USA > West Virginia > Wetzel County > History of Wetzel County, West Virginia > Part 5
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On a day like this we all recall such names as Lincoln, Grant, Sherman and Sheridan, but these names often all embrace our collective idea of the men whom they led. Their names typify their private soldiers. Thomas was the "Rock of Chickamau- gua," because he knew how to command men who were brave enough to be led.
Buckner complained at Donelson of the demand for "uncondi- tional surrender" as ungenerous terms. But he found that no terms were needed in surendering to so generous a foe. Grant was dangerous in fight, but he was kindness itself in victory.
When Lincoln's dead face was covered by Stanton, the great war secretary said, "He belongs to the ages." So with all the dead whom we commemorate to-day. Time mitigates sorrow and adds to the glory of events.
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Michael Angelo buried his Cupid so that it might pass for an antique. Now a work of Michael Angelo is as precious as if made by Phidias himself.
The time of was is now sufficiently remote to be reviewed without prejudice. Who cares now for the assaults of Junius upon Lord Mansfield? Dennis made a burden of the life of Alexander Pope. All we know of him now is that he fretted Pope, and that his name was Dennis.
Who now heeds the abuse that was heaped upon the head of the mighty and patient Lincoln?
Rancor is dead with the dead. and malice does not go beyond the four edges of the grave.
We speak of these men because it is more interesting and pro- fitable to study the example of an illustrious man than an ab- stract principle.
When Lord Nelson was signaled to retreat at Copenhagen he turned the blind eye. that he lost at Calvi. towards the signal and said that he was unable to make it out. and justified his disobedience by a great victory.
The people, young and old. are gracious to the soldiers of every war. Early in the present century a veteran who fought at Stony Point was indicted for some violation of law. His at- torner succeeded in getting the fact in evidence that the de- fendant had distinguished himself in that battle and made good use of it in his address to the jury. The verdict announced that "We. the jury. find the defendant not guilty because he fought at Stony Point." The court refused to receive the verdict in such a form, and the jury again retired and brought in another verdict of simple acquittal. But as they were about to retire the foreman said to the court. "Your honor, I am directed to say that it was lucky for the defendant that he fought at Stony Point." The same spirit has always actuated a free people. When Aaschylus was being tried and his life hung in the bal- ance. his brother stepped forward and drew aside the prisoner's cloak and showed the stump of the arm that he had lost in the
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defence of his country. The mute appeal was stronger than any spoken words, and the prisoner went free.
At this time the period we commemorate seems as remote to the new generation as the battles of ancient Greece and Rome. We think of the men who fought in the Revolution and the war of the Rebellion as old. It is hard to realize how young these men were.
I occasionally go into the museum of the dead letter office at Washington and look over the album of war photographs which were taken from the unclaimed letters of that day. The young features of those soldiers look out from the past as a revelation. The sight of the kind and boyish faces from the school and farm, the shop or the store, and the new ready-made, misfit uniforms in which they were clad carried me back to the days when as a boy I went to the front with comrades such as these. Two brothers sitting side by side in their army clothing, sent their picture to their friends, but in vain.
A young sergeant standing by the side of his little sister is among these lost photographs, and the fresh young face and curls of the girl of thirty-five years ago would make us think that one of our own daughters had sat for the picture, were it not for the fact that she is clad in the fashions of another gen- eration.
Another young private and a lady who is evidently his wife look out from the dead past in this album in the museum; and for hours you may gaze and find the youthful eyes of the boys of 1861 again looking at you. But we glance in the glass as we pass out and may well say :
"Time has stolen a march on me, And made me old unawares."
We may take an invoice of our gains and losses but our years never decrease.
When invited by Kinsman and Crocker Posts to address you on this occasion I was about to take a few days' journey
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through the battle fields of Virginia. These once horrid scenes are now as placid as the prairies of our own loved and beauti- ful Iowa, save where the earthworks remain as monuments of the past. Peace covers over the field with living green, and seeks to obliterate even the memories of blood.
In all ages a lion and a mound have thought to be a proper memorial for one of these historic battlefields.
The Greeks at Cheronea twenty-two hundred years ago mark- ed that fatal scene with a mound over the graves of their dead and surmounted it with a lion, the broken remains of which are there at this day.
Where Napoleon's old guard died at Waterloo is a gigantic mound two hundred feet high and surmounted by the great Bel- gian lion, cast from captured cannon.
When I visited that spot a few years ago the straw of a dove's nest hung from the lips of the lion and peace had taken posses- sion of the very symbol of war. At Cheronea a traveler says he found the honey of a wild bee in the mouth of the broken statue, as Sampson found the honey in the carcass of a dead lion in days of old.
We are strong enough to preach and practice the gospel of peace and arbitration. Speed the day when the prophesy of Isaiah may be fulfilled:
"The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.
"And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
"And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp; and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice den.
"They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the wa- ters cover the sea."
So in the once hostile and bloody fields of Virginia all now is
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peace, but the scarred bosom of the earth still tells the story of 1861 to 1865.
Perhaps it would interest the young people as well as the old soldiers to hear some brief description of these well known scenes.
The soldier of the west by such a visit will better realize the heroism of his comrade in arms in the eastern armies. No one can look over the scene of the conflicts in Virginia without ac- cording to our comrades of that army the full mead of praise which brothers should always award to the achievements of each other.
As a crow flies it is only 120 miles from Bull Run to Appo- mattox. Measured in time it was a journey of nearly four years.
Measured in blood and tears it was a thousand years.
The journey was by various and devious routes; through mud and mire, through sunshine and through storm, through sum- iner heats and winter snows, through dangers by flood and fire, through dangers by stream and wood, through sickness and sor- row; and by the wayside death always stalked grimly and claimed his own.
Twice did Bull Run witness the defeat of the cause of the National Union. It was indeed a fatal field to the federal army. When we approached that historic spot from Manassas Junction we met a large number of negro children on the road in holiday attire going to the "breaking up of school."
Had Appomattox not closed what Bull Run so disastrously began there would have been no school for these colored boys and girls. They were the living evidences of the changes that were brought about by the fearful journey which the Union troops traveled before the humiliation of Bull Run was atoned for by "peace with honor" at Appomattox. The two hundred years of enforced ignorance must now be compensated by the privileges of education.
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President Lincoln came into the Nation's capital in the night to take the oath of his high office.
Sumter was the scene of the first encounter, but it was at Bull Run that the greatness of the contest upon which we had entered first was realized.
The confederates gave this battle the more euphonious name of Manassas. It was their victory, and they had a right to name it, but yet in history it will no doubt remain as Bull Run until the end of time.
In the open field at Henry's farm we were reminded of the struggle that here terminated in defeat to the national cause. Here General Bee was killed, and before he fell he pointed to General Jackson's brigade and said: "There stands Jackson like a stone wall," and ever after the brigade was called by the name suggested, and its gallant commander was known as "Stonewall Jackson."
It is not far to Chancellorsville, where two years later this confederate fell upon the battle field, and as his life ebbed away, murmured, "Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees." The spot at Chancellorsville is marked with a granite monument, and the confederate soldier, Captain Talioferro, who pointed it out to me with tears in his eyes: "I loved that man. I was wounded four times while I was under his command. I mourned his death then, but I see it all now. It is all for the best. If he had lived the Union could not have been restored. It is better as it is." Whilst I do not believe that one man, however great, could have made the success of the rebellion sure, yet it is true, not excepting Lee himself, there was no man whose life was so vital to the rebel cause as that of Stonewall Jackson.
But to return to Bull Run battle field. Standing where Jack- son was wounded, the Henry house is near by. An old lady, Mrs. Henry, was in that house when the first battle began. She was bed-ridden, and eighty-five years of age. No one thought there would be a battle there, but supposed it would
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be fought near the town of Manassas. But the battle centered at that point, and the peaceful old woman was torn to pieces in her bed by an exploding shell.
A scene like this brings back again the horrors of war. Men are too apt to remember its glories and heroism and forget its brutality and its misery.
But a few days before I saw the "Stonewall Brigade Band" in the procession at the dedication of Grant's Tomb at River- side, and they proved that the war was really over by marching under the stars and stripes and playing "Hail Columbia" and "Dixie." Music brings minds into harmony in war or peace.
It was on the road from Bull Run to Appomattox in 1863, away down at Vicksburg, one of the great way stations on that journey, that on one occasion we had a striking illustration of the harmony produced by the concourse of sweet sounds.
Jules and Frank Lumbard, of Chicago, visited some friends in the trenches. Slow firing was going on here and there along the lines, and the scream of shell and whistle of a minie ball kept everyone in a state of eager attention. Some of the Lum- bards' friends asked them to sing, and their clear voices rang out amid the roar of the guns. As they sang, the firing slack- ened and nearly ceased when a confederate called out from the rifle pits, "Hello, Yanks, isn't that Jules and Frank Lumbard singing there?"
The response was, "Hello, Johnny! It is the Lumbard boys; keep still and you can hear them better." And so the firing ceased and the Lumbards sang songs of love and war, songs that pleased the hearts beneath both blue and grey, and then they sang "Home, home, sweet, sweet home," and many a rough sleeve in either trench wiped away a tear, as the distant homes in the city and farms of the North and the plantations of the South were brought back in loving memory by the cadences of the song we love so well. But the music ceased and a shout rang out, "Hello, Johnny, look out!" and an answer, "Hello.
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Yank, take care!" went back, and the concert was over, and grim war resumed its sway.
But let us again return to Bull Run. As the field now lies, shining under the springtime sun, and the Bull Run Mountains rise in the blue haze in the distance, it is hard to realize the two scenes that were enacted under McDowell and Pope, under Beauregard and Lee.
But the study of the battle field with maps and history shows that it was not after all so humiliating to our cause as we had long believed.
Napoleon planned his battle well at Waterloo, but Grouchy did not come and Blucher did, and rout and ruin befell the Em- peror of the French.
McDowell, too, planned wisely, and victory was well nigh won, but Johnston came and Patterson remained behind and history repeated itself, as it is always doing.
The battle encouraged the enemies of the Republic in every land. Charles Francis Adams represented our government at the English Court at a reception when the news of the battle was still fresh. A courtier tauntingly said to him: "These confederates fight well at any rate." "Yes," said Mr. Adams, drawing himself up proudly, "of course they do, they are my countrymen."
We have no one to fear now but ourselves.
Battle is the final court of appeal, and its decisions are often wrong. Constancy goes so often with the right that we think that all wars should end right, but as the tyrant Philip over- threw the Greeks at Cheronea, so the barbarian Turk of to-day has triumphed over the cause of civilization in the land where its sun first rose.
In all the sad journey from 1861 to 1865 the women North and South exhibited a fortitude that showed them true descend- ants of the mothers of the Revolution.
In the Sanitary Commission and in the hospital they were ever ready with their tender ministrations to the sick and
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wounded. The wives and sisters at home performed the work of the men in the field, and from day to day watched for the news from the front with an intensity of interest that no other events could produce. A battle
"Is a glorious sight to see
By one who has no friend or brother there."
The mothers who prayed and watched, the sisters and sweet- hearts who cheered the soldiers with their news from home must never be forgotten when we remember the events of that sorrowful time.
"Woman was last at the cross and first at the tomb in the days of the Redeemer." So in the darkest hours their tender hands and loving hearts bring consolation. The sacred name of mother, sister, daughter or wife was a constant inspiration. "A happy home is a suburb of Heaven," and ten thousand of these homes were rendered desolate by the war. Oh, children of this generation, thank God upon your bended knees that you have not been called upon to pass through this valley of the shadow of death!
From Bull Run to Appomattox along the thousands of miles traveled to reach that goal lie many national cemeteries in which hosts of our Union dead lie buried. An old soldier is al- ways in charge, and from sunrise to sunset the flag flies over those silent cities.
And many a prison pen lay between the starting point and the end of the journey. Only a coward will mistreat a prisoner, and perhaps the darkest page in that history is one that we should not dwell too much upon now.
I was a prisoner once, and enemies with arms in their hands fresh from the front treated me with kindness. Insults or threats only came from the cowardly camp followers in the rear.
I will not describe in detail our journey from Bull Run to
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Appomattox to-day, but it included Chancellorsville and Fred- ricksburg, where so many lives were lost in vain.
There, too, was the Wilderness where the earth. has been scarred by the labor of both armies, and these works remain undisturbed so that all the positions can be traced as though these intrenchments had been intended as monuments to record the movements of the two giants, Grant and Lee, who here clutched in the final conflict, which for eleven months raged without ceasing.
It then first became evident that it was the Army of North- ern Virginia that Grant was after, and that Richmond was a mere incident to the contest,-in fact, so little did the silent commander care for Richmond that he did not even enter it in person when the Confederacy took its final flight.
From the Wilderness to Spottsylvania Court House we went, and there, too, the earthworks are piled as a record of the great and final campaign. Let me stop here long enough to describe the Bloody Angle, where our troops, under Hancock, Warren and Wright, fought with such gallantry. This spot was per- haps the bloodiest scene of all the war. I will not picture the ghastly details of dead and dying, but we are told that the mus- ket balls flew so thick and fast that they cut down an oak tree eighteen inches in diameter within the rebel lines. This seems incredible, but is passing over Landram's field, a hundred yards or more in front of the east side of the "Angle," there we found the exploded gun caps of our men thickly sprinkled in the yel- low soil. The field had been plowed twenty times or more since the war, and yet the old gun caps of 33 years ago were still so thick that in a space which I covered with my two hands I picked up eight upon the surface, and a large part of the field was equally marked in the same way. And though the federal dead had been exhumed from the field so long ago, we found shreds of blue clothing here and there in the soft, fresh-plowed earth.
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HISTORY OF WETZEL COUNTY.
At Richmond the marks of war abound, and the approaches and defences are still shown by trenches and parapets.
In all these Virginia battle-grounds the pits showing the empty graves of soldiers whose remains had been transferred to some national cemetery are to be seen on every hand as a hor- rid reminder of the past.
Petersburg, with its ten months siege, invited our careful at- tention, and the remains of the ghastly crater where so many men, white and black, were slaughtered as they huddled to- gether in the deep hole, from which they could neither advance nor retreat.
At Spottsylvania we met a party of Virginia school girls who had come twenty-five or thirty miles to see the famous region, and they were looking at the fine monument built by the Sixth Corps to commemorate the death of Segwick, their commander general. We told them that we were going on to Appomattox, and they said they were glad the war was over, but that they could not bear to think of looking at Appomattox.
Staying over night at a hospitable home near the Wilderness, we were entertained with accounts of dark days of the war. One lady told us with some of the old tone of remonstrance how the Yankees drove away her cattle against her indignant pro- test.
An old confederate who joined in the conversation said their soldiers were much more considerate and honest, for when they went to Gettysburg they paid or offered to pay for everything -- in confederate money.
But let us hasten on to the end where peace spreads her wings again, where Grant gave back to Lee's army their cav- alry and artillery horses to use in plowing the neglected fields of the South. He treated them as our countrymen and then and there laid deep the foundation of respect and confidence that, let us fondly hope, will grow stronger and more cemented with the coming years.
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HISTORY OF WETZEL COUNTY.
Now and then some discordant bray is heard in the general peace, and some one not particularly noted in the war seems ready to fight it all over again now after it has passed into his- tory. But fortunately this sentiment is small and growing less and less.
In the last congress a fire eating congressman wanted to try it on again, and announced that he was ready to renew the con- test on a moment's notice, when one of my confederate friends came over to me and, rolling up his sleeve, said: "Do you see that saber cut?" Turning his face he then showed me a bullet scar near his ear and said: "I have two more of these memen- toes on my left leg, and I have got through with my part of it, and the gentleman now speaking may fight it out alone next time, as he did not do much of it when he had the chance."
The Appomattox field is marked with tablets, so that in a visit there you may know when you are standing upon the exact spot where one of the great events of that memorable scene oc- curred.
Speculative vandalism has done its work and the Surrender House has been torn down and the brick and lumber marked and piled up ready for removal to some other place, there to be again set up as a show house to be exhibited for gain.
But the memories of Appomattox cannot thus be removed. The house at some distant city would be out of place. Appo- mattox Mountain could not be seen from its doors. Here a marker shows where Grant and Lee met; there another where the famous apple tree once stood; another where Grant set up his headquarters for the last time in the presence of an armed foe; here Lee read his last orders to his troops as they massed around him; and most interesting of all, here is marked the place where the hostile arms were stacked to be used no more against brethren forever.
Best of all there is no great charne' house at Appomattox. Nineteen graves show that the confederate armies gathered their dead together there, and in doing so they found one skele-
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ton in blue that by oversight had not been removed to a distant national cemetery, and this Union soldier now lies buried side by side in the little cemetery of the confederate dead, and his grave is annually decorated with those of the men with whom he died on this historic field.
As we turn from the scene where the curtain rang down tbir- ty-two years ago upon the final act of the greatest drama the world has ever seen, the full moon rose and soon
"The woods were asleep and the stars were awake,"
and only the note of the whip-poor-will dusturbed the solemn silence.
In looking around to-day over this assembly we mourn more and more the friends of our youth. Where are our comrades of 1861? Where are those who broke ranks with us in 1865? We meet some of them here today, grizzled and gray, and with young hearts yet, but alas, how many have fallen out by the way!
We miss and mourn them,
"And the stately ships go on To their haven under the hill,
But, O for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still. Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, oh Sea-
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me."
JONATHAN P. DOLLIVER.
J. P. Dolliver was born near Kingwood, Preston county, Va., now West Virginia, February 6, 1858. In 1875 he graduated from the West Virginia University at Morgantown. In 1854 he came to New Martinsville, Wetzel county, West Vir- ginia, with his father, who was the first preacher that ever preached in a church at New Martinsville, and to his work and energy the building of the old M. E. church is due. His name will ever live to the members of that church. Mr. Dolliver was admitted to the bar in 1878, but never held any political office until elected as a Republican to the Fifty-first Congress as a representative from the Tenth Congressional district, and was elected again to the Fifty-sec- ond, Fifty-third, Fifty-fourth, Fifty-fifth and Fifty-sixth Con- gress. On July 22, 1900, he was appointed Senator to fill the unexpired term of Hon. J. H. Gear, deceased, and took his seat in the United States Senate December 3, 1900, which office he still holds. He is living in Iowa near the same locality as Hon. J. F. Lacey, another Wetzel county boy.
SENATOR J. P. DOLLIVER, Senator from Iowa.
DR. THOMAS M. HASKINS.
No man of Wetzel county is more thought of in his own county and the people at large, than is Dr. T. M. Haskins. He has performed operations that have been considered almost mi- raculous by some of the best physicians and surgeons of the day. He was born August 19th, 1859, at Burton, Wetzel coun- ty, W. Va. After attending the schools at that place until he was fifteen years old, he began teaching school at the age of sixteen, and after reaching his maturity was elected to the office of superintendent of free schools for this county, serving two terms. He is the graduate of several colleges, such as the Fair- mont Normal, and taught several years a private normal school at Burton, where a number of the best teachers in Wetzel coun- ty received their education. He graduated at the medical col. lege of Physicians and Surgeons at Baltimore, Maryland, in 1886; not being satisfied with this, after having practiced med- icine for a little over a year, went to New York and attended and graduated at that celebrated college, known as the Bellevue Hospital Medical College. He practiced his profession for two years at his native town, and then not finding the field clear to carry out his ambitions in the line of surgery, decided to locate at Benwood, where the field for surgery was much broader. In 1894 he took a course at the Post Graduate Medical School, New York, paying particular attention to surgery. He is now lo- cated at Wheeling, where he has the best equipped hospital for surgery, etc., in the State, and is certainly among the best sur- geons in the State. He was married in 1895 to Miss Louisa Schenk, daughter of F. Schenck, of the well known firm of F. Schenck & Sons, and to them three children have been born, Rhea, Mary and Edna.
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