As we entered the extensive piney woods section east of Tuskaloosa, we were critically near the right flank of the enemy, pushing on towards Selma. Croxton’s Federal Brigade had been detached to destroy the Confederate supplies at Tuskaloosa and burn the university. It so happened that this brigade dropped into the road between the rear of Jackson’s Cavalry and the front of his artillery and wagon train. If the Federals had continued to move west, they inevitably would have captured the trains. They turned east to follow the cavalry, and Jackson being apprised of this made the proper disposition to fall upon them in camp in the early morning. In the meantime, Croxton had changed his mind and had turned again to march, as luck would have it, by another road to Tuskaloosa, without knowing that he had our trains so nearly within his grasp. As it was, Jackson ran on his rear company in camp and captured men, horses, and ambulances. Croxton fled north with his command, crossed the Warrior forty miles above, turned south and reached Tuskaloosa, where he carried out his orders. This was the 3rd day of April, and he was now so far separated from his chief that he did not join him at Macon, Ga., till the 20th of May. When Jackson turned to pursue Croxton, unfortunately another detachment under one of the Fighting McCooks, took possession of the bridge over the Cahawba, where Forrest, with his escort, had already crossed, and where we were expected to cross. They boldly came to the west side and put themselves across our path at the village of Scottsville. That night the woods seemed to be full of them. Some of our men, getting out to do the usual little “buttermilk foraging” met some Yanks at a farm house where Johnny Reb thought he had the exclusive privilege. There was a tacit consent to a truce while they shared such good things as the farmer had to contribute. The next morning, April 2nd, Bell’s Brigade of Jackson’s Division collided with a part of McCook’s men and rapidly pushed them back to Centerville. They completely blocked our way by burning the bridge over the Cahawba. It was now impossible for Jackson to join Forrest on the road from Montevallo to Selma, where with Roddy’s Cavalry and Crossland’s small brigade of Kentuckians, he and escort were fighting to the death to hold Wilson in check till the Confederate divisions could be concentrated and hurled against those of the Federals in one grand conflict. The Federals, having intercepted certain dispatches of Forrest and Jackson, knew just how to subvert their plans. Wilson, seeing that there was now no chance for Jackson to fall upon his rear, according to the original plan of Forrest, pushed his forces with all his energy in the direction of Selma. Forrest, being reinforced by some militia and two hundred picked men of Armstrong’s Brigade of Chalmers’ Division, on the first day of April, did some of the fiercest fighting of the war, much of it hand to hand. At Bogler’s creek near Plantersville, it was at close quarters with two thousand against nine thousand, but the Confederates had the advantage of position. The Federal advance was a regiment of veteran cavalry who charged with drawn sabers. The Confederates received them at first with rifles and closed in with six-shooters, most of the men having two each. The Confederates being forced back by a flank movement, there was a bloody running fight for several miles. From the desperate character of the fighting here, it might be inferred that the great contest, planned to take place along these lines, would have been terrific, if Forrest, Jackson, Chalmers and Roddy could have joined their forces.
If all the forces named had been concentrated, as Forrest had intended, somewhere between Montevallo and Selma, Ala., would have been fought the cavalry battle of the ages. Who is not glad the whole plan miscarried?
When the Confederates were crowded into Selma the next day, their lines were so attenuated that the Federals, with overwhelming numbers, assailed the works and carried them, though with very heavy loss. Night was coming on as the contest ended and the streets were filled with Federals and Confederates in the greatest possible confusion. This enabled Forrest and Armstrong, with hundreds of their men, to find an opening through which they rode out and escaped in the darkness. In doing this, Forrest cut down his thirtieth man in the war, which closed his fighting career.
I had more than ordinary anxiety in regard to the fighting in front of Selma, as I had a brother with Armstrong and a brother-in-law with Roddy. The former escaped with Armstrong, but the latter, Wiley Hawkins of Florence, a mere youth, the last of four brothers to die during the war, was killed at Bogler’s creek.
With Forrest’s Cavalry the war was over. His command had fired its last gun at Selma. At Marion, Greensboro, Eutaw, and finally at Sumterville, where Jackson’s Division had its last camp, we found the very best type of Southern people. They had really seen very little of the war, though sorrow had been brought to many a home by the casualties of battle. Here was a lovely country in which a war-worn soldier could sit down to commune with nature, where she was never more beautifully and bountifully manifested in birds, flowers and fertile fields. It was so restful to the soul to know that we were done with guns and bloody work. The present was the present, the future was the future. We were taking care of the present. We would take care of the future when we got to it. Whipped or not, we had loved ones at home and were going to them; whipped or not, we felt assured that we had done our duty to our prostrate country, which never had more than the shadow of a chance for the success of a separate existence; whipped or not, we could face those who had urged us to go to the war, and say that we had fought it to a finish. It perhaps seems strange to many that there was no weeping or wailing, at least about where I was, because of the defeat of Southern hopes. I account for this upon the hypothesis that both officers and privates had been, for nearly two years, contemplating not only the possibility but the probability of defeat, and were therefore mentally prepared for almost anything which fate should decree. Certainly, the consensus of opinion was, that many mistakes had been made by the civil and military authorities during the four years of war, but there was no intense spirit of criticism. Whether a Confederate soldier thought that everything possible had been done, with the limited resources at hand, or not, he was very apt to be of the opinion that some means should have been brought into play to stop the war long before it was. I am of the opinion that the diligent student of history has come to the same conclusion. Why so many held on so tenaciously to a cause that had grown so desperate, I have tried to show on other pages. Duty and honor are the chief elements in a long story, though this statement of the case can hardly be so well appreciated by the present generation as by the active participants in the war.
The following excerpt is taken from Destruction and Reconstruction, by Lieutenant-General Dick Taylor, the only son of the last Whig president, and a man whose mental acumen was of the sharper kind, and whose varied learning would have graced any court: “Upon what foundations the civil authorities of the Confederacy rested their hopes of success, after the campaign of 1864 fully opened, I am unable to say; but their commanders in the field, whose rank and position enabled them to estimate the situation, fought simply to afford statesmanship an opportunity to mitigate the sorrows of inevitable defeat.”
This comports well with what I heard Confederate States Senator James Phelan of Mississippi, say, more than forty years ago, to the effect that the politicians at Richmond consumed most of their time in discussing abstruse questions of constitutional law and other subjects that might well have been deferred till the armies in the field could settle the question of independence. I took it that he thought there was little use for a constitution in a time of revolution or rebellion, but the chief concern should have been the perfecting of such measures as would strengthen our armies and achieve victories. It was well known that there were jealousies and dissensions among the officers of our armies from the beginning to the close of the war. What was at first war gossip became of record as soon after the surrender as some of these were able to contribute to our current literature. Posterity will be asking why some of the serious accusations made were not, at the proper time, brought to the notice of a court-martial.
When the future historian comes to make up the sum total of the causes which led to the downfall of the Confederacy, he will have only a written record to draw from, and will possibly be perplexed in his endeavor to pronounce an honest judgment in regard to men who, though differing so widely in opinion, were believed to be brave and patriotic.
CHAPTER XII.
CONCLUSION.
When I was a boy in Anson County, North Carolina, where I was born “with a full suit of hair” about the time “the stars fell,” I had two brothers living in Sumter County, Alabama, which was said to be six hundred miles away. That seemed to me then to be about as much as six thousand miles seem now. It was an inscrutable order of Providence that, after having lived in four other States, attended two colleges, become the father of a family, and served four years in a great civil war, I should lay down my arms in that same Sumter County.