Hearts Touched by Fire

by Harold Holzer

  In April, 1865, after the collapse of the Confederacy, Mr. Barnwell, who had steadfastly supported Mr. Davis in the Confederate Senate, met the writer at Greenville, S.C., where Governor Magrath had summoned the Legislature of the State to assemble. There, in conversation, Mr. Barnwell explicitly expressed his judgment in the following words: “Mr. Davis never had any policy; he drifted, from the beginning to the end of the war.”

  For practical regret at the issue of the secession movement, the time has long passed by. The people of the South have reconciled themselves to the restoration of the Union and to the abolishment of slavery. They have bravely and strenuously endeavored to go through the transition period of an enormous change without wreck. In complete harmony with the destinies of the Union, they are working out the future of the United States faithfully.

  This is set down to prevent the suppression of important facts in history, and in justice to eminent men, now dead, who have been much misunderstood.

  * * *

  1 The deputies elected to meet at the Montgomery convention were: SOUTH CAROLINA, R. Barnwell Rhett, Lawrence M. Keitt, C. G. Memminger, Thomas J. Withers, Robert W. Barnwell, James Chesnut, Jr., W. Porcher Miles, and William W. Boyce; FLORIDA, Jackson Morton, James B. Owens, and J. Patton Anderson; MISSISSIPPI, Wiley P. Harris, W. S. Wilson, Walker Brooke, Alexander M. Clayton, James T. Harrison, William S. Barry, and J.A.P. Campbell; ALABAMA, Richard W. Walker, Colin J. McRae, William P. Chilton, David P. Lewis, Robert H. Smith, John Gill Shorter, Stephen F. Hale, Thomas Fearn, and Jabez L. M. Curry; GEORGIA, Robert Toombs, Martin J. Crawford, Benjamin H. Hill, Augustus R. Wright, Augustus H. Kenan, Francis S. Bartow, Engenius A. Nisbet, Howell Cobb, Thomas R. R. Cobb, and Alexander H. Stephens; LOUISIANA, John Perkins, Jr., Charles M. Conrad, Edward Sparrow, Alexander De Clonet, Duncan F. Kenner, and Henry Marshall. The Texas delegates were not appointed until February 14th.

  These delegates had been appointed by the conventions of their respective States on the ground that the people had intrusted the State conventions with unlimited powers. They constituted both the convention that organized the Confederacy and its Provisional Congress. On the 8th of February the Provisional Constitution was adopted, to be in force one year. On the 9th was passed the first enactment, providing “That all the laws of the United States of America in force and in use in the Confederate States of America on the first day of November last, and not inconsistent with the Constitution of the Confederate States, be and the same are hereby continued in force until altered or repealed by the Congress.” The next act, adopted February 14th, continued in office until April 1st all officers connected with the collection of customs, and the assistant treasurers, with the same powers and functions as under the Government of the United States. An act of the 25th of February declared the peaceful navigation of the Mississippi River free to the citizens of any of the States upon its borders, or upon the borders of its navigable tributaries. On the 25th of February a commission to the Government of the United States, for the purpose of negotiating friendly relations and for the settlement of all questions of disagreement between the two governments, was appointed and confirmed. The commissioners were A. B. Roman, of Louisiana, Martin J. Crawford, of Georgia, and John Forsyth, of Alabama. An act of February 26th provided for the repeal of all laws which forbade the employment in the coasting trade of vessels not enrolled or licensed, and all laws imposing discriminating duties on foreign vessels or goods imported in them. This Provisional Congress of one House held four sessions, as follows: I. February 4th–March 16th, 1861; II. April 20th–May 22d, 1861; III. July 20th–August 22d, 1861; IV. November 18th, 1861–February 17th, 1862; the first and second of these at Montgomery, the third and fourth at Richmond, whither the Executive Department was removed late in May, 1861,—because of “the hostile demonstrations of the United States Government against Virginia,” as Mr. Davis says in his “Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government.”—EDITORS.

  2 Father of the writer.—EDITORS.

  3 The choice was provisional only, but was made permanent on the 6th of November, 1861, when Mr. Davis and Mr. Stephens were unanimously elected for six years. The Confederate Constitution made them ineligible to reëlection.—EDITORS.

  4 Mr. Davis’s reasons for the selection of the members of the first Cabinet are given in his “Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government” (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1881), Vol. I., pp. 241–3, in these words:

  “After being inaugurated, I proceeded to the formation of my Cabinet, that is, the heads of the executive departments authorized by the laws of the Provisional Congress. The unanimity existing among our people made this a much easier and more agreeable task than where the rivalries in the party of an executive have to be consulted and accommodated, often at the expense of the highest capacity and fitness. Unencumbered by any other consideration than the public welfare, having no friends to reward or enemies to punish, it resulted that not one of those who formed my first Cabinet had borne to me the relation of close personal friendship, or had political claims upon me; indeed, with two of them I had no previous acquaintance.

  “It was my wish that the Hon. Robert W. Barnwell, of South Carolina, should be Secretary of State. I had known him intimately during a trying period of our joint service in the United States Senate, and he had won alike my esteem and regard. Before making known to him my wish in this connection, the delegation of South Carolina, of which he was a member, had resolved to recommend one of their number to be Secretary of the Treasury, and Mr. Barnwell, with characteristic delicacy, declined to accept my offer to him.

  “I had intended to offer the Treasury Department to Mr. Toombs, of Georgia, whose knowledge on subjects of finance had particularly attracted my notice when we served together in the United States Senate. Mr. Barnwell having declined the State Department, and a colleague of his, said to be peculiarly qualified for the Treasury Department, having been recommended for it, Mr. Toombs was offered the State Department, for which others believed him to be well qualified.

  “Mr. Mallory, of Florida, had been chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs in the United States Senate, was extensively acquainted with the officers of the navy, and for a landsman had much knowledge of nautical affairs; therefore he was selected for Secretary of the Navy.

  “Mr. Benjamin, of Louisiana, had a very high reputation as a lawyer, and my acquaintance with him in the Senate had impressed me with the lucidity of his intellect, his systematic habits and capacity for labor. He was therefore invited to the post of Attorney-General.

  “Mr. Reagan, of Texas, I had known for a sturdy, honest Representative in the United States Congress, and his acquaintance with the territory included in the Confederate States was both extensive and accurate. These, together with his industry and ability to labor, indicated him as peculiarly fit for the office of Postmaster-General.

  “Mr. Memminger, of South Carolina, had a high reputation for knowledge of finance. He bore an unimpeachable character for integrity and close attention to duties, and, on the recommendation of the delegation from South Carolina, he was appointed Secretary of the Treasury, and proved himself entirely worthy of the trust.

  “Mr. Walker, of Alabama, was a distinguished member of the bar of north Alabama, and was eminent among the politicians of that section. He was earnestly recommended by gentlemen intimately and favorably known to me, and was therefore selected for the War Department. His was the only name presented from Alabama.”—EDITORS.

  5 One of them, offered by Mr. Rhett, and unanimously adopted, relates to civil-service reform, and is in the following words:

  “The principal officer in each of the executive departments, and all persons connected with the diplomatic service, may be removed from office at the pleasure of the President. All other civil officers of the executive department may be removed at any time by the President or other appointing power, when their services are unnecessary, or for dishonesty, incapacity, inefficiency, misconduct, or neglect of duty; and whe
n so removed, the removal shall be reported to the Senate, together with the reasons therefor.”

  —R.B.R.

  CHAPTER 5

  GOING TO THE FRONT.

  RECOLLECTIONS OF A PRIVATE.

  Warren Lee Goss.

  Before I reached the point of enlisting, I had read and been “enthused” by General Dix’s famous “shoot him on the spot” dispatch; I had attended flag-raisings, and had heard orators declaim of “undying devotion to the Union.” One speaker to whom I listened declared that “human life must be cheapened”; but I never learned that he helped on the work experimentally. When men by the hundred walked soberly to the front and signed the enlistment papers, he was not one of them. As I came out of the hall, with conflicting emotions, feeling as though I should have to go finally or forfeit my birthright as an American citizen, one of the orators who stood at the door, glowing with enthusiasm and patriotism, and shaking hands effusively with those who enlisted, said to me:

  “Did you enlist?” “No,” I said. “Did you?”

  “No; they won’t take me. I have got a lame leg and a widowed mother to take care of.”

  I remember another enthusiast who was eager to enlist others. He declared that the family of no man who went to the front should suffer. After the war he was prominent among those who at town-meeting voted to refund the money to such as had expended it to procure substitutes. He has, moreover, been fierce and uncompromising toward the ex-Confederates since the war.

  From the first I did not believe the trouble would blow over in “sixty days”;1 nor did I consider eleven dollars a month,2 and the promised glory, large pay for the services of an able-bodied young man.

  FAC-SIMILE OF THE CONCLUSION OF GENERAL DIX’S “AMERICAN FLAG” DISPATCH.3

  It was the news that the 6th Massachusetts regiment had been mobbed by roughs on their passage through Baltimore which gave me the war fever.4 And yet when I read Governor John A. Andrew’s instructions to have the hero martyrs “preserved in ice and tenderly sent forward,” somehow, though I felt the pathos of it, I could not reconcile myself to the ice. Ice in connection with patriotism did not give me agreeable impressions of war, and when I came to think of it, the stoning of the heroic “Sixth” didn’t suit me; it detracted from my desire to die a soldier’s death.

  ARRIVAL OF THE SEVENTH NEW YORK AT ANNAPOLIS, APRIL 20, 1861, ON THE WAY TO WASHINGTON. FROM A SKETCH MADE AT THE TIME.

  I lay awake all night thinking the matter over, with the “ice” and “brick-bats” before my mind. However, the fever culminated that night, and I resolved to enlist.

  “Cold chills” ran up and down my back as I got out of bed after the sleepless night, and shaved, preparatory to other desperate deeds of valor. I was twenty years of age, and when anything unusual was to be done, like fighting or courting, I shaved.

  With a nervous tremor convulsing my system, and my heart thumping like muffled drum-beats, I stood before the door of the recruiting-office, and, before turning the knob to enter, read and re-read the advertisement for recruits posted thereon, until I knew all its peculiarities. The promised chances for “travel and promotion” seemed good, and I thought I might have made a mistake in considering war so serious after all. “Chances for travel!” I must confess now, after four years of soldiering, that the “chances for travel” were no myth; but “promotion” was a little uncertain and slow.

  UNIFORM OF THE SIXTH MASSACHUSETTS. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH.

  I was in no hurry to open the door. Though determined to enlist, I was half inclined to put it off awhile; I had a fluctuation of desires; I was faint-hearted and brave; I wanted to enlist, and yet—Here I turned the knob, and was relieved. I had been more prompt, with all my hesitation, than the officer in his duty; he wasn’t in. Finally he came, and said: “What do you want, my boy?” “I want to enlist,” I responded, blushing deeply with upwelling patriotism and bashfulness. Then the surgeon came to strip and examine me. In justice to myself, it must be stated that I signed the rolls without a tremor. It is common to the most of humanity, I believe, that, when confronted with actual danger, men have less fear than in its contemplation. I will, however, make one exception in favor of the first shell I heard uttering its blood-curdling hisses, as though a steam locomotive were traveling the air. With this exception I have found the actual dangers of war always less terrible face to face than on the night before the battle.

  My first uniform was a bad fit: my trousers were too long by three or four inches; the flannel shirt was coarse and unpleasant, too large at the neck and too short elsewhere. The forage cap was an ungainly bag with pasteboard top and leather visor; the blouse was the only part which seemed decent; while the overcoat made me feel like a little nubbin of corn in a large preponderance of husk. Nothing except “Virginia mud” ever took down my ideas of military pomp quite so low.

  After enlisting I did not seem of so much consequence as I had expected. There was not so much excitement on account of my military appearance as I deemed justly my due. I was taught my facings, and at the time I thought the drill-master needlessly fussy about shouldering, ordering, and presenting arms. At this time men were often drilled in company and regimental evolutions long before they learned the manual of arms, because of the difficulty of obtaining muskets. These we obtained at an early day, but we would willingly have resigned them after carrying them for a few hours. The musket, after an hour’s drill, seemed heavier and less ornamental than it had looked to be. The first day I went out to drill, getting tired of doing the same things over and over, I said to the drill-sergeant: “Let’s stop this fooling and go over to the grocery.” His only reply was addressed to a corporal: “Corporal, take this man out and drill him like h—l”; and the corporal did! I found that suggestions were not so well appreciated in the army as in private life, and that no wisdom was equal to a drill-master’s “Right face,” “Left wheel,” and “Right, oblique, march.” It takes a raw recruit some time to learn that he is not to think or suggest, but obey. Some never do learn. I acquired it at last, in humility and mud, but it was tough. Yet I doubt if my patriotism, during my first three weeks’ drill, was quite knee-high. Drilling looks easy to a spectator, but it isn’t. Old soldiers who read this will remember their green recruithood and smile assent. After a time I had cut down my uniform so that I could see out of it, and had conquered the drill sufficiently to see through it. Then the word came: On to Washington!

  A MOTHER’S PARTING GIFT.

  Our company was quartered at a large hotel near the railway station in the town in which it had been recruited. Bunks had been fitted up within a part of the hotel but little used. We took our meals at the public table, and found fault with the style. Six months later we would have considered ourselves aristocratic to have slept in the hotel stables with the meal-bin for a dining-table. One morning there was great excitement at the report that we were going to be sent to the front. Most of us obtained a limited pass and went to see our friends for the last time, returning the same night. Many of our schoolmates came in tears to say good-bye. We took leave of them all with heavy hearts, for, lightly as I may here seem to treat the subject, it was no light thing for a boy of twenty to start out for three years into the unknown dangers of a civil war. Our mothers—God bless them!—had brought us something good to eat,—pies, cakes, doughnuts, and jellies. It was one way in which a mother’s heart found utterance. The young ladies (sisters, of course) brought an invention, usually made of leather or cloth, containing needles, pins, thread, buttons, and scissors, so that nearly every recruit had an embryo tailor’s shop, with the goose outside. One old lady, in the innocence of her heart, brought her son an umbrella. We did not see anything particularly laughable about it at the time, but our old drill-sergeant did. Finally we were ready to move; our tears were wiped away, our buttons were polished, and our muskets were as bright as emery paper could make them.

  “Wad” Rider, a member of our company, had come from a neighboring State to enlist with u
s. He was about eighteen years of age, red-headed, freckled-faced, good-natured and rough, with a wonderful aptitude for crying or laughing from sympathy. Another comrade, whom I will call Jack, was honored with a call from his mother, a little woman, hardly reaching up to his shoulder, with a sweet, motherly, care-worn face. At the last moment, though she had tried hard to preserve her composure, as is the habit of New England people, she threw her arms around her boy’s neck, and with an outburst of sobbing and crying, said: “My dear boy, my dear boy, what will your poor old mother do without you? You are going to fight for your country. Don’t forget your mother, Jack; God bless you, God bless you!” We felt as if the mother’s tears and blessing were a benediction over us all. There was a touch of nature in her homely sorrow and solicitude over her big boy, which drew tears of sympathy from my eyes as I thought of my own sorrowing mother at home. The sympathetic Wad Rider burst into tears and sobs. His eyes refused, as he expressed it, to “dry up,” until, as we were moving off, Jack’s mother, rushing toward him with a bundle tied like a wheat-sheaf, called out in a most pathetic voice, “Jack! Jack! you’ve forgotten to take your pennyroyal.” We all laughed, and so did Jack, and I think the laugh helped him more than the cry did. Everybody had said his last word, and the cars were off. Handkerchiefs were waved at us from all the houses we passed; we cheered till we were hoarse, and then settled back and swung our handkerchiefs.

  Just here let me name over the contents of my knapsack, as a fair sample of what all the volunteers started with. There were in it a pair of trousers, two pairs of drawers, a pair of thick boots, four pairs of stockings, four flannel shirts, a blouse, a looking-glass, a can of peaches, a bottle of cough-mixture, a button-stick, chalk, razor and strop, the “tailor’s shop” spoken of above, a Bible, a small volume of Shakspere, and writing utensils. To its top was strapped a double woolen blanket and a rubber one. Many other things were left behind because of lack of room in or about the knapsack.5