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MAJOR-GENERAL JEREMY F. GILMER, C. S. A. Chief Engineer Army of the Tennessee. |
"Night was closing rapidly in, and the scene was growing sublime. The battery at Moccasin Point was sweeping the road to the mountain. The brave little fort at its left was playing like a heart in a fever. The cannon upon the top of Lookout were pounding away at their lowest depression. The flash of the guns fairly burned through the clouds; there was an instant of silence, here, there, yonder, and the tardy thunder leaped out after the swift light. For the first time, perhaps, since that mountain began to burn beneath the gold and crimson sandals of the sun, it was in eclipse. The cloud of the summit and the smoke of the battle had met halfway and mingled. Here was Chattanooga, but Lookout had vanished! It was Sinai over again, with its thunderings and lightnings and thick darkness, and the Lord was on our side. Then the storm ceased, and occasional dropping shots told off the evening till half-past nine, and then a crashing volley, and a rebel yell, and a desperate charge. It was their good-night to our boys; good-night to the mountain. They had been met on their own vantage-ground; they had been driven one and a half miles. The Federal foot touched the hill, indeed, but above still towered the precipice.
"At ten o'clock a growing line of lights glittered obliquely across the breast of Lookout. It made our eyes dim to see it. It was the Federal autograph scored along the mountain. They were our campfires. Our wounded lay there all the dreary night of rain, unrepining and content. Our unharmed heroes lay there upon their arms. Our dead lay there, 'and surely they slept well.' At dawn Captain Wilson and fifteen men of the Eighth Kentucky crept up among the rocky clefts, handing their guns one to another—'like them that gather samphire—dreadful trade!'—and stood at length upon the summit. The entire regiment pushed up after them, formed in line, threw out skirmishers, and advanced five miles to Summerton. Artillery and infantry had all fled in the night, nor left a wreck behind.
"If Sherman did not roll the enemy along the Ridge like a carpet, at least he rendered splendid service, for he held a huge ganglion of the foe as firmly on their right as if he had them in the vice of the 'lame Lemnian' who forged the thunderbolts. General Corse's, General Jones's, and Colonel Loomis's brigades led the way, and were drenched with blood. Here Colonel O'Meara, of the Ninetieth Illinois, fell. Here its lieutenant-colonel, Stuart, received a fearful wound. Here its brave young captains knelt at the crimson shrine, and never rose from worshipping. Here one hundred and sixty of its three hundred and seventy heroes were beaten with the bloody rain. The brigades of Generals Mathias and Smith came gallantly up to the work. Fairly blown out of the enemy's guns, and scorched with flame, they were swept down the hill only to stand fast for a new assault. Let no man dare to say they did not acquit themselves well and nobly. To living and dead in the commands of Sherman and Howard who struck a blow that day—out of my heart I utter it—hail and farewell! And as I think it all over, glancing again along that grand, heroic line of the Federal epic—I commit the story with a childlike faith to history, sure that when she gives her clear, calm record of that day's famous work, standing like Ruth among the reapers in the fields that feed the world, she will declare the grandest staple of the Northwest is Man."
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A TYPICAL SOUTHERN MANSION. (From a war-time photograph.) |
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE BLACK CHAPTER.
PERSECUTIONS OF UNION MEN—THE BLACK FLAG—THE GUERILLAS—SECESSION FROM SECESSION—RIOT IN CONCORD, N. H.—MASSACRE AT FORT PILLOW—CARE OF PRISONERS—ANDERSONVILLE—OTHER PRISONS—SUSPENSION OF EXCHANGES—VIOLATION OF PAROLES—PRINCIPLES RELATING TO CAPTURES—CRUELTIES COMMITTED BY UNION SOLDIERS IN VIRGINIA—GENERAL IMBODEN'S STATEMENTS REGARDING FEDERAL ATROCITIES—GENERAL EARLY'S ACCOUNT OF THE BURNING OF CHAMBERSBURG.