Recollections of a Confederate Staff Officer

by G. Moxley Sorrel

In the first days of February another demonstration was made against Lee's extreme right, this time in great force and meaning business. Our division and other troops with cavalry at once pushed out to meet it, with Finnegan in command of division (Mahone was absent, sick). The collision came at Hatcher's Run by some preliminary skirmishing on February 5th, a sanguinary action on the 6th, followed up by the enemy feebly on the 7th. On the 6th, my Georgians were hotly engaged in the afternoon and made a handsome, successful charge, which dislodged and forced back the Federals. The contest went on until darkness stopped it, and the night passed entrenching where we stood, caring for wounded and burying dead.

Early next morning the enemy, driving back my pickets, got too close to us, and a rifleman put a bullet through my right lung, smashing the ribs front and rear. I was down this time for good, I supposed, the breath gushing through the orifices instead of its natural channel. The surgeon, Dr. Wood, however, soon relieved that by plastering the holes, and sent me back that night. The roads being frozen and very rough, my brave fellows made two relief gangs and bore their commander by litter on their shoulders eight miles to a small shanty, where rest was taken.

All through the night, while passing stray troops on the road, I could hear the question, "Who have you there?" "General Sorrel." "Is he badly hurt?" "Yes, mortally wounded." The soldier habitually takes a gloomy view of things.

Very soon I was in comfortable quarters near Petersburg, in the hands of my excellent brigade surgeon, Dr. Sampson Pope, and progressed so well that in a fortnight I could be moved to Doctor Sorrel's quarters in Richmond, under treatment of my friend Dr. J. B. Reid, and with that ended the staff officer's soldiering. A few closing words will bring me to the end of these "Recollections" nearly forty years behind us.

My wound healing satisfactorily, Doctor Sorrel proposed in March taking me to "The Oaklands," the beautiful estate in Roanoke County of Colonel Wm. Watts, who had kindly sent me an invitation to visit him. He was the invalided colonel of the Twenty-eighth Virginia, of the First Corps, a fine officer and most hospitable, the leading man of the county. To him we went, the change being very beneficial. Then the railroad station was Big Lick, a post-office, shop, and tavern. It is now grown to be Roanoke, a prosperous city of 25,000. Colonel Watts's widowed sister, Mrs. Rives, presided over the delightful old Virginia establishment. Her lovely character won all hearts. The stately figure and attractive features were known and admired widely over the countryside. To me she was kindness itself, and no marvel is it that I mended rapidly.

There was an engagement of a few months' standing between Doctor Sorrel and Mrs. Rives, and soon after our coming the uncertain future was considered. They decided to wed without longer waiting, and the ceremony, quite private, was performed at the residence, myself in full uniform as the Doctor's best man, propped on my feet by the dignified, silver-haired black major-domo.

While in this part of the country I heard much about Hunter's expedition into it the previous year and the devastation he had brought in the region round about. Truly Maj.-Gen. David Hunter, of the United States Army, was a torch bearer if nothing else. He had no military distinction, but had served against the Indians, it is said, with the same cruelties it was now his delight to apply to non-combatant dwellers in southwest Virginia and the head of the Shenandoah Valley. No property within reach of his destroying hand seemed safe from him. His fame lay not in the soldier's hard-fought battles, but in burning farmers' houses and barns. The extensive schools at Lexington aroused his hate and were laid in ashes by his torch.

General Crook, the fine soldier then serving with him, said, "He would have burned the Natural Bridge could he have compassed it." Marvel it is that Hunter did not blow it up. He was, however, beaten off by Early's forces and the home guards, and the country cleared of that devastator. There was little more heard of him as a soldier.

Maj.-Gen. George Crook was altogether a different character. He was a soldier of high training and tried courage, making no war on women and children, houses and barns.

Some time later, one of our daring rangers, NcNeil, with a small following, achieved a bold exploit. While Crook was commanding a department at Cumberland, Md., the ranger penetrated many miles within the blue lines, took the General out of bed, mounted him well, and landed his distinguished prisoner safely in Richmond.