.JPG) |
General Ulysses S. Grant. |
January
13: Composer Stephen Foster dies, age 38.
His most famous works include “Oh! Susanna,” “Camptown Races,” “Old Folks at Home (also known as “Swanee
River”), “My Old Kentucky Home,” “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair,” “Old Black Joe,” and “Beautiful Dreamer.”
Foster,
of course, paints an unrealistic portrait of the South in the era of slavery,
talking about “the darkies” in “Old Folks at Home.” In “My Old Kentucky Home,” Foster
writes of a land “where the birds make music all the day.”
See
also the picture painted in “Old Black Joe.” The South is a land where “hearts
[were] once so happy and free.”
The
crack of a whip is definitely not heard, nor so much as hinted at, nor the cry
of a mother watching her child taken from her and sold to another family.
Old Black Joe
Gone are the days when my heart was young and
gay
Gone are my friends from the cotton fields away
Gone from the earth to a better land I know
I hear their gentle voices calling “Old Black Joe.”
I’m coming, I’m coming, for my head is bending
low
I hear their gentle voices calling “Old Black Joe.”
Why do I weep, when my heart should feel no pain
Why do I sigh that my friends come not again?
Grieving for forms now departed long ago
I hear their gentle voices calling “Old Black Joe.”
Where are the hearts once so happy and so
free?
The children so dear that I held upon my knee?
Gone to the shore where my soul has longed to go
I hear their gentle voices calling “Old Black Joe.”
Bing Crosby sings “Swanee River.” Ugh!
*
January
21: Henry Kyd Douglas describes life in
the Yankee prison camp at Johnson’s Island, on the shores of Lake Erie. He reports
that on January 21, the temperature fell to 28° below zero.
The former of two nights I spent in
the hospital, which was in the enclosure, nursing a very young fellow from
Mobile, who, babbling in his delirium of flowers and fields and playing with
his mother and sister in his sunny land, died before morning. During the night
Captain Stagg of a Louisiana regiment was frozen so badly that when he was
discovered in the morning he was speechless, and it required vigorous measures
under a physician’s directions to restore him. That same night, as often before
or after, two men would squeeze into one bunk so as to double blankets, would
wrap themselves up head and feet, and in the morning break through cracking
ice, formed by the congealing of the breath that escaped, as one has seen on
blankets of horses in sleighing time. (20-252)
With such a large, protected
territory, I do not think any fair man in the North will attempt to defend the
selection of Lake Erie as a winter prison for Southern soldiers, any more than
he would have excused the selection of the malarial regions of southern Florida
or Louisiana as a summer prison for Northern troops. (20-253)
“He had gone off from home.”
He was surprised, while a prisoner,
to receive a letter from Enoch, “whom I have spoken of as my father’s colored
coachman.” Douglas admits “he had gone off from home” and was now living near
Harrisburg, Pa., “working for his living, in freedom, but harder than he ever
did in his life.”
Enoch said he had heard his old
master’s son was wounded and having a hard time; “he had laid aside several
hundred dollars and would send it to me, or as much as I wanted, if I were
suffering or needed it.”
Douglas wrote back, said he didn’t
need the money, but hoped he left no doubt how much he appreciated this kind
offer. “Poor Enoch, I never saw him again. I do not know that he survived the
war; but our old ‘Aunt Hannah,’ his companion in slavery, said ‘he worked
hisself to death for a lazy free nigger gal he married up there.’ In his case,
freedom brought him only bondage.” (20-255)
*
March
1: Rebecca Lee Crumpler becomes the
first African American woman to graduate from medical school, having earned a degree from the New
England Female Medical College (now part of the Boston University School of
Medicine).
At the time, there
were nearly 55,000 physicians in the United States, including only 270 women.
She went to work for
the Freedmen’s Bureau, helping provide medical care and advice for the newly
freed slaves. As The New York Times explains, Dr. Crumpler’s problems
were not solved by her possession of a degree. “Because of her race and gender, Crumpler was denied admitting privileges
to local hospitals, had trouble getting prescriptions filled by pharmacists and
was often ridiculed by administrators and fellow doctors.
In many ways, Crumpler was
ahead of her time, according to one doctor who talked to the Times in
2021. “She focused on prevention, nutrition and attaining financial stability
for one’s family, all relevant factors today,” Dr. Melody McCloud
explained.
“A cheerful home,” Crumpler once
wrote, “with a small tract of land in the country with wholesome food and water
is worth more to preserve health and life than a house in a crowded city with
luxuries and 20 rooms.”
Her work, A Book of Medical
Discourses, published in 1883,
is sometimes cited as a precursor to What to Expect When You’re Expecting,
published a century later. Her advice for new mothers, and families in general,
includes such nuggets as these:
“Children should not be asked if they like such and such things to eat,
with the privilege of choosing that which will give them no nourishment to the
blood.”
“Parents should hold onto their children, and children should stand by
their parents, until the last strand of the silken cord is broken.”
She also suggests that young
women marry at 19 or 20, relatively old for that era. In terms of pregnancies,
she warns against over-indulgence in intoxicating
liquors and tobacco, will cause sickly diminutive offspring, to say nothing of
premature births.
At one point she
warns against many of the “medicines” of that era provided for children,
particularly those including opium as an ingredient:
No paregoric, laudanum, or other
preparations containing opium, should ever be given to an infant for the
purpose of quieting or making it sleep. Sleep-producers serve only to bind the
bowels and stupefy the senses. Carminatives—medicines that expel wind—such as
caraway, fennel, anise, cardamon, mints and the like, should never be given
unless prescribed by those competent to vouch for their effect.
It is becoming a widespread
custom to send a little girl or boy to a druggist’s to purchase some
advertised baby medicine or food. The patent cough syrups, or those kept on
hand in shops, I deem unsafe in the hands of the inexperienced. Most, if not
all of them, contain some sleep-producing ingredient, whereby they may check a
cough by paralyzing, as it were, the little nerves of sensation in the
air-tubes; thus giving opportunity for the phlegm to collect in great
quantities, with no possible way of escape. Doubtless in this way suffocation
is frequently induced, in whooping-cough, bronchitis, or croup.
Several years ago, in the city
of Boston, a mother returned from work, and found her baby, which she had left
alone, a corpse. Her explanation, as it appeared in the daily papers, was to
the effect that she had given the child the rinsings of the vial that contained
laudanum, to keep it quiet.
People are getting much wiser
nowadays; laudanum and paregoric cannot be easily obtained without a recipe.
But they can yet buy and give large doses of “Patent Soothing Syrups.”
Other topics covered
include recognizing and treating cholera in children, bottle-feeding instead of
breast-feeding, how to handle teething babies and whooping-cough, and warnings
such as this: “I would say that children have grown
weaker every generation in families that have indulged in the use of rum and
tobacco.”
Dr. Crumpler was a product of her era. So her
advice does not always ring true. She believed, for example, that sending young
children to school could be fatal. Of one such calamity, she writes,
a few months
ago, a gentleman informed me that he had lost his only daughter. “What caused
her death?” I inquired. “The doctor said she studied too hard; she was taken
with a hemorrhage, and died in a short time.” “Was she old enough to go to
school?” I asked. “Oh, yes,” was the answer. “She was five years and a half.” I
knew the child was delicate from birth, but, notwithstanding, her mother had
taught her the alphabet at home. No wonder, the doctor said she “studied too
hard.”
*
March
3: Two Creoles from New Orleans visit
the White House. In language echoing the Declaration of Independence, they hand
him a petition, wherein African Americans pledge “to sacrifice their fortunes
and their lives” in the fight to save the country. Smithsonian explains:
“We are men; treat us as
such,” they said, as they called for “those inalienable rights which belong to
the condition of citizens of the great American Republic.” The petition bore
around 1,000 signatures, including those of 28 Black veterans who had fought
with Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815.
A
week later, the two petitioners, Arnold Bertonneau and Jean Baptiste Roudanez
returned. They again argued that free blacks, even the poor and uneducated,
should have the right to vote.
Roudanez and Bertonneau had crafted a rationale that connected
Black suffrage to winning the war and sustaining the peace: Black voters would
help create and maintain pro-Union majorities in the South. Lincoln found the
argument compelling and almost immediately adopted their view. On March 13, he
sent a letter to Louisiana’s governor-elect, Michael Hahn, suggesting that
Black men who were “intelligent” or “who have fought gallantly in our ranks” be
granted the franchise. Such voters, Lincoln said, “would probably help, in some
trying time to come, to keep the jewel of liberty within the family of
freedom.”
The
battle for the vote was just beginning.
*
“If every man who would die had a badge.”
A few notes from A Stillness at Appomattox,
by Bruce Catton: “In May,
an officer watching the Army of the Potomac cross the Rapidan thought to
himself how odd it would be if every man who would die had a badge.”
“A
reporter asked Grant how long it would take to get to Richmond. Four days, the
reporter offered. Grant laughed a little, saying yes, if Lee agrees, if not, a
good deal longer.” (59)
May 5-7: The first Yankee units to run into
Rebels in the Battle of the Wilderness could see very little of what was ahead.
Smoke gathered in trees, bullets cut leaves and branches. One officer had to
force way through vines, creepers, brush, backward, men following in single
file. “It was a battle of invisibles with invisibles,” said one of the
soldiers. (66) Sparks from cannons and rifles caused the woods to catch fire. Smoke
added to the confusion. One survivor remembered seeing a dead man’s beard catch
fire. Even young drummers were pressed into combat. (82). Soldiers had to crawl
on hands and knees through one pine thicket. (84)
After the defeat, most generals had
retreated. Grant marched his men south, passing one intersection, the soldiers
knew which road led toward Richmond – and tossed their caps in the air and
cheered when they took it. (92)
Some Yankee troops had only 27 days
left in their enlistments. Naturally, they were not anxious to fight.
*
The bloody Battle of the Wilderness
might have caused most generals to hesitate. Grant does not.
“Grant, in spite of this terrible
ordeal of fire, ordered his army forward by the left to Spotsylvania. General
Sherman says: ‘That was, in my judgment, the supreme moment of his life.
Undismayed, with a full comprehension of the importance of the work in which he
was engaged, feeling as keen a sympathy for his dead and wounded as any one,
and without stopping to count his numbers, he gave his orders calmly,
specifically, and absolutely – “Forward to Spotsylvania.”’” Andrew C.
McLaughlin; A History of the American
Nation; pp. 451-452; (1911).
 |
Yankee troops attack Rebel position at Spotsylvania. |
May
12-13: Grant having taken
command of Union forces, Lee tells his commanders that their new foe “was not a
retreating man.” The Battle of Spotsylvania is fought at close range. (107)
Andrews writes:
An
early morning attack on the 12th carried a salient angle in the centre
of the Confederate line, securing 4,000 prisoners and 20 guns. All that day and
far into the night Lee desperately strove to dislodge the assailants from this “bloody
angle.” Five furious charges were stubbornly repulsed, the belligerents between
these [sic] grimly facing each other from lines of rifle-pits often but a few
feet apart. Bullets flew thick as hail, a tree eighteen inches through being
cut clean off by them. Great heaps of dead and wounded lay between the lines,
and “at times a lifted arm or a quivering limb told of an agony not quenched by
the Lethe of death around.” (109)
*
“It seemed almost like murder to fire
upon you.”
June 2-3: Yankee troops marched hard to Cold
Harbor, kicking up clouds of Virginia dust on the way. “I’d rather be shot than
marched to death,” one Connecticut soldier complained. On June 2 an attack was
scheduled for 4 a.m. Confusion and delay resulted in the assault being
postponed until the 3rd, giving the Rebels an extra day to dig in
and prepare. An officer in the 12th New Hampshire described the fire
that day: It “seemed more like a volcanic blast than a battle.” (162) A Rebel
officer admitted to a New Hampshire soldier later, “It seemed almost like
murder to fire upon you.” (A Stillness at Appomattox, Bruce Catton.)
*
Henry Kyd Douglas knew that if Grant
continued with his policy of attacking, and never retreating, the South was
doomed.
One thing is certain, however,
General Grant was not dismayed and it was evident, if the Government at
Washington and his people continued to support him and his policy, the outlook
for the Confederacy was hopeless. It was the science of war reduced to a sum in
mathematics; and after all he succeeded.
(20-274)
June: Douglas is critical of destruction
in the Shenandoah Valley in 1864.
“…General Hunter was joined by Crook and Averell at Staunton, raising
his command to 18,000 and began to inaugurate that campaign of fire and vandalism,
which has made it so infamous that Northern historians are glad to avoid
mention of it.” (20-276)
Douglas describes the entrance of
General Hunter and his men into Lexington, Virginia on June 11, 1864.
On the 12th he burned the
Virginia Military Institute and everything connected with it. The cadets had
been there and had left: that was enough for Hunter. But it was not enough to
assuage his thirst for destruction and he looked around for something more to
destroy. He found it in the quiet, simple home of ex-Governor Letcher and he doomed
that to the flames. He directed it to be done in the most brutal manner.
Hunter’s soldiers, according to
Letcher’s son,
“…at once surrounded the house and
plundered it—while others of them were pouring something inflammable over the
furniture and setting fire to it. They refused to allow my mother to have
anything carried out, not even a change of clothes; everything was destroyed
that was not stolen. One officer whose name we never knew came in and offered
to assist in saving valuables; he got a trunk, but Captain Berry of a
Pennsylvania Regiment who was in charge of the burning, refused to let him carry it out; an altercation
followed when a soldier picked up the trunk and carried it into the yard.
Captain Berry ordered other things that some persons were attempting to carry
out to be seized and thrown into the burning building. All the buildings were
burned. The roof of my grandmother’s house caught fire and, when a Negro
servant tried to extinguish it, the soldiers threatened to shoot him if he did
not come down; but a Captain Downs rode up and ordered the fire to be put out.
Captain Berry and many of his soldiers were extremely rude and insulting to my
mother and sister. No reason, except the order of General Hunter, was given for
burning our house. Washington College was plundered, apparatus destroyed, books
torn up, etc.” (20-277)
Douglas continues:
…Sheridan set his cavalry to work on
their campaign of arson, rapine, and starvation. General Wesley Merritt says,
more in a tone of satisfaction than regret, that on its return his cavalry “was
deployed across the Valley, burning, destroying or taking away everything of
value or likely to become of value to the enemy,” until he adds, “the Valley
from Staunton to Winchester was completely devastated.” With an air of
soldierly pride he reports officially, October 5th, that his
division alone destroyed from Port Republic to Tom’s Brook 630 barns, 47 mills,
410,742 bushels of wheat, 515 acres of corn, etc., etc., to the amount of
$3,304,672. Sheridan reported to Grant 2,000 well-filled barns, 70 mills,
wheat, grain, etc., destroyed. They both omit to mention the private dwellings
which their troops , drunk with their license to burn, laid in ashes, and the
unspeakable suffering and horrors they brought on innocent women and
children. (20-301)
Later, he says,
I try to restrain my bitterness at
the recollection of the dreadful scenes I witnessed. I rode down the Valley
with the advance after Sheridan’s retreating cavalry beneath great columns of
smoke which almost shut out the sun by day, and in the red glare of bonfires,
which, all across that Valley, poured out flames and sparks heavenward and
crackled mockingly in the night air; and I saw mothers and maidens tearing
their hair and shrieking to Heaven in their fright and despair, and little
children, voiceless and tearless in their pitiable terror. I saw a beautiful
girl, the daughter of a clergyman, standing in the front door of her home while
its stable and outbuildings were burning, tearing the yellow tresses from her
head, taking up and repeating the oaths of passing skirmishers and shrieking
with wild laughter, for the horrors of the night had driven her mad. It is
little wonder that General Grant in his Memoirs passes over this work as if he
could not bear to touch it, and the truth about it and defend it, for it is an
insult to civilization and to God to pretend that the Laws of War justify such
warfare. (20-302)
*
“Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!”
August
5: The U.S. Navy continues its attacks
on the Confederate coastline, hoping to cut off all entry points for foreign
goods and supplies. Andrews describes the attack on the Gulf stronghold of
Mobile, Alabama. The assault was led by Adm. David Glasgow Farragut.
Two
strong forts, mounting twenty-seven and forty-seven guns, guarded the channel
below the city, which was further defended by spiles and torpedoes. In the
harbor, August 5th, 1864 lay the iron-clad ram, Tennessee, and three gunboats
commanded by Admiral [Franklin] Buchanan, formerly captain of the Merrimac.
Farragut determined to force a passage. Before six o’clock in the morning his
fleet of four monitors and fourteen wooden ships, the latter lashed together
two and two, got under way, Farragut taking his station in the main rigging of
the Hartford. The action opened about seven. One of the monitors struck a
torpedo and sunk. The Brooklyn, which was leading, turned back to go around
what seemed to be a nest of torpedoes. The whole line was in danger of being
huddled together under the fire of the forts. Farragut boldly took the lead,
and the fleet followed. The torpedo cases could be heard rapping against the
ships’ bottoms, but none exploded.
The
forests being safely passed, the Confederate gunboats advanced to the attack.
One of these was captured, the other two escaped. The powerful iron-clad
Tennessee now moved down upon the Union fleet. It was 209 feet long, with armor
from five to six inches thick. Farragut ordered his wooden vessels to run her
down. Three succeeded in ramming her squarely. She reeled under the tremendous
blows, and her gunners could not keep their feet. A monitor sent a fifteen-inch
ball through her stern. Her smoke-stack and steering-chains were shot away, and
several port shutters jammed. About ten a.m., after an action of an hour and a
quarter, the ram hoisted the white flag. The forts surrendered in a few days.
(IV, 151-153)
It
is during this attack that Adm. David Glasgow Farragut is supposed to have shouted the famous command, “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!”
The
U.S. Naval Institute offers a description of this battle, including a lengthy discussion
of whether or not Farragut really said anything about the torpedoes, damned or
not. It is likely he did, but multiple witnesses offered multiple variations.
It is not in dispute, however, what prompted Farragut to shout. The Institute
offers this account of the sinking of the monitor Tecumseh, in the lead of the
attack:
The Tecumseh surged onward with the other three
ironclads in her wake. The Tecumseh, though, crossed just west of a
red buoy that marked the eastern end of the torpedo field. At 0730, a moment
after passing this buoy, a muffled explosion ripped into the ironclad’s hull. A
fountain of water went into the air, the Tecumseh shuddered
and lurched violently, and her bow began to settle rapidly – “her stern lifted
high in the air with the propeller still revolving, and the ship pitched out of
sight like an arrow twanged from a bow.” The Tecumseh went
down quickly with most of her crew of 114 officers and men.
NOTE TO TEACHERS: If I were I still teaching, I might ask
students to describe what the last moments of those poor sailors would have
been like.
Andrews also discusses the career of
the cruiser Alabama, built in Liverpool, England, noting that “The
officers were Confederates, the crew British.” Starting in August 1862 and continuing
into 1864, the Alabama captured sixty-five American vessels and “destroyed
property worth between $6,000,000 and $7,000,000.” She also “sunk the gunboat
Hatteras, one of the blockading fleet off Galveston, Tex.” (IV, 154)
NOTE TO TEACHERS: Andrews does not
italicize names of warships, and does refer to vessels using the feminine pronoun.
The young ladies in my class were always aghast when I explained that ships and
other inanimate objects (controlled by men) were described as “she,” and “her,”
etc.
*
During the presidential campaign,
Chauncey Depew had a talk with Mr. Lincoln. The president explained: “I have
found that plain people (repeating with emphasis plain people), take them as
you find them, are more easily influenced by a broad and humorous illustration
than in any other way.” (123-57) At one point, during the campaign of 1864, two
supposed representatives of the Confederate government proposed a meeting to
discuss peace. Lincoln explained: “Mr. Greeley was hammering at me to take action
for peace, and said that unless I met these men every drop of blood that was
shed and every dollar that was spent I would be responsible for, that it would
be a blot upon my conscience and soul.” (123-62)
“Then came the spectacular victory of
Farragut at Mobile and the triumphant march of Sherman through Georgia…” (123-63)
turning the election in Abraham Lincoln’s favor. Vallandigham pushed to include
the phrase, “The war is a failure,” in the Democratic platform. “It was the
opportunity for the orator.
“It
is difficult to recreate the scenes of that campaign. The people had been
greatly disheartened. Every family was in bereavement, with a son lost and
others still in the service. Taxes were onerous and economic and business
conditions were bad. Then came this reaction which seemed to promise an early
victory for the Union. The orator naturally picked up the phrase, ‘The war is a
failure;’ then he pictured Farragut tied to the shrouds of his flag-ship; then
he portrayed Grant’s victories in the Mississippi campaign, Hooker’s “battle
above the clouds,” the advance of the Army of the Cumberland; then he
enthusiastically described Sheridan leaving the War Department hearing of the
battle in Shenandoah Valley, speeding on and rallying his defeated troops,
reforming and leading them to victory, and finished with reciting some of the
stirring war poems.” (123-64-65)
*
The artist Dan Troiani explains his painting, above:
Here is a new painting
done for the Union League of Philadelphia depicting the 6th United States
Colored Troops at the Battle of New Market Heights , Sept 29, 1864. The bravery
of this regiment along with the 4th Regt. was equal to that of the 54th Massachusetts
at Battery Wagner but is largely forgotten. The 6th suffered 57% losses in the
assault against the Texas Brigade at Fort Harrison. Here, Medal of Honor
recipients Sergt. Major Thomas Hawkins, Lt. Nathan Edgerton and First Sergeant
Alexander Kelly save the colors at the high point of the attack in the fog.
*
October
19: In I Rode with Stonewall,
the author describes the fight at Cedar Creek, where the Rebel surprise was
complete:
The Federals were driven in confusion
from their camps, which fell into our hands with many wagons and many prisoners
and eighteen pieces of artillery…[the Yankees were pursued beyond Middleton]
and then a line of battle formed. It was immediately evident that the enemy
greatly outnumbered us.
Why we did not attack at once, before
they got over the confusion and demoralization caused by the surprise and
stampede, I do not know. We had much to gain by taking the offensive,
everything to lose by delay. True, our infantry had been scattered and
demoralized in stopping to plunder the camps they went through, and the
temptation of food and the smell of cooking were too great for their famished
stomachs to resist. At any rate our victory was over by ten o’clock. The enemy,
knowing their strength and our precarious situation, took their time to get
ready, and six hours passed away in virtual inactivity. (303)
On Cedar Creek, he says this: “‘The
Yankees got whipped; we got scared,’ was Early’s comment on this battle.
“One
thing is certain: it was to us an irreparable disaster, the beginning of the
end.” (305)
*
McMaster describes Sheridan’s
famous ride:
Sheridan had spent the night at
Winchester, and as he rode toward his camp at Cedar Creek, he met such a crowd
of wagons, fugitives, and wounded men that he was forced to take to the fields.
At Newtown the streets were so crowded he could not pass through them. Riding
around the village, he met captain McKinley (afterwards president), who, says
Sheridan, “spread the news of my return through the motley throng there.”
Between Newtown and Middletown he met “the only troops in the presence of and
resisting the enemy. … Jumping my horse over the line of rails, I rode to the
crest of the elevation and… the men rose up from behind their barricade with
cheers of recognition.” When he rode to another part of the field, “a line of
in regimental flags rose up out of the ground, as it seemed, to welcome me.”
With these flags was Colonel Hayes (afterward president). When the men “saw me,
they began cheering and took up the double-quick to the front.” Hat in hand, he
rode along the entire line of infantry, shouting, “We are all right. … Never mind,
boys, we’ll whip them yet. We shall sleep in our quarters to-night.” (97/373)
*
“My clothing was perforated with
bullets.”
October
27: Lt. William Cushing and a party of
twenty U.S. sailors make a daring nighttime attack on the Confederate ironclad,
C.S.S. Albemarle. The Albemarle had previously attacked U.S.
ships blockading the mouth of the Roanoke River and caused serious damage and
loss of life.
Cushing’s mission was
to take out the Albemarle, using a torpedo attached to a boom on the front
of a steam launch he and his men were piloting.
Andrews writes,
On
the night of October 27th, young Cushing approached the iron clad in a steam
launch with the torpedo at the end of a spar projecting from the bow. Jumping
his boat over the log boom surrounding the ram, in the thick of musketry fire
from deck and shore, Cushing calmly worked the strings by which the intricate
torpedo was fired. It exploded under the vessels overhang, and she soon sunk. at
the moment of the explosion a cannonball crashed through the launch period
Cushing plunged into the river and swam to shore through a shower of bullets.
After crawling through the swamps next day, he found a skiff and paddled off to
the fleet period of the launches crew of 14, only one other escaped. (150-151)
Cushing himself later described
the events of that night. We pick up his story as he
and his crew approach the Albemarle, tied up along the riverbank.
We passed within
thirty feet of the pickets without discovery, and neared the vessel. I now
thought that it might be better to board her, and “take her alive,” having in
the two boats twenty men well armed with revolvers, cutlasses, and
hand-grenades. To be sure, there were ten times our number on the ship and
thousands near by; but a surprise is everything, and I thought if her fasts
were cut at the instant of boarding, we might overcome those on board, take her
into the stream, and use her iron sides to protect us afterward from the forts
[which also guarded the river from Yankee attack].
Lt. Cushing considered landing his men, and
rushing the enemy vessel from shore. But just then “a hail came, sharp and
quick, from the iron-clad, and in an instant was repeated.” Quickly changing
plans, he ordered “all steam” and “went at the dark mountain of iron in front
of us.”
A heavy fire was
at once opened upon us, not only from the ship, but from men stationed on the
shore. This did not disable us and we neared them rapidly. A large fire now
blazed , upon the bank, and by its light I discovered the unfortunate fact that
there was a circle of logs around the Albemarle, boomed well out from her side,
with the very intention of preventing the action of torpedoes. To examine them
more closely, I ran alongside until amidships, received the enemy’s fire, and
sheered off for the purpose of turning, a hundred yards away, and going at the
booms squarely, at right angles, trusting to their having been long enough in
the water to have become slimy - in which case my boat, under full headway,
would bump up against them and slip over into the pen with the ram. This was my
only chance of success, and once over the obstruction my boat would never get
out again. As I turned, the whole back of my coat was torn out by buckshot and
the sole of my shoe was carried away. The fire was very severe.
In a lull of the firing, the captain demanding what boat it was.
All my men gave comical answers, and mine was a dose of canister from the
howitzer. In another instant we had struck the logs and were over, with headway
nearly gone, slowly forging up under the enemy's quarter-port. Ten feet from us
the muzzle of a rifle gun looked into our faces, and every word of command on
board was distinctly heard.
My clothing was perforated with bullets as I stood in the bow,
the heel-jigger in my right hand and the exploding-line in the left. We were
near enough then, and I ordered the boom lowered until the forward motion of
the launch carried the torpedo under the ram’s overhang. A strong pull of the
detaching-line, a moment’s waiting for the torpedo to rise under the hull and,
I hauled in the left hand, just cut by a bullet. The explosion took place at
the same instant that 100 pounds of grape, at 10 feet range, crashed among us,
and the dense mass of water thrown out by the torpedo came down with choking
weight upon us.
Twice refusing to surrender; I commanded the men to save
themselves; and, throwing off sword, revolver, shoes, and coat, struck out from
my disabled and sinking boat into the river. It was cold, long after the
frosts, and the water chilled the blood, while the whole surface of the stream
was plowed up by grape and musketry, and my nearest friends, the fleet, were
twelve miles away; but anything was better than to fall into rebel hands, so I
swam for the opposite shore. As I neared it a man [Samuel Higgins; fireman];
one of my crew, gave a great gurgling yell and went down.
The rebels were out in boats, picking up my men; and one of the
boats, attracted by the sound, pulled in my direction. I heard my own name
mentioned, but was not seen. I now “struck out” down the stream, and was soon
far enough away again to attempt landing. This time, as I struggled to reach
the bank, I heard a groan in the river behind me, and, although very much
exhausted, concluded to turn and give all the aid in my power to the officer or
seaman who had bravely shared the danger with me.
…Nearing the swimmer, it proved to be Acting Master’s Mate
Woodman. He could swim no longer. Knocking his cap from his head, I used my
right arm to sustain him, and ordered him to strike out. For ten minutes at
least, I think, he managed to keep afloat, when, his physical force being
completely gone, he sank like a stone.
Cushing himself was by
now “very feeble.” Still, he had a “will not to give up” and kept paddling.
At last, and not a moment too soon, I touched the soft mud, and
in the excitement of the first shock I half raised my body and made one step
forward; then fell, and remained halt in the mud and half in the water until
daylight, unable even to crawl on hands and knees, nearly frozen, with my brain
in a whirl, but with one thing strong in me - the fixed determination to
escape.
As day dawned I found myself in a point of swamp that enters the
suburbs of Plymouth, and not forty yards from one of the forts. The sun came
out bright and warm, proving a most cheering visitant, and giving me back a
good portion of the strength of which I had been deprived before. Its light
showed me the town swarming with soldiers and sailors, who moved about
excitedly, as if angry at some sudden shock. It was a source of satisfaction to
me to know that I had pulled the wire that set all these figures moving, but as
I had no desire of being discovered my first object was to get into a dry
fringe of rushes that edged the swamp; but to do this required me to pass over
thirty or forty feet of open ground, right under the eye of a sentinel who
walked the parapet.
Watching until he turned for a moment, I made a dash to cross
the space, but was only half-way over when he again turned, and forced me to
drop down right between two paths, and almost entirely unshielded. Perhaps I
was unobserved because of the mud that covered me and made me blend with the
earth; at all events the soldier continued his tramp for some time while I,
flat on my back, lay awaiting another chance for action. Soon a party of four
men came down the path at my right, two of them being officers, and passed so
close to me as almost to tread upon my arm. They were conversing upon the
events of the previous night, and were wondering “how it was done,” entirely
unaware of the presence of one who could give them the information. This proved
to me the necessity of regaining the swamp sinking my heels and elbows into the
earth and forcing my body, inch by inch, toward it. For five hours then, with
bare feet, head, and hands, I made my way where I venture to say none ever did
before, until I came at last to a clear place, where I might rest upon solid
ground.
Lt. Cushing was now in a
thick cypress swamp. At one point he came near a party of Confederate soldiers,
busy sinking old ships in the river to obstruct any Yankee vessels that might
now try to pass. Cushing stumbled into a cornfield, and soon came upon a slave
or free black man.
Here I encountered a negro, and after serving out to him twenty
dollars in greenbacks and some texts of Scripture (two powerful arguments with
an old darkey), I had confidence enough in his fidelity to send him into town
for news of the ram.
When be returned, and there was no longer doubt that she had
gone down, I went on again, and plunged into a swamp so thick that I had only
the sun for a guide and could not see ten feet in advance.
Eventually, he came upon
another party of soldiers, and managed to steal a skiff they had tied to the
bank. He paddled for hours, “while sunshine passed into twilight and that was
swallowed up in thick darkness only relieved by the few faint star rays that
penetrated the heavy swamp curtain on either side. At last I reached the mouth
of the Roanoke, and found the open sound before me.” Steering by the stars for
“perhaps two hours” more, he discovered one of the warships of the Yankee
fleet.
My “ship ahoy!” was given with the last of my strength, and I
fell powerless, with a splash, into the water in the bottom of my boat, and
awaited results. I had paddled every minute for ten successive hours, and for
four my body had been “asleep,” with the exception of my arms and brain. The
picket-vessel, Valley City, upon hearing the hail, at once got under way, at
the same time lowering boats and taking precaution against torpedoes. It was
some time before they would pick me up, being convinced that I was the rebel
conductor of an infernal machine, and that Lieutenant Cushing had died the
night before. At last I was on board, had imbibed a little brandy and water,
and was on my way to the flag-ship.
Once Cushing was able to
confirm the success of his attack, rockets were fired by the fleet and the
sailors cheered the sinking of the feared Rebel ironclad. Soon after, the Union
fleet launched its own attack and “Plymouth and the whole district of the
Albemarle, deprived of the iron-clad’s protection, fell an easy prey” and
passed into Union hands.
*
“A vast holiday frolic.”
November
15: Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman cuts
all communications with the North and leads his army south across Georgia,
leaving a trail of destruction behind him. “Sherman marched from one end of
Georgia to the other,” Van Loon writes, “performing such miracles of wanton
destruction that many decent northerners felt slightly ashamed of this
spectacular but somewhat exaggerated display of ferocity.” (124-397)
Andrews also describes
scenes from the “March to the Sea.”
On this day,
A
splendid army of hardy veterans swung off for the Atlantic or the Gulf, over
200 miles away. Their orders were to live on the country, the rations being
kept for emergencies; but no dwellings were to be entered, and no houses or mills
destroyed if the army was unmolested. The dwelling-house prescription was,
alas, too often broken over. There was little resistance, Georgia having been
drained of its able-bodied whites. Negros flocked, singly and by families, to
join “Massa Linkum’s boys.” The railroads were destroyed, and the Carolinas
thus cut off from the Gulf States.
Each
regiment detailed a certain number of foragers. These, starting off in the
morning empty-handed an on foot, would return at night riding or driving beasts
laden with spoils. “Here would be a silver-mounted family carriage drawn by a jackass
and a cow, loaded inside and out with everything the country produced,
vegetable and animal, dead and alive. There would be an ox-cart, similarly
loaded, and drawn by a nondescript tandem team equally incongruous. Perched
upon the top would be a ragged forager, rigged out in a fur hat of a fashion
worn by dandies of a century ago, or a dress-coat which had done service at
stylish balls of a former generation. The jibes and jeers, the fun and the
practical jokes, ran down the whole line as the cortége came in, and no
masquerade in carnival could compare with it for original humor and rollicking
enjoyment. … The camps in the open pine-woods, the bonfires along the railways,
the occasional sham battles at night with blazing pine-knots for weapons
whirling in the darkness, all combined to leave upon the minds of officers and
men the impression of a vast holiday frolic.”
Sherman and his boys
tore up 320 miles of southern railroads and “practically isolated Virginia from
the South and the West. And all of this had been done with the loss of less
than 1,000 men. (IV, 67-70)
McMaster
gives this description of Shermans’ tactics:
To destroy the railroads so they could not be quickly rebuilt, the rails, heated red-hot insert made of burning ties, word twisted around trees or telegraph poles. Stations, machine shops, cotton bales, cotton gins and presses were burned. Along the line of march, a strip of country sixty miles wide was made desolate. (97/footnote, page number missing)
*
November
29: Troops led by Colonel John Chivington
attack a village of Cheyenne and Arapaho and kill at least 150.
____________________
“Nits make lice.
Col. John M. Chivington
____________________
From Buried My
Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown:
The tragic story of
Black Kettle and his band is hard to ignore. At one point, Black Kettle was
given a U.S. flag, with 34 stars, by Major Edward W. Wynkoop, a U.S. Army
officer, and told that so long as he flew it above his village, soldiers would
never fire on his people. Dee Brown writes that the chief “was very proud of
his flag and when in permanent camp always mounted it on a pole above his
tepee.” (70)
There had been fighting
in May 1864; Black Kettle himself had had to ride into the middle of one melee
and order his warriors to stop shooting a party of soldiers – after troops
opened fire and killed two Cheyenne who were trying to arrange a truce. The
Cheyenne were on friendly terms with whites like William Bent, a fur trader, who
had married Owl Woman in 1824, and when she died, married her sister Yellow
Woman, both members of the tribe. William, called The Little White Man, had five
children, and two of his sons, George and Charlie, spent the summer of 1864 hunting
with the Cheyenne on the Smoky Hill River. Meanwhile, Sioux warriors, already
at war with the settlers, “swarmed down from the north to raid wagon trains,
stagecoach stations, and settlers along the Platte route.”
The whites blamed not
only the Sioux, but the Cheyenne and Arapaho.
Both sides to blame for the violence?
Charlie Bent later
said that that summer he and the hunting party were repeatedly fired upon by
soldiers, without cause. Finally, they retaliated, as Brown writes, by “burning
the stage stations, chasing the coaches, running off stock, and forcing the
freighters to corral their trains and fight.”
Black
Kettle and the older chiefs tried to stop these raids, but their influence was
weakened by the appeal of younger leaders such as Roman Nose and by the members
of the Hotamitanio, or Dog Soldier Society [almost like a fraternity of
warriors]. When Black Kettle discovered that seven white captives – two women
and five children – had been brought into the Smokey Hill camps by the raiders,
he ransomed four of them from the captors with his own ponies so that he could
return them to their relatives. (74-75)
During this period Major
Edward W. Wynkoop was informed that the Cheyenne had white prisoners and set
out with 127 men to rescue them. Wynkoop had never dealt with Indians before,
but conversations with two messengers, who had come to lead him to the right
camp, changed his mind. The two Cheyenne were clearly men of honor, intent on
keeping their word to lead him safely. “I felt myself in the presence of
superior beings,” Wynkoop later wrote, “and these were representatives of a
race that I heretofore looked upon without reservation as being cruel,
treacherous, and bloodthirsty without feeling or affection for friend or
kindred.”
“The
white men are foxes…peace cannot be brought about with them.”
Another Cheyenne, Bull
Bear, later told the major, “The Indians are not to blame for the fighting. The
white men are foxes and peace cannot be brought about with them; the only thing
the Indians can do is fight.” (77)
Black Kettle may have
said it best, however. “There are bad white people and bad Indians. The bad men
on both sides brought about this trouble.”
At a peace conference
in June, Black Kettle tried to explain to white negotiators his people’s
dilemma. “I have not come here with a little wolf bark,” he told them, “but
have come to talk plain with you. We must live near the buffalo or starve.”
(80)
Wynkoop was eventually
determined to be too friendly with the Indians and relieved of command. On
November 5, Major Scott J. Anthony took charge at Fort Lyon. Several officers
who were present when Black Kettle and Major Anthony met later remembered that
he told the Cheyenne leader that if he returned to his camp at Sand Creek he
would be under the protection of the troops stationed at the fort. Colonel John
M. Chivington and several hundred soldiers arrived on November 27, and
Chivington began talking about “collecting scalps” and “wading in gore.”
Several younger officers, including Captain Silas Soule, made it clear. An
attack on the village at Sand Creek, they argued, “would be murder in every
sense of the word.”
Chivington erupted,
shouting, “Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians! I have come to kill
Indians, and believe it is right and honorable to use any means under God’s
heaven to kill Indians.” (86-87)
The stage was set,
then, when on November 29, Chivington’s regiments approached Black Kettle’s
village. Jim Beckwourth, who was riding beside the colonel, saw White Antelope
come “running out to meet the command, holding up his hands and saying ‘Stop!
Stop!’ He spoke it in as plain English as I can. He stopped and folded his arms
until shot down.” Cheyenne who survived the battle said that White Antelope
sang the death song before he was killed:
Nothing
lives long
Only
the earth and the mountains. (89)
“Thirty-five braves and some old men,
about sixty in all.”
Robert Bent, another
one of William Bent’s sons, had been pressed into duty by the soldiers as a
scout. He later described what happened:
I
saw the American flag waving and heard Black Kettle tell the Indians to stand
around the flag, and there they were huddled – men, women, and children. This
was when we were within fifty yards of the Indians. I also saw a white flag
raised. These flags were in so conspicuous a position that they must have been seen.
When the troops fired, the Indians ran, some of the men into their lodges,
probably to get their arms. … I think there were six hundred Indians in all. I
think there were thirty-five braves and some old men, about sixty at all…the
rest of the men were away from camp, hunting. … After the firing the warriors
put the squaws and children together, and surrounded them to protect them. I
saw five squaws under a bank for shelter. When the troops came up to them they
ran out and showed their persons to let the soldiers know they were squaws and
begged for mercy, but the soldier shot them all. I saw one squaw lying on the
bank whose leg had been broken by a shell; a soldier came up to her with a
drawn saber; she raised her arm to protect yourself, when he struck, breaking
her arm; she rolled over and raised her other arm, when he struck, breaking it,
and then left her without killing her. There seemed to be indiscriminate
slaughter of men, women, and children. There were some thirty or forty squaws collected
in a hole for protection; they sent out a little girl about six years old with
a white flag on a stick; she had not preceded but a few steps when she was shot
and killed. All the squaws in the hole were afterwards killed, and four or five
bucks outside. The squaws offered no resistance. Everyone I saw dead was
scalped. I saw one squaw cut open with an unborn child, as I thought, lying by
her side. Captain Soule afterwards told me that such was the fact. I saw the
body of White Antelope with the privates cut off, and I heard a soldier say he
was going to make a tobacco pouch out of them. I saw one squaw whose privates
had been cut out. … I saw a little girl about five years of age who had been hid
in the sand; two soldiers discovered her, drew their pistols and shot her, and
then pulled her out of the sand by the arm. I saw quite a number of infants in
arms killed with their mothers.
“Mutilated in the most horrible
manner.”
Robert
Bent’s description of the soldiers’ atrocities was corroborated by Lieutenant
James Connor: “In going over the battleground the next day I did not see a body
of man, woman, or child but was scalped, and in many instances their bodies
were mutilated in the most horrible manner – men, women, and children’s
privates cut out, &c; …I heard another man say that he had cut the fingers
off an Indian to get the rings on the hand; according to the best of my
knowledge and belief these atrocities that were committed were with the
knowledge of J.M. Chivington, and I do not know of his taking any measures to
prevent them; I heard of one instance of a child a few months old being thrown
in the feed box of a wagon, and after being carried some distance left on the
ground to perish…”
When
the shooting ended, 105 Indian women and children and 28 men were dead. In his
official report Chivington claimed between four and five hundred dead warriors.
He had lost nine killed, 38 wounded, many of the casualties resulting from
careless firing by the soldiers upon each other. Among the dead chiefs were White
Antelope, One-Eye, and War Bonnet. Black Kettle miraculously escaped by running
up a ravine, but his wife was badly wounded. Left Hand, although shot down,
also managed to survive.
Captives numbered
seven, including the Cheyenne wife of John Smith, a white trader, the wife of a
white civilian at Fort Lyon, and her three children. Soldiers wanted to kill Charlie
Bent and Jack Smith, the trader’s son, because both were “half-breeds” and
dressed as Indians. Beckwourth managed to save Charlie, but a soldier fired
through a hole in the tent where Jack was being held and killed him. George
Bent was wounded in the fight and fled with the surviving Cheyenne.
He later said that he
had heard Black Kettle “call to the people not to be afraid,” before the firing
started, “that the soldiers would not hurt them; then the troops opened fire
from two sides of the camp.”
Now wounded, George and
other survivors had to travel fifty miles in icy wind and cold, but at last
reached safety at the hunting camp, where most of the warriors had been all
along. He remembered:
As
we rode into that camp there was a terrible scene. Everyone was crying, even
the warriors, and the women and children screaming and wailing. Nearly everyone
present had lost some relatives or friends, and many of them in their grief
were gashing themselves with their knives until the blood flowed in streams.
(92)
 |
Sand Creek by Brent Learned. |
Renouncing their white blood.
George and Charlie
soon renounced their white blood and left their father’s ranch, as did Yellow
Woman, Charlie’s mother, who swore she would never again live with a white man.
A month later, the
Cheyenne attacked and burned the town of Julesburg. The white defenders were
scalped in revenge. The following summer a party of nearly 3,000 warriors rode
out to attack. Charlie and George were with them and took part in fighting
around a post called Platte Bridge Station. In one battle, hundreds of Cheyenne
and Sioux surrounded a platoon of U.S. cavalry and killed almost all of the men
in blue. “I saw an officer on a bay horse rush pass me through the dense clouds
of dust and smoke,” George wrote. “His horse was running away from him…the lieutenant
had an arrow sticking in his forehead and his face was streaming with blood.”
Brown notes that the
fatally wounded man was Lt. Casper Collins; cannon from the fort broke up the
attack.
In the summer of 1865,
the U.S. government sent a peace commission to the Cheyenne and the Arapaho and
asked them to cede most of their lands, including the land where Denver now
stands. Black Kettle and Little Raven, speaking for the Arapaho, were
reluctant. Little Raven explained:
It
will be a very hard thing to leave the country that God gave us. Our friends
are buried there, and we hate to leave this ground. … There is something strong
for us – that fool band of soldiers that cleared out our lodges and killed our
women and children. This is hard on us. There at Sand Creek – White Antelope
and many other chiefs lie there; our women and children lie there. Our lodges
were destroyed there, and our horses were taken from us there, and I do not
feel disposed to go right off to a new country and leave them. (100)
“Men…who would not stop at any crime to
enrich themselves.”
James Steele, a white
man friendly to the tribes, but speaking for the commission, was blunt when he
explained the stark reality facing the Indians:
We
all fully realize that it is hard for any people to leave their homes and
graves of their ancestors, but, unfortunately for you, gold has been discovered
in your country, and a crowd of white people have gone there to live, and a
great many of these people are the worst enemies of the Indians – men who do
not care for their interests, and who would not stop at any crime to enrich
themselves. These men are now in your country – in all parts of it – and there
is no portion where you can live and maintain yourselves but what you will come
in contact with them. The consequences of this state of things are that you are
in constant danger of being imposed upon, and you have to resort to arms in self-defense.
Under the circumstances, there is, in the opinion of the commission, no part of
the former country large enough where you can live in peace. (101)
The two tribes reluctantly
agreed. They would live south of the Arkansas River, on land belonging to the
Kiowa people. The treaty they signed guaranteed “perpetual peace.” With that,
they gave up title to all their former lands in Colorado. “And that of course,”
says Dee Brown, “was the real meaning of the massacre at Sand Creek.”
Song of the people:
Prancing They Came
See
them
prancing.
They
come
neighing,
they
come
a
Horse Nation.
See
them
prancing.
They
come
neighing,
they
come. (102)
In a public speech not
long before the attack, Chivington had made clear what he thought of Indians,
and why he planned to do his part in wiping them out.
“Nits make lice,” was
all he said.
 |
Attack at Sand Creek - painting by Brent Learned. |
*
This
next description comes from Marvels of the New West by William M. Thayer,
published in 1890. A copy of Marvels is in my possession.
The
book, (a copy published in 1892), can be found online. I see no
differences in the text, and have corrected a few mistakes in transcription in
the passage below.
Thayer
has no sympathy for the Native American peoples:
“The savages
were conquered.”
…The battle of Sand Creek, led by Colonel
Chivington, followed, in which the savages were conquered. Colonel Chivington
was charged with unnecessary brutality by men who knew little about the affair,
because the Indians were generally slaughtered. But the Western people, who
understood the situation well, have not ceased to praise Colonel Chivington and
his heroic command for removing the cause of their chief calamities. That
battle put an end to the Indian hostilities for fifteen years, and relieved a
terror-stricken people as no conciliatory policy could have done.
In September, 1883, the Pike’s Peak Pioneers of
’58 celebrated, in Denver, the twenty-fifth anniversary of their arrival in the
gold country; and, at the banquet, Colonel Chivington, by request, gave an
account of the Sand Creek battle, which we quote here, in justice to a
patriotic and fearless officer: —
“After many requests, I write this brief and
hasty sketch of that famous, or infamous, battle — famous, when looked upon by
those who know most about it; infamous, when looked at by those who know least
of it. Years have fled away; the smoke of battle has lifted; and time, the
Great Revealer, has placed his seal upon this and contemporary events. If
anything can be justified by its effects, then the noble, daring, sacrificing,
heroic men, who left their lucrative employments and callings, to brook the hardships,
privations, and dangers of a winter campaign on the plains, against the
marauding, thieving, and murdering Cheyenne and Arapahoe Indians, must stand
justified. Preeminently so.
“These men were not murderers of innocent,
helpless women, as some silly people believe. What are the exact facts in the
premises? On the 13th day of April, 1864, a herdsman, of Irvin, Jackman &
Co., government freighters, came into district headquarters, and reported that
the Cheyennes and Arapahoes had driven off about sixty head of their work-oxen
and ten or twelve head of mules and horses from the winter camp on Kiowa, some
thirty miles south of Denver. The district commander sent orders to Captain
Sanborn, in command of troops on the Platte, below Denver, to send out a
detachment to intercept the Indians where they would cross the river, and
recover the stolen stock, and return it to its owners; but be careful, if
possible, to avoid a fight with the Indians. The troops were sent under command
of Lieut. Clark Dunn, a careful and prudent officer. The Indians were
overtaken, as was expected, just as they were crossing the river. Lieutenant
Dunn crossed over to the side where the Indians were, and engaged them in a
parley or talk about the stolen stock. While this was going on, Dunn discovered
that the Indians were running off the stock. A blinding snow-storm was in
progress; and Dunn told the chiefs that they must stop running the stock away,
or he would be compelled to take it by force. This incensed the Indian chief so
much that he gave a signal, and the Indians fired on the Lieutenant when in
treaty under a flag of truce. Of course, the troops rode to the rescue of their
officers. The Indians outnumbered Dunn’s forces four to one. Darkness had now
set in. Hence, the Indians escaped with their booty.
“Mutilating
whole families, men, women, and children.”
“From this time on, all spring,
summer, and autumn, these Indians, joined by others, were raiding the Platte
and Arkansas river routes of travel, and the out-settlements and stockmen’s
herds, stealing horses, mules, and cattle; robbing and burning houses and other
buildings, attacking trains loaded with merchandise for Denver merchants and
traders, killing the drivers and those in charge, carrying off what they could,
and burning the wagons and remaining contents; murdering and mutilating whole
families, men, women, and children, in a manner too shocking to write or speak
off [sic]. All these long months, and in the midst of general alarm, not only
of those occupying the outposts, but of the dwellers occupying the villages,
the men in the city of Denver feared for the worst. There were only troops in
the district sufficient to escort and protect the United States mails, and
garrison the posts and camps, and to send detachments in pursuit of raiding
bands of Indians.”
After rehearsing the manner of
raising the Third Regiment, for a hundred days, and the hurried march to the
scene of conflict, Colonel Chivington continues: —
“On the night of November 27,
the command camped on the Arkansas River, eight miles above Fort Lyon; and the
arrangement of the campaign may be judged of when it is stated that, on the
morning of the 28th, the command broke camp, and marched into Fort Lyon, before
the garrison of the post was aware of its approach. Here the command rested
till dark, when — joined by two companies of the First Cavalry, of Colorado,
under command of Maj. Scott J. Anthony — it marched for the camp of the
hostiles, about forty miles distant. About midnight, the guide reported himself
lost, and said that Jim Beckwith, on whom he had depended for the last part of
the route, was so blind from age and cold, that he was not willing to proceed
further till daylight. Major Anthony had Jack Smith, a half-breed Cheyenne,
with his command, whose knowledge of the country was brought into requisition,
and the command moved on, as noiselessly as possible, until within eight or ten
miles of the Indian camp, when Jack told Colonel Chivington that any further
advance would be likely to result in the Indians taking flight and running
away; saying : ‘Wolfe, he howle; Injun doge, he hear wolfe, and doge howle,
too. Injun, he hear doge and listen, — hear something, and run off.’ Colonel
Chivington told Jack that he had not had an Indian to eat for some time, and if
he fooled him, and did not take him to the camp of the hostiles, that he would
have him, ‘Jack,’ for breakfast. The march was resumed, and nothing more was
heard of ‘wolfe’ and ‘doge.’ At early dawn, Colonel Chivington and Shoup, who
were one-half or three-fourths of a mile in advance of the command, had the
Indian camp pointed out to them by Jack Smith, who was at once sent to the
rear. The column was halted, and two detachments were sent to cut off the herds
of ponies, which were on two opposite sides of the camp, and probably each a
mile out from camp. The officers in charge of these detachments were strictly
commanded not to permit any firing on the Indians, unless they were first fired
upon. The herd of ponies farthest from us took the alarm first, and headed and
ran for camp. In cutting them off, the troops ran close into the tepee of the
head chief, and were fired upon, and one soldier and his horse fell dead. This
was the signal for a general fight, which it had hoped might be avoided by
cutting off these mounts, and then a talk and terms. The whole command was
ordered to advance and support the detachments, that were now under a heavy
fire from the Indians, who had formed in line just above the camp. Colonel
Chivington found the Indians too strong for his command to drive, until he
succeeded in getting two twelve-pound brass howitzers to the front. The first
shot from one of these broke the Indian lines, and a running fight ensued,
lasting till it was so dark that an Indian could not be distinguished from a
white man.
“Shoot
the dirty red b---h!”
“There were many incidents on
the field that would well bear mention. I will recite one. While sitting on my
horse, glass in hand, about two o’clock p.m., I saw an officer fall from his
horse. I galloped up, and found that he had been wounded with an arrow, and
ordered two troopers near by to assist and protect him till the ambulance came
to take him to the hospital tent. One of the soldiers, speaking excitedly,
said: ‘Look out, Colonel, the same squaw that shot the Major will shoot you!’ and
before I could dismount, and make my horse a breastwork, an arrow came whizzing
past, and cut the rim off my left ear, so that it bled freely. At this, one of
the soldiers brought his carbine to an aim, saying: ‘If that squaw shows her
head above the bank again, I will shoot the top off it.’ His commander
expostulated with him, saying, ‘I would not waste my powder by killing a woman.’
At this instant another arrow flew through the air, and pierced the arm of the
highly civilized soldier, about four inches below the shoulder-joint. I had all
my life some doubts about instantaneous conversions, but here it was as clear
cut as was ever witnessed at an old-fashioned Methodist camp-meeting. Before,
it was the officer who was shot; now, it was himself. Before, he would not
shoot a woman; now, he fairly shrieked, ‘Shoot the dirty, red b---h!’ and the
order was obeyed; and the squaw was shot; and I approved it. If the fools in
the East and elsewhere, who are still shouting themselves hoarse, could only
have turned loose upon them for a little time a band of hostile Cheyennes, and
I could witness the scene, I would be more than compensated for all the mean
things they have said and are saying about me and the troops under my command
at Sand Creek.
Chivington
claims hundreds of warriors killed.
“The number of Indians killed,
as near as I could estimate from the reports of company and battalion
commanders, was from five hundred to seven hundred and fifty. I am inclined to
think the latter number nearest correct. We captured a large number of ponies,
mules, and horses. From these I allowed the men of the command, whose horses
had died or given out on the march, to choose another, and ordered the
remainder of them to be turned over to Capt. Dandow Mullen, Assistant
Quartermaster of volunteers at Denver, which was done, and Captain Mullen sold
them at public auction and accounted for the proceeds in his returns to the
Quartermaster’s department. We burned the tepees, or tents, destroyed their
provisions, turned over to the hospital the robes and blankets we took for the
benefit of our sick and wounded, of whom we now had a large number.
“Was Sand Creek a massacre? If
it was, we had massacres almost without number during the late rebellion. That
there may have been some excesses committed on the field, no one will deny. Was
there ever a battle fought in which no excesses were committed? We were on the
ground, were ‘wide awake and duly sober’; there were not ten minutes at a time
for ten hours that we were not overlooking the whole scene of strife; and after
nineteen years, less two and a half months, we say unhesitatingly that it was
remarkably free from undue atrocities. I saw in a newspaper within a month that
Gen. S. R. Curtis, commanding the department, denied all responsibility for the
whole affair. Here is his last word by telegraph to the district commander: ‘Pursue
everywhere and punish the Cheyennes and Arapahoes; pay no attention to district
lines. No presents must be made and no peace concluded without my order.’ It
has been an open secret to the writer ever since the battle that the
misrepresentation of this whole affair from the beginning was a combination
consisting of one man who was disappointed of promotion, and some others who
were aspirants for office and wanted several connected with the campaign out of
their way. I heard a judge of common pleas in Ohio, a Friend Quaker, and
colonel of an Ohio regiment during the Rebellion, say only last week, when this
subject was on the tapis, that he was expecting to be arrested pretty soon, and
when asked why, he said, ‘I captured three Rebel soldiers who had Fort Pillow
blazoned on the front of their hats. I sent them to the rear under guard of
three soldiers. The soldiers returned to camp, and I asked them what had become
of the prisoners. They replied that they had tried to escape and they had shot
them, and I knew very well that they had shot them because of their boast that
they had participated in the Fort Pillow affair, and did not arrest them
because I thought they did about half right.’ Take the report of the committee
on the conduct of the war in the matter of General Sherman’s having ten
thousand men slaughtered by the rebels only just to show Pemberton, or some
other rebel commander, that he would fight. No man can afford to be tried by a
star-chamber court.
“I stand
by Sand Creek.”
“But were not these Indians
peaceable? Oh, yes; peaceable! Well, a few hundred of them have been peaceable
for almost nineteen years, and none of them have been so troublesome as they
were before Sand Creek. What are the facts? How about that treaty that Governor
John Evans did not make with them in the summer of 1864?' He, with Major Lowe,
Major Whiteley, two of his Indian agents, and the usual corps of attachés
under escort, went out on the Kiowa to treat. When he got there they [the
Native Americans] had gone a day’s march further out on the plains and would
meet him there, and so on, day after day they moved out as he approached,
until, wearied out, and suspicious of treachery, he returned without succeeding
in his mission of peace. He told them by message that he had presents for them;
but it was not peace and presents they wanted, but war and plunder.
“What of the peaceableness of
their attack on General Blunt’s advance guard north of Fort Larned, almost
annihilating the advance before succor could reach them? What of the dove-like
peace of their attack on the government train on Walnut Creek, east of Fort
Larned, under the guise of friendship, till the drivers and attachés of
the train were in their power, and by a signal struck down at once every man,
only a boy of thirteen years barely escaping, and he with a loss of his scalp,
taken to his ears, and he finally died?
“That was a very friendly act
these Indians did when they run the entire herd of stock at Fort Larned one
Sunday morning after they drew their rations for the succeeding week. This herd
consisted of all the cavalry and artillery horses, all the quartermaster’s
animals, and all the beef cattle belonging to the caravansary departments at
the post. What of the trains captured from Walnut Creek to Sand Creek on the
Arkansas route, and from the Little Blue to the Kiowa on the Platte route? Of
supplies and wagons burned and carried off, and of the men killed? What of the
massacre of the Hunyan family? Alas! what of the stock, articles of
merchandise, fine silk dresses, infants’ and youths’ apparel, the embroidered
night- gowns and chemises? Aye, what of the scalps of white men, women, and
children, several of which they had not had time to dry and tan since taken?
These, all these, and more, were taken from the belts of dead warriors on the
battle-field of Sand Creek, and from their teepes which fell into our hands on
the twenty-ninth day of November, 1864. What of that Indian blanket that was
captured, fringed with white women’s scalps? What says the sleeping dust of the
two hundred and eight men, women, and children, ranchers, emigrants, herders,
and soldiers, who lost their lives at the hands of these Indians? Peaceable!
Now we are peaceably disposed, but decline giving such testimonials of our
peaceful proclivities; and I say here, as I said in my own town in the Quaker
county of Clinton, State of Ohio, in a speech one night last week, — I stand by
Sand Creek.”
Colonel Chivington “stands by
Sand Creek,” and we stand by him, as we think every faithful chronicler of
history must do. (240-246)
.JPG)
