It was a desolate outlook. A few chimneys and two or three houses marked the site of what had once been a flourishing village, but which had been burned in the guerilla warfare of the last year. The landscape was bare, the trees having disappeared in the demand for camp-fires, as different bodies of troops had camped there from time to time. The bluff above the river was level and monotonous, and the great turbid stream rolling northward reflected only the heavy stormy skies. The only consolation we could gather was that Eastport, for which we supposed we were bound, was more desolate, more muddy, and a worse camping-ground.
The other divisions of the corps halted at Waynesborough for two or three days, till transports should take Smith's corps away and give us our turn at the landing. General Schofield joined me on the afternoon of the 7th, and on Sunday, the 8th, a fleet of transports came down the river, convoyed by three gunboats under Rear-Admiral Lee. They had taken part of Smith's troops to Eastport and had returned for the rest. A pleasant recollection of the time is the acquaintance then begun with the Admiral, which was afterwards renewed at Washington when I met him in the attractive circle of the Blair families, both the elder Francis P. Blair, and Montgomery, with whom Admiral Lee was connected by marriage. When the fleet was gone again, the rest of our corps gathered at Clifton, but we seemed shut off from all communication with the outer world. We had broken our connection with the country we had left, in the expectation of having our base on the lower Tennessee, and our supplies were getting short. An occasional steamboat would go by us, steaming up the river without stopping. Feeling the necessity of getting news from General Thomas below, General Schofield ordered me, on the 9th, to send a piece of artillery to the river bank and force up-bound boats to stop and report. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xlv. pt. ii. p. 557.] On the same day Schofield issued his order for the movement by transports up the river, giving the method of shipping the troops by divisions, each with its own artillery, baggage, and ordnance trains. Open barges were provided for the artillery and ordnance, and these were to be lashed alongside the steamboats on which the troops and the regimental baggage would be loaded. The method was arranged in consultation with Admiral Lee, to whom the division commander was ordered to report during the transit. [Footnote: Ibid.] The intent was to keep each division together as a military unit, with its baggage, guns, and trains, so that it could take care of itself when landed. [Footnote: Id., p. 557.]
Nearly a week passed, the only variation in the monotony being the changes of the weather, which went through the cycle of raining, snowing, clearing, thawing, and freezing which had been regularly marked during the season. The delays in reaching the up-river rendezvous, the complete absence of all news, the wearying effect of waiting, all told upon the troops in a depressing way. General Schofield evidently had little faith that much would be done before spring, and the fact that he had heard nothing from his letters to Grant and Sherman left him without the means of relieving the general tendency to apathy and discontent under which we were suffering. In my own case I had the further discomfort of physical ailing, for though the worst symptoms of my illness had been mitigated, I was far from my usual vigor. The undeniable result of this appeared in my home letters, and it would not be altogether honest to suppress the hearty bit of private grumbling which I indulged in.
Writing on the 13th, after noting the utter lack of stability in the weather and its effect on our operations, I broke out on the personal results of the winter campaigning. "I am getting ragged and barefoot," I said. "My boots are worn out, my coat is worn out, my waistcoats are worn out, my hat is worn out, and I am only whole and respectable when I am in my shirt and drawers. If I ever get near civilization again, I shall be obliged to lie abed somewhere till I can get some clothes made. I don't wonder the Washington people want to have the campaign go on, and if they would apply a little of the 'go ahead' to the army on the James, would appreciate it still better. Here we know to an absolute certainty that the army is stuck in the mud; but the administration would not believe General Thomas when he told them so, and force him to pretend to move, with the fear of being superseded hanging over him, whilst he knows that any effective movement is impossible. We can ruin our horses and mules, and put half our men in hospitals without getting twenty-five miles from the Tennessee unless the weather changes, and this is all we can do. Hood can laugh at us unless the Mobile and Ohio Railroad can be repaired as we go and be made to furnish us supplies. If this could be done, or if the season would permit us to chase the rebels right into the gulf, I would be perfectly content to stay, and in fact couldn't be coaxed to go home; but knowing what I know, I feel perfectly sure that I might as well be making a biennial visit to my family as not."
On the day after this letter was written General Thomas came up the river with a fleet of transports which we were ordered to take for a movement down instead of up the river. The word spread that we were going to join Sherman, and though this meant journeys by boat, by rail, and by ocean ships, two thousand miles or more, our camps leaped from apathy to enthusiasm, such creatures of circumstance we are! Looking back at the situation, I have to admit that Grant's plan of keeping everything moving was the right one, and that if hopeful energy and enterprise could have combined Canby's movements with ours, and we had all been told that this active co-operation was afoot and would soon take us southward where we would meet the coming spring while Tennessee was still shivering in the winter storms, we should all have caught the spirit of the opportunity and cheered our leaders on. But this impulse in an army must come from the head downward. The trudging columns perfectly know the fatigue, the cold, the mud. They very imperfectly catch the larger view which stimulates to great effort by the hope of great results. In a council of war the division commanders would probably advise delay in sympathy with the hardships of the troops, when the same officers would have sprung with ardor to the work under a brief and strong appeal from a confident leader, presenting the broader reasons for energetic persistent activity. It was this quality of leadership in Sherman which made Grant say to Stanton in December, "It is refreshing to see a commander, after a campaign of more than seven months' duration, ready for still further operations without wanting any outfit or rest." [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xlv. pt. ii. p. 264.]
Thomas did not stop at Clifton except to send us his orders, and went on to Eastport, arriving there on the morning of the 15th. From that place he reported that Hood's infantry, much disorganized, was at Tupelo, West Point, and Columbus, Miss. Forrest's cavalry, in similar condition, was about Okolona. Roads were almost impracticable, but the high water in the river made it easy to get supplies to Eastport by the largest steamers. [Footnote: Id., pp. 586, 593. General Schofield does not remember seeing General Thomas in Tennessee after December 25th ("Forty-six Years," p. 276), and this accords with my impression that Thomas did not stop at Clifton long enough for us to visit him.] As to our new movement, Mr. Charles A. Dana, Assistant Secretary of War, had been intrusted with the supervision of the transfer, and sent west Colonel L. B. Parsons of the Quartermaster's Department to collect a fleet of steam-boats at Louisville for the purpose. [Footnote:Id., pp. 560, 568, 586.] But meanwhile, under Thomas's orders, the fleet of transports had been collected and had come for us, and the troops were joined by Colonel Parsons when they reached the Ohio. He then took charge of the transportation by boat and by rail. [Footnote: Dana's Recollections, pp. 253, 254.] As the transfer would take ten days or more, Schofield arranged to go on in advance to close up business at Louisville and for consultations with Grant and Halleck by telegraph. I went with him to Cairo, where we took railway trains, and I was authorized to go to my home in Ohio to recuperate until he should telegraph me from Washington. The command of the corps en route was given to General Couch. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xlv. pt. ii. p. 588.] As we were leaving the Military Division of the Mississippi, Colonel Doolittle was obliged to give up the command of Reilly's brigade and return to his own regiment. Reilly rejoined the corps after we reached North Carolina. The convalescents of Sherman's army and his recruits were collected in a provisional division under General Thomas Francis Meagher, took steamboats at Nashville, and made part of the same general transfer to the East. There was an amusing coincidence when the brilliant Irish "patriot" telegraphed that his fleet had started, "the Saint Patrick leading the way." [Footnote: Id., pp. 564, 600, 613.] Colonel Wright, Sherman's efficient chief of railway construction, had been ordered, a little earlier, to proceed eastward with one division of the construction corps with the object of joining Sherman at Savannah. [Footnote:Id., p. 393.] Changing circumstances, however, brought him as well as Meagher's division into our column a little later, as will soon appear. In a similar way General S. P. Carter joined us by transfer from duties at Knoxville, [Footnote: Id., p. 620.] and General George S. Greene, of the Twentieth Corps, who had been serving on a court-martial at Washington, was also temporarily attached to our command till he was able to join his own organization, which was with Sherman. [Footnote: Id., p. 623.]
The reduction of Thomas's forces could not have been altogether agreeable to him, though he no doubt preferred it to the continuance of a winter campaign under imperative orders from Washington. He had not ceased to believe that it was better to rest and refit his army till spring;[Footnote: Id., p. 621.] but Grant insisted that he "must make a campaign or spare his surplus troops," and though Thomas was a model of obedience to orders, his continued opposition of opinion, frankly expressed, naturally led to the detachment of our corps. The discussion of the subject between Grant and Halleck clearly stated the reasons which were conclusive. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xlv. pt. ii. pp. 609, 610, 614; also vol. xlvii. pt. ii. pp. 101, 859.] Thomas suffered mentally under the pressure and the criticisms of the whole campaign, and we may personally share his pain in sympathy with the noble man, whilst we admit that Grant's views were such as the situation demanded. Those who knew Thomas intimately knew that he was a man of quick feeling if of slow action; and his nature was truthfully described by his quartermaster, Colonel Donaldson (who was an old and intimate friend), in a letter to General Meigs, after a parting interview on the steamboat as Thomas left Nashville for Eastport. "He opened his heart to me," says Donaldson. "He feels very sore at the rumored intentions to relieve him, and the major-generalcy does not cicatrize the wound. You know Thomas is morbidly sensitive, and it cut him to the heart to think that it was contemplated to remove him. He does not blame the Secretary, for he said Mr. Stanton was a fair and just man." [Footnote: Id., vol. xlv. pt. ii. p. 561.]
CAMPAIGN IN NORTH CAROLINA--CAPTURE OF WILMINGTON