William Henry Chase Whiting, Major-General C. S. Army.
An Address delivered in Raleigh, N. C., on Memorial day, May 10th, 1895, at the request of the Ladies' Memorial Society.By C. B. Denson, of the Engineer Service, C. S. Army.
Respectfully dedicated to the surviving partner of the joys and sorrows of the matchless genius, the heroic soldier and the unselfish patriot, to whose memory these pages are devoted.Ladies of the Memorial Association, Comrades of the Confederate States Army, Ladies and Gentlemen: The poet has said in touching numbers— Fold up the tattered, blood-stained cross,
By bleeding martyrs blest,
And heap the laurels it has won,
Above its place of rest.
It lived with Lee, and decked his brow
From Fate's empyreal Palm;
It sleeps the sleep of Jackson now—
As spotless and as calm.
Sleep, shrouded ensign! not the breeze
That smote the victor tar
With death across the heaving seas
Of fiery Trafalgar,
Can bid thee pale! Proud emblem, still
Thy crimson glory shines!
Sleep in thine own historic night!
And be thy blazoned scroll,
A warrior's banner takes its flight
To greet a warrior's soul!
Character is the foundation of human greatness. In its perfection, it represents, in the individual, the sum of the activities of life; in a national sense, it is the development in history of the ruling spirit of a people, leading to the flower of achievement—to the utmost limit of moral, physical and intellectual effort, in the discharge of duty. [130] The element of character most God-like, is self-sacrifice. According to this standard, we are here to-day, thirty years after the deep-mouthed cannon have hushed their voices, to honor the memory of the most peerless heroes in the annals of the world. He who imagines that the statesmen of the South, above all the people of North Carolina, rushed into the tremendous conflict of the Civil War in thoughtless pride, or mad determination to preserve a single species of property, knows nothing of the true spirit that filled the hearts of the best of the land. The Union had been the beloved object of Southern patriotism. Alamance and Mecklenburg sounded to arms for the revolutionary struggle, Patrick Henry's eloquence fired the torch of liberty, Washington led her hosts, Madison drafted the Constitution, Marshall interpreted the laws—Southern men all. King's Mountain and Guilford were the precursors of the inevitable close of the drama of the revolution at Yorktown. For seventy years and more Southern genius dominated the country and led it, step by step, to the pinnacle of fame. Jefferson and Jackson were the great executives of the first half of the century. The second War of Independence, in 1812, was maintained chiefly by Southern valor. Scott and Taylor, as well as Lee and Davis, in the Mexican war, were men of the South. Fought by an overwhelming majority of Southern men, that war, with the purchases previous thereto and succeeding, by Southern statesmanship, had doubled the area ruled by the Federal government, against the repeated protest of the North. The South had given to the general government, of her own accord, the princely territory of the States between the Tennessee and the Great Lakes. There was never a a conflict in behalf of the Union and the Constitution of these United States, in which the men of the South did not far outnumber those of any other section, and give their precious lives in due proportion. The world will never know how much it cost the South; how stupendous was the price that North Carolina paid to defend the Constitutional rights of the States. Was there no sorrow in contemplating the destruction of the fabric reared by the efforts of Southern statesmanship and cemented with the blood of her children? Who, to-day, would have had this old Commonwealth trample upon her traditions—even from the earliest colonial days, ‘of the freest of the free,’ in Bancroft's words—and tamely submit to military usurpation from Washington to send her sons into the field, against every dictate of conscience and settled conviction of the sovereign [131] rights of the States; to send her sons, I say, against their brethren of Virginia and South Carolina—bone of their bone, and flesh of their flesh, not only in the claims of blood, but in history and sentiment? Never have the annals of history known a line of statesmen like those who guided the fortunes of this country for three-quarters of a century or more! Think of the purity of character of Nathaniel Macon, of John C. Calhoun, of William A. Graham, of Jefferson Davis! Who knew more of the constitutional authority of the State to order her citizens to stand in her defence than such statesmen? My comrades, when men stand above the graves of our sacred dead and drop a flower there to honor them, because they died for what they thought was right, and bend their heads before your gray hairs, in token that your suffering for long years touches them, because you thought you were right—there is a vain and empty echo to such words, kindly meant as they may be. For one, I am here to affirm, before high Heaven, that they were right, and that North Carolina would have been recreant to every principle of honor and duty had she done otherwise. When I see the saintly Bishop-General, who was born on your own soil, leaving the pulpit under the imperative sense of overwhelming duty and sharing the dangers of the field; at one moment stretching forth his arms in blessing upon the stricken people, and the next moment torn apart by an enemy's shot, I feel, with the poet— A flash from the edge of a hostile trench
A puff of smoke, a roar,
Whose echo shall roll from Kennesaw hills
To the furthermost Christian shore,
Proclaim to the world that the warrior priest
Will battle for right no more;
And that for a cause which is sanctified,
By the blood of martyrs unknown,
He kneels, a meek ambassador,
At the foot of the Father's throne.
When I think of Stonewall Jackson, wounded unto death, yet wrestling in prayer with his God, as he was wont to do, in the valley of the Shenandoah, before some bloody enterprise of the next day, like the stern Covenanters of old, and then committing his cause and [132] his fellow-soldiers to a Heavenly care, ‘to rest under the trees’ this day, thirty-two years ago—the question recurs: ‘Was he not in the right?’ When I picture the matchless dignity of Robert E. Lee, looking from his charger in grave serenity upon a field tumultuous with every form of effort of horse and man, and incarnadined with human gore; or recall him, as it was my fortune to see him, in the peace and quiet of his headquarters, and mark the signs on his countenance, of the God-given intellect, and regal dignity of spirit, that afterwards refused fortune and honor abroad to share poverty and labor with his own at home, I am forced to declare—if such immortal spirits were wrong, then let me be wrong with them! In a memorial address twenty-six years ago, the brave and lamented Colonel Robert H. Cowan used this language, when our people were sitting amid the thickest gloom of their great calamity, and patriotic Wilmington was erecting a memorial to our dead. He declared:
In the Pass of classic Thermopylae, there is a monumental pillar reared by the decree of the Amphictyonic Council, to the memory of Leonidas and his devoted three hundred. It bears an inscription, written by the poet of the time, in a style of true Lacedemonian simplicity, and yet it is so tender and touching in its tone, and so lofty in its sentiment, that it appears to me to be sublime:The tongue that spoke these words has long been silent in the grave, but they are forever true. The mother State, conservative in all her history, pondered her steps long and well. What she ordered was done in the plain path of duty, when all other resource had departed. But that duty once ascertained, was performed with a tenacious determination almost without a parallel. In this transitory life, the most precious things are the spiritual forces—the invisible, but immortal, powers that mould men's lives. Look about you, in your beautiful Capital City, putting on anew the garniture of spring. Consider the swift passing away of the material objects about us. A century or two, and where are the [133] most pretentious of our structures? Where are our marts, our factories, and temples? Forms, fashions, institutions change—the rich and the poor exchange places—animated nature bows to decay and passes in turn to oblivion! But the ashes of the noble dead remain in mother earth, and the memory of their deeds hallows the soil. Think you that the valor of George B. Anderson is lost, the gallantry of L. O'B. Branch, the calm and intrepid patriotism of the host of lesser rank that lie beside them in either of our cities of the dead—Burgwyn, and Turner, and Shotwell; the Haywoods, Manlys, Rogers, Engelhard; the knightly Smedes, the great—hearted William E. Anderson—ah! where shall I pause in the bead-roll of heroes; how dare we not include every private, who bore his musket well, in that great brigade that lie in eternal bivouac on our eastern slopes, awaiting the trump of the resurrection morn? Tried by the standard of devotion to duty, and sublime selfsacri-fice, the men whom your fair women delight to honor were worthy of the highest niche in the temple of military fame—the brightest crown, as patriot martyrs. They lie on every battle-field of importance throughout the South. At Winchester, where the sacred ashes have been gathered from many bloody contests, they exceed in melancholy array those of any other State. At Fredericksburg, the dead and wounded of North Carolina exceeded those of all other States of the South combined. In the Seven Days struggle around Richmond, one-half of the number of regiments in Lee's entire army were sons of your soil. Would you seek the most magnificent spectacle of undying courage? Behold the 5th North Carolina at Williamsburg; see it in the 4th North Carolina at Seven Pines; find it in the 3d at Sharpsburg; watch it in the 18th at Spotsylvania; behold it in the 20th at Frazer's Farm; see it in the 26th at Gettysburg, whose loss was the greatest recorded in history; glory in it in the 36th North Carolina, as it envelops Fort Fisher and the heroic Whiting with a halo of imperishable fame. Yet how shall we separate a gallant few from all the brave sons of Carolina, in all her serried battalions? And how shall a single day's exhibition of God-like self-surrender and indomitable daring represent to us the daily struggle on the picket-line, the weary march, the long night watch, the agonizing wound, the dreary imprisonment, the slow starvation, the unceasing anxiety for distant wife and [134] child, the sorrow for a broken and desolated country, the unspeakable pain of final defeat? Alas! for the unknown graves that hide the broken hearts of our comrades, worn by disease, whom we left behind at every camp, in the sand-hills by the sea, or dotting the grassy glades of mountain valleys. Yet the very boys emblazoned immortal deeds upon the escutcheon of their State. At Chancellorsville, the death wound came to a lad of barely seventeen. His musket dropped; with Spartan fortitude he raised his hand to the gushing wound, and faltered forth to his commander, Major, I am killed; tell my father that my feet were to the enemy! So fell Wilson Kerr, of North Carolina. At Petersburg, in the suburb of Pocahontas, lies the last man of the retreating army of Lee. The enemy were rapidly closing on the rear guard, and he volunteered to fire the bridge in the face of certain death. He reached its middle, applied the match, and then, though torn by a grape-shot, that boy of sixteen walked back to the bank and yielded his precious life. The enemy, in admiration of his valor, gave him a soldier's burial on the very spot—wrapped in his old gray blanket that was slung about his shoulders, and the only shroud over his fair features from the enveloping clay, was the apron of a solitary woman, brave enough to venture there to weep over him. So died Cummings Mebane, of North Carolina.Oh stranger! tell it to the Lacedemonians,Let the stranger, whoever he may be, that visits this sacred spot, go and proclaim it to all the world that these brave men lie here in obedience to the laws of North Carolina.
That we lie here in obedience to their laws.
His country was the lady of his dreams,Young men of North Carolina, you who are her hope and pride, and who will be her strong staff, when we shall have become but a memory, see to it, I beseech you, that such sublime virtue,, which accepts certain death for the safety of the whole, and the good of the State, be commemorated in yonder capitol in glowing canvass or enduring marble. Happy will be that people, who, in honoring virtue and commemorating sublimity of human character, stamp the image of the ancestor upon the mind and heart of the children! [135] All honor to the noble women of the Memorial Association of Raleigh, that they have taught their lesson, year by year, not only in the silent but eloquent eulogy of flowers; not only in recalling to mind the herioc self-sacrifice of the hosts in gray, in their voiceless camps of death; but also have decreed that heroes who have served their country in conspicuous station, shall be honored by the recital of their services, and a record shall be forever kept in grateful remembrance. It is the privilege of the speaker to recite briefly some of the many leaves of history, which cluster like chaplets of laurel around an illustrous soldier, who though not born upon your soil, loved with his whole heart your people and your State, and gave his life for them. William Henry Chase Whiting, the son of Levi and Mary A. Whiting, was born March 22, 1824, at Biloxi, Mississippi. His father, originally from Massachusetts, spent his life as an officer of the U. S. Army, serving forty years, from 1812 to 1853, being at his death Lieutenant-Colonel of the 1st Artillery. At twelve years of age he was ready for the Public High School of Boston, where he remained two years, taking the highest stand, particularly in Latin and Greek. Gifted with extraordinary quickness of perception, unyielding tenacity and fidelity of memory, and great will-power, the combination gave evidence of the rarest mental power. He saw at a glance, yet comprehended to the utmost depth. At fourteen, he entered Georgetown College, D. C., and completed with ease the four years course in two years, besides receiving his diploma with high distinction at the head of his class. It was said of his knowledge of Latin, that he could converse in it with fluency. Yet an entirely different class of studies awaited him at West Point, where he entered the U. S. Military Academy, at seventeen. Always at the top, he took at once a high stand, maintained it throughout the course, and graduated after four years, July I, 1845, at the head of the class of forty members, and with a higher stand than any officer of the army had ever taken up that period. Cadet Whiting is described briefly, but vividly, a letter from his room-mate, General Fitz John Porter, to the speaker:
Her cross his knightly sign—
He died! And there he lies,
A stately, slender palm,
Felled down, in tender blossoming,
Across her grave!
It was no small honor to be first in a class that held General Chas. P. Stone (the organizer of the army of Egypt, after the Civil War), General Fitz John Porter, General Gordon Granger, Generals E. Kirby Smith, Barnard E. Bee, and the like. It has been generally conceded that no class contained so many men that afterwards rose to distinction in the great war. Upon graduating, his position entitled him to the honor of an appointment to the engineer corps, the elite of the army. He served as second lieutenant until his promotion to first lieutenant, March 16, 1853, and captain, December 13, 1858. He tendered his resignation from the United States service February 20, 1861. Shortly after graduation, he was ordered to the dangerous task of laying out a military road from San Antonio to El Paso. It will be remembered that Texas had just been annexed, and the country swarmed with the fierce Comanche Indians. This was accomplished with a small party, although with many hair-breadth escapes from the rifle and the scalping knife. He was next at various stations on the gulf until 1852. While temporarily in command at Pensacola, he won high reputation among professional engineers, by successfully closing an opening [137] made by the waters of the lagoon, breaking through to the gulf, thereby endangering the Fort (Pickens) by undermining. This had baffled the efforts of several engineers, who had attempted to close it, at great expense to the government. Ordered next to Fort McHenry, then under the command of Colonel Robert E. Lee, he was transferred shortly after to Fort Point, California, at San Francisco, thence to Wilmington, N. C., and from that point to Fort Pulaski, Georgia, and Fort Clinch, Florida. Upon her secession, Georgia made him Major of Engineers, and on March 29, he received the same rank in the Confederate Army. Then began the long line of services, in many capacities and at many points, to the Southern cause, much of which was devoted to North Carolina, and the closing years of his career wholly so. Sent to Charleston, S. C., to inspect the works being constructed against Fort Sumter, he recognized at once the faults of location and construction, and reported the danger to President Davis. He showed the letter to Beauregard, and ordered him to take charge. General Beuregard, recognizing the truth of the situation, proceeded to change the entire location, and, to use his language:
I determined to alter the system, but gradually, so as not to dampen the ardor or touch the pride of the gallant and sensitive gentlemen who had left their homes, at the call of the State, to vindicate its honor.General Beauregard, in his report of the capture of Fort Sumter, April 12, 1861, said:
The engineers, Majors Whiting and Gwynn and others, on whom too much praise cannot be bestowed for their untiring zeal, energy and gallantry, and to whose labors is greatly due the unprecedented example of taking such an important work, after thirty-three hours firing, without having to report the loss of a single life, and but four slightly wounded. From Major W. H. C. Whiting I derived also much assistance, not only as an engineer, in selecting the sites and laying out the channel batteries on Morris Island, but as Acting Assistant-Adjutant and Inspector-General, in arranging and stationing the troops on said island.Major Whiting was made Adjutant-General, and brought his great abilities into service on Morris Island, to prepare for the attack upon Sumter, which was successful April 11, 1861. An Englishman, and an accomplished critic of military men and [138] measures, speaks in exalted terms of praise of Major Whiting's operations there; and long after, General Gist writes of his ardent desire that Whiting should return to Charleston in complete command. Leaving Charleston now for the field, he remains in North Carolina long enough to advise as to the defences of the Cape Fear, at the following request of the Governor, the lamented John W. Ellis, who fell a victim to disease early in the war. He writes:
Seeing the forts in North Carolina in Confederate hands, he advised a system of defence, especially of the important Cape Fear region, after examining the condition of the forts and harbors; but there being no reason to anticipate immediate attack, he obeyed a call to duty in Virginia, whither he repaired to report for service to General Joseph E. Johnston, in command at Harper's Ferry of the Confederate forces protecting the Shenandoah Valley. With his usual activity, he grasped the situation at Harper's Ferry, and we find General Joseph E. Johnston saying, in his ‘Narrative of the War,’ page 17:
A careful examination of the position and its environs, made on the 25th May, with the assistance of an engineer of great ability, Major Whiting, convinced me that it could not be held against equal numbers, etc.In correspondence, years afterwards, Johnston refers to this period [139] and to Whiting's judicious aid upon his staff with the highest commendation. Now the first great conflict came on at Bull Run. Anticipating the event, Whiting was entrusted with the charge of arrangements for the moving of the army at Harper's Ferry, to the aid of Beauregard at Manassas, and had the railroad authorities kept their repeated pledges to him, reinforcements would have reached the field of Manassas in time to have crushed McDowell earlier in the day, spared much Confederate blood, and possibly cut off the retreat of the United States forces to Washington. General Whiting had in charge the blowing up of Harper's Ferry, which General Johnston pronounced a ‘masterly piece of work.’ Whiting was with the troops whose opportune arrival at Manassas saved the day, including the gallant 6th North Carolina, whose colonel (Fisher) gave up his life on the field of battle. His name is immortalized by the fortress where North Carolinians withstood the greatest bombardment that the world has ever known. In General Joseph E. Johnston's official report of the battle of Manassas, he mentions Whiting first, of all of his staff, and declares:
Major W. H. C. Whiting, Chief Engineer, was invaluable to me for his signal ability in his profession, and for his indefatigable activity before and in the battle.For his brilliant service on the field, President Davis, who was on the ground, wrote the following order (which I hold in my hand), entire as to text and signature:
The permanent commission was dated by the Secretary of War, August 28th, to rank from the glorious 21st July, the day of Manassas. [140] He was ordered at first to the command of Bee's brigade, their general having been killed at Manassas. It will be remembered that, after that collision, both sides began to realize the magnitude of the impending struggle, and to raise, equip and discipline their armies with more military order and detail. And in the South, preparations for better defences than the batteries hastily thrown up, were going forward. General Whiting gave his best efforts, as a trained soldier, to the equipment and training of the troops, while his engineering skill was freely drawn upon for the public welfare. General Whiting was assigned the command of the brigade of General Bee, killed at Manassas. This was composed of the 6th North Carolina, 4th Alabama, 2d and 11th Mississippi. Major J. S. Fairly, now Lieutenant-Colonel J. S. Fairly, of Charleston, S. C., who served with distinguished ability on the staff of General Whiting, says, in a letter to the speaker:
With Bee's and the Texas Brigade, under General Wigfall, the division went into winter quarters near Dumfries, Va., and built heavy batteries, commanding the Potomac river, sometimes inflicting loss upon the enemy attempting its navigation; but his great work and constant care during the whole winter, was, first to have his troops make themselves comfortable winter quarters; next, to organize them for the victories they were to win, by thorough drill—constant drill—by squad, by company, by regiment, by brigade, by division, or as the troops called the last, “ neighborhood drill;” thus accustoming the troops to act in concert, and in the presence of each other, so giving them confidence in each other and in their officers. “Little Billy,” as the troops endearingly called him, was indefatigable. With the opening spring, our retreat from Dumfries, and march from Fredericksburg began, aud was accomplished without loss, although the roads were indescribably bad. We encamped near Fredericksburg and thence went to the Peninsular to await General Johnston's further movements.When spring opened, Johnston determined to evacuate Norfolk and Yorktown, and retire upon Richmond, there to meet the enormous army gathering under General McClellan. The evacuation was skilfully performed, and the enemy checked in direct pursuit at Williamsburg, largely by the sacrifice of the 5th North Carolina, [141] under McRae, whose losses were so frightful and bravery so heroic, as to win for it the sobriquet of the ‘Bloody 5th.’ It was next found that the enemy had landed in force at West Point, and had occupied a thick woods between the New Kent road and Eltham's Landing, threatening the column on the march, with a fatal attack upon its flank. General Johnston reports:
The security of our march required that he should be disloged, and General G. W. Smith was entrusted with this service. He performed it very handsomely, with Hampton's and Hood's Brigades, under Whiting, who drove the enemy, in about two hours, a mile and a half through the woods to the protection of their vessels of war. If the statements published in the Northern papers at the time are accurate, their losses were ten times as great as ours.So much for prompt and timely action at a critical moment. The whole of Franklin's superb division was routed by Whiting's two small brigades. This repulse occurred May 6th, and inspired the troops anew with devoted confidence in their indomitable leader. In token of this General Whiting was surprised at the reception of a letter from the officers of the 4th Alabama, of his brigade, tendering to him a present of a noble charger, which on May 22nd was formally presented at dress-parade, ‘as an evidence of high esteem and appreciation of you as a soldier and a gentleman, by the regiment.’ On the last day of the same month, occurred the famous engagement of the Seven Pines. It will be remembered by veterans that this bloody conflict has gone into history as a drawn battle. The victory of Seven Pines for the Confederates being followed by inaction at Fair Oaks the next day, and the result a check, but not an overwhelming defeat for the United States troops as it might have been. The testimony of the ‘Records of the Rebellion,’ in which is all the evidence of reports of commanders throughout the field, shows unmistakably that the same sluggishness and want of response to orders, which lost the battle of Gettysburg, by the failure of Longstreet to move in time to the support of Pickett and Pettigrew, was at fault there. General G. W. Smith shows (Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Vol. II, 241) that Whiting's division, advancing at 6 A. M., was blocked by Longstreet's troops, and in spite of herculean efforts, [142] message after message having gone forward, was not permitted to advance until 4 P. M. He had been finally held in reserve by General Johnston, in case Longstreet was in danger of being overpowered, and who now was supposed to be overwhelmingly engaged. But, alas, the truth of history is, that eight brigades of Longstreet's thirteen, had not even been engaged. Colonel B. W. Frobel, of the engineers, was on Whiting's staff, and he writes (in 1868) of one of the rare mistakes made by that great soldier, Joseph E. Johnston, as follows:
Generals Johnston and Whiting were following immediately after Whiting's Brigade. As the brigade reached the road, near the railroad crossing, I was sent to halt it. On returning, after doing this, I joined the generals, who were riding toward the crossing. General Whiting was expostulating with General Johnston about taking the division across the railroad—insisting that the enemy were then in force on our left flank and rear. General Johnston replied: “Oh, General Whiting, you are too cautious.” At this time we reached the crossing, and nearly at the same moment the enemy opened an artillery fire from the direction pointed out by General Whiting. We moved back up the road near the small white house; Whiting's Brigade was gone. It had been ordered forward to charge the batteries which were firing on us. The brigade was repulsed, and in a few minutes came streaming back through the skirt of woods to the left of the Nine-Mile Road near the crossing. There was only a part of the brigade in this charge. Pender (commanding a regiment) soon rallied and reformed those on the edge of the woods. General Whiting sent an order to him (Pender) to reconnoitre the batteries, and if he thought they could be taken, to try it again. Before he could do so, some one galloped up, shouting, “Charge that battery!” The men moved forward at a double-quick, but were repulsed, as before, and driven back to the woods.General Whiting immediately arranged for a combined attack by the brigades of Whiting, Pettigrew and Hampton. Alas, for the mistake in not reconnoitreing the position first, before crossing the railroad, as General Whiting had suggested, and then attacking before General Sumner's Corps could reinforce Couch, who was holding the Federal line. For by the time the three brigades could be brought into action, many, with little or no ammunition left, unknown to the Confederates in the thick woods, General [143] Sedgwick's leading division, of Sumner's Corps, with Kirby's Napoleon guns, had arrived, and a new and immensely superior enemy was encountered by the devoted band in the assault. Sedgwick says, on arriving, ‘We found Abercrombie's Brigade, of Couch's Division, sustaining a severe attack and hard pushed by the enemy.’ Again and again the Confederates attacked, but to meet bloody repulse. General Smith says:
Longstreet says, in writing on June 7th:Believing that Whiting had, on the right, as much as he could well attend to, I went with Hatton's Brigade to the extreme front line of Hampton and Pettigrew in the woods, and soon learned that General Pettigrew had been wounded, it was supposed mortally, and was a prisoner. General Hatton was killed at my side just as his brigade reached the front line of battle, and in a very few minutes General Hampton was severely wounded. In this state of affairs, I sent word to General Whiting that I would take executive control in that wood, which would relieve him for the time of care for the left of the division, and enable him to give his undivided attention to the right.
In the wood, the opposing lines were close to each other, in some places not more than twenty-five or thirty yards apart. The firing ceased at dark, when I ordered the line to fall back to the edge of the field and re-form. In the meantime Whiting's Brigade and the right of Pettigrew's had been forced back to the clump of trees just north of Fair Oaks station, where the contest was kept up until night.Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Vol. II, p. 247.
The failure of complete success on Saturday, I attribute to the slow movements of General Huger's command. * * * I can't but help think that a display of his forces on the left flank of the enemy would have completed the affair, and given Whiting as easy and pretty a game as was ever had upon a battle-field.In the cold, calm light of facts now developed, it is not difficult to see that the slowness was on the part of the writer of that report, who should, by Johnston's orders, have moved at daybreak on the 31st, and who failed to move at all, as ordered by General Smith, on the morning of June 1st. Although not permitted to gather the fruits of their unyielding courage, Smith's Division, under Whiting, prevented Sumner's [144] forces from reaching Keyes' at Seven Pines (a matter of supreme importance), and deprived Keyes and Heintzelman of two brigades and a battery of their own troops. It has been mentioned that during the events narrated, General J. J. Pettigrew was wounded very seriously. I cannot forbear, in this presence where so many dear friends of General Pettigrew remain, to record for future history an unpublished letter from Pettigrew to Whiting, fraught with the pure patriotism and exquisite self-sacrifice characteristic of both heroes, who sleep in death together for the cause they served. I hardly need remind you that this (like his report) was written by an amanuensis, and exhibits in its feeble signature the exhaustion of one wounded almost unto death.
[145] After some weeks of inaction, ‘says Major Fairly, of General Whiting's staff; writing to the speaker,’ the march, ostensibly to reinforce Jackson in the Valley, was taken up by General Whiting's Division. I was afterwards told that it occurred in this way: Early in June, when all was still quiet along the lines, one day General Whiting rode over to the quarters of General Lee, and learning that he was out, sat down at his desk and wrote on a slip of paper, “ If you don't move, McClellan will dig you out of Richmond,” and left it, asking Col. Chilton, I think, to call the General's attention to it upon his return. It was not long before a courier came to Whiting's headquarters with a note or message asking General W. to come to army headquarters. On his arrival, the General said, “General Whiting, I received your note; what do you propose?” Whiting then developed the plan of appearing to reinforce Jackson's victorious army in the Valley, thus threatening Washington, and causing stoppage of troops then about to leave Washington to reinforce McClellan, and Jackson, by forced marches, was to fall on his right, north of the Chickahominy River, and destroy him before the powers at Washington could discover the “ ruse de guerre,” and send him reinforcements.
General Lee approved, but said, “Whom can I send?” General Whiting replied, “ Send me.” “Ah, but I can't spare you; you command five brigades.” General Whiting, with the unselfish patriotism which always characterized him, said, “ I will take my two old brigades and go,” to which Lee replied, “When can you go?” “ I am ready now,” said Whiting. “Oh!” said General Lee, “you can march Thursday.” This occurred, I think, on Tuesday And so he did.We lay at Staunton two days. The next morning we began a forced march to meet Jackson's corps at Brown's Gap, where we took the lead and kept it. The rapidity of the march may be judged when I say, that the teamsters were ordered to water their horses before starting, and not to allow them to stop for water until night, and I was instructed to stay by the column and enforce the order. I could but sympathize with the teamsters, but horses must suffer that our men might be fed on the march, and so kept up to their work.
Our division led the advance of Jackson's Corps, and reached the field of Gaines' Mill, or Cold Harbor, about 5 o'clock in the afternoon of the 27th June, 1862, and, if my memory serves me right, on Friday, and none too early, for I learned that every division of ours north of the Chickahominy had been thrown against McClellan's [146] right, held by Fitz John Porter, and all had failed; and we soon knew why. He had twenty thousand United States regulars behind the strongest field fortifications that I had ever seen, both from construction and position.The battle of Gaines' Mill one of the most sanguinary conflicts of the Seven Days Battle, occurred June 27th, and General Stonewall Jackson thus reports of two of the brigades of General Whiting's division (although the General was only a Brigadier in actual rank). Jackson says:
Dashing on with unfaltering step, in the face of those murderous discharges of canister and musketry, General Hood and Col. E. M. Law, at the head of their respective brigades, rushed to the charge with a yell. Moving down a precipitous ravine, leaping ditch and stream, clambering up a difficult ascent, and exposed to an incessant and deadly fire from the entrenchments, these brave and determined men pressed forward, driving the enemy from his well-selected and fortified position. In this charge, in which upwards of a thousand men fell, killed and wounded, before the fire of the enemy, and in which fourteen pieces of artillery and nearly a regiment were captured, the Fourth Texas, under the lead of General Hood, were the first to pierce these strongholds and seize the guns.The Sixth North Carolina participated in this famous charge. General E. M. Law, commanding one of these brigades under Whiting, describes the action fully in the ‘Southern Bivouac’ (1867). He says: By 5 P. M., on the 27th June, the battle of Gaines' Mill was in full progress all along the lines. Longstreet's and A. P. Hill's men were attacking in the most determined manner, but were met with a courage as obstinate as their own, by the Federals who held the works. After each bloody repulse, the Confederates only waited long enough to reform their shattered lines, or to bring up their supports, when they would again return to the assault. Besides the terrific fire in front, a battery of heavy guns on the south side of the Chickahominy was in full play upon their right flank. There was no opportunity for manoeuvering or flank attacks, as was the case with D. H. Hill, on our extreme left. The enemy was directly in front, and he could only be reached in that direction. If he could not be driven out before night it would be equivalent to a [147] Confederate disaster, and would involve the failure of General Lee's whole plan for the relief of Richmond. It was a critical moment for the Confederates, as victory, which involved the relief or loss of their capitol, hung wavering in the balance. Night seemed about to close the account against them, as the sun was now setting upon their gallant, but so far fruitless efforts. While matters were in this condition, Whiting's division, after crossing, with much difficulty, the wooded and marshy ground below Gaines' Mill, arrived in rear of that position of the line held by the remnants of A. P. Hill's division. When Whiting advanced to the attack, a thin and irregular line of General Hill's troops were keeping up the fight, but, already badly cut up, could effect nothing, and were gradually wasting away under the heavy fire from the Federal lines. From the centre of the division to the Chickahominy Swamp on the right, the ground was open, on the left were thick woods; the right brigade (Law's) advanced in the open ground, the left (Hood's) through the woods. As we moved forward to the firing, we could see the straggling Confederate line, lying behind a gentle ridge that ran across the field, parallel to the Federal position. We passed one Confederate battery, in the edge of the field, badly cut to pieces and silent. Indeed, there was no Confederate artillery then in action on that part of the field. The Federal batteries in front were in full play. The fringe of woods along the Federal line was shrouded in smoke, and seemed fairly to vomit forth a leaden and iron hail. General Whiting rode along his line and ordered that there should be no halt when we reached the slight crest occupied by the few Confederate troops in our front, but that the charge should begin at that point, in double-quick time, with trailing arms and without firing. Had these orders not been strictly obeyed the assault would have been a failure; no troops could have stood long under the withering storm of lead and iron that beat into their faces, as they became fully exposed to view, from the Federal lines. As it was, in the very few moments it took to pass over the slope and down the hill to the ravine, a thousand men were killed or wounded. The brigade advanced to the attack in two lines. Passing over the scattering line of Confederates on the ridge in [148] front, the whole division “broke into a trot” down the slope toward the Federal works. Men fell like leaves in an autumn wind; the Federal artillery tore gaps in the ranks at every step; the ground in rear of the advancing column was strewn thickly with the dead and wounded. Not a gun was fired in reply; there was no confusion, and not a step faltered as the two gray lines swept silently and swiftly on; the pace became more rapid every moment; when the men were within thirty yards of the ravine, and could see the desperate nature of the work in hand, a wild yell answered the roar of Federal musketry, and they rushed for the works. The Confederates were within ten paces of them when the Federals in the front line broke, and leaving their log breastworks, swarmed up the hill in their rear, carrying away their second line with them in their rout. Then we had our “innings.” As the blue mass surged up the hill in our front, the Confederate fire was poured into it with terrible effect. The target was a large one, the range short, and scarcely a shot fired into that living mass could fail of its errand. The debt of blood, contracted but a few minutes before, was paid with interest. Firing as they advanced, the Confederates leaped into the ravine, climbed out on the other side, and over the lines of breastworks, reaching the crest of the hill beyond with such rapidity, as to capture all of the Federal artillery (fourteen pieces ) at that point. We had now reached the high plateau in rear of the centre of General Porter's position, his line having been completely cut in two, and thus rendered no longer tenable. From the flanks where Whiting's Division had burst through, the Federal lines gave way in both directions. R. H. Anderson's brigade, till then in reserve, passed through on the right, and led the way for Longstreet's Division, while on the left the roll of musketry receded towards the Chickahominy, and the cheering of the victorious Confederates announced that Jackson, Ewell and D. H. Hill were sweeping that part of the field. “The battle was won, and the Federal infantry was in full flight towards the swamps of the Chickahominy.” —Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, p. 363. General Whiting should have been promoted as Major-General immediately after the Seven Days Battles, but unaccountably it was delayed until the next year. With a sense of injustice at the reduction of his command to brigade thereafter, he wrote to General Lee, [149] and transmitted certain important papers. The following is the answer of General Lee (from an unpublished letter.) I read:
Events at this period will be better understood by the perusal of the following letter to the speaker, from General Gustavus W. Smith (now of New York city), [since dead—died June 24, 1896—Ed.] who was second in command to General Johnston at Seven Pines, and subsequently in command of the army until relieved by General R. E. Lee:
On the 28th February, 1863, the long delayed promotion of Brigadier-General Whiting to Major-General was made, and the correspondence of the General shows letters from some of the best and bravest General Officers of the army writing of their own accord to entreat him not to decline the tardy recognition, but to accept and work on for the good of the cause. General Smith said, “Accept, I beg you, what in justice should have been done long ago.” General Gist wrote from Charleston:
Knowing you will feel disposed to decline this promotion, from [155] high and proper motives, I have concluded to intrude my advice, and beg you to accept. Although all acknowledge that you should have been promoted long ago; still, we must make sacrifices for our common country and cause. In common with many officers and citizens, I much desire you to be sent to us, for the command of the district of Charleston. We will have additional troops soon, and may expect a Major-General to command the whole.It adds to the force of this letter to remember that its writer was then senior Brigadier-General commanding at Charleston himself. He was called now to the defence of Wilmington, proceeding to his post of duty in November, 1862. A week afterwards he writes the General Commanding at Richmond:
My first, and last request will be for troops. Not less than 10,000 effective men should be collected as soon as possible, with five or six field batteries. The peculiar features of the site make the presence of a strong manoeuvreing force, in addition to the stationary batteries, indispensable.The importance of Wilmington, the only port practicable for use by Confederates, it is impossible to set forth to those unacquainted with the straits of the Confederacy. It was the mouth of the Confederate States, and when it was closed, arms, ammunition, food, clothing, medicines, machinery and supplies of every character were cut off. To lose it was to receive a fatal blow—a wound which must endanger the life of Lee's army. It was difficult of defence—easy to attack by one or more of a number of routes. Situated twenty-five miles from the fortifications at the nearest mouth of the Cape Fear, it was yet only about six miles from points on the coast, where a landing might be effected. Assailable not only here, and at the mouth of the river, by way of Oak Island, below Caswell, and an expedition via Southport, or by march from Kingston or Newbern, the enemy's cavalry having occupied the line as far as New Hope, in Onslow; or, again, by attack upon Caswell or Fort Fisher. Its preservation was a source of deep anxiety. It was in fact, the second capital of the Confederacy. Here the wharves were lined with the swift, narrow, smoke-colored, blockade-running steamships taking away cotton and bringing supplies. Men of all nationalities were upon these, and possibly spies. The beautiful snow-white ensign of the South, with the battle-flag of the troops for its union, fluttered from the Chickamauga and other vessels of [156] war; ammunition and ordnance for the most distant points, were landed upon the wharves, and sent away, even when the eager eyes of those whose safety was bound up with Wilmington's defence saw it leaving the spot where it was most needed. Strange to say, never was the vast importance of this last harbor of access from the rest of Christendom appreciated, until the die was cast and all was over! General Whiting was ordered there in November, 1862, the place having been thought comparatively safe from attack during the fall of that year, while an epidemic of yellow fever ravaged the city and cost the lives of many noble men. It was no longer a question of batteries strong enough for resistance against a few vessels, but as port after port was closed, and many taken, the day came when the effective force of the flower of the whole American Navy was to be brought to bear. Appreciating this, the General gave himself, his every thought and effort, to the gigantic task before him. Ably seconded by the brave and vigorous efforts of Colonel William Lamb, commanding the 36th North Carolina (a regiment of heavy artillery), he encouraged the exertions of Lamb in building and strengthening the huge Mound Battery and a line of defence on the land side at Fort Fisher, while he gave his own attention to the entire system of defences as a whole. Forts Caswell, Holmes, Campbell, Anderson and others were greatly strengthened, enlarged, furnished with better artillery where practicable, military roads and bridges made extending up the Sounds, complete topographical maps prepared, torpedoes made and filled, the channel obstructed except at points commanded by a chain of batteries on the river, a pontoon bridge constructed, batteries thrown up commanding the approach at North East river from Goldsboro to Newbern, redoubts built near the city, mines dug, and telegraphs placed in position. But there were two vital needs he could not control—the number of troops to support the works, and the amount of ammunition to carry on the contest. His letter-books show not one appeal, but dozens of earnest, imploring requests of the Secretary of War, of General Smith, of General Lee, of General Bragg when stationed at Richmond in general charge, and of the President himself, showing with the prevision of the great military genius, what must inevitably ensue. It is most pathetic to read page after page, and think how literally it was fulfilled. In the letter-book of General Whiting may be found the following [157] clear and definite warning, written to the Secretary of War, July 24, 1863, a year and a half nearly before the attack came, just as he prophesied with his unerring military insight. He says:
General Whiting gave his heart to the work of the defence o North Carolina. He had been long and successfully engaged, before the war, in the improvement of the navigation of the Cape Fear, and learned to know and esteem her people. He had won, as his bride, one of the noble women of the Cape Fear, Miss Kate D. Walker, daughter of Major John Walker, of Smithville and Wilmington. His estimate of the high-toned people among whom he lived, is seen in the military order published in the winter of 1862 by him, in a period of great anxiety:
The ceaseless labor went on day after day, month after month, heaping up defensive works, driving palisades, sounding the channels (for the treacherous sands of that inlet give new directien to the channel after every storm from the sea), protecting commerce, and the routine of the command, complicated as the great forwarding depot of the South; but he never ceased to warn Richmond that stationary fortifications alone could not accomplish the impossible task of holding the port; there must be a supporting force of troops to meet at once troops embarked by the enemy, as they would be out of reach of the guns of the fort, whether on Oak Island or near Fort Fisher. Meanwhile events were rapidly progressing elsewhere, and the sad story of repeated Confederate losses was growing familiar. The following remarkable letter from General Joseph E. Johnston deserves record here:
What line of eulogy, however expressed, could come with greater power than from the master of strategy and the patriot hero, whom his troops loved with undying devotion, and who gave the last bloody lesson to the invader on North Carolina soil—in the struggle at Bentonsville? To ask for Whiting as his second in command, and to declare: ‘If you were with me, I should feel confident!’ That is a sentence which should be the immortal epitaph of the hero whose life we attempt to review to-day. In his valuable address, delivered at the request of Cape Fear Camp, United Confederate Veterans, by Colonel William Lamb, is this description of Fort Fisher, which was still unfinished when the attack occurred. He says:
The plans were my own, and as the work progressed, were approved by French, Raines, Longstreet, Beauregard and Whiting. It was styled by Federal engineers, “the Malakoff of the South.” It was built solely with the view of resisting the fire of a fleet, and it stood uninjured, except as to armanent, two of the fiercest bombardments the world has ever witnessed. The two faces to the works were 2,580 yards long, or about one and a half miles. The land face mounted twenty of the heaviest sea-coast guns, and was 682 yards long; the sea-face with twenty-four equally heavy guns. The land face commenced about 100 feet [160] from the river, with a half bastion, originally Shepherd's Battery, which had been doubled in strength, and extended with a heavy curtain to a full bastion on the ocean side, where it joned the sea-face. The work was built to withstand the heaviest artillery fire. There was no moat with scarp and counter scarp so essential for defence against storming parties, the shifting sands rendering its construction impossible, with the material available. The water slope was twenty feet high from the berme to the top of the parapet, at an angle of forty-five degrees, and was sodded with marsh grass, which grew luxuriantly. The parapet was not less than twenty-five feet thick. The guns were all mounted en barbette, with Columbiad carriages; there was not a single casemated gun in the fort. Experience had taught, that casemates of timber and sand-bags were a delusion and a snare, against heavy projectiles, and there was no iron to construct others with. Between the gun-chambers, containing one or two guns each, there were heavy traverses, exceeding in size any heretofore constructed, to protect from an enfilading fire. They extended out some twelve feet on the parapet, and were twelve feet or more in height above the parapet, running back thirty feet or more. Further along, where the channel ran close to the beach, inside the bar, a mound battery, sixty feet high was erected, with two heavy guns, which had a plunging fire on the channel; this was connected with a battery north of it, by a light curtain. Following the line of the works, it was over one mile from the mound to the redan, at the angle of the sea and the land faces. From the mound, for nearly a mile, to the end of the point, was a level sand plain, scarce three feet above high tide, and much of it was submerged during gales. At the point itself, was Battery Buchanan, with four guns, In the shape of an eliptic, commanding the inlet, its two 11-inch guns covering the approach by land. Returning to the land face, or northern front of Fort Fisher, as a defence against infantry, there was a system of sub-terra torpedoes, extending across the peninsula five or six hundred feet from the land face, and so disconnected, that the explosion of one would not effect the others; inside the torpedoes, about fifty feet from the berme of the work, extending from the river bank to the seashore, was a heavy palisade of sharpened logs, nine feet high, pierced for musketry, and so laid out as to have an enfilading fire on the centre, where there was a redoubt guarding a sally-port, from which two Napoleons were run out as occasion required. [161] The garrison consisted of two companies of the 10th North Carolina, under Major James Reilly; the 36th North Carolina, Colonel William Lamb, ten companies; four companies of the 40th North Carolina; Co. D of the 1st North Carolina Artillery Battalion; Co. C, 3rd North Carolina Artillery Battalion; Co. D, 13th North Carolina Artillery Battalion, and the naval detachment, under Captain Van Benthuysen.Colonel Lamb affirms that at no time during the last and heaviest action were there in the Fort more than 1,900 men, including the sick, killed and wounded. The activity of the blockade-running steamers stirred the Federal government to prepare a gigantic force for the long deferred attack. It was known that the Confederate steamer, R. E. Lee, had made twenty-one trips within ten months from the British port of Nassau, and Chicago bacon had become familiar in our ranks. Men of worldwide fame visited the port under assumed names. Among these was Hobart Pasha, the Englishman who afterwards commanded the Turkish navy; Captain Murray, who was C. Murray Aynsley, afterwards Admiral in the British navy, and others. Rumors came thick and fast of the great expedition in preparation, and in the midst of active movement the troops were thunderstruck at the news that General Braxton Bragg had assumed command at Wilmington, superseding but not removing General Whiting, who remained second in command. The speaker, whose duties in the engineer service called him to many points of the city and river defences, found the feeling of melancholy foreboding at this change to be universal. General Bragg's career in the Mexican war, in the vigor of early life, when captain of artillery, was most brilliant and honorable. But whatever may have been the cause, no matter what his ability or efforts, the fact was known that his record throughout the war, from the attack on Pickens to the day that he gave up the army of Tennessee to Johnston, was one involving much slaughter and little success. Colonel Lamb says (in his address at Wilmington in 1893):
This was a bitter disappointment to my command, who felt that no one was so capable of defending the Cape Fear as the brilliant officer who had given so much of his time and ability for its defence. The patriotic Whiting showed no feeling at being superseded, but went to work, with redoubled energy, to prepare for the impending [162] attack. He visited Confederate Point frequently, riding over the ground with me, and selecting points for batteries and covered ways, so as to keep up communication, after the arrival of the enemy, betwen the fort and the entrenched camp, which I began at Sugar Loaf. He pointed out to me where the enemy would land on the beach, beyond the range of our guns, and on both occasions the enemy landed at that very place, without opposition, although Whiting had prepared ample shelter for troops, to seriously retard, if not prevent a landing.“It seems incomprehensible,” Lamb continues, ‘that General Bragg should have allowed the Federal troops, on both attacks, to have made a frolic of their landing on the soil of North Carolina. Six thousand soldiers from Lee's army within call, and not one sent to meet the invader and drive him from the shore.’ Half the garrison had been sent to Georgia, against Sherman, under Major Stevenson. On the day the fleet came in sight, we had but 500 men, but next day we were reinforced by two companies under Major Reilly, a company of the 13th North Carolina Battalion, and the 7th Battalion Junior Reserves, boys between sixteen and eighteen, in number 140—making a total in the fort of 900 men and boys. The brave young boys, torn from their firesides by the cruel necessities of the struggle, were as bright and manly as if anticipating a parade. What nobler women can be found in all history, than the matrons of the Old North State, who, with their prayers and tears, sent forth their darlings in a cause they believed to be right, and in defence of their homes? Self-sacrificing courage seems indigenous to North Carolina. No breast is too tender for this heroic virtue. The first life-blood that stained the sands of Confederate Point, was from one of these youthful patriots. “Saturday (Christmas eve),” Colonel Lamb says,
was almost an Indian summer day, and the deep blue sea was as calm as a lake. With the rising sun out of the ocean, there came upon the horizon, one after another, the vessels of the fleet, numbering more than fifty men-of-war; the grand frigates led the van, followed by the ironclads. At 9 o'clock the men were beat to quarters, and silently stood by their guns. * * * The Minnesota, Colorado and Wabash came grandly on, floating fortresses, each mounting more guns than all the batteries on land, and the first two combined carrying [163] more shot and shell than all the magazines in the fort contained. From the left salient to the mound, Fort Fisher had forty-four guns, and not over 3,000 shot and shell, exclusive of grape and shrapnel. The Armstrong gun had only one dozen rounds of fixed ammunition, and no other projectiles could be used in its delicate grooves. The order was given to fire no shot until the Columbiad at headquarters fired, and that each gun that bore on a vessel should be fired every thirty minutes, and not oftener, except by special order, unless an attempt was made to cross the bar, when every gun bearing on it, should be fired as rapidly as accuracy would permit.For five hours this tremendous hail of shot and shell was poured upon the works, before they hauled off for the night. General Whiting had been assigned to no duty by General Bragg, although it was his right to have commanded the supporting troops. He determined to go to the fort and share its fate. Meeting its commander, who offered to relinguish the control, the General declined to take away the glory of the defence from the brave Lamb, but declared he would counsel him, and fight as a volunteer. The second day by 10 o'clock the fleet was in line again, some five miles long, and from half a mile to a mile and a half distant, pouring a rain of shot and shell. Landing his troops out of range, as evening approached, a column of attack was formed. The fire of the fleet reached over one hundred immense projectiles per minute. The garrison was rallied to the line of the palisades, and the guns of the land defences being nearly intact, if that storming column had reached the fort, hardly a man would have been left alive to tell the tale. But they faltered and broke, and the advanced line threw themselves on the sand to creep out of fire. They re-embarked, and the first battle of Fisher was over, amid the rejoicing of the Confederates. Strange to say, no effort had been made by Bragg's troops; he had not even ordered an attack upon 700 shivering wretches left behind by their comrades on the night of the 26th, whose condition made them an easy prey. Ten thousand shots had been fired, and the damage to the fort was comparatively little, and the battle had been won by its garrison alone. The great armada steamed northward to refit and take in fresh ammunition and more troops. General Whiting asked for the necessary fixed ammunition for the guns, as 1,272 shots out of 3,000 had left a dangerously small supply, and for hand grenades to be [164] used on the ramparts, and for torpedoes to be placed in the anchorage whither the fleet was certain to return. None could be obtained. Part of his veteran artillerists were actually withdrawn, and new troops sent in without experience. His personal unselfishness was so great, his skill so eminent, his bravery so cool and calm, his kindness to all so unvaried, that his troops loved him—in the words of Major Sloan, his Chief of Ordnance, they ‘almost worshipped him!’ In the midst of the whirling shells, he scarcely removed his pipe from his mouth, as he stood upon the open rampart spattered from the bursting shells. Lieutenant Hunter, of the 36th, writes to the speaker:
I saw him stand with folded arms, smiling upon a four hundred pound shell, as it stood smoking and spinning like a billiard ball on the sand, not twenty feet away, until it burst, and then move quietly away. I saw him fifty times a day—I saw him fight, and saw him pray, and he was all that a general should be in battle. He was the best equipped man in the Confederate States to defend the port of Wilmington, and his relief by Bragg brought gloom over the entire command.Time fails me to relate the details of the great battle of the 13th, 14th and 15th of January. The fleet arrived the night of the 12th, and early next day began the rain of projectiles, increasing in fury at times to 160 per minute, and directed by converging fire to the destruction of the guns on the land force of Fisher, and the pounding of the northeast salient to a shapeless ruin. Again General Whiting came to the fort, on the first day's bombardment, and upon his entrance he said to Lamb:
I have come to share your fate, my boy. You are to be sacrificed. The last thing I heard General Bragg say, was to point out a line to fall back upon, when Fisher fell.The firing never ceased—all day and all night long the 11-inch and 15-inch fiery globes rolled along the parapet; the palisades were cut to pieces, the wires to the mines were ploughed up in the deep sands. An English officer who had been present at Sebastopol, declared it was but child play to this terrific shaking of earth and sea, by a fleet whose broadside could throw 44,000 pounds of iron at a single discharge. The men fought on—their quarters having been burned, with [165] blankets and clothing—in the depth of winter, without a blanket for rest, for three days, with cornmeal coffee and uncooked rations—for not even a burial party could put its head out of bombproof without casualties. On the evening of the 13th, some 8,500 troops landed four miles north, in the language of their commander, as if at some exciting sport, with no one to molest them. Throwing up entrenchments on either side, they began an approach upon the fort, which no longer possessed an armament of great guns on that face. Telegram after telegram besought General Bragg to attack; but his troops had been ordered sixteen miles away for an idle review, and when they were in position again, he refused to attack the two brigades of negro troops which held the land side, though urged re-repeatedly by telegraph, which was out of the enemy's control! The fire suddenly increased to inconceivable fury about 3 P. M. of the 15th, and the air was hot with bursting shells. All at once there was ominous silence, and the column of the enemy, of 1,600 picked sailors and 400 marines, under the flower of the officers of the navy, were seen approaching the northeast redan. Whiting and Lamb rallied their gallant band upon the exposed ramparts—the struggle was terrible, but with twenty-one officers killed and wounded, that column was broken to pieces, and a sight never seen in the world before, of two thousand United States Naval troops in full flight! leaving four hundred on the sands, and their commander, Breese, similating death among them, to escape capture. But alas, two battles were going on at the same time! Half a mile distant, at the left of the land face, Ames' division had assaulted, through the gaps in the palisades. Although, by the Federal accounts, three of every five who reached the works were shot down, Major Reilly's men were so outnumbered that two traverses with their gunchambers were taken. Just as the naval attack was beaten back, General Whiting saw the Federal flags planted on those traverses. Calling on the troops to follow him, they fought hand-to-hand with clubbed muskets, and one traverse was retaken. Just as he was climbing the other, and had his hand upon the Federal flag to tear it down, General Whiting fell, receiving two wounds—one very severe through the thigh. Meantime Curtis' troops—the brigades of Bell, Pennypacker and others—were sent forward at intervals of fifteen minutes, swarming into the entrance gained, and their engineers following upon their steps, threw up quickly such works as made it impossible for the thinned ranks of the besiegers to drive them out. [166] Colonel Lamb fell with a desperate wound through the hip, a half hour after the General; yet the troops fought on hour after hour, at each successive traverse. It was the struggle of of North Carolina patriots. Lamb, in the hospital, found voice enough, though faint unto death, to say, ‘I will not surrender!’ and Whiting, lying among the surgeons near by, responded, ‘Lamb, if you die, I will assume command, and I will never surrender!’ But the ammunition had given out—the Staff and the brave Chaplain, McKinnon, had emptied the cartridge boxes of the dead, under fire, and brought in blankets such scanty supply of cartridges as could be found. The wintry night set in, and four hours thereafter those glorious sons of Carolina fought, until a little after 9 P. M. The garrison retired to Battery Buchanan, taking their wounded officers; and its two heavy guns, uninjured, might have kept the land force at bay until they could have embarked in boats, but Lieutenant Chapman, of the Navy, had spiked his guns and taken himself away, with all the boats (by whose order is not known); and thus the garrison was left to its fate. It has been declared to be the glory of the army of Lee, that it placed hors du combat as many men of Grant's army in the campaign of the Wilderness as equalled its own numbers. What, then, shall we say of the heroic band at Fisher? Colonel Lamb says, with burning eloquence:
I had half a mile of land face and one mile of sea face to defend, with 1,900 men. I knew every company present and its strength. This number included the killed, wounded and sick. If the Federal reports claim that our killed, wounded and prisoners showed more, it is because they credited my force with those captured outside the works, who were never under my command. To capture Fort Fisher, the enemy lost, by their own statement, 1,445 killed, wounded and missing. Nineteen hundred Confederates, with forty-four guns, contending against 10,000 men on shore (8,500 of the army and 2,000 of the navy), and 600 heavy guns afloat, killing and wounding almost as many of the enemy as there were soldiers in the fort, and not surrendering until the last shot was expended. When I recall this magnificent struggle, unsurpassed in ancient or modern warfare, and remember the devoted patriotism and heroic courage of my garrison, I feel proud to know that I have North Carolina blood coursing through my veins, and I confidently believe [167] that the time will come with the Old North State, when her people will regard her defence of Fort Fisher as the grandest event in her historic past.Let us declare to-day that the hour has come when no base slander shall longer deface the fair fame of the Carolinians at Fisher. Adjutant-General Towle, of Terry's (U. S.) Army, in narrating these events, says: ‘Through the whole evening, until long after darkness closed in, they had offered the most stubborn defence. Never did soldiers display more desperate bravery and brilliant valor. With their leaders, Whiting and Lamb, both disabled with wounds, and sadly reduced in number, well foreseeing, too, the fresh force to be brought against them—under these circumstances, when night fell upon them, with no hope of relief, they gradually abandoned the fort, and retreated about a mile to the extreme point of the peninsula. No boats had been collected for the emergency. The strong tidal currents of the Cape Fear made swimming impossible. In this cul de sac, they awaited the captivity closing upon them. It was 10 o'clock at night when Abbott's Brigade completed the occupation.’ President Davis, in his ‘Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government,’ says of this event:
The garrison stood bravely to their guns, and, when the assault was made, fought with such determined courage as to repulse the first column, and obstinately contended with another, approaching from the land side, continuing the fight long after they had got into the fort. Finally, overwhelmed by numbers, and after the fort and its armament had been mainly destroyed, I believe, by a bombardment greater than ever before concentrated upon a fort, the remnant of the garrison surrendered. The heroic and highly gifted General Whiting was mortally, and the gallant commander of the fort, Colonel Lamb, seriously wounded.Two days and a night the wounded suffered before they were embarked upon the steamer which conveyed them to their Northern prison. The distinguished head of the Norfolk Virginian, M. Glennan, Esq., who was one of the brave boys in the fort, and known as Sergeant Glennan, writes to the speaker as follows:
I never saw a more patient sufferer than General Whiting. His [168] wound was most painful, yet he never murmured, never complained, and was always cheerful. His wants were attended to by his Chief of Staff, Major Hill, and one of his aides, a lieutenant, whose name I cannot recall. I attended to the wants of Colonel Lamb, and as an illustration of General Whiting's consideration, and his gentleness of disposition, I remember that, seeing that I was greatly fatigued from want of rest, he directed the lieutenant to “Relieve that boy, and let him have some rest,” which was done, and I enjoyed a long, sweet slumber, which greatly refreshed me. While in prison, he was in separate quarters from other prisoners, and desired to know how they were getting on. He got permission for me to visit him, after a little incident that had occurred between the commanding officer at Governor's Island and myself. He was much pleased with it, and brevetted me a lieutenant. At that time there was every indication that he would recover. His death was a great surprise—a shock. He was the soul of honor; none braver, none more gentle. North Carolina may well feel proud of her adopted son.In the trying hours, previous to the last battle, in the extremity of his anxiety for the fate of the fort, and with it that of Lee's army and the cause, he telegraphed the Secretary of War, and received the following dispatch, which places the responsibility of failure where it belongs:
The following is the official report of Major-General Whiting of the operations of January 15th:
The following letter is the last expression of General Whiting on the subject-matter of these reports:
From the Montgomery, Ala., Advertiser, Dec. 8, 1897.
