CHAPTER IX.
In North Carolina.
After the wounding of the officers named in the foregoing chapter, Col. Henry Ashby, of the Second Tennessee Cavalry, succeeded to the position of major general of Hume’s Division; Col. Baxter Smith, of the Fourth Tennessee Cavalry, to that of Col. Thomas Harrison’s brigade; Adjt. George B. Guild, to that of Captain Sayers, as adjutant general of the brigade; Maj. Scott Bledsoe, to the command of the Fourth Tennessee; and Lieut. E. Crozier was made adjutant of the Regiment.
The enemy did not pursue us at once, and the command passed on to Fayetteville. We passed down the main street of the city and crossed the bridge that spans the Cape Fear River. As we passed over the bridge, I noticed that it had been rosined, and upon the other side near the bridge I noticed several cannons that had been masked. We were halted here. After a while we heard a considerable firing of small arms. In a few moments General Hampton came dashing over the bridge with a few cavalrymen trailing him. When he had crossed, the bridge was ignited, and soon the flames mounted the large frame structure, enveloping it in fire and smoke. A considerable number of the enemy’s cavalry and infantry rushed down the street and into the opening on the other side, which was the signal for the battery to open upon them, which they did, rapidly throwing shells and shot into the dense mass, causing a scattering, falling down, and scrambling to get out of the way. It was too serious a matter to laugh at, but it really was amusing. Dr. Jim Sayers, of Company C of the Fourth Tennessee, was one of the squad that had come across with General Hampton. When asked what the firing meant preceding their coming over, he said that General Hampton had picked up about a dozen soldiers who were following the command, and, placing them in a turn of the street, awaited the coming of the advance guard of the enemy; and when the enemy had approached near enough, General Hampton and his men suddenly and unexpectedly dashed upon them with their revolvers, emptying some saddles, scattering and rushing them back upon the main line. He said that “General Hampton certainly killed several of the enemy in the mêlée, besides others that were killed or wounded.”
Upon leaving here, we marched toward Bentonville, N. C. Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, who had been appointed commander in chief, had his headquarters near here and was arranging and collecting his small army to resist the advancing columns of the enemy, who seemed to be headed that way from every quarter. The railroads had been torn up in all directions, and the Army of Tennessee was arriving in small detachments, traveling the distance from Corinth, Miss., partly on foot and partly by rail. Many of the absentees from Hood’s campaign in Tennessee were joining in small squads. Some of them were captured in trying to cross the Tennessee, and some remained at home, giving up the contest as lost.
Soon after reaching Bentonville General Wheeler was ordered to Averyboro, N. C., to assist General Hardee. This took a day and night’s march, if I remember rightly. General Hardee had taken position there to resist a column of the enemy marching toward Bentonville. Skirmishing was going on when we arrived upon the field. While awaiting orders Private Liter Herndon, of Company G, came up and asked permission to carry a battle flag that had been given us by a lady friend who happened to be at Winnsboro, S. C., as we passed through there a few weeks before. It was a beautiful flag of fine material, said to have been made in Scotland. It was a Maltese cross, with eleven stars forming the cross of St. Andrew. We thanked the lady for the gift, promising her that it should be unfurled in our next battle. Remembering this, I asked Colonel Smith and his inspector general, Capt. J. R. Lester, to let Herndon have it, which was agreed to; and Herndon, cutting a sapling, attached the flag to it and soon disappeared. In a little while the brigade was ordered off to the right, where we were engaged in brisk skirmishing till nightfall, when we were ordered to our left front to relieve some infantry in a line of temporary works. We learned that the enemy were intervening between us and Bentonville, that General Johnston’s little army was threatened, and that a battle was imminent. In passing up the road to the works, the rosin on the pine trees had been lighted, and we were visible to the enemy, who kept up a constant fire. As our infantry would pass us going to the rear, we heard more than one squad speaking of a soldier who had come upon the line that morning and said to them: “What are they keeping up such a racket for? I can see no one to fire at.” Deliberately climbing over the works and, reaching an elevated position some distance to their front and mounting it, he waved his flag toward the enemy, who immediately turned loose a volley at him, and he and his flag fell to the ground. This brought to mind the incident of Herndon and the flag. When I inquired of the next soldier that passed, I was informed that he had been sent to the field hospital. I at once dispatched one of his company back to investigate the matter. I did not see him until the next day, when he reported the facts as stated, and that he found Herndon in the field hospital badly wounded in several places, and that one of the surgeons in charge told him that Herndon was mortally wounded and was certain to die. Before the friend left him, Herndon requested him to look in his haversack and get out the flag and return it to headquarters with his compliments. I have never heard of Herndon since, and I suppose that he died and was buried at or near Averyboro, N. C. This flag was afterwards most gallantly carried by James B. Nance, the bugler of the regiment, through the battle of Bentonville. The surrender of the army occurring a few weeks after this, Nance concealed the flag and brought it home with him to Smith County, Tenn. I have regretted since that I did not preserve the flag. I did not meet Nance for a year after we came home, when he said that he had given the flag to his wife and she had made an apron of it for her little girl. If I had it now, it could tell of more fire and battle, though short-lived as it was, than many of the flags we see so heroically flaunting at latter-day reunions.
A few days before the battle of Averyboro General Bragg, who was reporting to General Johnston, fought a battle at Kingston, N. C., with the Federal General Cox, driving him from the field with the loss of 1,500 prisoners and three pieces of artillery. At daylight we left the intrenchments at Averyboro, following General Hardee, who was hurrying on to Bentonville. When we reached Bentonville, the battle was on. General Johnston had had some success the day before, but the enemy were constantly arriving in great numbers.
This was the last general battle of the war fought by the Army of Tennessee. General Johnston, in his narrative of his campaigns, says that his available forces at Bentonville were about 5,000 men of the Army of Tennessee, and that the troops of the department amounted to about 11,000. Sherman was marching against him with an army of 70,000, and nearly as large a force was approaching from the North Carolina coast. The last day of the battle, which, if I remember right, was the 19th or 20th of March, 1865, Wheeler’s cavalry command was ordered to the front along a curved line that was to be extended from the right at a point on Mill Creek around to the left, so as to cover the small village of Bentonville and the bridge which spanned Mill Creek, a large and muddy creek with marshy approaches. The bridge was the only egress for the army. We moved along the curved line occupied by the infantry, and had hardly passed the crescent of the curve when we found General Johnston and his staff standing there in earnest conversation with General Wheeler. We heard Johnston order Wheeler to send a regiment to the left front and develop the enemy. The brigade commanded by Col. Baxter Smith happened to be in front, and Wheeler ordered him to send forward his front regiment, which was the Fourth Tennessee. Colonel Smith accompanied his old regiment, leaving the remainder of the brigade standing in line upon their horses in the edge of a wood. They had not proceeded far when, in passing over and down the slope of a hill, they came into the view of a line of the enemy’s skirmishers extending for half a mile across the field. Upon seeing us, they commenced firing, and our horses and men were falling fast when the Regiment was ordered to dismount and the horses were sent to the rear. The men, moving out in the field to the left, threw down a fence and began firing upon the advancing skirmishers. We remained there some time, until it looked as if they would envelop us, when a courier came from General Wheeler with the order to fall back upon the line in the edge of the wood. As we moved back up the hill, the enemy continued to fire vigorously at us, and we could see our mounted men falling from their horses as we approached. The shots intended for us passed over our heads, killing and wounding many of them.
The courier who brought us the message to fall back was on horseback, and was shot in the head and instantly killed. His body was thrown into a passing ambulance, with directions to take it back to the village and bury it, marking the grave. He was Robert Davis, of Company K, and, though but nineteen years of age, had been in the war since its commencement. His father lived at Lebanon, Tenn., and soon after the war went to Bentonville and brought the body home. A gentleman had buried it in his garden, marking the grave. He had also kept his horse, and the father brought it home with him.
Johnston shifted his infantry farther to the left; the enemy coming no nearer, Wheeler was ordered still farther to the left. Here was encountered the enemy again in a sharp contest in a dense woodland. Among the wounded was Capt. J. W. Nichol, of Company G. This was the third wound that this most gallant officer had received. He was shot through the breast; and as he was borne from the field, pale and bleeding, it was remarked that we would never see him again. Remarkable to state, he was back at the surrender a few weeks thereafter, surrendering with his regiment. Colonel Smith had the Third Arkansas and the Eleventh Texas to dismount and march forward to where the skirmishing was going on. The Eighth Texas and the Fourth Tennessee were standing there in column. An officer of General Hardee’s came riding in haste from down the road, and, inquiring for the officer, said to Colonel Smith that the enemy were threatening the bridge, and asked him to come down there as soon as possible, that such were the orders of General Hardee. Colonel Smith hastened with all dispatch with his two mounted regiments to the designated spot. The field hospital of General Johnston’s army was close by; and as the command passed down the road, we could see men escaping from the hospital and a general scattering of men, evidencing that something of a stirring nature was happening. We found General Hardee standing in the road about half a mile or more from where we started. He at once ordered the regiments into line along the road and to charge through the woods, and, in coming up with the enemy, to drive them from the field. There was no force of our own in front of us, and there was a gap of a quarter of a mile or more from the creek to where our line extended from the right. We charged promptly and vigorously, as ordered, and had not gone far till we struck a long line of the enemy’s skirmishers. They were taken by surprise at the suddenness of the attack; and as we rode in among them, using our “navies,” we scattered them and forced them back to their main line, a distance of several hundred yards. Some were killed and wounded, and a few prisoners were taken. We lost a few men ourselves. At this juncture of affairs a line of our infantry appeared in our rear; and before the enemy could recover from their surprise we had a sufficient force to hold the position till General Johnston’s army passed over the bridge that night. Undoubtedly this charge of the Eighth Texas and the Fourth Tennessee saved the bridge and made certain the escape of Johnston’s little army at Bentonville, for at that time the enemy numbered six to our one. The enemy we were fighting was a large skirmish line of General Mower’s division of infantry. General Hardee extended his thanks to Colonel Smith for the success of the gallant charge of his two regiments.
These facts I have stated were well known by soldiers of the army at the time, and I have frequently heard them expressed since. In late years some writers have written upon the subject, claiming that their respective commands took part in the fight on this part of the line. If they did, I am free to say that I did not see them, and my opportunities were good to know of it if they had done so. When the two regiments reached the point where General Hardee stood, there was some artillery firing toward the enemy from the right of our line and some artillery immediately in our rear that fired over our heads as we went down the slope into the wood. I remember that a piece of wood that had become detached from a canister shell struck Lieutenant Scoggins, of Company C, stunning him and making him unconscious for a while. He is now living in Nashville, and is one of its most prominent citizens.