Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War Part 20

A Meditation.

How often in the years that close, When truce had stilled the sieging gun, The soldiers, mounting on their works, With mutual curious glance have run From face to face along the fronting show, And kinsman spied, or friend--even in a foe.

What thoughts conflicting then were shared.

While sacred tenderness perforce Welled from the heart and wet the eye; And something of a strange remorse Rebelled against the sanctioned sin of blood, And Christian wars of natural brotherhood.

Then stirred the G.o.d within the breast-- The witness that is man's at birth; A deep misgiving undermined Each plea and subterfuge of earth; The felt in that rapt pause, with warning rife, Horror and anguish for the civil strife.

Of North or South they recked not then, Warm pa.s.sion cursed the cause of war: Can Africa pay back this blood Spilt on Potomac's sh.o.r.e?

Yet doubts, as pangs, were vain the strife to stay, And hands that fain had clasped again could slay.

How frequent in the camp was seen The herald from the hostile one, A guest and frank companion there When the proud formal talk was done; The pipe of peace was smoked even 'mid the war, And fields in Mexico again fought o'er.

In Western battle long they lay So near opposed in trench or pit, That foeman unto foeman called As men who screened in tavern sit: "You bravely fight" each to the other said-- "Toss us a biscuit!" o'er the wall it sped.

And pale on those same slopes, a boy-- A stormer, bled in noon-day glare; No aid the Blue-coats then could bring, He cried to them who nearest were, And out there came 'mid howling shot and sh.e.l.l A daring foe who him befriended well.

Mark the great Captains on both sides, The soldiers with the broad renown-- They all were messmates on the Hudson's marge, Beneath one roof they laid them down; And free from hate in many an after pa.s.s, Strove as in school-boy rivalry of the cla.s.s.

A darker side there is; but doubt In Nature's charity hovers there: If men for new agreement yearn, Then old upbraiding best forbear: "_The South's the sinner!_" Well, so let it be; But shall the North sin worse, and stand the Pharisee?

O, now that brave men yield the sword, Mine be the manful soldier-view; By how much more they boldly warred, By so much more is mercy due: When Vickburg fell, and the moody files marched out, Silent the victors stood, scorning to raise a shout.

Footnotes.

1. The gloomy lull of the early part of the winter of 1860-1, seeming big with final disaster to our inst.i.tutions, affected some minds that believed them to const.i.tute one of the great hopes of mankind, much as the eclipse which came over the promise of the first French Revolution affected kindred natures, throwing them for the time into doubt and misgivings universal.

2. "The terrible Stone Fleet on a mission as pitiless as the granite that freights it, sailed this morning from Port Royal, and before two days are past will have made Charleston an inland city. The ships are all old whalers, and cost the government from $2500 to $5000 each. Some of them were once famous ships.--" (From Newspaper Correspondences of the day.)

Sixteen vessels were accordingly sunk on the bar at the river entrance.

Their names were as follows:

Amazon, America, American, Archer, Courier, Fortune, Herald, Kensington, Leonidas, Maria Theresa, Potomac, Rebecca Simms, L.C. Richmond, Robin Hood, Tenedos, William Lee.

All accounts seem to agree that the object proposed was not accomplished. The channel is even said to have become ultimately benefited by the means employed to obstruct it.

3. The _Temeraire_, that storied ship of the old English fleet, and the subject of the well-known painting by Turner, commends itself to the mind seeking for some one craft to stand for the poetic ideal of those great historic wooden warships, whose gradual displacement is lamented by none more than by regularly educated navy officers, and of all nations.

4. Some of the cannon of old times, especially the bra.s.s ones, unlike the more effective ordnance of the present day, were cast in shapes which Cellini might have designed, were gracefully enchased, generally with the arms of the country. A few of them--field-pieces--captured in our earlier wars, are preserved in a.r.s.enals and navy-yards.

5. Whatever just military criticism, favorable or otherwise, has at any time been made upon General McClellan's campaigns, will stand. But if, during the excitement of the conflict, aught was spread abroad tending the unmerited disparagement of the man, it must necessarily die out, though not perhaps without leaving some traces, which may or may not prove enduring. Some there are whose votes aided in the re-election of Abraham Lincoln, who yet believed, and retain the belief, that General McClellan, to say the least, always proved himself a patriotic and honorable soldier. The feeling which surviving comrades entertain for their late commnder is one which, from its pa.s.sion, is susceptible of versified representation, and such it receives.

6. At Antietam Stonewall Jackson led one wing of Lee's army, consequenty sharing that day in whatever may be deemed to have been the fortunes of his superior.

7. Admiral Porter is son of the late Commodore Porter, commander of the Frigate Ess.e.x on that Pacific cruise which ended in the desparate fight off Valparaiso with the English frigates Cherub and Phoebe, in the year 1814.

8. Among numerous head-stones or monuments on Cemetery Hill, marred or destroyed by the enemy's concentrated fire, was one, somewhat conspicuous, of a Federal officer killed before Richmond in 1862.

On the 4th of July 1865, the Gettysburg National Cemetery, on the same height with the original burial-ground, was consecrated, and the corner-stone laid of a commemorative pile.

9. "I dare not write the horrible and inconceivable atrocities committed," says Froissart, in alluding to the remarkable sedition in France during his time. The like may be hinted of some proceedings of the draft-rioters.

10. Although the month was November, the day was in character an October one--cool, clear, bright, intoxicatingly invigorating; one of those days peculiar to the ripest hours of our American Autumn. This weather must have had much to do with the spontaneous enthusiasm which seized the troops--and enthusiasm aided, doubtless, by glad thoughts of the victory of Look-out Mountain won the day previous, and also by the elation attending the capture, after a fierce struggle, of the long ranges of rifle-pits at the mountain's base, where orders for the time should have stopped the advance. But there and then it was that the army took the bit between its teeth, and ran away with the generals to the victory commemorated. General Grant, at Culpepper, a few weeks prior to crossing the Rapidan for the Wilderness, expressed to a visitor his impression of the impulse and the spectacle: Said he: "I never saw any thing like it:"

language which seems curiously undertoned, considering its application; but from the taciturn Commander it was equivalent to a superlative or hyperbole from the talkative.

The height of the Ridge, according to the account at hand, varies along its length from six to seven hundred feet above the plain; it slopes at an angle of about forty-five degrees.

11. The great Parrott gun, planted in the marshes of James Island, and employed in the prolonged, though at times intermitted bombardment of Charleston, was known among our soldiers as the Swamp Angel.

St. Michael's, characterized by its venerable tower, was the historic and aristrocratic church of the town.

12. Among the Northwestern regiments there would seem to have been more than one which carried a living eagle as an added ensign. The bird commemorated here was, according the the account, borne aloft on a perch beside the standard; went through successive battles and campaigns; was more than once under the surgeon's hands; and at the close of the contest found honorable repose in the capital of Wisconsin, from which state he had gone to the wars.

13. The late Major General McPherson, commanding the Army of the Tennessee, a major of Ohio and a West Pointer, was one of the foremost spirits of the war. Young, though a veteran; hardy, intrepid, sensitive in honor, full of engaging qualities, with manly beauty; possessed of genius, a favorite with the army, and with Grant and Sherman. Both Generals have generously acknowledged their professional obligiations to the able engineer and admirable soldier, their subordinate and junior.

In an informal account written by the Achilles to this Sarpedon, he says: "On that day we avenged his death. Near twenty-two hundred of the enemy's dead remained on the ground when night closed upon the scene of action."

It is significant of the scale on which the war was waged, that the engagement thus written of goes solely (so far as can be learned) under the vague designation of one of the battles before Atlanta.

14. The piece was written while yet the reports were coming North of Sherman's homeward advance from Savannah. It is needless to point out its purely dramatic character.

Though the sentiment ascribed in the beginning of the second stanza must, in the present reading, suggest the historic tragedy of the 14th of April, nevertheless, as intimated, it was written prior to that event, and without any distinct application in the writer's mind. After consideration, it is allowed to remain.

Few need be reminded that, by the less intelligent cla.s.ses of the South, Abraham Lincoln, by nature the most kindly of men, was regarded as a monster wantonly warring upon liberty. He stood for the personification of tyrannic power. Each Union soldier was called a Lincolnite.

Undoubtedly Sherman, in the desolation he inflicted after leaving Atlanta, acted not in contravention of orders; and all, in a military point of view, if by military judged deemed to have been expedient, and nothing can abate General Sherman's shining renown; his claims to it rest on no single campaign. Still, there are those who can not but contrast some of the scenes enacted in Georgia and the Carolinas, and also in the Shenandoah, with a circ.u.mstance in a great Civil War of heathen antiquity. Plutarch relates that in a military council held by Pompey and the chiefs of that party which stood for the Commonwealth, it was decided that under no plea should any city be sacked that was subject to the people of Rome. There was this difference, however, between the Roman civil conflict and the American one. The war of Pompey and Caesar divided the Roman people promiscuously; that of the North and South ran a frontier line between what for the time were distinct communities or nations. In this circ.u.mstance, possibly, and some others, may be found both the cause and the justification of some of the sweeping measures adopted.

15. At this period of excitement the thought was by some pa.s.sionately welcomed that the Presidential successor had been raised up by heaven to wreak vengeance on the South. The idea originated in the remembrance that Andrew Johnson by birth belonged to that cla.s.s of Southern whites who never cherished love for the dominant: that he was a citizen of Tennessee, where the contest at times and in places had been close and bitter as a Middle-Age feud; the himself and family had been hardly treated by the Secessionists.

But the expectations build hereon (if, indeed, ever soberly entertained), happily for the country, have not been verified.

Likely the feeling which would have held the entire South chargeable with the crime of one exceptional a.s.sa.s.sin, this too has died away with the natural excitement of the hour.

16. The incident on which this piece is based is narrated in a newspaper account of the battle to be found in the "Rebellion Record." During the disaster to the national forces on the first day, a brigade on the extreme left found itself isolated. The perils it encountered are given in detail. Among others, the following sentences occur:

"Under cover of the fire from the bluffs, the rebels rushed down, crossed the ford, and in a moment were seen forming this side the creek in open fields, and within close musket-range. Their color-bearers stepped defiantly to the front as the engagement opened furiously; the rebels pouring in sharp, quick volleys of musketry, and their batteries above continuing to support them with a destructive fire. Our sharpshooters wanted to pick off the audacious rebel color-bearers, but Colonel Stuart interposed: 'No, no, they're too brave fellows to be killed.'"

17. According to a report of the Secretary of War, there were on the first day of March, 1865, 965,000 men on the army pay-rolls. Of these, some 200,000--artillery, cavalry, and infantry--made up from the larger portion of the veterans of Grant and Sherman, marched by the President.

The total number of Union troops enlisted during the war was 2,668,000.

18. For a month or two after the completion of peace, some thousands of released captives from the military prisons of the North, natives of all parts of the South, pa.s.sed through the city of New York, sometimes waiting farther transportation for days, during which interval they wandered penniless about the streets, or lay in their worn and patched gray uniforms under the trees of Battery, near the barracks where they were lodged and fed. They were transported and provided for at the charge of government.

19. Shortly prior to the evacuation of Petersburg, the enemy, with a view to ultimate repossession, interred some of his heavy guns in the same field with his dead, and with every circ.u.mstance calculated to deceive. Subsequently the negroes exposed exposed the stratagem.