"Just within my lines" (this was written on August 11th), "and not ten paces from the breastworks, stands a log house owned by an old man named Wilson. A little before the army advanced to its present position, several relatives of his, with their families, came to him from homes regarded as in more imminent danger, and they united their forces to build, or dig, rather, a place of safety. They excavated a sort of cellar just in rear of the house, on the hillside, digging it deep enough to make a room some fifteen feet square by six feet high. This they covered over with a roof of timbers, and over that they piled earth several feet thick, covering the whole with pine boughs, to keep the earth from washing. In this bomb-proof four families are now living, and I never felt more pity than when, day before yesterday, I looked down into the pit, and saw there, in the gloom made visible by a candle burning while it was broad day above, women sitting on the floor of loose boards, resting against each other, haggard and wan, trying to sleep away the days of terror, while innocent-looking children, four or five years old, clustered around the air-hole, looking up with pale faces and great staring eyes as they heard the singing of the bullets that were flying thick above their sheltering place. One of the women had been bed-ridden for several years before she was carried down there. One of the men was a cripple, the others old and gray. The men ventured up and took a little fresh air behind the breast-works; but for the women there is no change unless they come out at night. Still, they cling to home because they have nowhere else to go, and they hope we may soon pass on and leave them in comparative peace again."
In an earlier chapter I have spoken of the easy descent from careful respect for the rights of property to reckless appropriation of what belongs to another, to robbery and pillage. [Footnote: Ante, pp. 233-235.] I find an instance of it given in one of the letters I have been quoting, which is the contemporary record of the thing itself which we had to deal with. It occurred on July 5th, when the whole army was in motion, hurrying past our position southeast of Marietta and following up Johnston's retreating army. "Some soldiers went to a house occupied only by a woman and her children, and after robbing it of everything which they wanted, they drove away the only milch cow the woman had. She pleaded that she had an infant which she was obliged to bring up on the bottle, and that it could not live unless it could have the milk. They had no ears for the appeal and the cow was driven off. In two days the child died, of starvation chiefly, though the end was hastened by disease induced by the mother's trying to keep it alive on food it could not digest. I heard of the case when the child was dead and two or three of the neighbors were getting together stealthily to dig its grave." One of them came to me to beg permission to assist, and to explain that the little gathering meant nothing hostile to us. I got the facts only by cross-questioning, for the old man was abject in his solicitude not to seem to be complaining, and did not give the worst of the story till my hot indignation at what I heard assured him of sympathy and of a desire to punish the crime.
"A woman came to me the same morning, and said the cavalry had taken the last mouthful from her, telling her they were marching and hadn't time to draw their rations, but that she would be fed by applying to us of the infantry column. The robbers well knew that we were forbidden to issue rations to citizens. They sacked the house of an old man with seven daughters by a second wife, all young things. He came to me in utter distress--not a mouthful in that house for twenty-four hours, their kitchen garden and farm utterly ruined, the country behind in the same condition, and he without means of travelling or carrying anything if he tried to move away." I added, "Of course in such extreme cases I try to find some way of keeping people from death, and usually send them to the rear in our empty wagon trains going back for supplies, but their helpless condition is very little bettered by going."
Such things were done chiefly by the professional stragglers and skulkers, and the stringent orders which were issued in both Sherman's and Hood's armies did not easily reach men who would not report for duty if they could help it. The country people could not tell who had done them the mischief, and the rascals would be gone before the case came before any superior officer who would interest himself in it. I must not, however, suppress the comment I made in the letter quoted. "The evil is the legitimate outgrowth of the hue and cry raised by our Christian people of the North against protecting rebel property, etc. Officers were deterred from enforcing discipline in this respect by public opinion at home, and now the evil is past remedy. The war has been prolonged, the army disintegrated and weakened, and the cause itself jeoparded, because discipline was construed as friendliness to rebels." Straggling and its accompanying evils may be said to be the gauge of discipline in an army. There were brigades and divisions in which it hardly occurred; there were others in which the stragglers were a considerable fraction of the whole.
During the evacuation of Atlanta by the citizens, there was a good deal of migration beyond our lines among those who were not compelled to go. In Decatur applications were made to me daily, and we kept a record of the passes we issued, trying to know the purpose and motives of those going away, for, of course, a good deal of it was with the intent to carry intelligence to the enemy. The reasons given were often amusing. Two ladies applied, one day, for leave to go to Florida, which they claimed as their home. They said they had been visiting kinsmen in Decatur when the advance of our army brought them within our lines before they were aware of it. When asked why not stay with their friends till the armies should move away, they answered that they were sure they could not endure the rigors of the climate! The phrase became a byword at our headquarters, where we were longing for the invigorating breezes of the North.
We had a visit, about the middle of September, from two gentlemen of some prominence in the public affairs of Georgia,--Mr. Hill and Mr. Foster. They came ostensibly to seek to obtain and remove the body of Mr. Hill's son, who had fallen in the campaign, but I suspected that they represented Governor Brown, who was known to be in a state of exasperation at the results to Georgia of a war begun to assert an ultra doctrine of State rights, but which had destroyed every semblance of State independence and created a centralized government at Richmond which ruled with a rod of iron. Mr. Hill was the same who had represented Governor Brown and General Johnston at Richmond in the mission in July, [Footnote: Ante, p. 272.] and whilst he did not formally present any subject except that of getting his son's body, our conversation gave me sufficient knowledge of his views on the subjects of controversy to make me deeply interested in the outcome of the visit to General Sherman which I arranged for him. [Footnote: See Sherman's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 137.] Nothing of present practical importance came of the interviews, but the voluminous and bitterly controversial correspondence between the Georgia Governor and the War Department of the Confederacy is a curious revelation of the antagonistic influences which had sprung up in the progress of the war. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. lii. pt. ii. pp. 736, 754, 778, 796, 803.]
The death of General McPherson in the battle of Atlanta had been a great loss to the army, but to Sherman it was the loss of an intimate friend as well as an able subordinate. They had been closely associated under Grant in all the campaigns of the Army of the Tennessee, and their mutual attachment and confidence was as strong as their devoted loyalty to their great chief. My own acquaintance with McPherson had been slight, but yet enough to enable me to understand the warm personal regard he inspired in those who came to know him well. I met him first on the day we passed through Snake Creek Gap into Sugar Valley, before the battle of Resaca. We had to learn from him the positions of the troops already advancing toward the town, and I rode with General Schofield to his tent for this purpose. Schofield and he had been classmates and room-mates at West Point, and McPherson revealed himself to his old friend as he would not be likely to do to others. His affability and cordial good-will struck one at once. His graceful bearing and refined, intelligent face heightened the impression, and one could not be with him many minutes without seeing that he was a lovable person. An evenly balanced mind and character had given him a high grade as a cadet, and at the beginning of the war he was serving as a captain of engineers. Being appointed to General Grant's staff, he won completely the general's confidence, and his promotion was rapid, following closely behind that of Sherman.
His death was sincerely mourned, and his place as a soldier was not easy to fill. Sherman would have given the command of the Army of the Tennessee to General Logan, who was next in rank in it, but the strong opposition of General Thomas made him conclude that this would be unwise. [Footnote: See Sherman, in The Great Commanders Series, pp. 229, 332.] If he made a selection outside of the Army of the Tennessee, Hooker had first claim by seniority of rank, but both Sherman and Thomas lacked confidence in him. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. v. p. 272.] When Howard was selected on Thomas's suggestion, Hooker was doubly offended, for Howard had been his subordinate at the beginning of the year, and there had been no love lost between them. Hooker now asked to be relieved from further service in Sherman's army, and he retired from active field service,--Slocum, another of his former subordinates, with whom he had a violent quarrel, being appointed to the command of his corps on Thomas's nomination. [Footnote: Id., pp. 272, 273.] Halleck, in a letter to Sherman of September 16th, gave pointed testimony to facts which showed why Hooker was personally an unacceptable subordinate. [Footnote:Id., p. 857.] Sherman insisted, with good reason, that Hooker had no real grievance, as he was left in command of his corps, and Howard's promotion was in another and independent organization, the Army of the Tennessee. He also declared that no indignity was intended or offered, and that he simply performed his own duty of selection in accordance with what he believed to be sound reasons. As to Logan, he took pains to praise his handling of the Army of the Tennessee after McPherson's death, and to emphasize his own high opinion of him as an officer and the respect in which he was held by the whole army. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xxxviii. pt. v. p. 522.]