"We consumed the corn and fodder in the region of country thirty miles on either side of a line from Atlanta to Savannah; also the sweet potatoes, hogs, sheep, and poultry, and carried off more than ten thousand horses and mules. I estimate the damage done to the State of Georgia at one hundred million dollars; at least twenty million dollars of which inured to our advantage, and the remainder was simple waste and destruction." (Official Report.)
Simple people, who understand nothing of military necessities, must be permitted to stand aghast at such a recital, and ask why was this? To what end? What far-sighted policy dictated such wholesale havoc? Lord Cornwallis—a foreigner—acting as a representative of the mother country, seeking to reclaim her alienated children, we have seen everywhere anxious to conciliate, generously active to spare the country as much as possible, to preserve it for the interests of the mother country, and enforcing strict discipline in his army for the benefit of the service. What changes have been effected in the morale of war by nearly a century of Christian progress and civilization since Lord Cornwallis's day? An army, in the middle of the nineteenth century, acting as the representative of sister States, seeking to reclaim "wayward sisters"—an army enlisted with the most extraordinary and emphatic avowals of purely philanthropic motives that the world has ever heard—an army marching through what it professes to consider AS ITS OWN COUNTRY—this army leaves a waste and burning track behind it of sixty miles' width!
"O bloodiest picture in the book of Time!
Sarmatia fell unwept, without a crime;
Found not a generous friend, a pitying foe,
Strength in her arms, nor mercy in her woe!
Dropped from her nerveless grasp the shattered spear,
Closed her bright eye, and curbed her high career."
The gay and airy pen-and-ink sketches, furnished to the Northern press by "our own army correspondents," of the exploits of bummers, the jocular descriptions of treasure-seekers, the triumphant records of fire, famine, and slaughter, served up with elegant illustrations—wood-cuts in Harper's best style—and, if likely to be a trifle too glaring for even radical sensibilities, toned down and made to assume an air of retributive justice by a timely allusion to the "wretched slaves"—these interesting reports, piquant and gayly-colored and suggestive though they were, were yet dull and tame and faded in comparison with the dismal reality. And all this "waste and destruction," it will be the verdict of posterity, even the calmed sense of the present generation will agree, was wholly uncalled for, wholly unnecessary, contributed in no way to the prosperous and speedy termination of the war, but added materially to the losses by the war of the General Government, lit up the fires of hatred in many a hitherto loyal Southern breast, brutalized and demoralized the whole Federal army, and was in short inexcusable in every aspect except upon the determination to exterminate the Southern people. We knew that there were men in the Church and in the State who openly avowed such aspirations; but as to the great body of the sober, intelligent, and conscientious Northern people, we do them the justice to believe that when the history of the war at the South comes to be truthfully written, they will receive its records with incredulity; and when belief is compelled, will turn from them shuddering.
The smoke of burning Columbia, and of the fair villages and countless plantations that lay in the route, where, for hundreds of miles, many a house was left blazing, and not a panel of fence was to be seen, rolled slowly up our sky; and panic-stricken refugees, homeless and penniless, brought every day fresh tales of havoc and ruin. By the eleventh of March, General Sherman was in possession of Fayetteville, in our own State.
The coïncidences in the plan, and the contrasts in the mode of conducting the campaigns of Lord Cornwallis and General Sherman, are striking, and suggestive to the student of history. Cornwallis hesitated whether to strike North-Carolina in the heart of the whig settlements—between the Yadkin and the Catawba—or enter among his friends between the Pedee and Cape Fear, and ultimately decided to accomplish both purposes. In January, 1781, Sir James Henry Craig captured Wilmington, and on the nineteenth of February, Lord Cornwallis forced the passage of the Catawba at Beattie's Ford. General Schofield had possession of Wilmington when General Sherman, making a feint at Charlotte, captured Fayetteville.
In Lord Cornwallis's progress through Carolina he met with every thing to exasperate him in the conduct of the people. On his first entrance into Charlotte, September, 1780, the whole British army was actually held at bay for half an hour by a body of about one hundred and fifty militia, and a few volunteers, commanded by Major Joseph Graham, posted behind the court-house and houses, and commanded by Colonel Davie, who was "determined to give his lordship an earnest of what he might expect in the State." Three separate charges of the British Legion were repulsed by this handful of devoted men, who retired at last on being flanked by the infantry, in perfect order, with but a loss of eleven killed and wounded, while the British admitted a loss of forty-three killed and wounded. "When the Legion was afterward reproached for cowardice in suffering such a check from so small a detail of militia, they excused themselves by saying that the confidence with which the Americans behaved made them apprehend an ambuscade, for surely nothing of that sort was to be expected in an open village at mid-day." I have by me as I write, in Colonel Davie's own handwriting, his account of "the affair at Charlotte," as he modestly styles it, and it is well worth comparing with Tarleton's and Stedman's report of the same. A more brilliant and audacious exploit was not performed during the whole Revolutionary war. A series of such annoyances, heading and dogging the British army at every step all through that country, gained for Charlotte the well-earned and enviable sobriquet of "The Hornets' Nest," and the commander-in-chief paid the whole region the compliment of declaring that "Mecklenburg and Rowan were the two most rebellious counties in America."
Yet Cornwallis burned no houses here—plundered no plantations. His aim was very apparently to conciliate if possible, to teach the people to look to him for protection and a good government. To be sure, he had not enjoyed the benefit of a West-Point military training—he was evidently in profound ignorance of the advantages to be derived from the principle of "smashing things generally," as he passed along; but he was, nevertheless, (perhaps in consequence,) a gentleman, and an accomplished statesman, as well as a consummate soldier. He well knew—
"——who overcomes
By force, hath overcome but half his foe."
As to Fayetteville, and her lot in these later days, no such slight sketch as this will suffice for the story. Perhaps no town in the South had surpassed her in the ardor and liberality with which (after secession had become the law of the State) she supported the war. She gave her bravest sons; her best blood was poured out like water in the cause of the South, and then she gave of her substance. The grace of giving had surely been bestowed upon the people of Cumberland without measure, for there seemed literally no end to their liberality. For four years the columns of their papers had exhibited an almost weekly list of donations, that in number and value would have done infinite credit to a much wealthier community. The ladies, as usual, were especially active and indefatigable. Where, indeed, in all the sunny South were they not? And why should they not have been? They were working for their fathers, husbands, sons, brothers, and lovers, and for principles which these beloved ones had instructed them to cherish. Would it not have been culpable in the last degree for the women of the country to have remained even indifferent to a cause (good or bad) for which the men were laying down their lives? Why should they not take joyfully all privations and all hardships, for the sake of these, and soothe the agony of bereavement with the belief that they who needed their cares no longer, lying rolled in their bloody blankets in the bosom of Virginia, or on the fatal hills of Pennsylvania, had died in a good cause and were resting in honored graves? Who shall question the course of the women of the South in this war, or dare to undervalue their lofty heroism and fortitude, unsurpassed in story or in song? When I forget you, O ye daughters of my country! your labors of love, your charity, faith, and patience, all through the dark and bloody day, lighting up the gloom of war with the tender graces of woman's devotion and self-denial, and now, in even darker hours, your energy and cheerful submission in toil and poverty and humiliation—when I cease to do homage to your virtues, and to your excellences, may my right hand forget its cunning and my voice be silent in the dust!