USA > Indiana > The soldier of Indiana in the war for the union, Vol. II > Part 67
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 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69
Shortly after the capture of Wilmington, more than nine thousand paroled prisoners arrived, and were immediately consigned to hospitals. They were mere wrecks of men. "I could not keep from crying when they began to come in,", writes one of our Indiana soldiers. It was not possible to imagine them the robust soldiers they had been. Their begrimed, blackened and stiffened skin hung loosely, like parchment, upon their bones. Their putrid sores, and the disgusting rags which could not cover their nakedness, pol- luted the air. Some had lost their feet by freezing. Some had lost their minds in long-continued suffering. Providen- tially, a large amount of supplies which had been shipped from New York for Sherman's army, and were not needed for their original purpose, were already in Wilmington. A deputation from the Sanitary Commission was also at hand. Mrs. Eliza E. George, of Fort Wayne, Indiana, was included in the deputation. March 9, she writes: "We read of the condition and sufferings of our brave soldiers in Southern dens, but like the Queen of Sheba, we now say the half hath never been told us! To realize it, you must see what I have seen. If you were here, I doubt not we should agree in our views of Southern chivalry. Since the capture of Atlanta, our prisoners have been marclied and driven from one point to another, exposed to the inclemency of the wea- ther, starved and bayoneted when they could not keep in ranks. When the Rebels were so closely pressed by Sher- man, that it was impossible to keep them any longer, they hastily paroled and turned them loose. Now, I will tell you
792
THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
the condition of these men." But here Mrs. George's letter euds. Her sympathy and her strength were engrossed by her patients, and she seems to have had neither time nor heart to write, even to her family, a word more than was necessary. Her time was indeed short. The poor, piteous objects of her tender care, soon missed her from their bed- sides. She was ill five weeks with typhoid fever. She lay as patient as a lamb, saying, when attentions were offered her, "Wait on the rest; I am very comfortable; I do not wish to trouble you." She grew better. She became able to walk about and ride out. She even made arrangements to return home, under the care of Dr. Wishard, who had been sent from Indiana to attend her. But on the ninth of May, the day before she was to start, she gently closed her eyes and fell asleep in Jesus. So passed away from earth a sweet, true, brave life.
Mrs. George was an army nurse two years and several months, serving most acceptably to soldiers and surgeons, in the hospitals of Memphis, Pulaski and Nashville, and with the Fifteenth corps on the Atlanta campaign. Many a night she was too tired to undress herself; and on the march over the mountains she more than once bivouacked under a tree, with a blanket around her. She was the only woman in the force which advanced to Jonesboro. After the battle, as she was at work in a field hospital, a shell exploded within a few feet of her, killing two men who were beside her in the hos- pital; yet she calmly remained at her post.
She fed the hungry, relieved the suffering, soothed the sorrowful, consoled the dying, admonished the living. Her gentle voice often hushed the hospital with prayer, or rose on the hillside in exhortation.
While she loved all mankind, she bore two great loves in her heart: her country and her children. A few very short passages from her letters may show her character better than words of description :
" MEMPHIS, May 18, 1863.
" My dear ones, it would make your hearts ache to go through the long wards, and see the pale faces, the sad and sorrowful eyes that follow you every step."
793
MRS. GEORGE.
" MARIETTA.
"Our soldiers are becoming exhausted physically, but their spirit is stronger and more defiant than ever. I am perfectly astonished to hear them talk, even while they are writhing with the pain of crushed and amputated limbs."
" My dear children, strive above all petty considerations, to make your home happy, to make it what it should be, a holy, happy place."
"I want you should kneel down together every night, and pray for your absent mother and your suffering country."
" NASHVILLE, December 8, 1864.
"The wind is whistling round the house, the cannon booming in the distance, and my heart is aching for the houseless, homeless, destitute women and children driven in by Hood's army,-women whose husbands are in the Union army, fighting for their country's life. Oh, my children! turn your thoughts away from every vain and superficial wish, that you may have at least a mite to give to the needy. Suffering is no name to apply to the many I see destitute of home and place where to lay their head."
" You know how like a cool draught of water to a thirsty soul, is a letter to me from home; and you know I would write, if I could, but my time is not my own."
Passages showing that she was easily moved to mirth might be quoted. She laughs at the mules, and the negroes, and at herself, with her old bonnet, on the Atlanta campaign. She has had "such a handshaking as General Harrison had, without being killed by it."
This fresh, happy, loving, untiring worker, was sixty years old when she died.
794
THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
CHAPTER XLVI.
THE LAST DAYS.
"And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave!
The Twentieth Indiana, in Mott's division of the Second corps, accompanied the Fifth corps early in December, in an expedition the object of which was to destroy the. Weldon railroad; and pushed out in February with the whole of its own and the Fifth corps to Ream's Station and to Dinwid- die Court House. The first expedition, with little loss, was but partially successful. The second necessitated hard marching in cold and stormy weather, brought the enemy out in force, and occasioned the loss of two thousand Union men to but one thousand Rebels; nevertheless, by the brave persistence of the Second corps, it accomplished the perma- nent extension of the line to Hatcher's Run. With these exceptions, the winter passed in quiet, as Grant's object was now to defer action until the approach of Sherman from the sonth-west, and of Sheridan from the north-west, should en- able him, by encircling the Confederate forces in Virginia, to cut off from them all hope of salvation or escape.
Activity was renewed by Lee, who looked toward the abandonment of Richmond, a union with Johnston, and either a combined attack on Sherman or a retreat to the mountains. March 25, he made an assault on the centre of Grant's front, at dawn, the hour for surprises, hoping to cut the army in two, and by compelling a withdrawal of the left flank to the centre, to open a way for his retreat southward. For the first hour he was successful; but, as usual in sur- prises, the reserves, twenty thousand men massed in the rear of the storming force, by delay lost the advantage. The
795
THE LAST CAMPAIGN BEGINS.
surprised troops had time to comprehend the situation. They rallied and rushed upon the intruders, capturing and killing nearly five thousand. At the same time, Grant's left, in- stead of hastening to the disturbed centre as Lee had antici- pated, seized the opportunity for advance, and wrested the first line of works from the now confused enemy. The Twentieth Indiana was prominent in this movement.
Two days later, Sheridan, with his cavalry, joined Grant. He had ridden swiftly up the valley, and demolished Early, whom he found still clinging to the mountains; had spent two days at Charlottesville, destroying roads, bridges and manufactories; had continued his destructive course to the James, whence he had been impelled by high waters in a north-eastward direction; had crossed the North Anna and the South Anna, followed the Pamunkey to the White House, where he had rested four days, and had then moved on across the peninsula.
March 29, long before break of day, the Army of the Po- tomac set out on the first march of its last campaign, leaving in the intrenchments before Richmond and Petersburg but a show of force. The cavalry, under Sheridan, on the left, reached Dinwiddie Court House with little opposition. Warren's corps, on the right of the cavalry, was obliged to fight part of its way, but drew up at night in front of Rebel intrenchments which covered the White Oak road. The Second corps, on Warren's right, marched through a difficult and puzzling country, but met only skirmishers. Rain dur- ing the night rendered movement the next day impossible, except on the part of Lec, who succeeded in throwing fifteen thousand infantry into the intrenchments on the White Oak road. On the morning of the thirty-first, Warren endeav- ored to seize the road directly beyond the termination of the works; and Sheridan tried to get hold of Five Forks, four miles west, an invaluable position, being the focus of several roads, and commanding the whole region which Lee was trying to cover. Warren was assailed in such numbers and with such impetuosity, that his two advanced divisions were thrown into disorder. They were saved from destruction, only by the firmness of his rear division and the readiness of
796
THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
Humphreys, who hastened to the scene of disaster. Coun- ter charges drove the enemy within his works, where he was in vain assailed by one division after another of Humphreys' corps.
Sheridan's troopers gained Five Forks without much trou- ble, but they were scarcely within the intrenehments when they were driven out. They were pursued to near Dinwid- die Court House, but, being there reinforced, were able to gain slight intrenchments already prepared, and to check their assailants. The next day, being reinforced by Warren's corps, they pushed their late pursuers back, and appeared again before the works at Five Forks. Sheridan skirmished lightly until four, then began a series of assaults which gained the position, with five hundred prisoners.
The battle of Five Forks was a mortal blow, and Grant was warranted, if only as a demonstration of triumph, to open all the guns in his army. He had another purpose, however, as was evidenced by the stir which prevailed throughout his lines. At dawn of the next day, the clamor and the blazing of artillery ceased, while the army from the Appomattax to Hatcher's Run advanced to a general as- sault. Despair offered a fierce but short resistance. 'The whole length of the outer line and a hold on the second line were gained. Every outwork was captured. Two divisions of Humphreys' corps, the Twentieth Indiana included, stormed a redoubt. At ten the last sally made in defence of Richmond was beaten back, and A. P. Hill, its leader, was shot dead.
It was Sunday, April 2, a calm, bright, still day in Rich- mond, which was beyond the sound of battle. Ateleven o'clock, as the President of the Confederacy sat in church, he re- ceived from Lee a dispatch, and read: "My lines are broken in three places. Richmond must be evacuated this evening." Davis went out without a word. The congregation seemed to understand that the end had come; it followed in silence. Afternoon and night witnessed the flight of the Rebel gov- ernment and forces from the capital; the burning of stores, shops, ships and dwellings; and the quarreling and cursing
797
"ESCAPE TO THE MOUNTAINS."
of an exasperated rabble, which had believed until this mo- ment in success.
The next day, a black brigade was the first Union force to march into the fallen citadel of the slave power.
Sheridan threw his troops across the Danville road at Je- tersville. He was not in time to prevent the escape of the Rebel government, which fled to Danville; but he swept the country, north and south, of Rebel cavalry, stopped the march of Lee's hungry army, whose rations coming up from Dan- ville, had gone on to Richmond, and had there been con- sumed in the conflagration, and captured succeeding trains of provisions. On the evening of the fifth he was joined by Meade with the Second and Sixth corps. That night a strong cavalry reconnoissance struck Lee's train moving di- rectly before his infantry, and captured a large portion at the expense of a spirited fight. The next morning, April 6, another body of cavalry, facing eastward, charged into Lee's marching column at Deatonville, and detained it, though re- pulsed in the end. Meantime, still another cavalry force struck the column at another point, made large captures of wagons, guns, and prisoners, and held Ewell until the Sixth and the Second corps, which were close at hand, were ready for attack. A severe battle resulted favorably. The Third Indiana cavalry captured five stands of colors. While Sheri- dan, Wright and Humphreys were thus engaged, a squad of cavalry and two infantry regiments under General Theodore Read, threw themselves on the head of Lee's army at the crossing of the Appomattox, determined to detain it until Ord's corps could come up. A short but bloody conflict hurled the handful of assailants out of the Rebel road, with the loss of their gallant young leader. The next morning the Second corps followed so close in the rear, that it saved High bridge over the Appomattox, and crossed it at the enemy's heels. Four or five miles north of the river, Hum- phreys came in front of Lee, strongly intrenched on the crest of an open slope of half a mile, and extending right and left. Humphreys extended his right, and threw three regi- ments against the enemy's left. They were inadequate, and were thrown back with loss. The next day pursuit was vig-
798
THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
orously continued, Humphreys and Wright moving close behind the enemy, north of the Appomattox; and Sheridan, the Fifth corps, and the Army of the James, south of the river, making all speed to gain, in advance, the narrow neek of land between the Appomattox and the James, the only outlet for Lee. At Appomattox Station, Sheridan captured four trains just arrived from Lynchburg with food for Lee's starving army. Five miles further on, at Appomattox Court House, he confronted Lee. In the ensuing fight many wa- gons, guns and prisoners were captured, the Third Indiana capturing two pieces of artillery, and the Rebel van was driven back on the main body. About daylight the next morning, Sunday, April 9, just a week after the evacuation of Richmond, the Rebels pushed forward to cut their way out. Sheridan's troopers fell back, but in their place ap- peared a wall of infantry,-the Fifth corps and the Army of the James, which had reached the ground barely an hour be- fore. The cavalry retired from the front, to take position on the Rebel right. The Rebel army was surrounded. It could do no less than display the white flag.
During the last few days of the flight and pursuit, Grant and Lec had been negotiating. Lee, on the seventh, in reply to a note from Grant, said: "Though not entertaining the opinion you express of the hopelessness of further resistance on the part of the Army of Northern Virginia, I reciprocate your desire to avoid useless effusion of blood." On the evening of the eighth, while his army, now dwindled down to ten thousand, staggered on toward the mountains, though hopeless of gaining their shelter, and men and horses fell dead and dying from fatigue and hunger by the roadside, and he was hemmed in, with no loop-hole of escape, he wrote: "To be frank, I do not think the emergency has arisen to call for a surrender of the army." However, with- out waiting for such an emergency, he condescended, on the morning of the ninth, to deliver up his arms and flags, and to disband his melancholy and heart-sick followers.
The delight of the widely-seattered forces of the United States on the announcement of the fall of Richmond, and so soon afterward of the surrender of Lee, was beyond intelligi-
ROBBERY, PERJURY, CRUELTY AND ASSASSINATION 799
ble expression, and surpasses description. The words Rich- MOND, LEE, PEACE, HOME, however they might be spoken, called out cheers, which again excited cheers, swelling up at 'each renewal, with the vivacity and vigor of the first shout.
The assassination of the President was like night upon noon, defeat upon victory. Grief pierced every heart. Si- lence fell upon the clamorous camps. "Our joy is changed to sorrow; our friendship toward the vanquished to bitter hatred," writes a soldier, who yet doubts if so blaek a deed can have been committed. "If our beloved President is thus cruelly murdered, it seems to me that Providence per- mits it because he has been, and would be, too lenient to these proud, overbearing, ignorant Southern 'gentlemen!' and that Johnson will crush their cruel, wicked spirit, with his iron heel. I must confess, I begin to hate the scoundrols for the first time."
"Alike in the joy of triumph," writes the chaplain of the Sixty-Third, speaking of the men of his regiment, "and in their deep, unutterable sorrow at the death of our beloved President, they manifested a sense of dependence upon the Almighty Ruler of nations and of men, which astonished as much as it gratified me. Nor was the feeling peculiar to my own immediate circle of comrades and fellow-soldiers. The whole army seemed to ascribe to the Lord the glory due unto his name, and even in that valley of the shadow of death to still trust that a light would arise."
A private in the Tenth cavalry writes from Fort Blakely, " We were almost crazy with joy, when suddenly and to our horror, it was whispered that our President was murdered." And he goes on to tell how the men sat in groups and talked low, and how some muttered deep and bitter curses. From the Potomac to the Rio Grande the swift wave of grief fol- lowed the tumultuous joy.
The Confederacy was not quite dead, but its epitaph was written: "Robbery of the Public Treasury, and Violation of sacred Oaths; Cruelty to the helpless Captive, and Assas- sination."
General Thomas found much occasion in Tennessee for activity during the latter part of winter and in the early
800
THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
spring. In January, he attempted to send a cavalry expedi- tion from East Tennessee, to cooperate with Sherman in the destruction of railroads in South Carolina, and to release the prisoners in Salisbury, North Carolina; but it was under General Stoneman, and he could not get it started until March. The expedition effected immense destruction of Confederate property, in which was included the last railroad remaining to Lee and Johnston, for supplies and retreat.
Sherman, already advanced from Goldsboro, was pressing Johnston from different quarters, at the time of Lee's surren- der. That event added weight and speed to the pressure, and on the fourteenth of April, Johnson was driven to make overtures. Sherman accepted the propositions of his antag- onist, but, the Government requiring more stringent terms, the surrender was not formally completed until the twenty-sixth.
General Taylor surrendered his forces to General Canby on the fourth of May, at Citronelle, Alabama.
Generals Roddy and Polk surrendered to the One Hund- red and Forty-Ninth Indiana, which garrisoned Decatur. The One Hundred and Forty-Ninth regiment was one of fourteen which were organized for one year's service, in Jan- uary and February, 1865. They were numbered from One Hundred and Forty-Three to One Hundred and Fifty-Six, (the last was a mere battalion,) and were under the com- mand of Colonels Grill, Riddle, Adams, Welsh, Peden, Ruckle, Fairbanks, Taylor, Healy, Griswold, Carey, Wilcox, Wilson, and Lieutenant Colonel Smith. 'They did good service in post, garrison or guard-duty in Tennessee, Georgia, Kentucky, the Shenandoah valley, in Maryland or Delaware. Companies D, G and H of the One Hundred and Fifty- 'Third were at, different times engaged in fighting guerillas in Kentucky, and lost five men in killed and wounded.
Kirby Smith, in Texas, determined to continue hostilities. Sheridan was sent with a large force to that quarter, but, before his arrival, the last engagement of the war had been fought. Colonel Barret, with several hundred men, includ- ing two hundred and fifty of the Thirty-Fourth Indiana, went out from Brazos Santiago fifteen miles, and captured and burned a camp at Palmetto Ranche, driving the enemy,
801
CAPTURE OF THE REBEL CHIEF.
who, however, rallied under cover of artillery, turned the pursuit into a retreat, and killed, wounded or captured eighty- two men of the rear-guard, companies B and E of the Thirty-Fourth.
The engagement occurred on the thirteenth of May. At dawn of the same day, in the woods near Irwinsville, Geor- gia, the fugitive President of the dissolving Confederacy fell into the hands of a detachment of Wilson's cavalry, which had set out from Macon in search of him. At the moment of his capture, he was dressed in a long gown, with a shawl over his head, and was going from the tent, in which, with his family, he had spent the night, down to a spring, to get a bucket of water. He was the chief of a Rebellion which had cut down the flower of the land; which had brought poverty and ruin, mourning, desolation and ashes upon the southern portion of his country, and sorrow and sighing to all the North; and it was a strange freak of retributive just- ice which led his blind ambition, his cruel lust of power, to a farcical end. It is not possible to describe the ecstacy of mirth with which the tale was heard, nor the shrieks of laughter which greeted engravings and photographs of "Jeff Davis" in woman's attire.
On the twenty-sixth of May, the chief officers of Kirby Smith's army capitulated to Canby, the troops having al- ready, for the most part, betaken themselves, with such Con- federate property as they were able to appropriate, to their homes.
The armies of the United States now began to turn their faces homeward. Sherman marched from Raleigh to Riel- mond, two hundred and forty miles, in six days. The de- fences of the Virginia capital did not seem to the army of Georgia more formidable than the works round Atlanta.
"Our way led us," writes an officer, "through the Spott- sylvania battle-ground. Everywhere were visible the terrible signs of the struggle,-trees mowed down by artillery, lowly mounds with nothing to testify whose was the resting place, and, sadder still, unburied remains. Bones lay by the road- side; and in a yard where a woman stood and discourscd 51
802
THE SOLDIER OF INDIANA.
about the struggle to inquirers, lay two skulls, silent evi- dences of her inhumanity. In a thicket near by, where the appalling stillness seems never to have been broken, except by owl, or bat, or raven, lie hundreds of skeletons. Somc had collected, as they lay wounded, such sticks as were within their reach, and had striven to creet a barrier to pro- teet them from further injury. Some had taken the straps from their knapsacks to bind a severed artery, and now the leather lying loosely about the bone told pathetically of the vain effort.
"We encamped on the field of Chancellorsville. Orders prohibiting rail-burning have been very strict; but in this vi- cinity, where contending armies have destroyed everything, they are superfluous. A former member of the Twenty- Seventh, now of the Seventieth, amused his comrades by in- forming them that, for old times' sake, he meant to boil his coffee that night by a rail fire; for, two years before, he had crossed a little stream by the aid of a rail. Sure enough the rail was found, the coffee boiled, and listeners gathered round the blaze to hear once more the oft-repeated story of Hooker's victory and defeat.
"Some of us visited the Wilderness battle-ground, and saw there the same sad scenes. The commingled bones of horse and rider, all the possessions of the soldier, from the envel- ope with its faint address in a woman's hand, to the broken gun, lie scattered over the ground. Knapsacks, placed to- gether by companies before they made a charge, and for which the owners never returned, remain in decaying heaps. 'Tis a gloomy sepulchre, where the trees, in tenderly covering with leaves the remains of the patriots, alone perform the last sad offices. The wind moans through the pines, tears fall at home for them, but they sleep on, unconscious of a weeping nation.
"An old gray-haired man leaned upon his hoc-handle, try- ing to quiet his trembling head, as he said, 'Ah, sir, there are thousands of both sides lying unburied in the Wilderness.""
On the twenty-second and twenty-third of May, the stal- wart Army of Georgia, which had never known defeat, and which had made the "grand rounds" of the country; and
S03
COMING HOME.
the' stately Army of the Potomac, which, only by defeat, had mounted to victory, and which had scarcely marched beyond the limits of Virginia, passed in review before the new Pre- sident. It is not probable that a single soldier's heart in all the vast assemblage failed to pay a silent tribute to the memory of the good and gentle Lincoln.
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.