Early in January, an urgent and most pressing appeal was made for Lee's army; and the people, most of whom knew not where they would get bread for their children in three months' time, responded nobly, as they had always done to any call for "the soldiers." Few were the hearts in any part of the land that did not thrill at the thought that those who were fighting; for us were in want of food. From the humble cabin on the hill-side, where the old brown spinning-wheel and the rude loom were the only breastworks against starvation, up through all grades of life, there were none who did not feel a deep and tender, almost heartbreaking solicitude for our noble soldiers. For them the last barrel of flour was divided, the last luxury in homes that had once abounded was cheerfully surrendered. Every available resource was taxed, every expedient of domestic economy was put in practice—as indeed had been done all along; but our people went to work even yet with fresh zeal. I speak now of Central North-Carolina, where many families of the highest respectability and refinement lived for months on corn-bread, sorghum, and peas; where meat was seldom on the table, tea and coffee never; where dried apples and peaches were a luxury; where children went barefoot through the winter, and ladies made their own shoes, and wove their own homespuns; where the carpets were cut up into blankets, and window-curtains and sheets were torn up for hospital uses; where soldiers' socks were knit day and night, while for home service clothes were twice turned, and patches were patched again; and all this continually, and with an energy and a cheerfulness that may well be called heroic.
There were localities in the State where a few rich planters boasted of having "never felt the war;" there were ladies whose wardrobes encouraged the blockade-runners, and whose tables were still heaped with all the luxuries they had ever known. There were such doubtless in every State in the Confederacy. I speak not now of these, but of the great body of our citizens—the middle class as to fortune, generally the highest as to cultivation and intelligence—these were the people who denied themselves and their little ones, that they might be able to send relief to the gallant men who lay in the trenches before Petersburgh, and were even then living on crackers and parched corn.
The fall of Fort Fisher and the occupation of Wilmington, the failure of the peace commission, and the unchecked advance of Sherman's army northward from Savannah, were the all-absorbing topics of discussion with our people during the first months of the year 1865. The tide of war was rolling in upon us. Hitherto our privations, heavily as they had borne upon domestic comfort, had been light in comparison with those of the people in the States actually invaded by the Federal armies; but now we were to be qualified to judge, by our own experience, how far their trials and losses had exceeded ours. What the fate of our pleasant towns and villages and of our isolated farm-houses would be, we could easily read by the light of the blazing roof-trees that lit up the path of the advancing army. General Sherman's principles were well known, for they had been carefully laid down by him in his letter to the Mayor of Atlanta, September, 1864, and had been thoroughly put in practice by him in his further progress since. To shorten the war by increasing its severity: this was his plan—simple, and no doubt to a certain extent effective. But it is surely well worth serious inquiry and investigation on the part of those who decide these questions, and settle the laws of nations, how far the laws and usages of war demand and justify the entire ruin of a country and its unresisting inhabitants by the invading army; or if those laws, as they are interpreted by the common-sense of civilized humanity, do indeed justify such a course, how far they are susceptible of change and improvement.
That the regulations which usually obtain in armies invading an enemy's country do at least permit every species of annoyance and oppression, tending to assist the successful prosecution of the war, to be exercised toward non-combatants, is unhappily testified by the annals of even modern and so-called Christian warfare. Especially are the evil passions of a brutal soldiery excited and inflamed where the inhabitants betake themselves to guerrilla or partisan warfare; and more especially and fatally in the case of long-protracted sieges, or the taking of a town by storm. The excesses committed by both the English and the French armies in the war of the Peninsula are recorded (and execrated) by their own generals, and are characterized by the historian as "all crimes which man in his worst excesses can commit—horrors so atrocious that their very atrocity preserves them from our full execration because it makes it impossible to describe them." Havoc and ruin have always accompanied invading armies to a greater or less degree, modified by the causes of the war, the character of the commanding officers, and the amount of discipline maintained.
A little more historical and political knowledge diffused among her people might have saved the South the unnecessarily bitter lesson she has received on this matter. Very, very few of the unthinking young men and women who clamored so madly for war four years ago, knew what fiend they were invoking. Few, very few of their leaders knew. Could the curtain that vailed the future have been lifted but for a moment before them, how would they have recoiled horror-stricken! But while admitting that in cases of very bitter national hatreds, ill-disciplined soldiery, and raw generals, excesses are allowed and defended, it is also the province of history to point with pride to those instances where veteran commanders, knowing well the horrors of war, seek to alleviate its miseries, and "seize the opportunities of nobleness," and, believing with Napier, that "discipline has its root in patriotism," do effectually control the armies they lead. Of such as these there are happily not a few great names whose humanity and generosity exhibited to the unfortunate inhabitants of the country they were traversing lend additional lustre to their fame as consummate soldiers. I shall, however, recall but one example to confirm this position—an example likely to be particularly interesting to Southerners as a parallel, and most striking as a contrast, to General Sherman's course in the South.
In the month of January, 1781, exactly eighty-four years before General Sherman's artillery trains woke the echoes through the heart of the Carolinas, it pleased God to direct the course of another invading army along much the same track; an army that had come three thousand miles to put down what was in truth "a rebellion;" an army stanch in enthusiastic loyalty to the government for whose rights it was contending; an army also in pursuit of retreating "rebels," and panting to put the finishing blow to a hateful secession, and whose commander endeavored to arrive at his ends by strategical operations very much resembling those which in this later day were crowned with success. Here the parallel ends. The country traversed then and now by invading armies was, eighty-four years ago, poor and wild and thinly settled. Instead of a single grand, deliberate, and triumphant march through a highly cultivated and undefended country, there had been many of the undulations of war in the fortunes of that army—now pursuing, now retreating—and finally, in the last hot chase of the flying (and yet triumphant) rebels from the southern to the northern border of North-Carolina, that invading army, to add celerity to its movements, voluntarily and deliberately destroyed all its baggage and stores, the noble and accomplished Commander-in-Chief himself setting the example. The inhabitants of the country, thinly scattered and unincumbered with wealth, exhibited the most determined hostility to the invaders, so that if ever an invading army had good reason and excuse for ravaging and pillaging as it passed along, that army may surely be allowed it.
What was the policy of its commander under such circumstances toward the people of Carolina?
I have before me now Lord Cornwallis's own order-book—truly venerable and interesting—bound in leather, with a brass clasp, the paper coarse and the ink faded, but the handwriting uncommonly good, and the whole in excellent preservation. A valuable relic in these days, when it is well to know what are the traits which go to make a true soldier, and how he may at least endeavor to divest war of its brutality. A few extracts will show what Cornwallis's principles were.
"Camp near Beattie's Ford, }
January 28, 1781. }"Lord Cornwallis has so often experienced the zeal and good-will of the army, that he has not the smallest doubt that the officers and soldiers will most cheerfully submit to the ill conveniences that must naturally attend war so remote from water carriage and the magazines of the army. The supply of rum for a time will be absolutely impossible, and that of meal very uncertain. It is needless to point out to the officers the necessity of preserving the strictest discipline, and of preventing the oppressed people from suffering violence by the hands from whom they are taught to look for protection.
"To prevent the total destruction of the country and the ruin of his Majesty's service, it is necessary that the regulation in regard to the number of horses taken should be strictly observed. Major-General Leslie will be pleased to require the most exact obedience to this order from the officers commanding brigades and corps. The supernumerary horses that may from time to time be discovered will be sent to headquarters."
"Headquarters, Cansler's Plantation, }
February 2, 1781. }"Lord Cornwallis is highly displeased that several houses have been set on fire to-day during the march—a disgrace to the army—and he will punish with the utmost severity any person or persons who shall be found guilty of committing so disgraceful an outrage. His Lordship requests the commanding officers of the corps will endeavor to find the persons who set fire to the houses this day."