JUDGE RUFFIN—HIS HISTORY—HIS CHARACTER—HIS SERVICES—GENERAL COUCH'S OUTRAGES AFTER PEACE HAD BEEN DECLARED—GENERAL SHERMAN'S OUTRAGES—HIS UNBLUSHING OFFICIAL REPORT.—"ARMY CORRESPONDENTS"—SHERMAN IN FAYETTEVILLE—CORNWALLIS IN FAYETTEVILLE—COINCIDENCES OF PLANS—CONTRASTS IN MODES—THE NEGRO SUFFERS—TROOPS CONCENTRATING UNDER GENERAL JOHNSTON.
In the first week of May, 1865, after the final surrender of General Johnston's army, and after General Grant's proclamation of protection to private property, Major-General Couch, with a detachment of some twelve or fourteen thousand infantry, passing up the main road from Raleigh to Greensboro, encamped on a noble plantation, beautifully situated on both sides of the Haw river, in Alamance county. Of the venerable owner of this plantation I might be pardoned if I were to give more than a cursory notice; for, as a representative North-Carolinian, and identified for nearly fifty years with all that is best in her annals and brightest in her reputation at home and abroad, no citizen in the State is regarded with more pride and veneration than Judge Ruffin. His claims to such distinction, however, are not to be fairly exhibited within the limits of such a sketch as this, though a reference to his public services will have a significant value in my present connection.
Judge Ruffin was born in 1786, graduated at Princeton in 1806, was admitted to the bar in 1808, and from the year 1813, when he first represented Hillsboro in the House of Commons, to the present time, he has been prominently before the people of our State, holding the highest offices within her gift with a reputation for learning, ability, and integrity unsurpassed in our judicial annals. In the year 1852, after forty-five years of brilliant professional life, he resigned the Chief-Justiceship, and, amid the applause and regret of all classes of his fellow-citizens, retired to the quiet enjoyment of an ample estate acquired by his own eminent labors, and to the society of a numerous and interesting family.
The judicial ermine which Judge Ruffin had worn for so many years not only shielded him from, but absolutely forbade, all active participation in party politics. He was, however, no uninterested observer of the current of events. He had been warmly opposed to nullification in 1832, and was no believer in the rights of peaceable secession in 1860. In private circles, he combated both heresies with all that "inexorable logic" which the London Times declared to be characteristic of his judicial opinions on the law of master and slave. He regarded the "sacred right of revolution" as the remedy for the redress of insupportable grievances only. His opinions on these subjects were well known, when, in 1861, he was unexpectedly summoned by the Legislature to the head of the able delegation sent by the State to the Peace Convention at Washington. The reference to his course there, in the first of these sketches, renders it unnecessary to say more at present. Eminent statesmen, now in high position in the national councils, can testify to his zealous and unremitting labors in that Convention to preserve and perpetuate the union of the States; and none, doubtless, will do so more cordially than the venerable military chieftain[3] who, sixty years ago, was his friend and fellow-student in the office of an eminent lawyer in Petersburgh.
Judge Ruffin returned home, dispirited and discouraged by the temper displayed in the Convention, and still more by the proceedings of Congress. He still cherished hopes of reconciliation, however, when, without any canvass by or for him, he was elected to the Convention which, on the twentieth of May, 1861, adopted, by a unanimous vote, the Ordinance of Secession.
Having given that vote, he was not the man to shrink from the responsibilities it involved. In common with every other respectable citizen in the State, he felt it his duty to encourage and animate our soldiers, and to contribute liberally to their support and that of their families at home. His sons who were able to bear arms were in the battle-field, and his family endured all the privations, and practiced all the self-denial common to our people; cheerfully dispensing with the luxuries of life, and laboring assiduously for the relief of the army and the needy around them.
Toward this most eminent and venerable citizen, whose name added weight to the dignity and influence of the whole country, what was the policy of Major-General Couch, encamped on his grounds, in the pleasant month of May? The plantation had already suffered from the depredations of Major-General Wheeler's cavalry of the Confederate army in its hurried transit; but it was reserved for General Couch to give it the finishing touch. In a few words, ten miles of fencing were burned up, from one end of it to the other; not an ear of corn, not a sheaf of wheat, not a bundle of fodder was left; the army wagons were driven into the cultivated fields and orchards and meadows, and fires were made under the fruit-trees; the sheep and hogs were shot down and left to rot on the ground, and several thousand horses and cattle were turned in on the wheat crops, then just heading. All the horses, seventeen in number, were carried off, and all the stock. An application for protection, and remonstrance against wanton damage, were met with indifference and contempt.
Such being the course of one of General Sherman's subaltern officers in time of peace, it is natural to turn to General Sherman himself, and inquire what was the example set by him in the progress of "the great march." He speaks for himself, and history will yet deliver an impartial verdict on such a summing up: