by Alan Huffman
Campbell agreed to surrender on the condition that all of his commissioned officers would be permitted to go to Meridian or some other point in Mississippi, and from there to Memphis for parole, and that they would be allowed to keep all their personal property, including horses, saddles, sidearms, and clothing, while the enlisted men—about three hundred fifty of whom were black and one hundred twenty were white—“shall be kindly and humanely treated and turned over to the C. S. Government as prisoners of war, to be disposed of as the War Department of the Confederate States shall direct.”
Forrest agreed to the terms, but many of Campbell’s own officers and men did not. Though they argued that the fort was strong enough to withstand a Rebel attack indefinitely (and a group of his officers afterward requested that Campbell be investigated by the military), they were overruled. In their request for an investigation, the officers wrote, “We also feel it our duty to make mention of the bearing and disposition of the soldiers in the fort, both white and black. It was everything that any officer could wish of any set of men.” When told that the fort had been surrendered and that they were prisoners, the officers wrote, “they could scarcely believe themselves, but with tears demanded that the fight should go on, preferring to die in the fort they had made to being transferred to the tender mercies of General Forrest and his men.”
The 44th, in which Elliott served, met a similar end. The men saw their first real action at Dalton, Georgia, on October 13, 1864, and it resulted in their capture. They were part of a Union garrison in Dalton that was surrounded by Confederate troops under General John Bell Hood. Colonel Johnson, who commanded the 44th, occupied the garrison with about seven hundred fifty men, as many as a hundred of whom were unarmed and more than six hundred of whom were from the 44th. A few soldiers had gone “foraging” or “recruiting” and so escaped capture, but Elliott was not among them. He and the other officers of the 44th were captured and paroled in the field on October 15.
The surrender at Dalton was remarkably similar to the one at Athens. Johnson reported that his scouts had observed the Rebels destroying the railroad within five miles of the town and burning the connecting bridges. He had requested reinforcements and received about fifty white troops from Illinois. By the time his cavalry returned, the Rebels were in close pursuit. After some brief skirmishing, Hood delivered an ultimatum under a flag of truce, demanding that Johnson surrender. Hood promised that the white officers and soldiers would be paroled but said, “If the place is carried by assault, no prisoners will be taken.” In other words, everyone would be killed.
Johnson responded that he could not surrender, “whatever the consequences may be.” After another half-hour of skirmishing, the parley was repeated. Then Hood began to prepare for battle in earnest, forming what Johnson described as “a very long and dense line of infantry, about two miles in length,” with artillery emplacements. “In short,” Johnson reported, “we were surrounded.” He sent three white officers out under a flag of truce to demand an inspection of the Rebel troops and said that if their numbers proved overwhelming, and if Hood would guarantee safe conduct to the next military post, he would evacuate his garrison. Hood refused. Johnson’s men had seen what they needed to, however: An overwhelming force, in a far more commanding position. “General Hood told me that I must decide at once; that I already had occupied too much of his time; and when I protested against the barbarous measures which he threatened in his summons he said that he could not restrain his men, and would not if he could; that I could choose between surrender and death,” Johnson wrote, a bit breathlessly, adding, “To fight any more than had been done was madness, in the face of such barbarous threats, which I was fully satisfied would be carried out, as the division of Cleburne, which was in the immediate rear of the rebel general and his staff, was over anxious to move upon the ‘niggers,’ and constantly violated the flag of truce by skirmishing near it, and to fight was also hopeless, as we were surrounded and could not be supported from anywhere.”
Unwilling to submit his nearly eight hundred troops to possible slaughter, Johnson surrendered on the condition that his black enlisted men would be treated humanely, that his officers and white soldiers would be paroled and allowed to retain their swords and whatever personal property they could carry, and that they be allowed to remain with their black troops. The latter request was denied. “I was told by General Hood,” he wrote, “that he would return all slaves belonging to persons in the Confederacy to their masters; and when I protested against this and told him that the United States Government would retaliate, and that I surrendered the men as soldiers, he said I might surrender them as whatever I pleased; that he would have them attended to, &c.”
Despite the threat, “The colored soldiers displayed the greatest anxiety to fight,” Johnson reported, adding, “It grieved me to be compelled to surrender men who showed so much spirit and bravery.” After the surrender, the black soldiers “were immediately robbed and abused in a terrible manner. The treatment of the officers of my regiment exceeded anything in brutality I have ever witnessed, and a General Bate distinguished himself especially by meanness and beastly conduct. This General Bate was ordered to take charge of us, and immediately commenced heaping insults upon me and my officers. He had my colored soldiers robbed of their shoes (this was done systematically and by his order), and sent them down to the railroad and made them tear up the track for a distance of nearly two miles. One of my soldiers, who refused to injure the track, was shot on the spot, as were also five others shortly after the surrender, who, having been sick, were unable to keep up with the rest on the march.” As his white officers were being paroled Johnson entreated his captors to free the black “servants and soldiers” in the regiment who came from the free states of Indiana and Ohio, but to no avail. “From the treatment I received, and what I observed after my capture, I am sure that not a man would have been spared had I not surrendered when I did, and several times on the march soldiers made a rush upon the guards to massacre the colored soldiers and their officers,” he wrote. “Mississippians did this principally (belonging to Stewart’s corps), and were often encouraged in these outrages by officers of high rank. I saw a lieutenant-colonel who endeavored to infuriate a mob, and we were only saved from massacre by our guards’ greatest efforts.”
Johnson and his officers were paroled and released at a place called Dug Gap, but their black troops were sent south into slavery or to work for the Confederate Army. John Leach, a sergeant with the 44th, later reported that they were put to work in the vicinity of Dalton, then marched to Selma and Corinth, destroying railroads along the way. “During the time I was in the hands of the rebels there were about 250 men of the Forty-fourth delivered to their former masters, or men who claimed to own them, thereby returning these men to slavery,” Leach wrote. At the time he managed to escape to Union-held Memphis on Christmas Day, about one hundred twenty-five men from the 44th were “still laboring on these railroads, the remainder having either been sent to the hospital to die, or turned over to civilians as slaves, or effected their escape.”
Elliott later said that after being paroled, he and the remaining officers of the 44th returned to Nashville, where they reorganized and moved south to Chattanooga to join the army of General William Tecumseh Sherman, though they were subsequently ordered back to Nashville and placed under the command of Colonel Thomas J. Morgan. On the way to Nashville, the train on which the 44th and two companies of the 14th Colored Infantry were being transported was disabled by fire from Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s batteries at about 11 a.m. on December 2, 1864.
The train on which Elliott and his troops had been riding was “the hindmost one,” and during the night of December 1, the train ahead of them had derailed. Thus delayed, they had received what Elliott later concluded were bogus orders, fabricated by the Rebels, to return to Nashville. “We went forward, and when on the bridge over Nine Mile Creek at Block-house No. 2, Gen. Forest opened fire on us with
a battery, at short range, from the curve just in advance of the train,” he wrote. The train was crippled on the bridge. Elliott and company leaped into the creek, waded to the bank, drove the Rebels back, and then made their way to a small blockhouse, where they continued fighting until dark. “Soon after dark a council was called by our colonel, Louis Johnson, in the block-house, & as the result was sent 4 several parties to try to pass Hoods line to…the Cumberland to reach Gen. Thomas & seek his aid for our rescue.”
At about midnight, Elliott recalled, the men concluded that Hood had invested Nashville, preventing Thomas from coming to their aid, and “that our only safety lay in stealing out thro’ the darkness and then some must remain to maintain the line and keep up the spasmodic night firing. That duty fell upon myself and my 2nd Lieutenant H.C. Knowles.”
Johnson reported that the Confederate batteries were delivering relentless fire upon the stockade and had destroyed the lookout tower, caved in the roof, and injured or killed numerous men. “My position was quite desperate, and when I took into consideration that my stock of ammunition was almost expended, the stockade so much used up that a few shots would have knocked it down, and having lost one-third of the men, I resolved to abandon the stockade and fight my way to Nashville,” Johnson reported. “I knew that should the place be surrendered or taken by assault a butchery would follow, and I also knew that re-enforcements would have been sent to me if it had been possible to send them. I therefore left the block-house at 3.30 a.m., and, contrary to my expectations, got through the rebel lines without much trouble. I arrived at Nashville about daylight.” The 44th’s troop surgeon and chaplain remained behind with the wounded men and raised the hospital and truce flags above the blockhouse.
Elliott, Knowles, and a small squad of soldiers meanwhile crept away into the darkness and “began the task of stealthily passing two lines of Forest’s and thro’ Hoods lines to Nashville, an almost hopeless undertaking, but I & Knowles had all to win & nothing to lose by the experiment. Capture meant death, shot like dogs by the Southern chivalry while prisoners of war, and no living comrade to tell our friends of our end.” They managed to pass through the first line of pickets but soon encountered mounted squads of Rebels and “had some lively, active firing experiences in bush, briar, brambles and streams of water,” which scattered his men.
In the early light, Elliott found himself alone with Knowles, and they were forced to do some “zigzag running and dodging” to try to escape. Once they passed out of the line of fire, they hid behind a fallen tree, “concealed by a dense growth of weeds that lapped over the log.” They could see pickets about seventy-five yards away and decided to lie quietly, wet, hungry, and shivering from the cold, to “watch & pray for night, when we might hope to crawl thro’ Hood’s army. Foragers passed so close I could have touched them with my hand as I lay there in the wet earth.” Sometime after noon, Elliott fell asleep and was awakened by a whisper from Knowles, who told him the Rebels were advancing toward them. Glancing up, Elliott realized that “discovery and capture was inevitable. We were alone & might escape identification as ‘nigger’ officers and recognition. It could be no harm to try & we had life to gain by success & could be no worse off by a failure, so quick as thought, in that supreme moment of capture thought and action were simultaneous. I whispered to Lieutenant Knowles, ‘My name is Capt. David E. Elliott of Co. ‘E’ (I now think it was) 75th Ind. V.I. & yours is Lieutenant Henry Clay of Co. ‘F’ 16th Ill. V.I.’ the co. he was promoted from. About two minutes afterward Knowles & I advanced on a brisk walk to report to Col. or Gen. Ross of Forest’s command, having by then been discovered by one of the Rebels.” Elliott had met David Elliott the first night of the organization of Company E of the 10th, back in Indianapolis, and the two, he later recalled, “became friends & I loved him for his gentlemanly & soldierly qualities.”
Despite his fears, Elliott wrote that the first Rebel to interview him was “a very courteous gentleman.” When General Ross demanded Elliott’s name and command, he unfurled his lie and introduced “Clay,” who, he said, “seemed scared and to lose his wits.” Asked why they were separated from their command, Elliott said they had been cut off after Sherman “took one of his crazy fits and took French leave of Atlanta & left a few thousand of men & officers on leave at home and as we returned to join him we found ourselves cut off and were stopped at Chatta. & when you uns got to kicking up such a hell of a racket here General Thomas sent us straglers a very pressing invitation to join him, but while on the way General Forest took charge of the train & we took to the woods.”
Ross sent Elliott and “Clay” to Forrest’s headquarters “at the first toll-gate out from Nashville.” En route they passed through Franklin after a two days’ march, subsisting on two ears of corn per man. Elliott said he “kept up a merry fusilade with the long haired jesters,” all the while fearing he would be recognized by his fellow prisoners and outed as an officer of colored troops.
The remaining colored troops under Johnson continued to fight, and in a subsequent report he observed that they suffered the greatest casualties. During one particularly brutal skirmish, he reported, “I was unable to discover that color made any difference in the fighting of my troops. All, white and black, nobly did their duty as soldiers, and evinced cheerfulness and resolution such as I have never seen excelled in any campaign of the war in which I have borne a part.”
George Fitch, a lieutenant with the 12th Colored Infantry, reported that later in the month he was captured and shot, along with two other black officers, one of whom was with the 44th. After their capture by Forrest’s scouts, the men were robbed, stripped, and marched toward the Rebel headquarters. “After leaving the road about half a mile, as we were walking along through a wooded ravine, the man in advance of us halted, partially turned his horse, and as I came up, drew his revolver and fired on me without a word,” Fitch reported. “The ball entered my right ear just above the center, passed through and lodged in the bone back of the ear. It knocked me senseless for a few moments. I soon recovered, however, but lay perfectly quiet, knowing that my only hope lay in leading them to believe they had killed me. Presently I heard two carbine shots, and then all was still. After about fifteen minutes I staggered to my feet and attempted to get away, but found I could not walk. About that time a colored boy came along and helped me to a house near by. He told me that the other two officers were dead, having been shot through the head. That evening their bodies were brought to the house where I lay. Next morning they were decently buried on the premises of Col. John C. Hill, near by.”
Fitch continued: “The shooting occurred on the 22d, and on the 23d, about midday, one of Forrest’s men came to the house where I was lying and inquired for me; said that he had come to kill me. The man of the house said that it was entirely unnecessary, as I was so severely wounded that I would die any way, and he expected I would not live over an hour. He then went away, saying that if I was not dead by morning I would be killed. After he left I was moved by the neighbors to another house, and was moved nearly every night from one house to another until the 27th, when I was relieved by a party of troops sent from Columbia and brought within the Federal lines.”
Chapter Seven
CAHABA
A MISERABLE TABLEAU MET AMANDA GARDNER’S EYES each time she looked out her upstairs windows. Below her, on the flatlands along the Alabama River, three thousand thin, dirty men milled about inside the crowded stockade of Cahaba prison under a perpetual pall of smoke. Many of the men were sick. Some of them died as easily as fog rose from the river on a cool morning, and their friends had to touch their bodies to make sure they were gone. Others died hard, thrashing on the ground.
Gardner lived in an otherwise comfortable house in the town of Cahaba, Alabama, an enclave of columned mansions, storefronts, and shanties that spread across the floodplain of the Alabama and Cahaba rivers. The town had been the state capital in the 1820s but, like Campbellton, Georgia, had been sliding toward obs
curity since before the war, primarily because it was prone to floods. The local railroad had gone bankrupt, and the Confederate Army had torn up the tracks to repair more important lines elsewhere. But in June 1863, the town took on one final momentous role as a portal into the darkest underworld of the war. Gardner’s house stood next door to the prison, providing her with an unenviable box seat.
By late October 1864, Gardner could see the prisoners hugging their shoulders against the chill of autumn. The weather was invigorating and brisk for anyone who had only to pull cloaks, blankets, and gloves from the cedar chest, pick the last of the season’s roses, and lay a cozy fire on the hearth. But the prisoners were dangerously exposed, and the halcyon sky, open to the cool, clear air pushing down from the north, was a harbinger of the deadly chill to come.
The prisoners’ suffering was not a significant source of concern for most of the people of Cahaba, who had problems of their own. The Confederacy was running short of food and supplies; the rebellion was not going well; and the women’s husbands, sons, and brothers were fighting and dying on distant battlefields. The prisoners’ countless small fires sent smoke through both the stockade and the town, and everyone within range could smell the stench of sickness, of death, and of the god-awful latrines. Occasionally, the report of a guard’s rifle echoed across the river. The muffled chatter during the day, the occasional moans and cries at night, provided the background noise at every table. But the prisoners themselves were largely a faceless, nameless mass. On Sundays, when the church held services next door, the parishioners’ singing drowned them out.