Personal Recollections of Distinguished Generals

"You cane Douglas! You strike Stephen A. Douglas, who made you all you are! Get out of this office, or I'll kick you out!"

Cook began to expostulate, when the infuriated Steedman carried out his threat, and Cook made a hasty and inelegant retreat.

Next day President Buchanan sent for Steedman, and lectured him regarding his treatment of Cook. Steedman had by this time began to look at the comic side of the affair, and listened patiently and good-humoredly to the President's lecture, until Mr. Buchanan alluded to Douglas contemptuously as "the little traitor." Steedman's blood boiled with fury, but by a great effort he controlled his passion, and, rising, said, with a voice of measured calmness,

"Mr. President, I have been a warm friend of Stephen A. Douglas for many years. I supported him in the convention which nominated you for the Presidency because I believed him to be incomparably the ablest and the best man for the position. I think so still. Good-morning, sir."

A few hours after, Steedman received a note from the Postmaster General:

"Sir, – I am directed by the President to inform you that in future Mr. Cornelius Wendell will do the printing of this department."

This was followed by a general withdrawal of government patronage where it was possible, and thus Steedman lost a great deal of his business in consequence of his candor.

I have intimated in the sketch of General Thomas that the famous charge of the reserve corps at Chickamauga was made at Steedman's suggestion. The idea of advancing at that time was a most preposterous one – it looked simply suicidal – and I would have been less surprised if the army had made arrangements to surrender than I was to see Steedman's corps charging and carrying the ridge against Longstreet's corps, which had a few hours before scattered a larger force than that of Steedman's at a single blow. The charge was not less of a surprise to the enemy, and the fact that it was unexpected and unaccountable under the circumstances had much to do with its success, since it puzzled and confused both Longstreet and Bragg so much as to convince them that Thomas had a large reserve force, and to cause a long and highly important delay and cessation of hostilities.

During this famous charge of Steedman's occurred an incident which at once illustrates the boldness and extravagance of the man. The fighting was very heavy, the ridge which Longstreet held very high and difficult, and at one time Steedman saw a portion of his line wavering. Before he could ride forward to their position, this wavering brigade broke and began to retire, following a flag in the hands of a color-bearer, who had taken the lead in retreating. Meeting the retiring brigade, Steedman grasped the flag from the bearer and waved it above his head. All the line saw the action, but only a part of it heard his stentorian voice as he cried,

"Run away, boys – run away like cowards; but the flag can't go with you."

Not the words, but the advancing flag had the desired effect, and these men returned to the charge, and, led by the broad-shouldered, broad-breasted old soldier, they carried the hill before them.

Before going into this battle, Steedman became strangely impressed with the idea that he was to lose his right leg, and, though no believer in presentiments, so forcibly and frequently did the thought occur to his mind, that he confided his feelings to some of his staff and friends. Among others to whom he mentioned it was Gordon Granger, who laughed at the idea, and jocosely asked Steedman what he could do for him in case he was wounded or killed.

"Yes," said Steedman to his inquiry, "you can do me a great favor, and I beg that you will attend to it."

"What is it?" asked Granger. "I swear to do it."

"See that my name is spelled right in the newspapers. The printers always spell it Stead. "

And with this request Steedman rode into the battle. An hour or two after it had begun, his horse was shot under him, and another was brought for him. He mounted him, but the right stirrup-leather becoming twisted, he raised the stirrup with his foot, lifting his leg at the same time, in order to reach down and catch hold of the leather and take the twist out of it, when a musket-ball struck the strap, and, cutting it in two, passed between his leg and the saddle.

"By George!" exclaimed Steedman, "I'm all right!" and the troublesome presentiment passed away from his mind, for he was now firmly convinced that the bullet which had cut the leather was the one which he had had intimations to fear.

It is not generally known, I believe, that Granger and Steedman got to the battle-field of Chickamauga against orders. Rosecrans had assigned to the reserve corps the duty of guarding Rossville Gap, a very important position; but when the straggling troops of McCook began to pour into Chattanooga by this gap, Granger began looking about for Rosecrans, in the hope of getting orders to advance to Thomas's aid. While Granger was looking for orders, Steedman marched forward, and it was thus that he happened to reach Thomas's position before Granger did. Steedman has acted without orders in this way on more than one important occasion. He fought the battle of Carnifex Ferry, Western Virginia, without either orders or assistance, and defeated Floyd's brigade with a single regiment. He was ordered to hold Chattanooga when Hood marched against Nashville; but, finding no very formidable force near him, and being cut off from communication with Thomas at Nashville, Steedman left a small force of negro troops in Chattanooga, and started with a large force of white and negro volunteers for Nashville. Hood's cavalry advance cut the railroad and precipitated his trains into Mill Creek, a small stream a few miles from Nashville, but he fought his way through on foot to the city, and appeared with his ten thousand men before General Thomas's head-quarters. To Thomas's look of inquiry, and perhaps of censure, Steedman replied,

"General, I was cut off from communication, and have come here in hopes I may get leave to re-enforce Nashville, and take a hand in the battle."

He got the order and the opportunity. In his report of his participation in the battle, he states that he made the movement by General Thomas's order, but does not explain how he obtained it.

Steedman had great faith in negro troops. One of his most daring efforts was that of leading a thousand negroes in a charge at Dalton, Georgia, upon Wheeler's cavalry, twenty-five hundred strong, defeating them, and capturing the place. His main force at the battle of Nashville was two brigades of negro troops, and their conduct was highly commended by him. He made much character and great personal popularity, while in command of the Department of Georgia, by his efforts in alleviating the condition of the freedmen. An incident illustrative of his policy with the freedmen, and his ideas of justice as applied to them, is told of him while stationed at Augusta, Georgia.

A railroad contractor came to him one day and asked for a military force to compel the negroes to work in repairing the line from Savannah to Augusta.

"They won't work, general," said the contractor.

"How much do you pay them?" asked the general.

"Ten dollars per month," was the answer.

"The devil!" exclaimed Steedman. "Give 'em thirty, and see whether they'll work then. I never gave a man less than eighty-seven and a half cents a day in my life. I think I could get a brigade at that price here. You try it; and, I say," he added, "if I hear of your offering less, I'll try you."

The contractor tried the plan, and found he had no use for a military guard, and no work for half the applicants who swarmed about his office.

Steedman in appearance is like a hale, hearty farmer, with stout, burly form, largely made, and of great physical power and endurance. He weighs over two hundred pounds, and is one of the strongest men in the country. He is as frank as he is bold, and as honest as impudent.

When General Rosecrans retired to Chattanooga during the battle of Chickamauga, thus abandoning his army, he committed the grand mistake of his military career. He soon found this to be so, and soon felt and knew that his unfortunate retreat had left him utterly defenseless. He feared at first to condemn any one, and endeavored to make friends with all. He could not condemn McCook and Crittenden, for in running away from the battle-field they had only followed his example, and to condemn them for this was to condemn himself. Some victim was necessary as an explanation of his defeat and retreat, and Generals Thomas J. Wood and James S. Negley were selected, the latter before and Wood after the removal of Rosecrans. Negley was a volunteer officer, who had incurred the enmity of Brannin, Davis, Baldy Smith, and one or two regular officers of inferior rank, and he was sacrificed by Rosecrans in order to obtain the support of what was known as the "regular clique" of the army, and which embraced these and other regular officers. Wood was not relieved by Rosecrans as Negley was, nor did Rosecrans venture to publicly censure him until after his own removal, when, very much to every body's surprise, Rosecrans condemned Wood in his official report for having caused the disaster to the army. The fact is that Rosecrans was not entitled to make a report of the battle of Chickamauga, for he did not see it, was not present, and, as written, his report, after its description of the general topography of North Alabama and Georgia, is merely a lame apology for his own strange conduct.

The two men thus made the scapegoats of Rosecrans were men of more than ordinary abilities, and it is a great pity that the reputation of such men should ever be placed in the hands of such generals as Rosecrans. General Negley, though not educated for the army, was one of the best-read officers in military matters that we had in the volunteer service, and possessed a natural adaptation for, and many qualities as a leader. He was a man of quick perception and decided judgment, intuitive talents which "stood him in hand" on more than one occasion, as, for instance, at Stone River, where he replied to Breckenridge's assault of his troops by a counter-charge which, made with great force and rapidity, turned the fortunes of the day, and won an advantage which decided Bragg to abandon the field of which he was still master. Bragg relieved Breckenridge from his command for his defeat by Negley.

Among the most important services rendered by General Negley, or by any other general officer of the army, were the operations embracing the reconnoissance and battle at Dug Gap, Georgia, on September 11, 1863. He commanded the advance of the centre column of Rosecrans's army in crossing Lookout Mountain. The three columns had been widely separated – fifty miles intervening between the right wing and centre, and about thirty between the centre and left wing. Knowing this, Bragg had concentrated his forces in front of the centre, abandoning Chattanooga in such a way as to indicate he was in full retreat. Rosecrans ordered him to be pursued, and General Negley, debouching from Stevens's Gap of Lookout Mountain, was ordered to take Lafayette, Georgia. General Negley was advised and had reported that Bragg was concentrating his forces at that very point, but the report was discredited by General Rosecrans, and Negley was ordered forward. He advanced cautiously on the morning of September 11, in command of his own and Baird's divisions, and, as he anticipated, soon encountered the enemy. He drove them for some time, but soon found that he had Bragg's whole army in his front and on his flanks. It was subsequently discovered that Bragg had issued positive and peremptory orders to Generals Hindman, Hill, Buckner, and Polk, to attack and destroy Negley, promising himself the easy capture of the other columns in detail. But Negley was too shrewd to be caught thus; although his trains and those of Baird encumbered the road in his rear, which the enemy soon threatened by moving on his flanks, he succeeded in saving every wagon and in slowly retiring on Stevens's Gap, where he could afford to battle with thrice his numbers. This engagement, which lasted all the day, was the first convincing proof which Rosecrans had of the presence of Bragg, and the first premonition of danger. It induced him to gather his scattered columns together. General Negley's discretion and valor on this occasion were not only alike commended by Generals Rosecrans and Thomas, but by General Bragg, who, in his anger at their failure to destroy him, arrested Hindman and Polk, and preferred charges against them. These charges, which attributed Negley's escape from this danger to delay on the part of the rebel officers arrested, were never sustained, and they were returned to duty. The fact was that Negley had outwitted them, and had forewarned Rosecrans in time to save the army.

When the battle of Chickamauga began, General Negley's division was on the move, marching to the sound of the artillery, and it reached the field just in time to push forward on the right and fill up a gap created by the dispersion of General Van Cleve's division. In the desperate fight which ensued, the rebel General Preston Smith was killed, and the enemy driven in confusion. On the second day of the battle General Negley's division was not so fortunate. One brigade was sent to the extreme left, another was placed in the centre, and the third held in reserve. Later in the day the general himself was taken from the command of the division and ordered to the command of a number of batteries which were concentrated on a hill on a new line to which it was proposed to retire, and which were intended to cover the retrograde movement. Before this manœuvre could be executed, however, the right wing and centre of the army were broken, and the troops fell back in confusion. The enemy charged upon the guns of General Negley in great force, and, moving upon the flanks, greatly threatened their capture. By great exertions the general succeeded in carrying them from the field without the aid of any infantry supports, and thus saved about fifty guns from capture.

On retiring to Rossville, he found himself, in the absence of Rosecrans, McCook, and Crittenden at Chattanooga, the senior officer in that part of the field, and he immediately began the work of reorganizing the troops of the several divisions gathered indiscriminately there. He succeeded in reorganizing a large number of men, and, selecting a strong position at Rossville Gap, endeavored to open communication with General Thomas. This was found impracticable, however. During the night General Thomas retired to this position, and, forming a junction with General Negley, ordered him to post the forces along the line selected by him, and prepared to give the enemy a warm reception on the next morning. Bragg was too wise to attack, and contented himself with merely reconnoitering the position. On the succeeding day the troops were retired to Chattanooga, and preparations were made for the siege which followed. During this siege General Negley was relieved from duty by General Rosecrans in such a manner and so unjustly that he was induced to demand an examination into his official conduct. This was granted; a court of inquiry was convened and an investigation made, resulting in General Negley's acquittal. The official record of the court states in conclusion "that General Negley exhibited throughout the day (the second day of the battle) and the following night great activity and zeal in the discharge of his duties, and the court do not find in the evidence before them any ground for censure." General Negley, on the conclusion of the trial, was ordered to report to the Adjutant General at Washington, and did so, but soon after resigned. He is now engaged in the cultivation of his farm near Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.

Negley is one of the most accomplished horticulturists in the country, and when in the field of war his leisure hours were devoted to the study of various fruits, flowers, and shrubs in which the Southern fields and woods abounded. Many a march, long, tedious, exhausting, has been rendered delightful to his staff by his interesting descriptive illustrations of the hidden beauties and virtues of fragrant flowers and repulsive weeds. I have known him to spend hours in explaining the properties of shrubs and wild-flowers which grew about his bivouac or head-quarters, and he would, when on the march, frequently spring from his saddle to pluck a sensitive plant, that he might "point a moral" in showing how soon it, like life or fame, withered at the touch of death or disgrace. He was a remarkably well-made man – something of the robust, sinewy frame of Steedman and Buell. His grasp was like a vice. He was as tough as he was strong, and as elastic as enduring. He was an exceedingly prompt and active man, and his division of the Army of the Cumberland was by far its best in drill, appointments, and in its commissariat. Negley's troops used to boast that while he commanded they had never, under any circumstances, wanted for food or clothing, and they used frequently to call him "Commissary General Negley."

General Thomas J. Wood might in some slight respects be compared to Negley, but they appear to better effect when drawn in contrast. Negley was considered a martinet among volunteers, Wood a martinet among regulars. I do not mean martinet in the sense which a few brainless officers have given the title by their illustrations of it, but in its proper sense, as indicating a thorough and efficient disciplinarian. Both Negley and Wood made their men soldiers through discipline, and there were no better soldiers in the army. Their fate, too, was similar. The advancement of each was slow and labored, and their friends began to fear that their promotion was to be of that ungenerous, posthumous order which was too frequent, and which always looked to me like giving a handsome tomb-stone to a man unjustly treated all his life.

General Wood was a captious officer, but a decided, brave, and energetic one. History, which is rapidly beginning to be just, and which will grow harsher every day, and more just with all her harshness, will say that it was highly proper that the appointment of General Wood as major general should read as it did – "vice Crittenden, resigned." The place which that clever gentleman, but very poor soldier, Thomas L. Crittenden, filled, was properly Tom Wood's years before he got it, for he really filled it. Always under the command of Crittenden, he was ever at his right hand and as his right hand, and furnished him with all the military brains, and formed for him all the military character he ever had. It may be impolite to say this now, but it is anticipating history but a short time. This is a decree which must be submitted to eventually, and why not now?

When the army of Rosecrans was drawing itself up in front of Murfreesborough, Tennessee, the very day before the battle of December 31, 1862, Crittenden's wing was on the left, and Tom Wood's division held its advance. On approaching the rebel position, Wood, of course, came to a halt, and, reconnoitering the position, reported to Crittenden that the enemy were intrenched in his immediate front. Crittenden went forward to Wood's position and satisfied himself of the presence of the enemy in force, and approved the halt. A short time after he received a communication from General Rosecrans stating that General David S. Stanley, who, with his cavalry corps, had gone to Murfreesborough, reported that the enemy had evacuated, and he therefore ordered Crittenden to cross Stone River and occupy the town. Crittenden showed the order to Wood, and told him that he must advance and occupy the town. Wood argued that Rosecrans's information, to his own and to Crittenden's knowledge, was incorrect, and that, of course, it would not do to implicitly obey the order. Crittenden thought that its terms were positive, and no course was left him but to obey it. Wood urged Crittenden to report the circumstances, announce to Rosecrans that the movement was delayed an hour in order to report those facts, and stand ready to obey it if then repeated. It was some time before Wood could make Crittenden understand that this was the proper proceeding under the circumstances. He rode back to Rosecrans and reported the facts, when that officer, examining for himself, approved of the course pursued, and taught Crittenden that positive orders were not always to be implicitly obeyed.

In three years of active warfare Tom Wood won honor from every action, from Shiloh to Nashville. The disasters of his corps were not disasters for him. He came out of the crucibles refined and sparkling with renewed glory. Whether proving, as he did at Shiloh, that he had made by his discipline veterans out of men who had never seen a battle – whether stemming the adverse current of battle at Chickamauga – whether scaling with irresistible power the heights of Mission Ridge, and carrying at the point of the bayonet the strongly-manned position, which looked strong enough to hold itself – whether repulsing the charge at Franklin, or making it at Nashville, he stands forth prominent as one of the coolest, self-possessed, and gallant spirits of the day. I was glad to see him at the close of the war joining hands with his noble friend Rousseau for the redemption of Kentucky from slavery, and uniting with that band of progressive spirits to whom she will in a few years acknowledge that she owes her prosperity and welfare.

Among the many original characters whom I met, and who had been developed by the war, and by no means the least remarkable of them, was Major General Oliver Otis Howard. In many respects he was not unlike General George H. Thomas, possessing the same quiet, dignified, and reserved demeanor, the same methodical turn of mind, and the same earnest, industrious habits; but Howard was Thomas with the addition of several peculiarities, not to say eccentricities. He had none of General Thomas's cold-bloodedness, and though, like him, a statue in dignity of demeanor, Howard, unlike Thomas, had blood in him that often flowed warm with sympathy, and pulses that sometimes beat quicker with excitement. General Thomas guided himself in his course through life by his immediate surroundings, adapting himself, without sycophancy, however, to present circumstances without regard to past consistency, and was in power and favor at all times, because content to obey as long as he remained a subordinate. Howard began life with certain aims in view, and sailed a straight course, remaining always constant to his principles, and consequently finding himself, like all men with either firm principles or advanced ideas, at times unpopular. He had little of General Thomas's practicability, and General Thomas had little of Howard's faith in the strength and final triumph of great principles. One trusted in the physical strength, the other in the innate power of the principles of a great cause. Thomas believed the late war the triumph of good soldiers over their inferiors – the triumph of numbers, skill, and strength; Howard will tell you, with a flush of feeling and a slight touch of the extravagance of an enthusiast, that it was the triumph of right over wrong. Thomas thinks, with Napoleon, that God sides with the force that has the most cannon; Howard believes, with Bryant, that "the eternal years of God" are truths; and with the Psalmist, that

"Great is truth, and mighty above all things."

The faith of Howard in the principles which he advocated was sublime. I knew of but one other who began the war with loftier purposes of universal good, purer motives of right, justice, and liberty, or truer ideas of the nature of the struggle as a crusade against slavery and ignorance, and he was not a general – only a major of infantry, though a brilliant "first section" graduate at West Point, but worthy ten times over of greater rank than the army could grant. Nothing could have been more beautiful than the firm faith which William H. Sidell felt from the first in the final triumph of the right, not merely in restoring the country to its former glory, unity, and strength, but in restoring and rejuvenating it, purified of that which was at once its weakness and its shame. It is somewhat of a digression to run off from Howard in this manner to speak of Major Sidell, but every reader who knew the man will think it pardonable. Sidell was a man of firm convictions, and hence a man of great influence. It used to seem to me that he was intended for the single purpose of making up other people's minds, and deciding for his acquaintances what was right and what wrong. He possessed a singularly effective, epigrammatical style of conversation, and his generally very original ideas were always expressed with great force and vigor. When he got hold of a great idea, he would talk it at you without cessation, repeating it as frequently as he found a hearer, and persist with something of the manner of those religious preachers who pride themselves on "preaching in season and out of season" until conviction followed. His ideas possessed not only value, but his language had a stamp as coinage has, and both ideas and language passed current. His ideas, oft repeated, thoroughly inculcated, found wide circulation in the army with which he served, and it was often amusing to hear his language repeated in places where they were least expected, and by persons who were never suspected of possessing minds capable of retaining grand ideas, or hearts true enough to comprehend great principles. His ideas were traceable in the language of the soldiers, relieved and often illustrated by the happy use of their familiar, commonplace "slang." They got strangely mixed up in the orders of commanding generals with whom he served, and I have even detected Sidell's undeniable stamp in one of the Executive documents.