General Anderson’s first visit was to General R. E. Lee, who was at dinner, and insisted on our dining with him. It was the most uncomfortable meal that I ever had in my life. General Lee was fond of quizzing young officers, and my frame of mind can be imagined when General Lee spoke to me in this way: “Mr. Dawson, will you take some of this bacon? I fear that it is not very good, but I trust that you will excuse that. John! give Mr. Dawson some water; I pray pardon me for giving you this cup. Our table service is not as complete as it should be. May I give you some bread? I fear it is not well baked, but I hope you will not mind that,” &c., &c., &c.; while my cheeks were red and my ears were tingling, and I wished myself anywhere else than at General Lee’s head-quarters.

On September 28th, General Anderson was ordered to move to the North side of the James River and assume command there. Early the next morning he and his staff and couriers set out for Chaffin’s Bluff. We had ridden some miles when a courier came up in a condition of desperate excitement, and told us that the enemy in great force had attacked the works on the North side of the river, near Chaffin’s Bluff, had captured Battery Harrison, and were probably by this time in Richmond. Sending him on to General Lee’s head-quarters, we put spurs to our horses and rode at a gallop to the river, where we crossed the pontoon bridge and found the condition of affairs almost as bad as had been described. Nothing but want of dash on the part of the enemy had prevented them from taking Richmond. The lines had been held by four or five hundred men of our command, with a small number of the Home Guard from Richmond, and when the enemy had taken Battery Harrison the roads were open to them and they had nothing to do but march right into the Confederate Capital. Fortunately for us, they believed us to be much stronger than we were and waited for reinforcements. Only one hundred and fifty men occupied Battery Harrison when it was attacked. In the afternoon Laws’ Brigade came to our assistance, and with Gregg and Benning repulsed a desperate attack made by the enemy on Battery Gilmer. Here we saw that colored troops could be made to fight for one dash at all events. They came right up to the fort very resolutely, but, encountering an obstinate resistance, they gave way completely and took refuge in the ditch, where they were easily disposed of. It was just the sort of fight that any one would like. Shells with the fuses cut to a half second were thrown into the ditch and played havoc with the terror-stricken negroes.

The next morning, September 30th, General Lee having obtained reinforcements, an effort was made to retake Battery Harrison. The attack was not well arranged apparently, and failed completely. A new defensive line was therefore taken up and fortified, and the enemy were left to make the most of their barren conquest.

There was no fighting of much importance after this until October 7th, when we made an attempt to turn the enemy’s right and drive him back to the river. At first the movement was completely successful and we captured nine pieces of artillery and some prisoners, but when we struck the enemy in position near the New Market Road we were repulsed and General Gregg was killed. It was on this day, unless I am mistaken, that, in a cavalry charge, Colonel A. C. Haskell, of the Seventh S. C. Cavalry, was desperately wounded, and for a time in the hands of the enemy. Volunteers were called for to make a charge and recover the body, and one of these volunteers was C. S. McCall, of Bennettsville, who is now State Senator from Marlboro’ County, in this State, and as gallant a soldier and as good a fellow as we had in the army. There was a touching incident this day when Gregg’s Brigade had been repulsed and Gregg had fallen mortally wounded. General Lee, with General Anderson and a number of officers, was watching the attack, when a boy apparently about eighteen or nineteen years old, his uniform dabbled with blood and his arms hanging limp by his sides, came up to General Lee, and nodding to him said: “General! if you don’t send some more men down there, our boys will get hurt sure.” General Lee asked him if he was wounded. “Yes, sir,” he replied. “Where are you wounded?” asked General Lee. “I am shot through both arms, General; but I don’t mind that General! I want you to send some more men down there to help our boys.” General Lee told him that he would attend to it, and directed one of his staff officers to take charge of this poor boy and see that he was properly cared for.

In a letter which I wrote to England about this time, I gave the price of different articles in Confederate money: a pair of cavalry boots $350; coffee $15 a pound; sugar $10 a pound; a linen collar $5; a pocket handkerchief $10; Richmond papers 50 cents each; tobacco, which two years before was 25 and 30 cents a pound, was selling at $8 or $9 a pound. For the making of a pair of trowsers I paid $100.

[XXVIII.]

A sudden and very welcome change in my position now took place. I cannot say that my connection with General Longstreet had been pleasant to me personally, for the reason that he was disposed to be reserved himself, while the principal members of his staff, with two exceptions, were positively disagreeable. Colonel Sorrell, the Adjutant-General, was bad tempered and inclined to be overbearing. Colonel Fairfax was clownish and silly, and Major Walton, whom I have mentioned before, was always supercilious. Colonel Osman Latrobe was courteous enough at all times, and Colonel Manning was exceedingly kind and considerate. Besides Colonel Manning, I had not a friend on the staff. The staff had “no use” for me, which was perhaps not surprising, as I was a stranger and a foreigner, and I was on no better terms with them in 1864 than I had been in 1862. Still I had the satisfaction of knowing that I had a good reputation in the army as an officer, and that it was known at General Lee’s head-quarters that the whole responsibility in the Ordnance Department of the corps rested upon me. General Anderson had been promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-General, and was to take command of a corps at Petersburg when General Longstreet should return to duty, and he was kind enough to tell me that if Colonel Baldwin, the Chief of Ordnance of the army, would consent to the transfer, he would take me with him to Petersburg, and make me Chief Ordnance Officer of his corps. This would have given me the rank of Major or Lieutenant-Colonel. I rode over to Petersburg to see Colonel Baldwin, and he told me that he would be delighted to see me promoted, and would order the assignment to be made. Unfortunately, though properly, General Anderson, upon reflection, came to the conclusion that it would not be just to Captain E. N. Thurston, who had been his Ordnance Officer while he was in command of a division, to promote me over his head, and that he ought to make Captain Thurston his Chief Ordnance Officer. I assented, of course, but was determined to seize any opportunity that offered to leave Longstreet’s Corps. As far back, indeed, as the month of June I had made a written application to be relieved from duty with the command. The opportunity came when I least expected it. General Fitzhugh Lee, a nephew of General R. E. Lee, while in the command of the cavalry in the Valley of Virginia had lost his Ordnance Officer, Captain Isaac Walke, of Norfolk, Virginia, who was killed in action, to the deep regret of his comrades. Through some kind friend General Lee heard of me. It seems that he had told Colonel Baldwin and others that he wanted an officer to take Captain Walke’s place, who was both “a good officer and a gentleman.” To my great pleasure I was recommended to him. He made application for me, and I was relieved from duty with Longstreet’s Corps and directed to report to General Fitz Lee at Richmond. This was in November, 1864.

General Longstreet had already resumed command of the 1st Corps, and I have not seen him since I took leave of him before I went to join Fitz Lee. The reputation that Longstreet had as a fighting man was unquestionably deserved, and when in action there was no lack of energy or of quickness of perception, but he was somewhat sluggish by nature, and I saw nothing in him at any time to make me believe that his capacity went beyond the power to conduct a square hard fight. The power of combination he did not possess, and whenever he had an independent command he was unsuccessful. A better officer to execute a prescribed movement, and make such variations in it as the exigencies of the battle required, would be hard to find, but he needed always a superior mind to plan the campaign and fix the order of battle. It should be said of Longstreet, especially in view of his political course since the war, that he never faltered or hesitated in his devotion to the Confederate cause. A stauncher soldier the South did not have, and at Appomattox, when hope was gone, and General Lee, to prevent the useless loss of blood, was prepared to surrender, Longstreet pleaded for permission to take the remnant of his men and endeavor to cut his way through the surrounding enemy. But Longstreet was a soldier, and nothing else. Of the principles that underlay secession he knew nothing, and when we were defeated, and the war was over, he considered that might had made the North right, and that he could, without any impropriety, go over to the victors. The whirligig of time brought its revenges, however, when Longstreet, at the head of the Metropolitan Police in New Orleans, endeavoring to maintain, by armed force, the political supremacy of the “carpet-baggers,” was confronted and routed by the old soldiers of his corps, whom he had again and again led to victory in Virginia. They spared him in remembrance of what he had been, but they drove his Metropolitan Police like rabbits before them.