The Falling Flag Part 2

While we were closing up our scattered ranks, and getting the brigade ready for action as rapidly as coolness, skill and courage could do it, a department officer (I think he was) came galloping up to us from the scene of action, apparently under orders from himself to get out of the way; but the natural insolence of his cla.s.s broke out in spite of the scare that was on him, and he commenced giving orders at once.

I happened to be the person addressed--"Get on at once; the enemy are down yonder Why don't you go at once? Are all you men going to stand here and let the enemy"--and so on. The colonel had ridden down the column to see that all was straight, while the "Legion" and the Twenty-fourth Virginia were closing up, so that when we did move it would be as a compact body--when the order came ringing along--"Forward, forward, men! gallop!"--and our indignant friend was lost in the rush of the column while yet haranguing us for being so slow.

The roar of the batteries was incessant. They were evidently holding the dismounted cavalry in check. As rapidly as we could get over ground we moved towards them, and formed the brigade in the field to the left of the position held by the batteries, in what might be called a column of regiments. As we formed the regiment from a column of fours into line, they came down from a gallop to a trot at the order, "Front into line," as steadily as if on parade; then followed, "Right dress, front"--and all were ready for the next move.

Our batteries from the right were sh.e.l.ling the woods opposite to us.

In front, under cover, some of the cavalry skirmishers were using their Spencers upon us at long range, and a squadron of ours, the Fifth, was detailed to move up and take a position opposite and return their fire.

By this time the grey of twilight was lighted up by the rising moon, and there seemed to be a lull in the attack. General Gary and Colonel Haskell had ridden over our front and communicated with the commanding officer of the batteries; the consequence of which was, the brigade was dismounted and double-quicked through a small piece of wood to the batteries. Before our men could get to the guns the enemy charged and got among them, but were driven back by the fire and our rush, but taking with them some of our men as prisoners--among them Captain Hankins, of the Virginia battery, who got away and came running up to me as I rode to my place. Our men fell in between the guns, and then began one of the closest artillery fights, for the numbers engaged and the time it lasted, that occurred during the war. The guns were fought literally up to the muzzles. It was dark by this time, and at every discharge the cannon was ablaze from touch-hole to mouth, and there must have been six or eight pieces at work, and the small arms of some three or four hundred men packed in among the guns in a very confined s.p.a.ce. It seemed like the very jaws of the lower regions. They made three distinct charges, preluding always with the bugle, on the right, left and centre, confusing the point of attack; then, with a cheer and up they came. It was too dark to see anything under the shadow of the trees but the long dark line. They would get within thirty or forty yards of the guns and then roll back, under the deadly fire that was poured upon them from the artillery and small arms. Amid the flas.h.i.+ng, and the roaring, and the shouting, rose the wild yell of a railroad whistle, as a train rushed up almost among us (the enemy had possession of the road), as we were fighting around the depot, sounding on the night air as if the devil himself, had just come up and was about to join in what was going on.

Then came a lull; our friends in front seemed to have had the wire edge taken off.

Our horses had been sent back to the turnpike road; General Gary taking advantage of the present quiet sent Colonel Haskell to get them together--rather a difficult task, as it afterwards proved.

General Gary's great object was to draw off the guns, if possible, now night had set in, from the depot, and get them back with the rest of the train in the line of retreat. So the order was given to limber them up, which was done, and the guns moved off at once, it being but a few hundred yards to the main road.

Our brigade in line faced to the rear, the guns behind them, and covered the movement. The silence of the guns soon told our friends over yonder what was going on, and they were not long in following after; our men, facing to the rear, delivered their fire steadily, moving in retreat, facing and firing every few steps, effectually keeping off a rush; they pressed us, but cautiously--the darkness concealed our numbers.

We were going through an open old field, and came now to a road through a narrow piece of woods, where we broke from line into column, and double-quicked through the woods so as to get to the road beyond.

Before we got to the turnpike we heard the bugles of the enemy down it, and as the head of our column came into the road their cavalry charged the train some two or three hundred yards below us. Sixty pieces of cannon, at the point where we came into the road, the drivers were attempting to turn back toward the Court House, had got entangled with one another and presented a scene of utter confusion.

As our regiment got into the road some thirty or forty men were thrown out from the last squadron and faced to the rear on the right and left, opening a fire directly upon those of the dismounted men who were pressing us from that quarter. I had but little fear of the enemy's cavalry riding into us on the road, so blocked up as it was with the routed artillery train, and there were woods on both sides just here.

In pa.s.sing from the old field, where the guns had been at work, into the woods that separated it from the turnpike, two men were walking just in front of me, following their gun, which was on before. I heard one say, "_Tout perdu_." I asked at once, "What battery do you belong to?" "Donaldsonville." It was the creole company; and they might well have added the other words of the great Francis, after the battle of Pavia, "_Tout perdu fors l'honneur_" all lost but honor; for well had they done their work from 'sixty-one, when they came to Virginia, until now, when all was lost, "_Tout perdu_"--it was the motto of the occasion.

The stag was in the toils, but the end was not yet. We could hear the rush, the shouts and pistol shots, where the enemy mounted and in force had attacked the train; the artillerymen having no arms could make no fight, as they could not use their pieces. We could do nothing (being closely pressed by a superior force of their dismounted men) but fall back upon the town toward our main body, making the best front we could, leaving the road and marching under cover of the timber on the side, being on foot giving us a better position to resist any attack that might be made upon us by the cavalry.

The fifth squadron of the Seventh, that had been thrown out as skirmishers when we first came on the ground, had kept their position covering our left flank when the fight at the batteries was going on.

And when we commenced falling back after the guns, the adjutant, Lieutenant Capers, was sent to bring them to the road, so as to join the regiment. They had also been dismounted, and their horses sent with the rest. He found them, led them to the road, and, on getting on it at a point nearer to the town than where we struck it, hearing the bugles and the rush of the cavalry on the train, he at once posted the companies, with their captains, Doby and Dubose, in the woods immediately on the road-side, and with the parting salutation, "Take care of yourselves, boys," (he had been a private in one of the companies, and both were from his native district), dashed back to his place in the regiment and disappeared round a turn in the road. They had scarcely lost sight of him when a heavy volley rang out, and his horse came round the bend at full speed without his rider, jumping over in his fright a broken caisson that lay across the road--the horse, a very fine roan, the one he was riding when, at "Amelia Spring," he, Capers, was the only one of the five in advance who escaped, to meet his fate that night, pierced by a dozen b.a.l.l.s; the whole fire of the column was concentrated upon him, for we found his body next day. Some kind hand had given him a soldier's grave; some one, most likely of those who fought us, who could not but respect and admire the gallant young fellow lying in his blood, and with the feeling developed by a soldier's life, "So be it to me and mine in my sorrow as I may be to thee this day." All the respect was shown that circ.u.mstances admitted of.

One of our captains, who was wounded at the "guns" severely, fell into the enemy's hands when we moved them--as everybody was too busy to look after the wounded, and ambulance men and stretchers were this time neither in the front or rear. He was taken up by his new friends quite tenderly, as he thought, and put into an ambulance; but in the course of the evening's entertainment the Yankee wounded came dropping in, and our friend, Captain Walker, was disposed of rather unceremoniously on the roadside, for others they valued at a higher rate than even a Confederate captain.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Immediately after the adjutant's horse came Custar's cavalry. Seeing all clear before them, they came on without a check until, when nearly opposite where our men of the Fifth squadron were lying in the woods, they caught the fire of the entire squadron, which emptied a good many saddles, and was the last shot probably fired that night.

The Federal cavalry kept on toward the town, and the squadron, under cover, drew deeper into the woods, and moved round the town and went into camp, but did not join the main body until next morning. The enemy kept on until they got into, or nearly into the town, but again fell back, establis.h.i.+ng their line somewhere between the town and the depot. Our outside picket was in the town.

We went into camp about one o'clock in the morning, on the Richmond side of the town, in the woods--General Gary riding to General Gordon's headquarters to report before lying down.

_April 9th._--The sun rose clear on this the last day, practically, of the Southern Confederacy. It was cool and fresh in the early morning so near the mountains, though the spring must have been a forward one, as the oak trees were covered with their long yellow ta.s.sels.

We gathered the brigade on the green on the Richmond side of the village, most of the men on foot, the horses not having come in. About eight o'clock a large portion of our regiment had their horses--they having been completely cut off the night before by the charge of Custar's cavalry on the turnpike, and were carried, to save them, into a country cross-road. Then the "Hampton Legion" got theirs. My impression is that the Twenty-fourth Virginia lost the most or a good many of their horses. The men built fires, and all seemed to have something to eat, and to be amusing themselves eating it. The woods on the southern and eastern side swarmed with the enemy and their cavalry--a portion of it was between us and the "James River," which was about twelve miles distant. General Fitz Lee's division of cavalry lay over in that direction somewhere; General Longstreet with General Gordon was in and on the outer edge of the town, on the Lynchburg side, and so we waited for the performance to commence.

Looking at and listening to the men you would not have thought there was anything special in the situation. They turned all the responsibility over to the officers, who in turn did the same to those above them--the captain to the colonel, the colonel to the brigadier, and so on.

Colonel Haskell had not yet returned--having sent in all the horses he had gotten, and was still after the balance. About nine or ten o'clock, artillery firing began in front of General Longstreet, and the blue jackets showed in heavy ma.s.ses on the edge of the woods.

General Gary riding up, put everything that had a horse in the saddle, and moved us down the hill, just on the edge of the little creek that is here the "Appomattox," to wait under cover until wanted. Two of our young men, who had some flour and a piece of bacon in their haversacks, had improvised a cooking utensil out of a bursted canteen, and fried some cakes. They offered me a share in their meal, of which I partook with great relish. I then lay down, with my head, like the luxurious Highlander, upon a smooth stone, and, holding my horse's bridle in my hand, was soon in the deep sleep of a tired man.

But not for long, for down came the general in his most emphatic manner--and those who know Gary know a man whose emphasis can be wonderfully strong when so minded. "Mount, men, mount!" I jumped up at the sharp, ringing summons with the sleep still in my eyes, and found myself manoeuvring my horse with his rear in front. We soon had everything in its right place, and rode out from the bottom into the open field, about two hundred and fifty strong, to see the last of it.

Firing was going on, artillery and small arms, beyond the town, and there was General R.E. Lee himself, with Longstreet, Gordon, and the rest of his paladins.

When we rode into the open field we could see the enemy crowding along the edge of the woods--cavalry apparently extending their line around us. We kept on advancing towards them to get a nearer view of things, and were midway on the Richmond side between the town and a large white house with a handsome grove around it. In the yard could be seen a body of cavalry, in number about our own; we saw no other troops near. Two or three hundred yards to the right of the house an officer, apparently of rank, with a few men--his staff, probably--riding well forward, halted, looking toward the town with his gla.s.s. Just as he rode out General Gary had given the order to charge the party in the yard. Some one remarked that it looked like a flag of truce. "Charge!"

swore Gary in his roughest tones, and on we went. The party in the yard were taken by surprise; they had not expected us to charge them, as they were aware that a parley was going on (of which, of course, we knew nothing), and that there was a suspension of hostilities.

We drove them through the yard, taking one or two prisoners--one little fellow, who took it very good-humoredly; he had his head tied up, having got it broken somewhere on the road, and was riding a mule.

We followed up their retreat through the yard, down a road, through the open woods beyond, and were having it, as we thought, all our own way--when, stretched along behind the brown oaks, and moving with a close and steady tramp, was a long line of cavalry, some thousands strong--Custar's division--our friends of last night. This altered the complexion of things entirely; the order was instantly given to move by the left flank--which, without throwing our back to them, changed the forward into a retrograde movement.

The enemy kept his line unbroken, pressing slowly forward, firing no volley, but dropping shots from a line of scattered skirmishers in front was all we got They, of course, knew the condition of things, and seemed to think we did not. We fell back toward a battery of ours that was behind us, supported, I think, by a brigade of North Carolina infantry. We moved slowly, and the enemy's skirmishers got close enough for a dash to be made by our acting regimental adjutant--in place of Lieutenant Capers, killed the night before--Lieutenant Haile, who took a prisoner, but just as it was done one of our couriers--Tribble, Seventh regiment--mounted on a fine black horse, bareheaded, dashed between the two lines with a handkerchief tied upon a switch, sent by General Gordon, announcing the "suspension of hostilities."

By this time the enterprising adjutant had in turn been made prisoner.

As soon as the orders were understood everything came to a stand-still, and for a while I thought we were going to have, then and there, a little inside fight on purely personal grounds.

An officer--a captain--I presume the captain in command of the party in the yard that we had attacked and driven back upon the main body--had, I rather expect, been laughed at by his own people for his prompt and sudden return from the expedition he had set out on.

He rode up at once to General Gary, and with a good deal of heat (he had his drawn sabre in his hand) wanted to know what he, Gary, meant by keeping up the fight after there had been a surrender. "Surrender!"

said Gary, "I have heard of no surrender. We are South Carolinians, and don't surrender. [Ah! General, but we did, though.] Besides, sir, I take commands from no officers but my own, and I do not recognize you or any of your cloth as such."

The rejoinder was about to be a harsh one, sabres were out and trouble was very near, when an officer of General Custar's staff--I should like to have gotten his name--his manner was in striking contrast to that of the bellicose captain, who seemed rather to belong to the snorting persuasion--he, with the language and manner of a thorough gentleman, said, "I a.s.sure you, General, and I appreciate your feelings in the matter, that there has been a suspension of hostilities, pending negotiations, and General Lee and General Grant are in conference on the matter at this time."

His manner had its effect on General Gary, who at once sheathed his sabre, saying, "Do not suppose, sir, I have any doubt of the truth of your statement, but you must allow that, under such circ.u.mstances, I can only receive orders from my own officers; but I am perfectly willing to accept your statement and wait for those orders." (Situated as we were, certainly a wise conclusion.) Almost on the instant Colonel Blackford, of the engineers, rode up, sent by General Gordon, with a Federal officer, carrying orders to that effect.

We drew back to the artillery and infantry that were just behind us, and formed our battered fragments into regiments.

Desperate as we knew our condition to be since last night's affair, still the idea of a complete surrender, which we began now to see was inevitable, came as an awful shock. Men came to their officers with tears streaming from their eyes, and asked what it all meant, and would, at that moment, I know, have rather died the night before than see the sun rise on such a day as this.

And so the day wore on, and the sun went down, and with it the hopes of a people who, with prayers, and tears, and blood, had striven to uphold that falling flag.

It was all too true, and our worst fears were fully justified by the result. The suspension of hostilities was but a prelude to surrender, which was, when it came to a show of hands, inevitable.

General Lee's army had been literally pounded to pieces after the battle of "Five Forks," around Petersburg, which made the evacuation of Richmond and the retreat a necessity. When General Longstreet's corps from the north bank joined it, the "army of Northern Virginia,"

wasted and reduced to skeleton battalions, was still an army of veteran material, powerful yet for attack or defence, all the more dangerous from its desperate condition. And General Grant so recognized and dealt with it, attacking it, as before stated, in detail; letting it wear itself out by straggling and the disorganizing effect of a retreat, breaking down of men and material. The infantry were almost starved.

It was not until the fourth day from Richmond, at the high bridge on the "Appomattox," the battle of Sailor's Creek was fought, in which, with overwhelming ma.s.ses of cavalry, artillery and infantry, our starved and tired men were ridden down, and General Grant destroyed, in military parlance, the divisions of Kershaw, Ewell, Anderson and Custis Lee.

The fighting next day was of the same desultory character as before, and the day after there was no blow struck until we encountered with the artillery Custar's cavalry, at the depot of Appomattox Court-house, as has been described--all their energies being directed toward establis.h.i.+ng their "cordon" around that point.

The terms of the surrender, and all about it, are too well known to go over in detail here--prisoners of war on parole, officers to retain side arms, and all private property to be respected, that was favorable to our cavalry, as in the Confederate service the men all owned their horses, though different in the United States army, the horses belonging to Government.

General Gary, true to the doctrine he had laid down in his discussion with the irate captain, that "South Carolinians did not surrender,"

turned his horse's head, and, with Captain Doby and one or two others, managed to get that night through the "cordon" drawn around us, and succeeded in reaching Charlotte, North Carolina, which became, for a time, the headquarters of the "Southern Confederacy"--the President and his Cabinet having established themselves there.

Colonel Haskell, who had been separated from us the night before, while gathering up the horses of the brigade, by the charge of cavalry on the turnpike, and had joined and been acting with General Walker and his artillery, came in about two o'clock. All the Confederate cavalry at Appomattox, some two thousand or twenty-five hundred, were under his command as ranking officer.

The brigade crossed the road and bivouacked in the open field near the creek, within a few hundred yards of the town. Our infantry, and what was left of the artillery, was scattered along the road for two or three miles toward Richmond--the enemy swarming in every direction around us, and occupying the town as headquarters.

The articles of capitulation were signed next morning under the famous "apple tree," I suppose; what we saw of it was this: General Lee was seen, dressed in full Confederate uniform, with his sword on, riding his fine grey charger, and accompanied by General Gordon, coming from the village, and riding immediately in front of where we were lying.

He had not been particularly noticed as he had gone toward the town, for, though with the regiment, I have no recollection of his doing so.

As soon as he was seen it acted like an electric flash upon our men; they sprang to their feet, and, running to the roadside, commenced a wild cheering that roused our troops. As far as we could see they came running down the hill sides, and joining in, along the ground, and through the woods, and up into the sky, there went a tribute that has seldom been paid to mortal man. "Faithful, though all was lost!"