The Last Ninety Days of the War in North-Carolina

by Cornelia Phillips Spencer

"The Federal soldiers searched my house from garret to cellar, and plundered it of every thing portable; took all my provisions, emptied the pantries of all stores, and did not leave me a mouthful of any kind of supplies for one meal's victuals. They took all my clothing, even the hat off my head, and the shoes and pants from my person; took most of my wife's and children's clothing, all of our bedding; destroyed my furniture, and robbed all my negroes. At leaving they set fire to my fences, out-houses, and dwelling, which, fortunately, I was able to extinguish. The remains of a dozen slaughtered cattle were left in my yard. (Nine dwellings were burned to the ground in this neighborhood. Four gentlemen, whose names are given, were hung up by the neck till nearly dead, to force them to tell where valuables were hidden. One was shot in his own house, and died soon after.) The yard and lot were searched, and all my money, and that of several companies which I represent, was found and taken. All my stocks and bonds were likewise carried off. My wagon, and garden, and lot implements were all burned in my yard. The property taken from another family—the jewelry, plate, money, etc.—was estimated to be worth not less than twenty-five thousand dollars. Hundreds of pleasure vehicles in the town were either wantonly burned in parcels and separately, or carried off with the army. Houses in the suburbs and vicinity suffered more severely than those in the town. No private dwellings in the town were burned, and after the guards were placed the pillage ceased. The misfortune was, that the guards were not placed till the houses had been sacked."

I have other statements, but perhaps these are sufficient for my present purpose.[5] I have given none that can not be verified if necessary, though they differ widely from those of a book lately published at the North, entitled The Story of the Great March, and which is doubtless regarded there as of unquestionable authority. On page 251 I observe it is stated, "Private property in Fayetteville has been respected to a degree which is remarkable;" and on page 253: "The city of Fayetteville was offensively rebellious, and it has been a matter of surprise that our soldiers, who are quick to understand the distinction, have not made the citizens feel it in one way or another." It is just possible that Major Nichols did not know the truth; that, being very evidently of an easy and credulous temper, and too busy making up his little book for sale, he allowed himself to be imposed upon by wicked jokers. Let us all believe that he knew nothing of the robberies that were going on. He was evidently hard of hearing, besides; for he says, page 240, "I have yet to hear of a single outrage offered to a woman by a soldier of our army." Let us all believe that he was too deeply interested in his interviews with the handsome "quadroon family," mentioned on page 237, to know what was going on among the whites. By the way, it would seem these quadroon girls were too deep for him too. His reported conversation with the family is a very amusing tissue of blunders and misrepresentation. Foot-notes should certainly accompany the thirtieth edition, and in particular it should be stated of these "intelligent quadroons," not one of whom was ever named Hannah, and not one of any name was ever sold, that not one of them has yet left the lot of their old master, or expressed a wish to leave. Major Nichols does not seem to know much; but he probably knows this, that it was not for want of asking that these handsome quadroons did not go.

Enough of such disclosures and of such scenes. If it be asked why these have been presented, and why I seek to prolong these painful memories, and to keep alive the remembrances that ought rather to slumber and be forgotten with the dead past, let me reply that it is deliberately, and of set purpose, that I sketch these outlines of a great tragedy for our Northern friends to ponder. The South has suffered; that they admit in general terms, and add, "Such is war." I desire to call their attention to the fact that such is is NOT war, as their own standards declare; that the career of the grand army in the Great March, brilliant as was the design, masterly as was the execution, and triumphant as was the issue, is yet, in its details, a story of which they have no reason to be proud, and which, when truly told, if there be one spark of generosity, one drop of the milk of human kindness in Northern breasts, should turn their bitterness toward the South into tender pity, their exultation over her into a manly regret and remorse. They do not know—they never will know unless Southerners themselves shall tell the mournful story—what the sword hath done in her fair fields and her pleasant places. Their triumphant stories and war-lyrics are not faithful expositors of the woe and ruin wrought upon a defenseless people. When the sounds of conflict have finally died away, I would fain see the calmed senses of a great people who, having fairly won the fight, can afford to be magnanimous, take in clearly the situation of the whole Southern country, and "repent them for their brother Benjamin, and come to the house of God, and weep sore for their brother, and say, O Lord God, why is this come to pass that there should be to-day one tribe lacking in Israel?"

Thousands of delicate women, bred up in affluence, are now bravely working with their hands for their daily bread; many in old age, and alone in the world, are bereft of all their earthly possessions. Thousands of families are absolutely penniless, who have never before known a want ungratified. Let me not be mistaken to represent Southerners as shrinking from work, or ignobly bewailing the loss of luxury and ease. The dignity and the "perennial nobleness" of labor were never more fairly asserted than among us now, and I have never seen, or read, or heard of a braver acceptance of the situation, a more cheerful submission to God's will, or a more spirited application to unaccustomed toils and duties, than are exhibited here this day. Nobody is ashamed of himself, or ashamed of his position, or of his necessities. What the South wants is not charity—charity as an alms—but generosity; that generosity which forbears reproach, or insult, or gay and clamorous exultation, but which silently clears the way of all difficulties, and lends an arm to a fainting, wounded brother; that says, "There must be an inheritance for them that be escaped of Benjamin."

It is for this that I present these sketches, which, but for some good to be accomplished by them, would better have never been written. Where wrongs can not be redressed, or their recital be made available for good, they would far better be buried in oblivion, the wrong-doer and the sufferer alike awaiting in dread repose the final award of the Great Tribunal.

How shall the South begin her new life? How, disfranchised and denied her civil rights, shall she start the wheels of enterprise and business that shall bring work and bread to her plundered, penniless people? How shall her widows and orphans be fed, her schools and colleges be supported, her churches be maintained, unless her rights and liberties be regained—unless every effort be made to give her wounds repose, and restore health and energy to her paralyzed and shattered frame? Is there any precedent in history of a war that ended with the freeing not only from all obligation to labor, but from all disposition to labor, of all the operatives of the conquered country? Is not the social status of the South at present without a parallel? Just emerging from an exhausting and devastating war, the country might well be crippled and poverty-stricken; but with three or four millions of enfranchised slaves, a population that is even now hastening to inaugurate the worst evils of insubordination, idleness, and pauperism among us, what hope for us unless the Northern sense of justice can be aroused into speedy action!

While General Sherman's wagons were wallowing in the mud between Fayetteville and Goldsboro, vain attempts were being made in Raleigh to galvanize into some show of action and strength the fragments of an army that were concentrating there. General Lee's desperate situation in Virginia was not understood and realized by the multitude, nor that the Confederate territory was fast narrowing down to the northern counties of Central North-Carolina, and that Raleigh was the last capital city we could claim. Beauregard, Johnston, Hardee, Hoke, Hampton, Wheeler—names that had thrilled the whole Southern country with pride and exultation—they were all there, and for a time people endeavored to believe that Raleigh might be defended. General Sherman's plans appeared to be inscrutable. When he left Columbia, Charlotte was supposed to be his aim; but when he fell suddenly upon Fayetteville, then Raleigh was to be his next stage. The astute plan of a junction with Schofield at Goldsboro, which appears now to have been pre-arranged while he was yet in Savannah, did not dawn upon our minds till it was too late to prevent it. The fight at Bentonsville was a desperate and vain attempt to do what might possibly have been done before, and in that last wild struggle many a precious life was given in vain. With sad anxiety for the fate of those we loved, with sinking hearts, we heard, from day to day, from Averasboro and from Bentonsville, of the wild charge, the short, fierce struggle, and the inevitable retreat, little thinking that these were indeed the last life-throbs of our dying cause.

There was one from our own circle, whose story is but a representative one of the many thousand such that now darken what was once the Sunny South. He had joined the army in the beginning of the war, and his wife and children had fled from their pleasant home near New-Berne, on its first occupation by the Federal forces, leaving the negroes, plantation, house, furniture, and all to the invaders. They had taken refuge at Chapel Hill among old friends; and in a poor and inconvenient home, those who had counted their wealth by thousands were glad of a temporary shelter, as was the case with hundreds of families from the east, scattered all over the central part of the State. The energetic wife laid aside the habits of a lifetime and went to work, while her brave husband was in the army. From New-Berne to Richmond, from Charleston to the Blackwater, we, who had known him from boyhood, traced his gallant career, sharing his wife's triumphs in his successes, and her fears in his perils. Her health in unaccustomed toils began to fail, but we looked forward hopefully to the time when she might return to her beautiful home on the sea-shore, where a blander air would restore her. So we read his loving, cheerful letters, and believed that the life which had been spared through so many battles would yet be guarded for the sake of the wife and the curly-haired little ones. On the twenty-second of March, riding unguardedly near a thicket, our friend received the fire of a squad of sharp-shooters concealed there. He fell from his horse and was carried to a place of safety, where he lay on the muddy ground of the trampled battle-field for a few hours, murmuring faintly at intervals, "My wife! my poor wife!" till death mercifully came. He was wrapped by his faithful servant in his blood-stained uniform and muddy blankets as he lay; a coarse box was procured with great difficulty, and so the soldier was brought back to his family. His last visit home had been just before the fall of Fort Fisher; and when the news of the attack came, though his furlough was not out by ten days, yet he left at once for Wilmington, saying, "It was every man's duty to be at the front." He had returned to us now, "off duty forever." Loving hands laid him slowly and sadly down to a soldier's honored rest, while his little children stood around the grave. The wife made an effort to live for these children. She bore up through that woful spring and summer, and the thin, white, trembling hands were ever at work. But the brown hair turned gray rapidly, the easy-chair was relinquished for the bed, and before winter came the five children were left alone in the world. The wife had joined her husband. The ample estate that should have been theirs was gone. Strangers were in their home by the sea, and had divided out their lands; nor is it yet known whether they will be permitted to claim their inheritance.

This man, Colonel Edward B. Mallett, brave, beloved, lamented, was also a grandson of the gay girl who had entertained Lord Cornwallis in her house near Cross Creek, and his fortunes were linked with those of the brother whose house and factory had been burned so lately. Thus did the destruction in one part of the State help on and intensify the ruin in another part.