As I rode up I saw General Lee dismounted and standing on a railroad embankment, intently observing our fleeing men, who now began to throng about him. He very quietly but firmly let them know that it would be best not to collect in groups; the importance of which they at once understood and acted on.
Approaching night, which on previous occasions, when conditions were reversed, had interfered to our disadvantage, now shielded us from further pursuit. It can readily be seen what demoralization would follow such an exhibition of our utter helplessness. But still there seemed to be no alternative but to prolong the agony, although perfectly assured that we could not escape death or capture, and that in a very brief time. Soon after nightfall I found our battery, which had traveled over a shorter and less exposed road, and thereby escaped the adventures which had fallen to my lot. Our course was now toward High Bridge, which spans the Appomattox River near Farmville. On we toiled throughout the night, making very slow progress, but not halting until near noon the following day. Under present conditions there were not the ordinary inducements to make a halt, as food for man and beast was not in evidence. I had not eaten a bite for forty-eight hours. Notwithstanding this, and as if to draw attention from our empty stomachs, orders came to countermarch and meet a threatened attack on the line in our rear. To this the two guns with their detachments promptly responded, reported to General Mahone and took part with his division in a spirited battle at Cumberland Church.
It has been stated, by those who had opportunities of knowing, that Mahone's division was never driven from its position in battle throughout the four years of the war. True or not, it held good in this case, and those of our battery who took part with them were enthusiastic over the gallant fight they made under circumstances that were not inspiring. There being a surplus of men to man our two guns, Lieut. Cole Davis and Billy McCauley procured muskets and took part with the infantry sharpshooters. McCauley was killed. He was a model soldier, active and wiry as a cat and tough as a hickory sapling. He had seen infantry service before joining our battery, and, as already mentioned, had "rammed home" one hundred and seventy-five shells in the first battle of Fredericksburg. Another member of our company, Launcelot Minor, a boy of less than eighteen years, was shot through the lungs by a Minie-ball. Although he was thought to be dying, our old ambulance driver, John L. Moore, insisted on putting him into the ambulance, in which he eventually hauled him to his home in Albemarle County, fifty or sixty miles distant. After some days he regained consciousness, recovered entirely, and is now a successful and wealthy lawyer in Arkansas, and rejoices in meeting his old comrades at reunions. His first meeting with Moore after the incident related above was at a reunion of our company in Richmond thirty years after the war, and their greeting of each other was a memorable one.
CHAPTER XXIX
APPOMATTOX
Another night was now at hand, and while it might be supposed that nothing could be added to intensify the suspense there certainly was nothing to allay it. Although there was little left to destroy, we passed heaps of burning papers, abandoned wagons, etc., along the roadsides.
As each new scene or condition in our lives gives rise to some new and corresponding feeling or emotion, our environment at this time was such as to evoke sensations of dread and apprehension hitherto unknown. Moving parallel with us, and extending its folds like some huge reptile, was an army equipped with the best the world could afford—three-fold greater in numbers than our own—which in four years had never succeeded in defeating us in a general battle, but which we had repeatedly routed and driven to cover. Impatient of delay in effecting our overthrow in battle, in order to starve us out, marauding bands had scoured the country, leaving ashes and desolation in their wake.
That now their opportunity to pay up old scores had come, we fully realized, and anticipated with dread the day of reckoning. General Grant, who was Commander-in-Chief of all the Federal armies, and at present personally in command of the army about us, was by no means regarded as a man of mercy. He had positively refused to exchange prisoners, thousands of whom on both sides were languishing and dying in the hands of their captors. It should be borne in mind, in this connection, that the offers to exchange had come from the Confederate authorities, and for the last two years of the war had been invariably rejected by the Federal Government. In the campaign beginning in May, 1864, and ending with the evacuation of Richmond, Grant's army had sustained a loss greater in number than that of the whole army opposed to him.
Among the ranks were foreigners of every nationality. I had seen, as prisoners in our hands, a whole brigade of Germans who could not speak a word of English. During the preceding winter we had been confronted with regiments of our former slaves. Our homes and people we were leaving behind to the mercy of these hordes, as if forever.