men arrested since the beginning of the war have been obliged to make their mark, in lieu of their names, to the oath of allegiance.
There is a region in Randolph and Webster counties, along the sources of the Cheat and the Holly, where are forests as savage as the unexplored wildernesses of Oregon. There the growl of the bear, the cry of the panther, and the bark of the wolf are sometimes still heard, and the dreary owl nightly wakes the echoes. Laurel-brakes stretch out like inland seas, and with never-fading leaves and snake-like branches inter- laced, forbid a passage to even the light-footed deer; black- berry bushes extend miles in compact masses ; superb firs lift up their crowned heads to the height of a hundred and fifty feet ; and silvery cascades never cease their solitary murmur. Scattered wherever a clearing can most easily be made, in log-cabins, which bear a closer resemblance to wood-piles than
21
IGNORANCE.
to dwellings, live mountaineers to whom a newspaper is a curiosity, a book a sealed mystery, a locomotive an unimagi- nable monster, and a telegraph wire a supernatural agency, the touch of which might produce some indefinable evil. Even a tallow-candle is not a familiar thing, and a slip of pine lights the narrow precincts of the rude cabin, or pine knots send out from the wide chimney a glare more brilliant than the gas of cities.
A mountaineer, who had lived thirty years on one farm in this district, was asked by our scouts the name of his county. " Virginny !" he answered, and was positively unaware of the subdivision of a State into counties. Yet this man was in as good circumstances, and seemed as intelligent as his neighbors. At the same time an old woman, with impertur- bable gravity, insisted that her family were neither Unionists nor Secessionists, but Baptists.
Even when education laid hold of the elementary sciences of reading and writing, it stopped short of grammar and orthog- raphy. Captured mail-bags exhibited curious and sometimes incomprehensible imitations of sound. Neither profanity nor treason are discoverable in a resolution to support the Seces- sion cause " as shure as goddlemity ranes."
Ignorance tells more painfully upon women than upon men; and the women are listless, hopeless, sallow, lean, gaunt, and ugly beyond description. Were it not for a certain ex- pression of sad patience on their face and in their demeanor, they could not but be objects of ridicule or disgust to the stranger. Their morbid imaginations have long received with ready credence the wild stories of Abolition cruelty passing from mouth to mouth, and they have been taught to regard Abolitionists as moral outlaws, violators of every social, civil, and divine ordinance. Secession agents found encourage- ment in every secluded valley, mountain forest, or mossy vil- lage, and had no difficulty in convincing even voters, that, in order to preserve the Union, it was necessary to crush Aboli- tionism, the bugbear which for the last thirty years has fright- ened the refractory into submission. A hundred young men, who joined Wise from one district, were fully persuaded that they were engaged in a crusade against Abolitionism, which
1
22
THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
was seeking the destruction of the Government. But it is a great and happy truth, that, while prejudice, suspicion, and hate find a genial soil in ignorant minds, the principles on which the good of humanity depends may be apprehended by the plainest understanding. We find many a man, to whom the alphabet is a mystery as occult as Egyptian hiero- glyphics, looking straight at the right in this question of Secession and Union, recognizing his duty to the Government and disdaining disloyalty.
By the orders of the Confederate Government, General Garnett, about the middle of May, with a force of ten or twelve thousand, took possession of the gaps in the broken range west of the Alleghanies, called Cheat Mountains, and advancing along the turnpike, established his head-quarters at Beverly, a village on the eastern base of a long ridge parallel with the Alleghanies and the Cheat, and known as the Laurel Hill. From this point he sent detachments to various places in the valleys of the Tygart and the Cheat rivers. 'The de- tachment stationed at Grafton, which commands the railroad, in a little while destroyed the bridges in the direction of Wheeling. General McClellan, whose department included West Virginia, immediately ordered troops to advance into the disputed territory, and issued proclamations at the same time to his soldiers and to the inhabitants. He declared to the people that his army should respect property of every kind, in no way causing or allowing the institution of slavery, whether among loyal or disloyal owners, to be disturbed. His proclamation to the soldiers closed with the noble sentiment of mercy: " Soldiers, remember that your only foes are armed traitors, and show mercy even to them when in your power, for many of them are misguided." General McClellan was warmly seconded by his subordinate officers, and as warmly by the privates. Every man in the United States uniform, called to West Virginia, understood that mercy and justice were to go hand in hand, and had at the same time a proud satisfac- tion in marching to the relief of a gallant people threatened with destruction.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.