Personal Recollections of Sherman's Campaigns in Georgia and the Carolinas

by George W Pepper

  Never mind, the sun shines— weather of the most' genial kind obtains. The Neuse River is safely crossed the woods, in all their wealth of tint and color, shaken with the softest breezes, as with a bannered panoply, attend our march. Incidents were not wanting on the way. The music of the bands precedes us, ringing: through the gorges and passes of the hills.

  Louisburg, North Carolina, is an old, beautiful place. It is situated in Franklin County, thirty miles from Raleigh. It is a town of considerable trade and enterprise. It has been much celebrated for its quiet, rural, appearance, its excellent buildings, and the intelligent and enterprising character of its inhabitants. The churches and other public buildings, though not elegant are substantial, and indicate both liberality and taste. The Methodist Female College is a fine building, located in a pleasant portion of the city, with a large and beautifully shaded yard. This institution has been in successful operation for a number of years.

  The country between this place and Raleigh is delightful and well cultivated, diversified with gentle hills and beautiful vales, refreshing streams and cooling shades — presenting here beautiful groves and there extensive plantations. The scenery was lovely — churches and school-houses everywhere visible. The people were intelligent, industrious, pleasant and patriotic in the small village of Goldsville the glorious banner of the Nation was flung to the breeze. When our brave boys caught a glimpse of this exhibition of Southern loyalty cheer after cheer rose to the heavens. In conversation with several of the planters I found them to be honestly and earnestly in sympathy with the anti-slavery policy of the Administration, They deeply deplore the mmv der of the President

  The next town of importance in our route was Warrenton. It is a neat and picturesque village — rather, I should say, a county seat. It has a very attractive and imposing appearance. It is one of the oldest and most attractive cities of the South. The country surrounding it is rich, agriculturally, and the scenery is grand! There are several splendid houses, shaded by trees, and tastefully ornamented. It is one of earth's sweetest spots. Gardens of most delicious flowers add beauty and fragrance to the place. It has a superb college building, several churches and schools. The grandest palace is owned by one Edenton. The flowers, shrubbery and ornamental trees surrounding this place are unequaled by any that we have ever seen. I longed for more time, so that I might feed on the enchantment for hours. Let your readers recall the most magnificent mansion he has ever seen — transform the furniture into the richest specimens of the antique on which his eves have lingered, and then proceed, in imagination, through series of rooms, with lobbies, landings, boudoirs, and ceilings grained and gilt, the walls hidden with rich tapestry and paintings, the chimney pieces elaborately sculptured, the windows filled with stained glass, and the furniture, (some of it brought from Europe,) and he may form a faint conception of this gorgeous palace of modern genius.

  A day's journey from Warrenton brings us to the Roanoke River — the broad and rapid river which here presents so harmonious a combination of the beautiful in nature.

  The scene presents but little of the rugged grandeur of rock and flood that inspires astonishment and awe, but is fully clothed with the softer graces of the picturesque and the beautiful. The river at the ferry which we crossed is not precipitated in one plunge, but descends in a series of cascades. The waters now along in a thousand changing, sparkling forms of beauty, until they whirl away between green slopes and verdure-clad hills. The shores are in consonance with the bright spirit of the waters. They are well wooded and crowned with the full foliage of the South.

  As we journey along everything is rural around us, I was about to say, but that is too much to utter or express, with a due observance of the truth. The country in which Grant and Lee fought, presents to the eye one vast sheet of misery. We pass the old mansion in which General Scott was born. A place so rich in history, so picturesque, so grand. The fields are now vacant, the houses empty, deserted, dilapidated, the sentry has taken the place of the husbandman, bayonets have taken the place of plow shares, the din of arms affects the tympanum instead of the lowing of the kine, and the drowsy noises of country life. The inhabitants, the belles, the beaux have gone I know not where, perhaps to Europe.

  We are now passing through Dinwiddie Court House. The village is forlorn, desolated Hatcher's Bun, the scene of Sheridan's brilliant fighting is reached. Looming up before us, crowned with extensive earthworks, is Lee's almost impregnable position. A mile further on are the ruins of the house where, for many a weary hour, the perplexed brain of the rebel chief was terribly agitated with conflicting emotions of hope and fear. We are now treading on consecrated ground. For it is here that the most brilliant and decisive victory of the war was achieved. Here thousands of our gallant soldiers crimsoned the earth with their blood, and passed to immortal fame. All honor and glory to their memories! I was forcibly reminded of that passage in Campbell's magnificent poem, Hohenlinden. I never understood its full power and thrilling grandeur until I read it from memory on these bloody fields —

  " Where rushed th e steeds to battle driven,

  Where shook the hills by thunder riven,

  And loader tham the bolts of heaven,

  Far flashed the red artillery."

  Abstractly, war is a wicked thing —

  " The son of hell, Whom angry Heavens do make their minister'

  That

  "Rash, fruitless war, from wanton glory waged, Is only splendid murder."

  Yet we do not look upon ail war as being either wicked orunjustifiable.

  “War is honorable In those who do their native rights maintain;

  In those whose swords an iron barrier are

  Between the lawless spoiler and the weak.”

  What a mountain of sin must rest upon the heads of those guilty wretches whose wickedness initiated the present civil war!

  On a little rising ground between spaces, separating the two armies, is a little nursery of young fruit trees that tinge the summit with the hue of the heathen somebody you may be sure planted them, watered them, and watched them from the beginning. The waste that even the most carefully conducted campaign super induces has spared them. It is no stretch of the imagination to conceive that many a stern soldier, softened by their beauty, has passed them by, leaving to other and sacrilegious hands their destruction And so they stand and bloom, as when, months ago, children played near the road side, and the father families watched its young shoots budding to maturity. Someone may plant them yet when peace comes again, as it will, and of summer evenings sit under the branches that brave men have fostered, and blood has watered.

  Major General Hazen, an able and distinguished officer, the gallant and popular commander of a Division in Logan's Army, which fought so bravely at Fort McAllister, has won enviable laurels in the present great struggle. If we are permitted to judge his future by the past, we met accord to him great and splendid soldier ship. Graduating at West Point with honor to himself, and credit to his adopted State, he entered the United States Army, and remained in it until the commencement of the present war. At the outbreak of the rebellion he was appointed by Governor Dennison to the Ctohmelcy of the 41st Ohio. The splendid fame of this regiment is mainly owing to the great zeal and fidelity of General Hasen. He has participated in nearly all the brilliant campaigns the Southwest, and is held in high estimation by Sherman. He imparts the energy of his own active nature into his fighting troops. The march of his Division from Raleigh to Petersburg— a distance of one hundred and sixty-three miles in six days — is the biggest march of the war. In person General Hazen is tall and well proportioned. He is about forty-three years of age, has a serious military bearing, and is a very rigid disciplinarian.

  At Warrenton we called on a certain distinguished rebel preacher, whose name cannot, for prudential masons, be now given; approached him in the most polite manner possible, giving myself a cordial introduction, which was received with a suaviter in modo, about eqpial to that which might be e
xpected from the rugged est rock of Ben Lomond.

  "Are you connected with the Yankee Army?" growled he. “Certainly, sir, I have that distinguished honor."

  "Have you heard, asked I, "from Jefferson Davit recently?"

  "Of him, not from him," was the studied reply. "He is in Texas, or on his way there I believe."

  "What do you think of Andrew Johnson and his policy ?" asked we.

  "It will create vengeance in North Carolina, and a hundred thousand of her sons will spring to arms," an twered the rebel preacher.

  I told him, that should a guerrilla war be inaugurated, it would terminate in the extermination of the Southern people. He was very bitter in his denunciations of the honored and beloved Lincoln, pronouncing him a low joker for whom he had a profound contempt At this juncture I rose to depart.

  "Won't you stay for dinner ?" quoth he.

  “No, sir; I cannot partake of the hospitality of a man who speaks so disrespectfully of the great and good Abraham Lincoln. Good Morning” said I.

  "Morning," muttered " Ben Lomond."

  This preacher was the most terrible rebel I had ever met in the Confederacy.

  PETERSBURG.

  This is an ancient, historic and stupid place. It has a large number of churches, public edifices, and seminaries of learning. The people are nearly all natives, to the manor born. Northern pluck and enterprise will make it a prosperous commercial city.

  A visit to the celebrated mine and other tremendous works of both armies reveals the amount of labor performed by both armies, and the stupendous efforts of our Generals in dislodging the foe. There was preaching in all the churches. I worshipped yesterday at the Market Street Methodist Church, and the minister, formerly Chaplain General of the Confederate Army, prayed most fervently for the President and the country. His name is Dr. Granberry, a very able divine. In conversation he admitted the hoplessness of the South.

  THE GREAT MARCH OF THE WAR.

  The Fifteenth Corps, commanded by General John A. Logan, made the most wonderful march of this war. Leaving Raleigh on the first of May, it reached Petersburg on the seventh, peaking the trip of one hundred and sixty-three miles in six days. The troops moved along with exultant feelings, cheered by the prospect of peace and home. The following congratulatory order was received in the Corps today, by telegraph;

  Washington, May 6, 1865.

  HEADQUARTERS UNITED STATES ARMY,

  Major General John A. Logan:

  The Lieutenant General congratulates your command on the extraordinary march it has just made.

  [Signed] T. S. BOWERS, A. A. General.

  Petersburg is a stupid looking city; modern ideas never seem to have entered it excepting in the shape of shells. It gives no greater signs of progress than any English town of the same size would do; it does not impress one as an American go-ahead place, but as a staid European borough that for its part was willing to leave well enough alone. It has had its growth.

  Roger A. Pryor lives here— one of the ablest of American journalists, whose only misfortune was that he was not only wrong but logical. Like his master and the master of nearly all the young men of the old South — Calhoun — if you admitted his fundamental principle, you oould not logically deny his conclusions. Admit that the strong should crush instead of lifting up the weak, should rule, not teach them, that power is not a sacred trust to be used only in behalf of the helpless, but a simple possession to be applied to purposes of personal or of class aggrandizement, and lo ! Slavery, with all its horrors, its auctions, its Negro gangs, its forced miscegenations, its robberies, its unutterable and innumerable unmanlinesses, was vindicated and even idealized into a Divine institution. Pryor is less popular than less consistent men; but it is from his class that I have more hope than from the dull-eyed conservatives who held back from the hell on earth to which their conduct led, while they refused to turn back and enter the straight and narrow path of impartial justice which endeth at the celestial city of universal brotherhood.

  There are five or six schools for freedmen at Petersburg. In company with Chaplain Manning, State Superintendent of Schools under the Freedmen's Bureau and Mr. Hawkins of the New York Society, I visited nearly all of them. The best of the large schools is that of the Pennsylvania Society. It is well graded, and has unexceptionably excellent teachers. Th schools of the Baptist Home Mission are very largely attended, but they suffer seriously from the want at additional teachers. They are not graded. The school of the New York Society is well managed, but it is still small. This society has schools in the suburbs which I did not see. The attendance at all of the schools is tolerably regular. Concert of action on the part of all the teachers will soon produce a larger attendance, here and elsewhere, and in Petersburg this union has been inaugurated.

  The richest man in Petersburg was a Mr. Bolling, a financial gymnast, who throve equally well in peace and in war. He decamped, leaving his splendid residence for General Hartsuff commandant. It is the best furnished house south of Washington. The street named after the Father of his Country here is lined with sumptous and tasteful mansions, and some traces of old times are afforded in the cool evenings, when the ladies sit on the front porches, and starlight shines quietly through the trees along the sidewalks. All nature, as if cognizant of the cessation of arms, is putting forth bud, leaf, and blossom now. Flowers are reddening in the yards; the box-brush and ivy are freshening greenly, and there is promise of much fruit But the people 'are not cheerful like vegetation. Their false pride continues to their prejudice and perhaps ruin. "We glory in our destitution," said a fair citizeness to me. Alas! we pity these infatuated people more than they pity themselves. Had they a grain of conventionality about them there might be hope to nationalize them anew; but their vanity is their brain, and they think to exact admiration by making themselves foolish. The only parties given during the winter have been at the expense of the officers. The churches have been irregularly attended, and devotions, of the interested sort, have grown apace. Nobody has prayed " Give us our daily bread" more fervently than these people, and the last couplet of " Now I lay me down to sleep " has been as popular with parents as their children. Still, the ladies here take every secure means to signalize their illiramor. They turn their backs to officers, and double vail their faces when regarded. These demonstrations amuse rather than enrage. Nobody cares for a woman's patriotism. They reverence Lee, and refuse to believe that he has capitulated. They and the war department do not believe the newspapers.

  CHAPTER XXV.

  Travelings in Virginia.— Interviews with Lee and Marshall.— Mount Vernon.— Pilgrimage to Washington.— First Sketch of Virginia.

  The noble State of Virginia has been truly denominated par excellence the garden of the South, where nature is to be seen in her rudest forms— where romantic glens and mountains are so blended with fertile fields and cultivated valleys — with woods and rivers — that the beholder might almost be led to look upon the picture as one in which the Great Architect had intended to give such a display of His power, His greatness, and His skill, as would force even the most careless to exclaim, while gazing upon its wonders and beauties,

  " The hand that made, is divine."

  But we should now say that the tour of Virginia commences near Petersburg, where is the fairest scenery with the softest shading to be met.

  The country is beautifully wooded and everywhere presents a greenness and luxuriance of vegetation that is quite unrivalled. Even the Spanish moss leaf is here a magnificent thing in size it resembles some of the gigantic leaves of the tropical climates, and in brilliancy far surpasses them.

  About ten miles from Petersburg is Drury's Bluff which so long protected the rebel capital. On both sides it is surmounted by hills, beautifully ornamented to the top, and at its base rushes along the James. The James river at some points unites the beauties of Loch Lomond, Windermere, and the Shannon, and is as charming as any river that I have seen, excepting that its mountain scenery is not so rugge
d.

  Near Drury's Bluff, along the banks of the river, are a cottage, banqueting hall, and church, erected years ago by the taste of some fine old Virginia planter. These buildings produce a pleasing effect as they are seen peeping from the rich green woods, with which the hill is clothed. This is by far the most extensive and interesting demesne I had yet seen. The road winds along the calmly flowing river, and the gently sloping Mils are even richer in the garniture of groves than is usual in this part of the South. A couplet in that magnificent hymn by Heber, as I surveyed this lovely prospect, ran through my head continually —

  “Where every prospect pleases, And only man is vile.”

  Fredericksburg is situated in the heart of the most fertile part of Virginia, on the finest navigable river in that part of the State.

  The city of Fredericksburg ranks as one of the oldest in the country, and its population is probably five or six thousand. The town lies at the foot of several steep hills, and consists of one principal street, about a mile in length, with several smaller streets, branching from the chief line of thoroughfare. The place has all the antiquated appearance of a close built city of the latter part of the seventeenth century; its venerable churches, narrow streets, lofty houses, give it a sombre and solemn aspect. This gloom is, however, relieved at various openings by a view of the cheering waters of the Rappahannock, while the vicinity of the city is occupied by elegant houses, constructed of stone, for which the neighboring district supplies the finest materials.

  Fredericksburg, the city bombarded by the artillery of General Burnside, is the chief town of Spottsylvania County, in Virginia, and is situated on the right bank of the Rappahannock river, at the head of tidewater. It is between 60 and 60 miles from Richmond by railroad, and 66 miles by the turnpike, in a northerly direction. Turnpike roads connect it with Falmouth and Newport — the former by a ferry across the Rappahannock and another turnpike through the Wilderness to Orange Court-house, where a railroad connects it with Gordonsville. The town itself is pleasantly situated in a fertile valley, and has advantages for commerce and manufactures. The railroad from Washington, via Acquia Creek, passes through it, and thereby large traffic and trade was done previous to the rebellion. As the through trains generally stopped at Fredericksburg Station for about an hour on each trip, a not inconsiderable chance trade was caused thereby in the immediate locality of the depot. It is distant from Acquia Creek, by railroad, about fifteen miles, from which point part of the Potomac river traffic used to be carried to Fredericksburg.