Slavery and four years of war

by Joseph Warren Keifer

Clement Comer Clay, a lawyer, who had been a soldier in the Creek Indian War, Chief-Justice of his State, and had served in both branches of Congress and as Governor of Alabama, was arrested and tried at Huntsville, when seventy-three years of age, by a military commission of which I was president. There were several charges against him, the most serious of which was for aiding and advising guerillas to secretly shoot down Union soldiers, cut telegraph lines, and wreck trains. This charge he vehemently denied until a letter in his own handwriting was produced, recently written to a guerilla chief, advising him and his band to do the things mentioned. He was not severely dealt with, but was sent to Camp Chase, Ohio, for detention. He was later liberated, and died in Huntsville in 1866. His son, Clement Claiborne Clay, had been a judge, and subsequently a United States Senator. He withdrew from the Senate in February, 1861, and was formally expelled in March, 1861. He became a Senator in the Confederate Congress in 1862, and during the last two years of the war was the secret agent of the Confederacy in Canada, where he plotted raids on the Northern frontier.

General O. M. Mitchel held advanced notions on the subject of the treatment and disposition of slaves of masters in arms against the government. The slaves of such masters, he thought, should be confiscated. He used some slaves as spies to gain information of the enemy, and to located secreted Confederate supplies, and to them he promised protection, if not freedom. Secretary Stanton approved his action and views in this matter.( 6)

But Buell, his immediate commander, wholly disapproved of all employment or use of slaves in any manner as instruments to put down the rebellion. Mitchel, therefore, soon fell into disfavor with him. Buell, on learning that Mitchel had employed some able- bodied escaped slaves to aid the soldiers in constructing stockades to protect railroad bridges, necessary to be maintained to enable supplies to be brought up, ordered Mitchel to send an officer to see that slaves thus employed were forthwith returned to their masters. I was accordingly directed by Mitchel to take a small guard, and, with a locomotive and car, go to the bridges west of Huntsville and north of the Tennessee River, on the line of railroad from Decatur through Athens towards Nashville, to execute this order of Buell's. I executed it to the letter—only. While on this unpleasant duty I came to a place where a scouting party, commanded by a lieutenant sent out by Mitchel, had two citizen- disguised Confederate guerillas, just taken in the act of cutting the telegraph wires, an offence, by a proclamation of Mitchel, punishable by death. The scouting party proceeded to hang them with wire to telegraph poles. I did not approve the summary punishment, but was powerless and without authority over the officer; and was then engaged only in returning slaves to their owners.

Prior to this order of Buell's, Congress had passed an act, as an Article of War, prohibiting the employment of any of the United States forces "for the purpose of returning fugitives from service or labor who may have escaped, and any officer found guilty, by a court-martial, of violating this article to be dismissed from the service."( 7) The order, and my execution of it, were alike in violation of the law, for the issuing and execution of which both Buell and I could have been dismissed from the service. Just after the capture of Fort Donelson Grant issued an order prohibiting the return of the fugitive slaves with his army and of all slaves at Fort Donelson at the time of its capture.( 8)

Both Stevenson and Decatur, to the east and west of Huntsville, were, by the use of captured locomotives and cars, seized by Mitchel on the 12th of April, and his command was soon so extended as to hold the one hundred miles of railroad between Stevenson and Tuscumbia. The last of the same month, however, the troops were withdrawn from Tuscumbia and south of the Tennessee. The 3d and 10th Ohio being in occupancy of Decatur, evacuated it under orders, and, on the night of April 27th, burned the railroad bridge (one half mile in length) over the Tennessee River.

An expedition started the same day for Bridgeport, where the railroad again crosses the Tennessee, and where General Danville Leadbetter had command of a small force on the west side of the river, somewhat intrenched. The expedition consisted of two companies of cavalry, two pieces of artillery, and six regiments of infantry, Mitchel commanding. Owing to the destruction by the Confederates of a bridge over Widow's Creek, it was impossible to transport by rail the artillery with caissons and horses nearer than four miles of Bridgeport. By the use of cotton bales the two guns were floated over the deep stream, and the artillery horses and caissons with extra ammunition were left behind. The guns were dragged by two companies of the 3d Ohio, and the whole expedition pushed on to a ridge within about five hundred yards of Leadbetter's redoubts near the north end of the bridge. The enemy was surprised or demoralized, and Leadbetter did not decide either to retreat or fight until a shot or two from our cannon emptied his redoubts and intrenched position near the end of the bridge.

Precipitately his guns were loaded on a platform-car, and a hasty retreat was made across the Tennessee by the railroad bridge; but before all the Confederate troops had succeeded in crossing Leadbetter caused to be exploded two hundred pounds of powder, with a view of blowing up the east span of the bridge. The explosion did not do the work, hence the drawbridge at the east end was fired, to complete its destruction.( 9) But few captures were made. Leadbetter also abandoned his camp east of the river, and was forced to abandon two guns placed in position on the east bank. One of the Andrews raiders of the 33d Ohio, who, to save himself from capture and punishment, had joined Captain Kain's battery, and was acting as artillery sergeant with the two guns captured, hid under the river bank and signalled his desire to be allowed to surrender. He was permitted to cross over to us, and, his old regiment being present, he at once rejoined it.

Mitchel moved his command on Bridgeport with great rapidity and skill, but he showed a nervous temper, which gave the impression that in a great battle he would become too much excited for a commanding officer.

Just after Leadbetter's retreat a body of cavalry appeared below Bridgeport in an open field, not knowing the place had been taken, and would have been captured had Mitchel not ordered them fired on before they came near enough to be cut off.

I was sent on the morning of the 30th, in command of a detachment, across the Tennessee to reconnoitre towards Chattanooga. We improvised rafts from logs and timber to carry the men, and a few horses for mounted officers were forced into the stream, and by holding their heads to the rafts compelled to swim the east channel of the Tennessee. We secured the two guns mentioned, some muskets and supplies at the enemy's camps, and found evidence of a hasty flight of the Confederates. By a détour we came into a valley flanked to the east by Raccoon Mountain, and we visited a large saltpetre works at Nick-a-Jack Cave. These works we destroyed by breaking the large iron kettles and by burning all combustible structures. A portion of the detachment was sent under cover of the thick woods to the railroad east of Shellmound, a station near the river, where we expected to cut off a train of cars engaged in loading, for removal, supplies of provisions. The engineer, a few moments before the party reached the railroad, had run his engine to a water-station located east of the point of our intersection, and it thus escaped capture. We, however, captured one captain and about a dozen men; also the cars of the train and considerable supplies, all of which we were obliged to destroy, save some choice, much-needed hams. These we loaded on a flat car, which we pushed about ten miles to the east abutment of the broken bridge. This raid caused great consternation at Chattanooga for several days. The detachment was reported as 5000 strong at Shellmound, and Leadbetter ordered "all bridges on the railroad and country roads" burned, and a retreat to Lookout Mountain.(10) It would have been easy then to have taken Chattanooga. A year and a half later it cost many lives and became about the only Union trophy of the battle of Chickamauga.