Mohun; Or, the Last Days of Lee and His Paladins. / Final Memoirs of a Staff Officer Serving in Virginia. from the Mss. of Colonel Surry, of Eagle's Nest.

by John Esten Cooke

I. — RICHMOND BY THE THROAT.

I was again back at the “Cedars,” after the rapid and shifting scenes which I have endeavored to place before the reader.

The tragic incidents befalling the actors in this drama, had most absorbed my attention; but sitting now in my tent, with the newspapers before me, I looked at the fight in which I had participated, from the general and historic point of view.

That heavy advance on the Boydton road, beyond Lee’s right, had been simultaneous with a determined assault on the Confederate left, north of James River, and on Lee’s centre opposite Petersburg; and now the extracts from Northern journals clearly indicated that the movement was meant to be decisive.

“I have Richmond by the throat!” General Grant had telegraphed; but there was good ground to believe that the heavy attack, and the eloquent dispatch, were both meant to “make capital” for the approaching Presidential election.

These memoirs, my dear reader, are written chiefly to record some incidents which I witnessed during the war. I have neither time nor space for political comments. But I laid my hand yesterday, by accident, on an old number of the Examiner newspaper; and it chanced to contain an editorial on the fight just described, with some penetrating views on the “situation” at that time.

Shall I quote a paragraph from the yellow old paper? It will be bitter—we were all bitter in those days! though to-day we are so fraternal and harmonious. With his trenchant pen, Daniel pierced to the core of the matter; and the paper may give some idea of the spirit of the times.

I could fancy the great satirist sitting in his lonely study, and penning the lines I shall quote, not without grim smiles at his own mordant humor.

Here is the slip I cut out. The old familiar heading may recall those times to some readers, as clearly as the biting sentences, once read, perhaps, by the camp-fire.

* * * * * DAILY EXAMINER. * * * * * MONDAY MORNING OCT. 31, 1864. * * * * *

“Every day must now bring its brilliant bulletin to the Yankee
nation. That nation does not regard the punctual rising of the sun
as more lawfully due to it than a victory every morning. And those
glorious achievements of SHERIDAN in the Valley were grown cold and
stale, and even plainly hollow and rotten—insomuch that, after
totally annihilating the army of EARLY at least three times, and so
clearing the way to Lynchburg, instead of marching up to Lynchburg
the heroick victor goes whirling down to Winchester. Then the
superb victory obtained on Sunday of last week over PRICE in
Missouri, has taken a certain bogus tint, which causes many to
believe that there was, in fact, no victory and no battle. This
would not do. Something fresh must be had; something electrifying;
above all, something that would set the people to cheering and
firing off salutes about the very day of the election;—something,
too, that could not be plainly contradicted by the events till
after that critical day—then let the contradiction come and
welcome: your true Yankee will only laugh.
“From this necessity came the great ‘reconnoissance in force’ of
last Thursday on our lines before Richmond and Petersburg; a
‘reconnoissance’ in very heavy force indeed upon three points of
our front at once both north and south of the James river; so that
it may be very properly considered as three reconnoissances in
force; made with a view of feeling, as it were, LEE’S position; and
the object of the three reconnoissances having been fully
attained—that is, LEE having been felt—they retired. That is the
way in which the transactions of Thursday last are to appear in
STANTON’S bulletin, we may be all quite sure; and this
representation, together with the occupation of a part of the
Boydton plank-road (which road the newspapers can call for a few
days the Southside Road) will cause every city from Boston to
Milwaukee to fire off its inevitable hundred guns. Thus, the
Presidential election will be served, just in the nick of time; for
that emergency it is not the real victory which is wanted, so much
as the jubilation, glorification and cannon salutes.
“Even when the truth comes to be fully known that this was the
grand pre-election assault itself: the resistless advance on
Richmond which was to lift the Abolitionists into power again upon
a swelling high-tide of glory unutterable—easily repulsed and sent
rolling back with a loss of about six or seven thousand men in
killed, wounded and prisoners; even when this is known, does the
reader imagine that the Yankee nation will be discouraged? Very far
from it. On the contrary it will be easily made to appear that from
these ‘reconnoissances in force,’ an advantage has been gained,
which is to make the next advance a sure and overwhelming success.
For the fact is, that a day was chosen for this mighty movement,
when the wind was southerly, a soft and gentle breeze, which wafted
the odour of the Yankee whiskey-rations to the nostrils of
Confederate soldiers. The Confederates ought to have been taken by
surprise that morning; but the moment they snuffed the tainted
gale, they knew what was to be the morning’s work. Not more
unerring is the instinct which calls the vulture to the
battle-field before a drop of blood is shed; or that which makes
the kites ‘know well the long stern swell, that bids the Romans
close;’ than the sure induction of our army that the Yankees are
coming on, when morn or noon or dewy eve breathes along the whole
line a perfumed savour of the ancient rye. The way in which this
discovery may be improved is plain. It will be felt and understood
throughout the intelligent North, that it gives them at last the
key to Richmond. They will say—Those rebels, to leeward of us,
smell the rising valour of our loyal soldiers: the filling and
emptying of a hundred thousand canteens perfumes the sweet South as
if it had passed over a bed of violets, stealing and giving
odours:—when the wind is southerly it will be said, rebels know a
hawk from a handsaw. Therefore it is but making our next grand
assault on some morning when they are to windward of us—creeping
up, in the lee of LEE, as if he were a stag—and Richmond is ours.”

That is savage, and sounds unfraternal to-day, when peace and good feeling reign—when the walls of the Virginia capitol re-echo the stately voices of the conscript fathers of the great commonwealth and mother of States: conscript fathers bringing their wisdom, mature study, and experience to the work of still further improving the work of Jefferson, Mason, and Washington.

“I have Richmond by the throat!” General Grant wrote in October, 1864. In February, 1868, when these lines are written, black hands have got Virginia by the throat, and she is suffocating; Cuffee grins, Cuffee gabbles—the groans of the “Old Mother” make him laugh.

Messieurs of the great Northwest, she gave you being, and suckled you! Are you going to see her strangled before your very eyes?

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