USA > Tennessee > History of the Twentieth Tennessee regiment volunteer infantry, C.S.A > Part 5
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This message was sent by Simon Cameron, Secretary of War, and at once Gen. Winfield Scott, a son of Virginia, who was in command of all the Federal forces, issued an order forming the
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HISTORY OF THE TWENTIETH TENNESSEE REGIMENT
three states of Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania into a Mili- tary Department, paying no respect to the wishes of Maryland, viz : that no troops pass over her territory to invade Virginia.
Citizens of Baltimore, in addition to the request of Gov. Hicks, sent telegrams to Simon Cameron, Secretary of War, not to send troops through her city ; but in spite of all these requests by the citizens of Maryland. a body of Federal troops from Massachu- setts was thrown into the city of Baltimore, the citizens resented this invasion and the soldiers fired upon them, and thus the first blood was shed in the great war of the states.
Now, is not this a strange fact, that these soldiers from Massa- chusetts-the State that bought and sold more negroes into slavery than all the other states combined, that now, after this trading in human flesh was no longer profitable to her; her soldiers should shed the first blood for the emancipation of the very negroes that she had brought from Africa and enslaved? This is in keeping all along the line with the Puritan character. "The Leopard will never change his spots."
Massachusetts and New Hampshire were two of the bitterest of the Northern States in prosecuting the war against the South. Both of these states learned their interpretation of the Constitu- tion from Daniel Webster and Joseph Story, one a Senator and the other a Justice of the Supreme Court.
Their sole effort was to make the people believe that the Con- stitution of the United States was not a compact. If it was, each State would have the right to withdraw from the Federal Union when she saw fit to do so.
Now, let us see what these two States said? The State of Mas- sachusetts, in convention assembled, before signing the compact, is of the opinion that certain amendments and alterations be made to remove the fears of this commonwealth. Ist, That it be ex- . plicitly declared that all powers not delegated by the aforesaid Constitution, are reserved to the several States, to be by them ex- ercised. Now, what did rabid New Hampshire do? She had adopted in her State Constitution the following : "That the peo- ple of this commonwealth have the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves as a free sovereign and independent state and do, and forever hereafter shall exercise and enjoy every power, jurisdiction and right which is not, or may not, hereafter be by
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CAUSES OF THE WAR
them expressly delegated to the United States ; " and now she be- comes rabid against the Southern States for asserting their rights.
When these reserved rights were so plainly taken care of by the different States, North, as well as in the South, no Webster or Story had come to the surface to proclaim the new doctrine, viz : that the Constitution of the United States had been formed by the people of the United States in contra-distinction to the people of the States, and it was this teaching of these two men, in my opinion, that caused the North not to let the South withdraw from the Federal Union in peace.
Massachusetts sent the first soldiers, and shed the first blood, to deny to the Southern States the same rights that she so ex- plicitly reserved before she would sign the compact.
Would not a Southerner rather have been a Confederate sol- dier and died a hundred times than to have been a Massachusetts soldier, and have lived to draw a pension ?
At this time the Congress of neither government was in session. President Davis issued his proclamation for the Confederate Con- gress to meet at Montgomery, Ala., on April 29th, 1861; and a little later President Lincoln issued his proclamation for the Fed- eral Congress to meet in Washington on July 4th, 1861. Now war between the States was fully on, and the resources of the two sections were beginning to be heavily drawn upon.
President Lincoln in his message to this Congress recommended that it give the legal means to make the contest short and decis- ive, by the placing at the control of the government 400,000 men, and $400,000,000; this call startled the world.
The Federal government was in the complete control of sixteen states, and they had an understanding this early in the war, that no party was to take political advantage to gain party success while crushing the rebellion. Hence, it was understood and agreed to by resolution that the war was not waged to emancipate the slaves, ( Vol. 1, page 40, "Confederate Military History." ) This was done to deceive the border States of Missouri, Kentucky and Maryland.
Did an intelligent world ever witness so base a falsehood as this scheme carried with it? It was puritanical, every word of it, and all for conscience sake.
The line that separated the two sections of the country was,
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HISTORY OF THE TWENTIETH TENNESSEE REGIMENT
known as Mason and Dixon's line. Those who lived South of the line were the Pro-slavery, and those who lived North of it were the Anti-slavery people. The original Mason and Dixon's line ran along the Southern border of Pennsylvania and separated that State from the two slave states, of Virginia and Maryland. It was run, with the exception of about twenty-two miles, by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, two English surveyors, be- tween Nov. 15th, 1763 and Dec. 26th, 1767, and during the de- bate in Congress in 1820 on admitting Missouri as a slave State, John Randolph, of Roanoke, Va., made such frequent use of this phraze, viz : Mason and Dixon's line, that the newspapers all over the country took it up, so that it gained such a celebrity that it holds it to this day.
This line was supposed by imagination to continue along the Northern border of Delaware east to the Atlantic ocean, and west along the Northern border of Kentucky, Missouri and Texas. The `population that lived north of this line, pre- paring to wage war upon the South, was about 18,000,000 ; and the population south of this line was about 8,500,000 ; nearly 4,000,000 of whom were negroes, leaving a white popula- tion of about 4,500,000 that was to fight the war against 18,000,000.
But this was not the fight. There was Missouri, who was un- true to her sister Southern states, and sent into the Federal army 107,773 and less than 40,000 to the South. There was Kentucky, another Southern state, who by a vacillating and attempted neutral polioy allowed 78,540 of her sons to take up arms to coerce her Southern sisters, as against 42,000 who fol- lowed the cross of St. Andrew. And Maryland, the state that shed the first blood, and was shown no respect by the government at Washington, for her wishes, sent 49,730 soldiers to destroy her Southern sisters, for trying to protect reserved rights, such as Maryland herself was so jealous of, before she would sign the compact of 1787.
The District of Columbia, which was south of Mason and Dixon's line, sent 16,872 soldiers to invade the State that gave birth to the men that secured the independence of the American people ; and here was West Virginia, who furnished to the Northern army 30,000 men who ought to have stood side by side
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with Lee, Jackson, and Stewart as dutiful sons defending a loving and kindly mother, who had done more for the American Union than any State that had signed the Compact of 1787. Our own Tennessee also furnished to the Federal army 31.500 men, among whom were some few good soldiers, but the bulk of the soldiers she gave to the North were but little force at home and less on the field of battle. There were also some 4,000 traitors to their States from Western North Carolina and North Georgia, making about 318,400 white men from the South who ought to have been in the Confederate army. Now add to this about 146,000 negroes from the South in the Federal army, and this will give the grand total of soldiers south of Mason's and Dixon's line who in a strict sectional war ought to have been in the Southern armies. This number amounted to 464,400 men, while the South only had in all of her armies from start to finish about 615,000 men.
The Federal Government brought into the field from all calls from President Lincoln from 1861 to 1865, 2,759,049 soldiers ; about 400,000 of this number were foreigners, and 183,000 of whom were Germans. A large number of these are drawing a pension from the Federal Government to-day, and are living and spending this money in Germany. About 165,000 were Irish.
I have often wondered if the 3,000 ancestors of these Germans who surrendered with Cornwallis at Yorktown, on October 19. 1781, to the ragged rebels of our revolution, while here as hire- lings of the British Government to keep your fathers and mine from getting from under the British yoke, ever received a pension from the English Government for such services.
At the beginning of the war the Northern sections were a manufacturing people, and the Southern section an agricultu- ral people.
The North had her organized army, and her navy was supplied with the best arms and munitions of war known at the time : her factories, her currency already established, with unlimited credit. Her ports were all open to the world, with her govern- ment already organized and well in hand.
But not so with the South. Her government had to be formed, her cabinet officers appointed, her army mobilized and armed when she had no arms, no navy, no currency, no credit,
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and no factories. She had to put her government machinery in motion, and try to establish her relations with the outside world. But there was one thing she did know, and that was, she had a full knowledge of her perpetual grievances and wrongs that she had received at the hands of the North from the foundation of the United States Government.
Now, let us see who were the people who fought the war be- tween the States, or as the Yankee would have it, "the war of the rebellion."
The people who lived north of Mason and Dixon's line were the descendants of the Puritans, and were against slavery after they abandoned trading in it.
And the people who lived south of this line were the descend- ants of the cavaliers, and were in favor of slavery as guaranteed by the compact of 1787. Now as the foreigners would arrive on the shores of America, they, having an antipathy to slavery, would naturally drift to the north of the line, until the Northern people had married and intermarried until their's was a mongrel nation, and in the veins of some of their families their blood represented half a dozen nationalities. Not so with the South. We were left alone to marry and intermarry until we had pro- duced the pure Anglo-American, that high type of American manhood and civilization that has always stood for honor, courage, and patriotism.
And we are to-day, 38 years after the war, the great conserva- tive element of the country, and will sacrifice more than any other section, according to white population, to sustain and de- fend a decent form of Republican Government.
As near as we can learn, there were engaged from first to last, of all armies in the Confederate States, about 615,000 men.
We have shown that the number of troops, white and colored, that the South furnished to the Union cause, was 464,400.
The Northern States that furnished the troops for the Union armies in the great war were : -
New York
. 455,568
Connecticut 52,270
Pennsylvania 366,326
Maryland
49,730
Ohio
317,133
Vermont
35,256
Illinois
258,217
New Hampshire. 34,605
Indiana
195,147 .
West Virginia 30,003
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BRIG .- GEN. FELIX K. ZOLLICOFFER. See page 380.
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CAUSES OF THE WAR
Massachusetts
151.785
Minnesota .
25,034
Missouri.
107,773
Rhode Island
23,71I
Wisconsin.
96,118
Kansas . 20,097
Michigan .
90, 119
Dist. of Columbia 16,872
New Jersey
79,51I
Delaware 13,655
Kentucky.
78,540
Tennessee
31,500
Iowa
75,860
Maine
71,745
Making
2,676,575
Add to the above the negro soldiers from the South, and you have a grand total of 2,759,049, making nearly five to one.
This unequal contest lasted for four long and bloody years. Although President Lincoln, in his message to the United States Congress that met at Washington, July 4, 1861, asked that the Government be voted 400,000 men and $400,000,000 of money that the contest might be short and decisive.
The contest was neither short nor decisive, as at first thought by Mr. Lincoln, for he had to bring into the field more than six times 400,000 men.
When this fierce and bloody drama was over, what did we find ? That the Federal Government was compelled to establish 79 na- tional cemeteries, in which 279,376 of those who wore the blue were deposited ; 61,362 of this number were killed in battle, 34,727 died of wounds received in battle, and 183,287 died of disease.
As the Confederate records ( as stated before), were mostly de- stroyed, from the best information that we can get, the South lost during that struggle, in killed and deaths from wounds and disease, 1.33,821.
There were desertions from the Northern army amounting to 199, 105, and from the Southern army, 104, 128.
The number of United States troops who were confined in Southern prisons was 270,000, and the number of Confederates that were confined in Northern prisons was 220,000, and of these there were 4,000 more Confederates who died in Northern prisons than there were Federals who died in Southern prisons, thus showing who received the most humane treatment.
Now let us compare the three different wars that the United States has engaged in with the foreign powers, the number of men engaged in each, and the cost of each war, then see how in-
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HISTORY OF THE TWENTIETH TENNESSEE REGIMENT
significant they were when compared with President Lincoln's short and decisive war.
During our Revolutionary war, which lasted from April 19, 1775, to April 11, 1783, there were engaged 309,791 troops, at a cost of $135, 193,703. There were killed about 8,000 men.
Our second war with Great Britain began on June 18, 1812, and lasted to February 17, 1815. The number of troops engaged was 577,622 ; killed, 1,877 ; wounded, 3,737 ; total, 5,614. Cost of the war was $107, 159,003.
The war with Mexico began April 24, 1848. In this war were engaged 112,230 men, of whom 1,049 were killed, and 904 died of wounds; total loss, 3.420, at a cost of $100,000,000. We will say nothing of our little wars with France, Tripoli, and our Indian wars.
But the great war between the States cost the United States, including her responsibilities growing out of the war, $6, 189,- 929,909, besides her yearly footing of a pension bill of $142,000,- 000 that goes to satisfy a pension roll of 996,000 soldiers - ONE-HALF MORE THAN THE ENTIRE CONFEDERATE ARMIES ALL TOLD.
We are a firm believer in pensioning the worthy soldiers of either army, but when we see, 38 years after the war, one-third of the boys who wore the blue drawing pensions, I as a soldier who wore the gray must tell them (in common slang ) that " they laid down on their job," and it is no credit to American soldiery.
Now, as best we could, we have given our readers the number of States engaged on each side in this great struggle, and the number of troops furnished by each. We will now attempt to tell where the dead of the Federal armies were buried. Nearly 300,000 have been accounted for, but there are hundreds whose destination has never been recorded.
Of the 79 national cemeteries that the Federal Government es- tablished at the close of the war, twelve of these were located in the Northern States. We will mention a few of the principal ones.
Cyprus Hill, at Brooklyn, N. Y., with its 3,786 dead ; Finn's Point, N. J., which contains 2,644 ; Gettysburg, Penn., 3,575 ; Mound City, Ill., 5,226 ; Philadelphia, Penn., 1,909 ; Elmira, N. Y., 3,090, and others of less magnitude.
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But in the South, near the scenes of the terrible conflicts, are deposited the bulk of the Federal dead.
At Arlington, Va., are buried 16,264 ; Beaufort, S. C., 9,241 ; Chalmette, La., 12,511 ; Chattanooga, Tenn., 12,962 ; Freder- icksburg, Va., 15,257 ; Jefferson Barracks, Mo., 11,490; Little Rock, Ark., 5,602 ; City Point, Va., 5, 122 ; Marietta, Ga,, 10,151 ; Memphis, Tenn., 13,997; Nashville, Tenn., 16,526; Poplar Grove, Va., 6,199 ; Richmond, Va., 6,542 ; Saulsbury, N. C., 12, 126 ; Murfreesboro, Tenn., 5,602 ; Vicksburg, Miss., 16,600 ; Antietam, Va., 4,671 ; Winchester, Va., 4,559 ; Ander- sonville, Ga., 13,714.
Besides those that died in the prisons at Andersonville, Ga., and Saulsbury, N. C., there are some 5,000 that died in other Southern prisons, making the sum total of Federal soldiers who died in Southern prisons during the war between the States, 29,725.
The above number of Federal dead have been gathered from over the different fields of conflict and decently buried, and their graves are patriotically guarded by the Federal authorities, which is right and proper.
But where are the dead of the South? Their bones have bleached on every field between the Potomac and the Rio Grande. We had no time after a battle to gather our gallant dead, and hide them from the elements and vultures, except in the quickest and crudest manner. We would dig a trench six feet wide, from one to two feet deep, and lay them on' their backs, side by side, then cover the faces of these gallant men with some well worn blanket (for we had to keep the best blankets for the living), and then in this hurried way we would leave our comrades and kindred, to be never again resurrected ; for when the contest closed, the boys who wore the gray and fell in defense of home, mother, and Southland, had no rich government to search the woods and fields and gather together their sacred dust into na- tional cemeteries, in order that the sod and beautiful magnolias might remain fresh and green over them as a token of a grateful people for the heroic deeds and great sacrifices that they had made for principle, manhood, and patriotism. But, instead, the bushes and briars have hidden them away until, except in memory, these knights of the South have nearly lost their iden-
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HISTORY OF THE TWENTIETH TENNESSEE REGIMENT
tity with a gallant people. Are they lost ? No! Old Mother Earth has opened her arms six feet wide and welcomed them to her bosom, and said to them, " You will have no armed guard to watch by night over your hidden place, no electric light, that your white headstone may not be hid by the going down of the sun. Instead, however, you will have the God of justice to watch over your silent and shallow graves by night ; and instead of an electric light, you will have the evening star to come first on duty, then the seven stars and the Pleiades will take the place of the evening star, to shed their brilliant lights over your hid- den mounds. In the middle of the night time, and towards the coming day, these two will retire from duty, and the morning star will be seen coming from the east in all its glory, to remind the gallant dead that a Christ had risen, and that he, at the ap- pointed time, will gather you into his sacred realm as a reward for duty faithfully done." And as the grand sentinel of day will come on duty, and the light of the morning star is completely obliterated by the effulgence of his rays, he will say to the boys in gray, "You have slept here unsought and unseen for years be- neath the briars, the bushes, and the fennel, and as my light is in comparison to the light of the starry sentinels that preceded me, so are your records and deeds of glory as soldiers in compari- son to all soldiers that have gone before."
We wish to say, when we buried these brave boys in the sixties in this hurried manner, and then hastily turned our backs on them to fight another battle, we would often repeat one of the verses of Charles Wolfe on the burial of Sir Thomas Moore, with a little change : -
" No useless coffin encloses your breast, Nor with sheet nor shroud we bind you, You will lay, like soldiers taking your rest, With your gray jackets around you.
Quickly and sadly we have laid you down, From the field of your fame, fresh and gory, We carve not a line, we raise not a stone, But leave you alone, in your glory."
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THE RIGHT OF SECESSION JUSTIFIED BEFORE AND AFTER THE WAR BY NORTHERN TESTIMONY.
We think we have shown conclusively from a Southern stand- point that any state, according to the compact, had a perfect right to secede when her people in their sovereign capacity, be- lieved that their constitutional rights were disregarded. Even rabid Massachusetts and Rhode Island held to their reserved rights to the fullest degree.
The reasons that we are actuated to write such a paper, are, that the perversions of the truth are sown broadcast in the litera- ture and oratory of the North and have even penetrated some sections of the South and are being taught to our children, when their Fathers know absolutely that it is false, and these false- hoods go to make up the periodicals, newspapers and even find their way into the permanent histories that are published in the North. Some of their best public speakers dare not tell the truth of the causes of the war for fear it will not meet with the approval of their constituency.
We know there were many brave men in the Federal Army because we have met them time and again in deadly conflict ; yet, at their annual reunions, these brave men will sit and hear resolutions read and passed concerning the war, that they know are far from the truth. Viz,-such as, "The South began the war," which we of the South deny.
There were three leading questions upon which the war was fought. One was slavery ; and the others were the right to secede, and the constant encroachment on their vested and retained rights under the original compact between the States. We have disposed of the former. Now where did the doctrine of secession first originate, and where was this doctrine most religiously taught? It was in New England, and no fair minded man can read the articles of agreement upon which the Ameri- can Government was formed (and without this agreement, it could never have been formed), and not come to the conclusion, that the doctrine as then taught by New England, was just and right; and if it was just and right when taught by New England in 1803, it was surely as just and right when put into
(59)
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effect by the South in 1860, when we had no change in the constitution.
Here is what an English writer said : "that he believed the right of secession was so clear that if the South had wished to do so from no better reason than 'it could not bear to be beaten in an election, and had submitted the question of its right to withdraw from the Union, to the decision of any court of law in Europe, she would have carried her point."
Can any one read the resolutions adopted by Virginia and Kentucky in 1798-99 (the Virginia resolutions were written by James Madison, the Father of the Constitution ; and those . of Kentucky by Thomas Jefferson, the Father of the Declara- tion of Independence), and deny what these Masters have said about the reserved rights of the States?
Mr Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts tells us that the North was controlled in these matters by expedience and not by principle. Mr Lodge also says, in his life of Webster. "When these resolutions of Virginia and Kentucky were adopted by these States and sent to the Northern Legislatures for their concurrence, they were disapproved, not on Constitu- tional grounds, but only on the grounds of expediency, and they could find no Constitutional grounds for opposing them, but it would not pay the New England States to endorse these principles."
A few years later when the New England States thought they were oppressed, they not only endorsed the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, but actually threatened to secede.
Here is what a distinguished Northern writer says: "that at the time the Constitution was accepted by the States, there was not a man in the country who doubted the right of each and every state to peacably withdraw from the American Union." In fact the right of secession was an underlying principle of the Constitution, and was accepted by all parties and that this doctrine was first advocated and threatened to be put into effect by the New England States.
So this same Northern writer tells us that a popular notion existed, that the secession doctrine originated with John C. Cal- houn, and was therefore a South Carolina heresy; but this was wrong, and the States Rights doctrine or secession theory
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