Surrender town: An 1881 visit to Appomattox Court House

The McLean house, where Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia.
(Library of Congress)

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In 1881-82, Philadelphia Times correspondent George Morgan embarked on an epic road trip to Civil War battlefields in the South. (Oh my, I wonder if the man had an expense account, and if so, how did he sneak it past his editor?)

Morgan's journey took him to hallowed ground from Bull Run in Virginia to Kennesaw Mountain in Georgia. His lengthy, detailed accounts of those visits appeared on the front page of The Philadelphia Times and in other newspapers throughout the country. 

In fall 1881, newspapers published Morgan's report of his visit to Appomattox Court House, Virginia, where Army of Northern Virginia commander Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses Grant on April 9, 1865.

"The Court House landscape, made up of a little valley and its bordering hills, seemed to me to be as soft and pleasant a picture as one could wish to see," wrote Morgan.

Here's Morgan's complete account from that visit as it appeared in The Times on Sept. 12, 1881:

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Special correspondence of The Times

"A school in the jail!" I said in surprise.

"Yes," repeated Dr. Patterson, the obliging physician of the village, "we had school there all winter."

"Well, I should — irradiate!" remarked my jocose companion, who was here with [Phil] Sheridan sixteen years ago.

"But where were the prisoners?" I protested; "the thieves, vagabonds, cut-throats, forgers and awful creatures of that kind?"

"Why, sir, sometimes Appomattox Jail is without a tenant of that class for two or three years; we are a law-abiding people and love God."

"An',begad, strangers," interrupted a less polished native; "ef ye feel kind o' thirsty ye'll be 'bleeged ter g' way from heah ter git yo' licker, 'cause there aint a dran o' the critter in ole Appomattox."

Such was my introduction to the scene of Lee's surrender and Grant's triumph — as peaceful and pleasant a spot as can on the continent. What I take to be the common idea of the whereabouts of the out-of-the-way Court House and its apple tree is that they are lying around loose somewhere within an hour's ride or so of Petersburg.

At least that was my notion until I tried to get here. I had forgotten that when Lee left his Cockade City lines and that when Grant unleashed his army in hot pursuit the worn veterans of the one and the jubilant host of the other pushed westward on level land for five full days. So it was that when, with a fellow-traveler of chance acquaintance, I got out of the cars at Appomattox Station on the Southside Railroad I was surprised to learn that the smoke of busy Lynchburg could be seen on clear days just over among the mountains to the west. The station is a scraggy collection of stores, which apparently have more clerks than customers. The ride thence to the Court House is three miles northward, across flat fields and through thick timber.

Until we issued upon the Appomattox Valley the only thing that relieved a trot otherwise tiresome was the sight of a score of little darkeys at play around a school house, on the stoop of which sat the white-haired and strong-armed swinger of the hickory gad.

Appomattox in a beautiful valley

But as soon as we got out of the woods and drew near the village the whole surroundings took upon themselves that which forced our close scrutiny and admiration. The Court House landscape, made up of a little valley and its bordering hills, seemed to me to be as soft and pleasant a picture as one could wish to see. To the right from the roadway stretch rolling lands and to the left are similar clearings, with a plantation house a quarter of a mile distant, in the midst of its field.

Beyond and in the direction we were driving the road runs down a long declivity. At the foot of the hill is the Appomattox and crossing this stream, here a mere rivulet, the road ascends at slight grade until it is lost to sight in the horizon line to the north. Up the valley are hillocky fields and down the valley, which curves to the south, are hillside groves. Where we now rein in our horses to get a mental picture of the stretch of rolling earth Grant once stood, as with field-glass he scanned the tent-dotted slope whereon Lee's last bivouac was made. The sunlight is soft, the sky is one of pearl, the air is perfumed with the breath of the pine, the oak and the locust, and far away rise the Peaks of Otter, pyramids of blue beauty, standing as sentinel towers hard by the gateway of the sun.

Slightly below the point from which we see these sights is the Court House village. It is snugged up against the hill, half way down the slope, and is nearly hidden by shade trees. As we move on we pass a graveyard that covers less than a square rood of ground. Within the enclosure, as our driver tells us, are buried the last victims of Lee's last campaign. The only slabs in the place of burial are wooden ones, and the only tombstones are such rude rocks as have been gathered from the highway. A few hundred yards further along the road we come to the McLean House, the place of surrender, and a moment later we hitch our horses in front of the Court House, in the heart of the little settlement.

United States soldiers at the court house in Appomattox Court House, Va., in April 1865.
(Library of Congress)

An odd little place 

It is plain at first glance that the village was built with an eye to the geometrical. The half acre of grassy ground in which squats the Court House is of octagonal cut and hedge. Four short streets form a square around the octagon and along the outer sides of the streets are the one hotel, the three stores and the thirteen dwellings that constitute the village.

The Court House is a brick building of low pitch in a grove of locusts. Stone steps lead in steep succession up to a porch, passing which Judge or juror finds himself in the hail of justice. Blackstone is uppermost in the main room, but in the basement below the Bible holds sway, for upon occasion the Court House can serve as a church. The jail looks like a brick dwelling, and its harmless appearance is in keeping with every other thing about the delightful village. 

"The only excitements wo have," said Dr. Patterson, "are in court weeks. Court met yesterday and Colonel Readjuster Cameron spoke here, but, as you see, there isn't much stir. Yes, the apple-tree place is beyond the creek there, and, by the way, do you see that house ? Well, there's where Mr. Peers lives; in the yard of his house the last Confederate gun fired in Virginia went off on the Sunday morning of the surrender. On the other side of the county building is the McLean House; do you see, gentlemen? — that brick house.' "

In at the start and the death

We went to the McLean house and were pleasantly greeted by its occupant, Mrs. N. G. Ragland. It stands, with slight change, as it stood at the surrender. In 1861 Wilmer McLean, a quiet citizen, owned a farm near Bull Run stream, in Prince William county. When on Sunday, the 21st of July, in that year the great armies clashed for the first time his fields were devastated and his home despoiled. He jumped at the conclusion that the war would be waged in front of Washington, and so, to get away from the fuss, he pocketed his household goods and moved southward to the untroubled hills of Appomattox. 

Strange does it seem that he should have beheld the first act and the last act of the war in Virginia, but it was immediately around him that the conflict had its beginning and end. He was at Manassas when the gay young rebel, sashed and plumed, gave [Irwin] McDowell that first sockdolager, and he was here at Appomattox when the same rebel — ragged, shoeless, shirtless, the recipient of a thousand blows — stacked arms forever.

Where the war ended

An early 20th-century view of the ruins of the McLean house. (Read more on my blog.)

In Mrs. McLean's parlor Grant and Lee met to agree upon the terms of surrender. The house is a two-story brick structure, with a porch extending the full length of its front. It was intended originally for a tavern. The yard is a large square grass plot, bordered by six towering locust trees. A huge willow that stood at the time of the surrender has been cut away, stump and all. In the middle of the yard is a well of sweet water. The summer house that once covered the well is gone. At the edge of the porch are a number of geranium pots with flowers in bloom.

The pailings are white with a fresh coat of lime and altogether the property is as neat and pretty as it is possible to make it. A wide hall leads from the porch through the middle of the house. It was with one room only — the parlor to the left of the entrance — that the commanders had anything to do. An alleged engraving of the historic conference hangs over the parlor door, but the villagers say that several of the Federal officers who show their fine uniforms in the picture were not present except in the engraver's accommodating eye. The room would seat comfortably fifty or more persons.

There is a window at each end and both windows are wide. The fireplace is screened by a pictured board. Around the room are portraits of Ragland beauties and beaux, and while Mrs. Ragland's furniture and ornaments make the historic parlor quite pretty they also make it commonplace. The big chair in the corner suggests tender courting episodes rather than incidents of hard campaigning.

15th New York Cavalry
officer Augustus Root
was killed on April 8, 1865
at Appomattox Court House.
(Find a Grave)

A pleasant breeze was swaying the tops of the locusts as we left the McLean house and passed once more through the village, clear over which my companion swore that he could knock a base ball in sky-scraping curve, Here at this wheelwright shop fell the dashing [Lieutenant Colonel Augustus Israel] Root, the last officer of the Army of the Potomac to die. 

Further along we see an oak and black gum, uninteresting of their own account, but which enable the villager to get the bearings of the now uptorn locust where Grant and Lee first met to talk. That spot is in an open field, about two hundred yards north of the Court House and well down the slope towards the Appomattox.

When we forded that stream the clear, spring water flowing over sandy bottom did not so much as wet the hubs of our buggy-wheels. It is less than ten yards in width at this time, though in stormy weeks, when the red soil above takes to itself something of the fluidity as well as the color of blood, the rivulet truly swells into a river and passes eastward its one hundred and fifty miles to the James with rush and roar that tell of the highland bed wherein it was born. The source of the stream is three miles above — a spring that is visited daily by darkey boys who balance buckets upon their heads with as much dexterity as the thumb of the sweet swell at Long Branch throws into the twirl of his cane.

At the apple tree 

The spot where stood Lee's apple tree is soon reached, as leaving the creek we go a part of the way up the slope and halt by a roadside orchard. Persons have said that the hole left by the removal of the stump is now visible. If so it is microscopic. The driver showed us "near 'bout " and "put nigh" the place where the hole ought to be.

The day after the surrender the tree was removed root and branch by soldiers who wanted relics to take home to their wives and sweethearts. And as apple wood is apple wood, several other trees in the same orchard were cut up into relics also. This season a crop of oats was taken by Farmer E. G. Hicks from the field and September stubble now makes the whole hillside brown. It is true that Lee held a brief council under the apple tree and the story of the tree is not a myth. 

Lee's apple tree, locusts and poplar

The weary leader was hemmed in on all sides. The thousand days of fighting were over and the one day of parley had come. The Army of Northern Virginia had spent its strength in many manœuvres, in tireless marches and in terrific battles.

Robert E. Lee, days after his army's surrender,
poses for Mathew Brady in Richmond.

Hungry, sore and sick, the poor remnant of a once seemingly invincible host now under the bright light of an April moon slept its last sleep with the knapsack for its pillow. From the apple tree the rebel chief sent out his white sign of peace — a poor, torn rag, but how fateful! Riding down hill and across the stream he met Grant near the locust. County Clerk George T. Peers saw Grant and Lee meet. They saluted, chatted, touched hats, wheeled and rode in opposite directions.

To appearances it was an ordinary meeting of two mounted men. Soon afterwards Lee returned from the further side of the creek and, with Grant, entered the McLean house. Then the vanquished captain rejoined his comrades and under a poplar, now flourishing in its growth on the farm of J. W. Flood, one mile northeast of the Court House, bade farewell to battle-fields.

Here ended the long, fierce, pitiless struggle which in the record of the world's wars vastly overtops all others. Following the lines of scarred earth from Manassas hither, a youth predisposed to carp becomes aware of the smallness of closet critics and of after-battle valiants. He feels that the war was waged under mighty impulse and that those who taught overcame obstacles to which the labors of Hercules were as the tricks of toys. The footprints of the grand armies will outlast the generation that made them and grow to gigantic breadth and import for those who come after.

Myriad graves border the grounds of combat, but peacefully above each battle-field the flag of the Union has its place. — G.M.

'Sad havoc': A reporter's 1882 visit to Atlanta-area battlefields

1864 view of Kennesaw Mountain battlefield from behind Confederate lines. 
(The Photographic History of The Civil War in Ten Volumes: Volume Three, The Decisive Battles)
CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE.

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From atop Kennesaw Mountain in the fall of 1882, newspaper reporter George Morgan took in an awe-inspiring view: spires of Atlanta in the far distance to the south, a "network of red road-beds," brown fields and a sea of swaying trees. On ground within sight of  The Philadelphia Times correspondent, thousands of soldiers from both sides spilled blood two decades earlier during William Sherman's Atlanta Campaign.

At Kennesaw Mountain on June 27, 1864, Sherman's army suffered an estimated 3,000 casualties; Confederate commander Joseph Johnston's roughly 1,000. "Each acre of ground between us and New Hope's forests, indistinguishable at their distance of twenty miles, belongs to the battlefield," Morgan wrote.

Nearby, at Kolb's Farm, where the opposing forces fought on June 22, 1864, Morgan and his guide found bullet-scarred trees and remains of earthworks.

At New Hope Church, where Union General Joseph Hooker's XX Corps suffered heavy losses on May 25, 1864, the war-time church was a casualty, too.  "[E]ven the foundation stones had been torn up [by soldiers]," Morgan recalled. ".... Every plank had been spirited, as though by Satan himself, clear away." But earthworks still stood in 1882 —  "as high as one's neck," the reporter wrote — within a short distance of a new church built on the site.

On a bush-covered slope nearby, Morgan discovered bullets, a rusty canteen and an artillery shell; and in the "dark corner of a black-jack woods," his young guides directed him to a ghastly sight.

Here's Morgan's Page 1 story in the Philadelphia Times about his three-day visit to Kennesaw Mountain and other nearby Georgia battlefields — one of a series of accounts of his trips to hallowed ground in the South in 1881-82. (Note: Morgan used an alternate spelling of Kennesaw throughout his story.)

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Special Correspondent of The Times

MARIETTA, Ga., September 28 -- Jack Boxer gave a chirrup, held the lines taut so that his horses would prance impressively through Marietta's court house square and then reined the span out on the Kenesaw road, along which he sent them scurrying. The old guide was a thing to look at. With a stovepipe hat no less shiny than his eyes, and a swallow-tail coat of cloth, he seemed just to have sprung from the bandbox of polite plantation days.

"I'so much a-bleege, sah," he said, as when we had got into the country I held out a cigar; "I'se much a-bleege, but I nebber smokes befoah gemmen; no, sah, praise de Lawd I diden get fotch up like dese heah sassy town nigguhs. I was fotch up in a place like dat yo' see, sah, ober dare."

''That nice old house, with the man sitting under the oaks?"

"Yessah; dat man dare had mo'an six hunnered slabes, but de Yankees cotched 'im an' was gwine to hang 'im on one ob dem oaks. He passed fru de Red Sea, he did."

While Jack dwelt upon the war trials of the planter, who seemed to be a typical baron of the South's past, we moved along the grove of oaks and, trotting a mile beyond, drew sharply up at the base of the battle-scarred mountain for the summit of which we had set out.

A climb up Kenesaw

         GOOGLE STREET VIEW: Present-day view of Kennesaw Mountain terrain.

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Kenesaw rises from the level land like an uneven dome. Its cap of stone touches the lower folds of the clouds and every side of the acclivity has a garb of green. So steep did the slope appear that I thought our ascent would be difficult, but the ride half way up was easy and in the climb that followed we stopped once only to catch our wind.

The entrance to the summit road is through a farm, which a darkey has blazed out near the foot of the eastern slope, the thrifty owner having paid for his land from the sale of timber, cut at the crest and hurled down the mountainside. Even among the stripped stalks of corn that stand in this little patch thus stolen from the wilds we struck heavy earthworks, rifle-pits and a continuous parapet that reaches up and over Kenesaw and along the crest of Little Kenesaw, encircling Marietta on the west. As we rode upward it was at the edge of this line, nor did we lose sight of it until we came to great piles of rocks on the summit.

Sights from Kenesaw's summit

       GOOGLE STREET VIEW: Present-day view from near Kennesaw Mountain summit.

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That which was before us when we had clambered to the top of the mountain's tip-topmost boulder ought to have been a sight to brighten even the eye of the eagle which we happened to discover perched in the crotch of a dead tree within a stone's throw of our rocky outlook. But that bird of patriotic song seemed to be using the long-range spy-glasses, affixed by nature above his beak, rather in mousing out small creatures to pounce upon than in drawing thrills of delight from the grand panorama down on level earth -- the rivers shining in the sun, the network of red road-beds, the tops of trees swaying as waves of a sea, brown fields in the sedgy skirts of which one fancied he could see the rabbit coax his young to a frolic, and the many objects given strange beauty because thus looked upon in unaccustomed view.

Nor were these marked parts of the landscape long in our eyes. All the stretch of land from the rocks at our feet to the far sky-line in the west was the field of a whole month's combat, wherein a score of men fell between every two strokes of the clock --  a place of hot maneuvers with constant clash of arms, of continuous skirmish, of ceaseless crack of rifle and scream of shell. Each acre of ground between us and New Hope's forests, indistinguishable at their distance of twenty miles, belongs to the battlefield. Dim in the south rise the spires of Atlanta, as they appeared to [William] Sherman when he stood here gazing at the goal of his three grand armies, while just at the edge of Marietta, so near that we can count tombstones until  I tire, is a green hillside dotted with the graves of more than ten thousand Union dead.

Twenty miles of battleground

It was not long after sunrise the next day that we started on a long drive through this famous stretch of battle-fields. At Culp's Place [also known as Kolb's Farm] we found such evidences of the hot fight there as earthworks and chipped trees. Near towns as populous as Marietta war relics quickly disappear and even in timbered sections the darkeys have scraped up most of the lead.

At a debating society in Georgia not long ago a question before the members was: "Am fire more useful dan iron?" It is said that the champions of fire were about to carry the day when an old Solomon scattered them "as though with a bombshell by the remark: "Hole on dar, feller-citerzens! Ef hit haden' been furr iron de white fokes would 'er been lickin' de niggers yit!" And the old fellow might have added that if it had not been for the iron and lead left on the battle-fields many persons, white as well as black, living in their impoverished vicinities, would have fared worse than they did.

Endless lines of earthworks

While such uncanny things as the skull and cross-bones no longer bleach at Culp's nor by the side of the Dallas road to New Hope Church, whither we drove that day, they are found sometimes in ravines, as well as in untilled fields. Moreover, lines of earthworks extend for about twenty-five miles, from Kenesaw to Dallas and beyond.

When Sherman would outflank [Joseph] Johnston the Southern strategist straightway would settle down behind a new line. A witty girl once said that all men are like lobsters -- break a lobster's claw and another will sprout; break a man's heart on the back piazza at night, when the romantic stars look down, and it heals again for breakfast. So, too, Johnston could mend his heart, his claw and his earthworks. These fortifications were seen in their undiminished strength when, after passing the foothills of Lost Mountain, which, seeing that it has such a name, must be the Charlie Ross of rocks, we left the Dallas road and came out of the woods at New Hope Church.

Sad havoc at New Hope

Earthworks at New Hope Church in 1864.  Reporter George Morgan found well-preserved earthworks
 here  18 years later. (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration)

It is likely that between 75,000 and 100,000 men, who were minute parts of the vast armies that confronted each other at this famous church, are yet living, and if they can recall what the county around looked like then, they have in mind a clear idea of what the place looks like now. Few changes have come about. After the battle the Baptists who had been accustomed to gather at the meeting house looked in vain for their church. Even the foundation stones had been torn up for use in the earthworks that still stand as high as one's neck within ten feet of the new building. Every plank had been spirited, as though by Satan himself, clear away. But the Christian fights a great fight.

The New Hope congregation met one Sunday on the spot where their church had stood. They knelt amid ashes, and who shall say that the prayer then sent up by the good preacher did not go higher than the stars! Getting up from their knees they built a house with oak limbs and cedar branches, and under the arbor they met for years. Now a small frame building, paid for this very year, is the church of New Hope. It has taken the congregation just eighteen years to recover from the blow that the myriad black imps, riding in Sherman's sulphur, gave it.

Confederate entrenchments at New Hope Church, Ga., in 1864.
(National Archives and Records Administration)

Queer things for a churchyard

It would be easy to dwell to the length of a column in The Times upon the battle-field objects that are within sound of the singing and the hallelujahs. Around the church are oak, pine and black-jack trees cut by bullets. A few paces from the church door are rifle-pits, now pawed deeper by the horses that bring their masters hither on Sundays, and just across the road is a fort of white clay soil and overgrown with smart-weed.

Confederate General Leonidas Polk was killed 
at Pine Mountain (Ga.) by a Federal artillery shell
on June 14, 1864.  
(Collections of the Alabama Department 
of Archives and History)

Not less notable is the graveyard, with some of the mounds housed in, through which runs the ever-present line of earthworks. The occupants of this graveyard were by no means as jolly as three boys whom I met a little later. While Boxer slept in the buggy the boys took me to the slope, now covered with bushes, where [Joseph] Hooker made his fierce charges, as well us to the place where the countercharges of the enemy occurred. We picked up bullets, found a shell, examined a rusty canteen, and visited a dark corner of a black-jack woods where the skeleton toes of a soldier stick from the sod.

Similar sights came up at Pickett's Mill, the other end of the battle-field, and having seen them Boxer whipped his horses into Dallas. In passing over the same ground on the following day, being then bound back to Kenesaw and Marietta by way of Gilgal Church, I noticed that the armies left Egyptian cloverseed at New Hope, as they did at Resaca. The New Hope farmer prizes the plant also, and he regards it as a sort of recompense made by Providence for the destruction of the church.

The return ride by Gilgal had in it little of interest, except a good view of Pine Mountain, halfway up the northern side of which we drove. If Boxer could have pointed out the spot where fell General [Leonidas] Polk, who goes down in history as a good officer as well as a Bishop in the Protestant Episcopal Church and a brother of a President of the United States, I should have gone to it, but Boxer was honest enough to confess that he did not know where to find the place. [Leonidas Polk was actually a second cousin of the 11th U.S. president.] One of the cannon balls sent by [George] Thomas killed the Fighting Bishop as he stood talking with [William J.] Hardee near the mountain top. So, too, when further along, we would have visited the place where General [Charles] Harker and Dan McCook got their death-wounds, but none save comrades may indicate where they lost their lives.

Confederate General William J. Hardee (left) was near Leonidas Polk when "The Fighting Bishop"
 was killed by Federal artillery. Union generals Charles Harker (middle) and Daniel McCook suffered
mortal wounds at Kennesaw Mountain in 1864. (Credits: LOC | Unknown | Ohio History Connection)

Red flowers in Kenesaw's Crest

Our second ascent of Kenesaw was made to get a good-bye glimpse of the ground across which we had come. On the road Boxer passed the time in telling me how Mr. V. J. Hames had cleared a tract of sixteen acres at an elevation of 1,800 feet and had succeeded in bringing up a thousand peach trees in the way they should grow. He showed me, moreover, after we had passed the orchard, millions of cypress vines, which plant was not known on the mountain before Johnston's men occupied it, and said that in July the whole crest is crimson with the little red cypress flower. In fact, I was so interested in this duplicate wonder of the clover story that not until we had gained the summit did I notice a thunder-storm swiftly approaching from the West. The sky had been dark with clouds all day, but the new cloud, bearing so close down upon us that it looked as though it would envelop our heads, was like an immense strip torn from the smutty curtains of Pluto's darkest chamber.

Heaven's artillery on Kenesaw

Union entrenchments in foreground, Kennesaw Mountain in the distance.
(The Photographic History of The Civil War in Ten Volumes: Volume Three, The Decisive Battles)

As one ear-splitting crack of God's own great guns came fast and hard upon another I could not help letting fancy fly to the days when the mock thunder of Sherman's cannon roared against this same stronghold. Then, throughout the hot time when Sherman had his hand on Johnston's throat here, the parapets flashed in lines of red, the earth shook under close recoil and battle-clouds in sulphurous folds swathed the green. But now forks and streaks and zig-zags of white fire dance among the rocks or fall in bolts to the lowlands, whence roll deafening booms reverberating up and down tho sky.

"See heah, honey," protested old Jack, edging up and pointing to the western slope, where the rain had begun to roar like the rush of a cataract, "ain't we gwine to git outen dis?"

"Oh, it'll pass over. You said there were many things yet to see up here."

"Bress yer soul, honey, dar ain't nuflin moah up heah -- we'se seed hit all," continued the old man, who had changed his tune from that of an hour before.

In spite of the wild storm about to burst I thought of one Jim Duke, a scapegrace darkey, known in Western Pennsylvania as the biggest rascal out of jail, who once likewise changed his tune in a manner entirely worthy of Falstaff. Duke, being a rogue himself, thought everyone else a rogue. Going into a store one day to buy a plug of tobacco, Duke pulled from his pocket a purse which contained a handful of dimes. As he held the purse upside down the clasp gave way and out dropped the coin in a silver shower, scattering from one end of the room to the other. Duke stood aghast for a second and then, fearing that the crowd present would pick the money up, shouted: "God-a-mitey, gentlemen, let's all be honest!"

So my guide Boxer, fearful lest his beaver would be ruined by the rain, or lest his hard coconut of a head would be split by one of the thunderbolts waltzing around, had changed his tune.

Chased down the mountain

But Boxer's plea really was not needed. The storm was on and it was time for our heels to do quick work. We left the crest, struck down the mountain and with rocks rolling after us made two-forty time for the half-way place where the horses were hitched. Boxer led the way. Neither Phipps nor Arabi could have made better time in their flight than we did down Kenesaw.

At a particularly near crack of the storm's whip Boxer would redouble his wild leaps, as though hit in the back by a full-grown thunderbolt. His stovepipe stuck on the back of his head like a tin cup on cucumber, his long coat-tails flapped at half-mast horizontally in the breeze and his whirling legs seemed at every stride to measure off enough earth for a circus ring.

At last we got to the buggy and as Boxer thrust his stovepipe and his cloth coat under the seat, taking the storm bareheaded and in his shirt-sleeves, while he unhitched he said: "Bress de Lawd, honey, dat was wuss'erna hornet's nest or a fight at a co'n shuckin' down on de ole Ocheco-bee."

G.M.

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'God's acre' and cotton fields: An 1882 visit to Stones River

A photograph, probably post-Civil War, of the Hazen Brigade monument at Stones River.
 (Library of Congress | CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE.)

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In August 1882, reporter George Morgan saw a Stones River battlefield landscape that’s almost impossible to imagine in today’s sprawling Murfreesboro, Tenn.

“[W]hite cotton blossoms of the morning had turned to pink in the sun and his last rays were upon the silk tufts in the corn,” the Philadelphia Times correspondent wrote of a simple farm field. 

George Morgan's Stones River account
appeared on Page 1 of the Philadelphia Times
on Aug. 28, 1882.

On a Sunday afternoon, Morgan — touring Southern battlefields — rode with a guide over the hallowed ground where the contending armies suffered nearly 25,000 casualties in late December 1862 and early January 1863. Unlike his visit to Franklin days earlier, Morgan saw little evidence of the Battle of Stones River.

“I looked in vain,” he wrote, “for traces of earthworks and scarred timber. All that one could see were trees of scrubby growth, worm fences, narrow fields, and a few cabins.” Today, modern development encroaches heavily on the Stones River National Battlefield, which preserves only a fraction of the land contested in 1862–63. 

A swath of once-open terrain near the infamous Slaughter Pen is now occupied by a hospital. The site where Union General Joshua Sill suffered a mortal wound has become a bank parking lot. Developers have obliterated the site of the opening action on Dec. 31, 1862; in its place stand a fast-food restaurant, a service station and other urban schlock. 

Morgan’s vivid account, published on Page 1 of the Philadelphia Times, helps fill the gaps in our imagination — showing us the Stones River landscape as it appeared nearly 20 years after the battle. 

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Special Correspondence of The Times.
Murfreesboro, Tenn., August 20

When General Alexander Ogle served Somerset's "frosty sons of thunder" in the Pennsylvania Legislature, it fell to him to write, in behalf of the Democratic members, a letter to General [Andrew] Jackson, then stepping across the Presidential threshold. Such work of the scribe was a labor of love, and in submitting to the caucus what he had written General Ogle said: "Gentlemen and members of the Democratic party, I hold in my hand a letter addressed by General Alexander Ogle to General Andrew Jackson, and I have no hesitation in saying that it's a damned able paper."

The members, gathering around, agreed that the letter was just the thing to make Old Hickory's heart thump with satisfaction, and all except one, a dapper little Philadelphian, spoke words of praise. This dandy of the House, fixing his glasses and scanning the page with the critic's smirk, ventured to remark: "Pardon me, General, I do not wish to assume to make a suggestion to so distinguished a gentleman as yourself, but I cannot refrain from saying that it is customary in the East, and I may say in almost all the civilized countries of Europe, to write with the capital 'I' instead of the little 'i ' in using the personal pronoun in epistolary correspondence."

General Ogle drew down his heavy brows, piercing the dandy's marrow with the fierce shaft of scorn that shot from his eye. "Sir," he said, beginning with a hiss and ending with a roar, "when I write to such a great, such a towerin' man as General Andrew Jackson, Democratic President of the United States, I abase myself, I abase myself, sir. I use as small an 'i ' as I can put on paper; but, sir, if I should ever get to such a low-down pitch as to have to write to a damned little snipe as you, I'd use an 'I,' sir, that would fill two sheets of foolscap, so help me God!"

So with this place. In writing of the terrific battle of Murfreesboro the biggest kind of a big "M " must be handled, but I admit at the start that having gone over Murfreesboro battle-field, the most unsatisfactory ground of combat I have yet visited, a very little "m" suggests itself.

A funny old town, indeed

Circa-1891 Kirz & Allison illustration of the Battle of Stones River.

 Towards the close of a ride of thirty miles, from Nashville hither, I saw flash by the car-window a stretch of sward thickly dotted with headstones, a close cedar brake, a monument in a cotton patch and then for two miles a succession of tilled fields, until the train shot over Stone's river and rumbled into town. All Murfreesboro seemed to be at the station. Such a gauntlet of tugging, crowding, shouting darkies I hope never to have to run again. Nor was it much better riding from the station to a tavern on the Court House hill. Darkies as plentiful and as black as merry-go-rounds in a mud puddle swarmed along the streets. Behind a boy beating a drum crowded dozens of his dusky fellows, and similar parties moved towards the railroad from other points.

It soon became clear that a jollification was going on, and when one hackman shouted to another "I doan 'spec' dat bulljine kin tote dis heah crowd on dat 'skurshun," the reason for the excitement was plain. Even when shorn of the excursionists Murfreesboro was lively enough. The four rows of stores, shops and jug-booths around the square, in the centre of which stands the Court House, seemed to be overflowing with country people, while lounging along the sidewalks was here a pretty girl, there a dowdv, now a cigarette - smoker, and again a knot of clodhoppers come to town for a day s fun. The like of black people I had never seen. They sat on the dry-goods boxes, stood elbow to elbow at the bars, and kicked across the common toe to heel.

Stone's River in dry time

It was under lively circumstances that we left this swarming centre of Saturday life in a Southern town, for at the start our skittish horse upset a darkey with a basket of eggs, and while from one small boy came the advice, "Look behind, yer boss is blind," three other urchins clung to the axletree. Down the Court House hill we went, however, and passed out from the western skirts of Murfreesboro, aiming to reach by way of Franklin road that part of the field whence [Braxton] Bragg, at daybreak on the last day of 1862, rolled his columns in resistless waves upon the Federal right.

The jerks and jolts of that rule over a road of rocks were about as bad for the backbone as were the accompanying baptisms of red mud for our coats. When less than a mile from the Court House we made abrupt descent of the river bank, fording the branch in yellow water up to the hubs, and while the horse drank I had a good look at the famous stream into which the animal had thrust his nose. So narrow is it that Hanlan with a twist of his wrist could shoot his shell across from one high bank of limestone to the other, and though there might be water enough to drown a bagful of kittens I fancy tho old cat would survive.

Grass grows in matted rankness along one shore and in places boulders show their brown heads. Nor was there lack of life in the picture, for just as we started seven girls of a party on a picnic, gathering their skirts in their fingers, tripped interestingly in Indian file over the foot-ford.

Where Bragg struck his blow

"Hell's Half Acre," where a brigade of Federals under William Hazen held off waves of enemy assaults on Dec. 31, 1862. The Nashville Pike is at right. 

Even after we had jolted on a mile further and were well on historic ground, there was no hint in the rocky road, nor in the cotton fields and stretches of black-jack by its side, of the beginning of the fight. I looked in vain for traces of earthworks and scarred timber. All that one could see were trees of scrubby growth, worm fences, narrow fields and a few cabins with a little darkey and a big dog at the door of each. Nevertheless, twenty years ago, when the frost looked in the dawn like a shroud upon the dead grass of December, ten thousand men swept by this spot, moving at the quick-step, shoulder to shoulder and arms a-trail.

Edward Kirk: Union
general was mortally
wounded at Stones River.

In his flight the rabbit scattered the furze and the partridge dashed the hollyberry from the thorn. The thud of the footfall, the snap of the twig, the rustle of the cedar-branch caused no tell-tale wave in the air. Tecumseh's moccasins would have made as much noise as did [William] Hardee that midwinter morning when, passing the Franklin road, he struck [Alexander] McCook the terrific blow. Along they dashed, without drum tap -- [Matthew] Ector, [James] Rains, [Evander] McNair and [Patrick] Cleburne's brigadiers -- over Federal pickets, by camp-fires, into whole companies, still breakfasting, until the heroic [Union general] Edward Kirk, advancing to grasp death's hand, woke the still woods with a warning that roared along the line from flank to flank.

In the track of the storm

As we turned from the Franklin road into the thicket in order to follow the track of the Confederate advance, I noticed a large stone that had been set upon end, seemingly to mark some spot of interest. Tho stone was roughly scrawled over with the words "J. E. Wright, Ninth Texas," but whether that follower of McCown fell here or afterwards visited and marked the place of his triumph there was nothing to indicate. This led me to look around for the spot where General Kirk fell -- time, as well as love's labor, lost. Indeed, we had gone a little ways only when the guide backed and filled so, hee-hawing over his tobacco-quid like a mule at a camp meeting, that I suspected he had lost his bearings.

"Gee-up, gee-up, thar!" The horse was snorting and plunging among chincapin bushes, trembling at the flanks and champing at the bit.

"I say, you seem to be in need of a compass?"

"Wall, it's kind o' funny furr a fac'. I 'low I'm aleetlo flurried."

Though the old guide was lost within two miles of Murfreesboro, where he had jerked the gurgling jug aloft for at least half a century. I did not blame him. We were in the thick of a wilderness of cedar and scrub oak, which are characteristic of the battle-field.

A place to see ghosts in

The face of the level land here is hidden in undergrowth of briars and stunted timber. When [John] McCown, Cleburne and [Benjamin] Cheatham passed over it, constantly circling in heavy masses round the Federal right, there were more clearings, and winter had stripped bare both bush and ground, leaving the evergreen cedars as the only screen for the frightened foe. Now the density of the brake shut us in on every side. The old driver tried first this path, then that, striking against rocks, scraping the buggy top and swearing as though he would scorch the roof of his mouth. At last we got out of the wilderness, emerging by a rough road that took us past the Harding farm house.

In the yard, where a peacock put himself in fine plume to greet us, once lay hundreds of dying men, because here was a field hospital which [Phil] Sheridan and [James] Negley taxed to the utmost. A rifle shot's flight further along we came out upon Wilkinson's turnpike and stopped at Blanton's farm house, where awful slaughter occurred. Dr. Burrows, the present owner of the mansion, took pains to show us such things as shell marks and rifle pits, but the evidences of the great struggle were few. About two years ago the skeletons of eleven Union soldiers were found in the cellar of an abandoned house on Dr. Burrows' place, a rare occurrence, as the dead of Stone's river have been given Christian burial either at the Confederate Cemetery south of the town or at the National Cemetery, whither we went full tilt on a good by-road.

Trotting across to Nashville Pike

The Nashville Pike about 20 years after the battle, probably much as reporter
George Morgan saw it. (National Park Service)

On the way to the cemetery the guide showed me what he said was the place where [Union general George] Thomas had stood, for that hero was the rock of Stone's river as well as " the rock of Chickamauga." More over, the guide amused himself by pointing out the spot where a shell took off [Julius] Garesche's head as he rode by the side of [William] Rosecrans, but so far from believing him I felt like telling him to go off somewhere and hang his feet over. He was as useful a guide as  McCook was a general. I knew, however, from General [Henry] Cist's excellent map in my hand, that we were passing over the new line whereon Rosecrans rallied his men and withstood all further shocks. Soon the open fields were in sight, and then a trot of a few minutes brought us to the cemetery.

A beauty-spot among barrens

This God's acre, set apart for more than six thousand soldiers slain in battle, is between the Nashville railroad and the Nashville turnpike, The turf is as smooth as a tennis plot, and around it passes a hedge so lovely as not to be surpassed by the maples, the vines, and the flowers. It is a garden-spot, offering contrast to the ground immediately without. A pebble could be thrown from the keeper's cosy lodge to a cabin of squalor just beyond the pike. The tiny sweet-william and the snap-dragon grow wild by the cabin, but in the place of the dead are blossoms that tell of years of painstaking.

Just to the north of the cemetery we came to a sort of darkey village, a settlement without a central point and without streets, more of a cluster of cabins than anything else. I was told that the cabins were built during the years of loose ownership in land that followed the battle. The colored people would pass whole days in the fields and brakes roundabout, gathering lead iron, shoes and the what-not scattered by the one hundred thousand men whose bivouacs had been passed therein. Most of the cabins had stone fences around them, for stones thickly strew the surface, and sometimes one may take a dozen steps on the smooth top of boulders level with the soil.

A battle-field monument

A train follows the war-time railroad course past the Hazen Brigade Cemetery.

The object next of interest in that locality is a monument put up in 1863 by [William] Hazen's Brigade of the Army of the Cumberland. It consists of a pile of stone some twelve feet high and bears the names of several officers killed here and at Shiloh. Referring to the brigade, the Nineteenth of [Don Carlos] Buell's old Army of the Ohio, the inscription runs: "The blood of one-third its soldiers, twice spilled in Tennessee, crimsons the battle-flag of the brigade and inspires to greater deeds." Little inspiration could be drawn from the surroundings, though, because a few dozen unkept graves, some rough prickly pears and corners overgrown with weeds were the only marked objects near the shaft. And even had I found food for patriotic reflection there, the mood would have vanished a few moments later, as a fresh bull-dog of yellow hue chased the tired sight-seer headlong through a cotton held to the waiting buggy in the road.

A present-day close-up of the Hazen Brigade monument.

A parting glimpse

As we drove back past the famous "Round Forest," now no longer standing, what we saw was well worth seeing. The white cotton blossoms of the morning had turned to pink in the sun and his last rays were upon the silk tufts in the corn. Coming in sight of the river again the guide pointed out a dozen or more forts, and these proved to be better preserved than any other battle-marks in the vicinity. They are on the southern bluff, having been built after Bragg had retreated. Some are partly covered with bushes, but those near the road are bare and in the gathering twilight they looked as red as the clouds far over by the west. On top of one fort stood a cabin and in an angle of the earthworks its lord and master was penning his ox -- the last thing seen in the last glimpse caught of Murfreesboro field.

G. M.

---

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'Where'll I find the Crater?': A visit to Petersburg in 1881

In 1887, six years after reporter George Morgan's Petersburg visit, 57th Massachusetts veterans
pose at The Crater.  William Mahone, the Confederate brigadier general who led counterattacks 
at The Crater on July 30, 1864,  is the man with the cane and long, white beard
 in the front row. (William Tipton | Library of Congress)

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On a tour of Southern battlefields in 1881. Philadelphia Times correspondent George Morgan stopped in Petersburg, Va., where citizens weren't especially eager to talk about momentous Civil War events that occurred there. At least one of them, however, profited from the war: The farmer who owned land where the U.S. Army exploded a mine under the Confederates' salient on July 30, 1864, charged visitors a quarter apiece to visit the "historic hole" created by the blast.

Correspondent George Morgan 
toured Civil War
battlefields in 1881-1882.

"[H]e was obliged to charge a fee," Morgan wrote about Timothy R. Griffith, who owned The Crater, "as otherwise his visitors, after the reckless manner of Sunday sight-seers, would trample down his cotton and kill his corn."

The Crater served as the feature Civil War attraction in Petersburg, and Morgan unsurprisingly made it one of his first stops. It looked "like an abandoned reservoir," he wrote, "of uneven banks and irregular bottom, overgrown with clumps of briars and bushes. It is one hundred and sixty feet long, sixty feet wide and twenty-five feet deep."

Morgan made no mention of soldier remains at The Crater, where a photograph taken a little more than a decade earlier showed human skulls gruesomely perched on the rim of the giant hole. In visits to forts Damnation, Davis and Rice and elsewhere in the immediate area, the 27-year-old reporter also found plentiful evidence of civil war.

"[E]very rain," he wrote, "washes out Minie balls and grape [shot] on all the farms between the lines."

Here's Morgan's colorful account published by the Times on Sept. 5, 1881:

---

Special Correspondence of The Times. 

Petersburg, September 3

America's Sevastopol, which I make bold to call this place of prolonged siege, seems to me to be a sort of Richmond on a small scale. The streets and stores of this pretty little city on the Appomattox are much like those of the proud beauty on the James: the nooks and crannies of the one suggest those of the other, and there is that in the air here whereby the stranger recognizes the Virginia capital in miniature. In Richmond, however, there may be felt the snap and dash of a lively now South, while at this ancient point of trade there is a hint of Dixie, not altogether unadulterated, but still pleasantly suggestive of the land of "cinnamon seed and sandy bottom."

Though the town is surrounded by the ruins of numerous forts and though many of the people served in the trenches, I find them averse to talking about the siege. Furthermore, those of whom I asked questions apparently fail to appreciate what a big thing they have in the matter of battle-fields. Very likely it is because they have them at their doors and it is the old story of the weather prophet who is not without success save in his own country. It wouldn't be at all wonderful if St. Peter has ceased to admire the golden hinges of his big gate, and no doubt the devil fails to appreciate the interesting section over which he presides.

On the Jerusalem Plank

"Where'll I find the Crater?'' I asked, coming out from the built-up part of the town and emerging upon Jerusalem plank-road.

"Feth, an' am thinkin' yo'll be afther gettin' yer nuff av the crathur beyant there in Jimmy O'Nail's saloon," replied my interlocutor, pointing to a sign whereon "Old Rye," "XX Ale" and things of that kind blazingly figured.

"He don't mean that crater; some other crater," chimed in a small boy; "he moans the big C-r-a-t-e-r, where the Yanks busted a hole in old man Griffith's field."

"Och, bejasus, tho't yo was manin' the livin' liquid herself;" and as I drove on I left the boy telling the citizen how Burnside had wasted his tons of powder. Passing along the Jerusalem road for more than a mile I came to a road that branched off into a field of peanut plants. At the side of the gateway was the sign:

TO THE CRATER, 25 CTS. AHEAD

At the end of the field road, a few hundred yards from the sign, I saw a large, roundish bank of red earth topped by shrubs and small trees. Near by is a two-story frame house in which lives T. R. Griffith, the owner of the farm and the guardian of the historic hole. Mr. Griffith led me up the side of the Crater, explaining as he brushed the weeds from the path that for self-protection he was obliged to charge a fee, as otherwise his visitors, after the reckless manner of Sunday sight-seers, would trample down his cotton and kill his corn.

What the Crater looks like

Present-day view of The Crater, on outskirts of Petersburg. (Photo:Shelly Liebler | Visit her Instagram page)

Tunnel dug by 48th Pennsylvania soldiers for a mine placed under Confederate salient nearby.
(Photo: Shelly Liebler)

The land within a half mile in every direction is clear of woods and at this time is checkered by fields of corn, cotton and peanuts and patches of ground that are fallow. Looking to the north the fields slope downward, and so with the strip to the east, but passing a ravine the slope is upward to the Federal line. To the west and south is rising ground, with the city cemetery on the ridge and the city itself beyond. The crater now looks like an abandoned reservoir, of uneven banks and irregular bottom, overgrown with clumps of briars and bushes. It is one hundred and sixty feet long, sixty feet wide and twenty- five feet deep. The earth is brown, with red blotches, being clay sub-soil.

The parapet of the fort remains and serves as the rim and border of the pit. Pine, peach, apple and atlanthus trees, together with grapevines, blackberry bushes and fruitless briars, grow thickly in the hollows, which look as if a herd of wild boars with hundred-horse-power snouts had rooted them out a dozen years ago. Extending from the northeastern corner of the crater in a straight line down hill to the ravine, two hundred yards away, is a sunken, narrow, ditch-like sink in the earth. This is the surface line of the tunnel dug by Schuylkill county soldiers, who had been brought up in mines and who wormed their way from the ravine until they stored thousands of pounds of powder just under this spot. As I sit in the crotch of a peach tree and look at the points of the field, now little changed from the day when it was the scene of a wonderful episode in war, the picture comes vividly up.

How ten tons of powder spoke

Marker denoting 48th Pennsylania soldiers' role in The Crater explosion.
(Photo: Shelly Liebler)

It is not yet sunrise and the defenders are asleep among the traverses and under the guns of the fort. A match, a touch, a hissing fuse and what a thing of mould and force infernal is now let loose. It is as though a young volcano, held in nature's mystery underground, has burst its bonds. The crust is rent by the up-coming bolt and fire flashes through broken clods of earth that fly to mid-air two hundred feet above. Sand, stones, guns, men, everything within reach of the blast, are blown skyward. A brass piece that weighs a ton is sent whirling over the parapet for a hundred yards.

Young Chandler, who an instant before slept beneath the gun, is hurled so high and so far that his bruised body falls within the Union lines. Men die in the air, never knowing in what unwonted and in what sulphurous guise death has unwrapped itself. Answering to the quake that is felt as far as Richmond and that shakes the steeples at Norfolk, a hundred miles away, come the roll and roar of [Ulysses] Grant's artillery. In redan and redoubt [Robert E.] Lee's men are benumbed and shrink lest the old mole has toothed his blind path under other forts and lest instantly now other death-bolts shall start up from the depths. Lee's batteries to the right and left are deserted; the outburst has broken his line and into it a wedge that may end the war in a week can now be driven. The mine itself is a wonder. It does its work with the swift flight of an electric streak that zig-zags across a bank of clouds in summer time, rendering the thunderous acclaim of its own success.

In the death trap

Granite marker near The Crater. The Federals suffered 504 killed, 1,881 wounded, 1,413 missing 
or captured  in the battle. Many of the casualties were U.S. Colored Troops. (Photo: Shelly Liebler)

But it is in the driving of the wedge that the gain becomes loss. What thus far has been an immense success now turns to that which is worse than a failure. What is needed is that the wedge shall be driven with Grant's best sledge hammer promptly home. A mass of boasting black men, whose battle-cry of "No quarter!" comes as an echo from Fort Pillow, are sent under a leader unworthy of his uniform to accomplish what only the pick of the army could hope to do. A whole hour is given [Confederate General William] Mahone in which to throw himself into the breech. Lee's artillery is again manned and hotly begins to work.

Union troops advance toward The Crater
after the explosion of the mine.
 (Alfred Waud | Library of Congress)
CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE.

Poor devils of black men from shouting "No quarter" now shriek wild prayers for pity. Boasting becomes beseeching. The miserable wretches are bayoneted by friends and shot down by the foe. Without head or order the entrapped victims huddle close about the gap in the ground, seeking shelter behind heaps of upturn earth and even shielding themselves vainly with the bodies of dead comrades. The crater is a death-trap. From many batteries, where lurid gleams come through shrouds of smoke, shot and shell are hailed incessantly, and what was a spot of triumph is now a slaughter-pen a place of torn earth, soaked in the blood of four thousand men.

[Read historian Kevin Levin's detailed account of the Battle of the Crater. Levin's book, Remembering the Battle of the Crater: War as Murder, may be purchased here.] 

Forts Hell and Damnation

Monument denoting the role of Fort Stedman, a Union fortification at Petersburg. 
(Photo: Shelly Liebler)

The Crater is the main object of interest on the lines of fortifications and it is more frequently visited than Forts Steadman, Haskell and Sedgwick, which lie within sight to the north and cast. There are traces of Fort McGilver far beyond Fort Steadman and the outlines of the latter are just as distinctly marked. All the traverses have been removed and all the covered ways destroyed, for Fort Hell, as the armies nicknamed the Steadman redoubt, is now a garden wherein truck is raised for the Petersburg market. A farm house has been erected in the enclosure and O.P. Hare now peacefully dwells where Gordon and havoc once swept along. [Note: Fort Sedgwick was nicknamed "Fort Hell," not Fort Stedman.]

Fort Haskell is in better preservation than any other of the Federal redoubts. Pine trees grow in and around the enclosure and both the inner and outer works with a little use of the shovel could be made as formidable as in the days of death. Many of the oaks in the vicinity contain bullets. nor is it unusual to pick up rusty reminders of battle anywhere along the line from that point southward to Fort Sedgwick. Only half of that famous place of strength now remains. It was built across the Jerusalem road on two plantations.

The part on Mr. Griger's farm was long ago leveled and is now in corn, but the half on the east side still stands. Mahone's Fort Damnation shows many remnants. Fort Davis is in good condition, and Fort Rice has suffered little from the wear and tear of time. In this way the curious visitor might follow the lines of defense and contravallation down to Hatcher's Run and the Five Forks field. Wherever the land was cultivated before the war the works have been levolod, but where the lines passed through woods the works are very much as they were when abandoned. In the high and rolling lands the woods contain white oak, red oak, poplar and hickory, but in the light, sandy soil grow pines, ash, elm and buttonwood. At points where a link in the chain of fortifications is missing the line may be traced by the color of the sub-soil. Where the land is tilled most of the shells and bits of lead have been picked up, yet every rain washes out Minie balls and grape on all the farms between the lines.

Present-day view of Fort Stedman, better known as Fort Hell. (Photo: Shelly Liebler)

Pink blossoms and white

There is a delightful thing about Petersburg that never before has been mentioned in print. The city is bordered in its suburbs by a long bolt of peach trees which, in the spring, turn myriad white blossoms out to the sun and thus give a beautiful girdle to the place once trussed with bands of iron and cordons of steel. In that long and weary year of watchfulness the Southern soldiers were glad to get fruit and the best things that came to them from the Carolinas were peaches, whereof the pink flesh was sweeter than honey-dew. The kernels were dropped upon the battle-ground; the army tramped sorely on to Appomattox; winter came again, and then from the trenches sprang fruit trees that have flourished to this day. Down in the sunny South there is a kind of peach that shows a white bud; elsewhere the blossom is touched with pink. All other peach trees around Petersburg have the pink flower, and the battle-field peach thus keeps its mark and proud distinction. So now, starting from the river at the north, Lee's line may be traced for six miles or more by the far-reaching orchard planted in blood.

G.M.

---

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Where 'bleeding warrior' fell: A visit to Chancellorsville in 1881

A circa-1900 view of the old Chancellor family house, which burned down in 1927. The structure suffered
significant damage during the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863.
(Photo courtesy Pat Sullivan | Click on all images to enlarge.)

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In 1881 and 1882, George Morgan of the Philadelphia Times lived what many of us today would consider a charmed life. Traveling throughout the South, the 27-year-old reporter visited Civil War battlegrounds from Franklin in Tennessee to Kennesaw Mountain in Georgia to report a series of lengthy stories for the Philadelphia newspaper.

George Morgan's story about his Chancellorsville
battlefield visit was published on Page 1
of the Philadelphia Times on Aug. 9, 1881.

A little less than two decades after the war, the battlefields looked much as the soldiers who fought there saw them. On his excursions, Morgan examined parapets, viewed soldiers' skulls in the woods, discovered war relics and chatted with locals who lived on hallowed ground.

In the summer of 1881, accompanied by a black man named Cato, Morgan rode about 10 miles from Fredericksburg, Va., to visit the old Chancellorsville battleground, (in)famous for where Stonewall Jackson was mortally wounded May 2, 1863. A pilgrimage to the Jackson wounding site, marked by a large stone, obviously made an impression on Morgan.

"The stone is as still as though the bones of the man of fame were beneath," wrote Morgan, a gifted writer, in his Page 1 story in the Philadelphia Times. "Squirrels skip over it. Bucks and does rub lazily against it and acorns dropping from the boughs above lose their cups as they crack against its brown sides."

On his Chancellorsville journey, the reporter also visited "a church full of bullets," saw the "towering pine" under which Robert E. Lee and Jackson may have sat to plot strategy and examined "shrapnel bolts" embedded in the Chancellor house, vortex of the battle. And almost in passing, Morgan wrote about a grisly discovery by a local farmer.

Here's Morgan's Philadelphia Times account about his Chancellorsville visit, published Aug. 9, 1881.

---

Special Correspondence of The Times

The Wilderness P. O., August 7

Coming within sight of Chancellorsville I tried to make close scrutiny of the one historic house that is the all in all of the settlement, but my own gaze, as well as the questioning stare of the driver, Cato, became fixed upon a much prettier picture in the yard. Under the shade of an elm sat a young couple who looked as though they were out for a picnic. The young woman was fair of face and of gentle manners, and the moustached youth who paid her such smiling attention evidently was something more than a brother. Both wore traveling costumes of the Northern cut and I was not surprised to learn that they hailed from Hartford, Connecticut.

''Who am dem people, Moss Oliver?" asked Cato, speaking in an undertone, as the sun browned tenant of the Chancellor House stepped out to the buggy with his hearty invitation to "light and walk in."

"Young married folkses"said Farmer Oliver.

 "On dere weddin'  skurshun, am dey ?"

"I 'low so, you 'quisitive niggah; you'd better take keer o' yo hosses," and turning to me Farmer Oliver continued: "The young lady says as how her father was killed on this heah battlefield the day she was bo'n. He was an officer with Gennul Sickles an' was killed over thah by Hazel Grove same time as Genuul Berry was. Do 'light and walk in, sir! Any marks about the old house? Well, I should say so! Come in. come in."

A church full of bullets

When reporter George Morgan visited Salem Church in 1881, wartime damage was evident. Here is an
 early post-war view of the church, today located "amongst a virtual sea of shopping malls."
(Photo courtesy Pat Sullivan)

It needed some such pleasant introduction as this to Chancellorsville, because the morning sun had been hot, the horses slow, Cato sleepy and the ride from Fredericksburg barren of interest, except at one point -- the battle-scarred surroundings of Salem Church. Leaving Marye's Heights behind, a trot of a few miles over the Orange turnpike had brought us to the church around which [John] Sedgwick fought on the days that witnessed the death-grapple of [Joseph] Hooker and [Robert E.] Lee, a little further to the north. The church, which is a small brick building, stands in the corner of dense woods somewhat to the left of the road. Its grove of oaks differs from the adjoining forest trees in that they grow several yards apart and shelter a circular plot of pasture grass. A few feet in the rear of the church is a line of breastworks, now no higher than the knees and thickly overgrown with weeds.

The church walls contain shell-holes and countless bullet marks, while the overhanging oaks show many scars. Indeed, it may be said that as many minie balls have been put into the church as there have been prayers sent from it. Moving on by a red clay road bordered by pine and oak and poor cornfields, in which were negro cabins made of logs, we had at eleven o'clock reached the Furnace road. Along this road stretched the Confederate right and under a towering pine tree, plainly in sight, it is said that Lee and Jackson sat upon their cracker boxes on the evening of May 1 when they planned their daring attack upon Hooker's Eleventh Corps. But the pine and the guide's cracker-box story had proved very dry indeed and it was with the pleasure of a thirsty man approaching a well that I drove up to the Chancellor House, with its shady yard and happy bridal party.

A famous place of one house

Another early post-war view of the old Chancellor house, visited by reporter George Morgan in 1881.

Chancellorsville is a desolate clearing on the southern edge of the Wilderness. Time was when a hundred Virginians of the first families clinked glasses in the long dining hall of the hostelrie, and many a day did Jefferson, Madison and those who came after take noontide rest under the surrounding elms. But the planks of the Plank road are gone. Coaches and four no longer shake dust from the shallow ruts of the pike and lovers no longer seek the cross roads tavern as the half way to Gretna Green.

In the old days the Chancellor House was a massive brick building, shaped like a squat T. Around it on every side were level fields that stretched for a quarter of a mile or more, while three important stage roads came together in front of the yard. Now only one-third of the building -- the northern end --  stands, and even that had to be re-erected after battle, when fire left nothing but bare walls, shot shattered and bullet-pierced. From the northern end of this poor remnant of the ruined inn stick out five pieces of shrapnel bolts that, as Mr. Oliver fears, may yet play the mischief. Above these grim things is a ragged rent in the gable end near the roof, showing where shells knocked for admission as they paused in their screaming flight eighteen years ago. The porch pillar, near which Hooker had the misfortune to stand when it was shattered by a round shot, was destroyed by the fire and in the places of the pillars are wooden columns freshly painted and without a scratch. In the yard the visitor sees the outlines of the old house marked by shrubs, weeds and stray bricks, while a dozen sweet hollyhocks growing near the porch remain as sentinels of garden beauties long since gone.

The spot where Jackson fell

THEN & NOW: Approximate site of Stonewall Jackson's wounding on May 2, 1863. He died of complications of the wound eight days later. Use slider to toggle from 1866 to present-day view.

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The sun is overhead as the lazy horses, white with lather, jog along a level road between two cornfields and come once more to where trees grow thickly on either side. Thus moving in the midst of timber for somewhere near a half mile we come to a big stone planted steadfastly by the roadside. Cato is nodding and I hit him a smart crack with a soldier's skull which Farmer Oliver gave me and the points of which I had been studying since we left Hooker's shattered headquarters behind. Cato gave a grunt and a jerk and mumbling: "I'se mos' aseep," spied the stone.

Stonewall Jackson

Then it was amusing to watch the change come over the darkey's dull expanse of jaw and lip. He lifted his eyebrows, showed his teeth and said, with animation: "Bress my soul, sah, us am right heah."

 "What's ' heah ?'  What's that stone for ?"

"Doan yo kno, sah, whut dat ar' markable stone am tendin to memmorate?"

"No, what is it?"

"Dar's whar Genuul Stonewall was kilt. Moss Tucker  Lacey, do preacher up dar by Wilderness sto, he put stone dar, sah."

I remembered that Jackson clung to life for several days after he had been wounded, but by further questioning I learned that this was the spot where the bleeding warrior fell from his horse in the very hour of his crowning triumph The stone is a rough block of white flint, quarried here in the Wilderness. It stands three feet eight inches high and is two feet ten inches in breadth. Its surface shows dents and sears where from loving pilgrims have scaled bits of it as relics, and all around are smaller pieces of hard rock that have been used as hammers with which to crack it. Immediately around the stone the ground is in small undergrowth. Huckleberry bushes, chinkapins and the like, but at a few feet it is encompassed by pines and oaks of large growth.

Early post-war image of the Orange Plank Road and Mountain Road intersection.
Stonewall Jackson is believed to have been shot at the far right or farther down the road,
out of view of the camera. (Library of Congress | CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE.)

Bullet marks in a red oak

Between the stone and the road is a red oak of such size that it must have sprung up thirty years ago. I noticed a dozen or more bullet holes in this oak and asked Cato why they were there. His reply, that they came with the volley by which Jackson was killed, seemed to be disproved by the fresh appearance of the holes.

"How can that be?" I asked. "The holes look as though they were made within the last year."

"Easy 'nuff, sah, easy 'nuff," Cato said with a hearty he-haw of a laugh; "doan yo' see, sah, dat do volley come from do No'rf, where do rebels was? 'en doan yo' see dat do visiters heah hab bin pickin' wid dere pen-knives at dem bullet-holes lookin' fur relics?"

Then I understood: the bullet marks had been kept fresh for nearly a score of years by such of the great leader's admirers as hungered to bear away with them the fellow bits of lead of those that flew to their deadly work so long ago. And this is the place where [Stonewall] Jackson for the first time grew weak! The silent woods are around. The stone is as still as though the bones of the man of fame were beneath. Squirrels skip over it. Bucks and does rub lazily against it and acorns dropping from the boughs above lose their cups as they crack against its brown sides. But even here in the Wilderness romance may be spoiled. Nailed against the red oak is a broad board with the sign:

Willis & Grasty
Sowing Machine Agents,
Dry Goods, Shoes and Hats
Cheap for Cash

Thus within hand's reach of Stonewall's stone trade leaves its mark and enterprising dealers reap profit from the glances of the reverential passer-by. In this way sentiment is lost, and even Cato makes the droll suggestion that he let the kicking horse of his team use his hind hoofs to chip a bit of the flint as a memento for me.

Where Pleasonton took his stand

Union General Alfred Pleasonton
(Library of Congress)

Cato is asleep over by Jackson's stone as I come out upon one of the Hazel Grove clearings more than a half mile to the west. While I rest here alone among rank dock weeds that cover the ruins of a parapet, the flesh creeps to think of the mad thing that [Peter] Keenan started from this very spot to do. Daylight fades now as it did then. A red moon looks through the tree tops, and on that May evening eighteen years ago her light was no less reflective of fiery clouds down by the path of the sun.

Twelve thousand panic-stricken men are pressing down the road, through the woods and across the fields in utter rout, each eager to save himself and reckless of the fate of others. [Alfred] Pleasanton, riding wildly on a horse flecked with foam, strives to stem the tide of Howard's flight and to meet the terrific onslaught of Jackson's victorious men. He looks here and there for Keenan, and finding him says: " Major, yon must charge the enemy. Save me ten minutes, to get my guns ready; go, Keenan !" The young Philadelphian, in peace as soft-hearted as a girl, generous, chivalric, the pride of the cavalry, knows that it is certain death, but if Pleasanton is willing to sacrifice his right arm the right arm is ready, and Keenan, with a smile, says: " I will."

Riding down to death

In an early post-war image, a snake rail fence and the old Wilderness Church in the left background. 
(National Park Service via Pat Sullivan)

Then Keenan takes a grip upon his reins, says jocularly "good-by" and wheels his horse with such a touch as the beast never felt before. He nods as he passes [Pennock] Huey and a moment thereafter says: "Cavalry, charge!" and so quiet is his voice that the three hundred troopers barely hear it in the great uproar. But what terrible words to say! The men know the grit of them, and if any one of the three hundred pales at the awful thing about to be done there is no sign of it to Pleasonton, watching eagerly but in perfect confidence as they respond.

In a headlong drive the squadrons cut a swath from the mass of fugitives and come to the edge of the woods. The pause there is for a moment as then Keenan and Huey ride abreast into a narrow road and the cavalrymen follow two by two. Caps are raked off by the brushwood, faces are scratched and torn by the hanging briars, but Keenan rides fast and all come after. From the right now and then whistles up a handful of bullets and a dozen saddles are emptied, but no notice is taken of the skirmishers, and so Keenan, wheeling to the left, dashes into the plank road. And what a sight is before him!

Line upon line of Jackson's veterans -- great hosts of them -- are coming on the double quick straight up the road. Keenan throws aside his cap, shouts "Sabres!" and spurs his horse plumb into the wall of bayonets. The first battalions are blinded by one flash and another and nearly half of the three hundred fall, but Keenan. Huey, [Charles] Arrowsmith and [J. Hazelton] Haddock, backed by their comrades, gather their horses under them and strike such hot blows that they shock the oncoming line for a thousand yards on either side. It is tooth to tooth. Never before did three hundred men cast themselves with such true aim and so impetuously against twenty thousand victorious and advancing veterans. They struck the head and front of the moving mass and left it like a thunderbolt.

"And full in the midst rose Keenan, tall
in the gloom like a martyr, awaiting his fall,
While I lie circle-stroke of his sabre, swung
'round his head, like a halo there luminous hung."

Over Keenan's dead body

Major Peter Keenan of the
8th Pennsylvania was killed
at Chancellorsville
on May 3, 1863

But though Jackson recovers from the shock and pushes on over the prostrate bodies of Keenan, [Duncan] McVicar, Arrowsmith, Haddock and their comrades, ten full minutes have passed and not a moment has Pleasonton been idle. He gathers about him twenty-one guns, double-shotted, and set steadfastly to sweep the approach. He hides his time until the enemy shall appear. Here they come, fresh from the taking of Keenan's blood, wild with the news of Jackson's death wound, swarming in deep masses, waving a dozen battle-flags, keen, eager, thirsty. Pleasanton opens. Every gun speaks on the instant -- a lurid flash, a crash, a roar, live thunder voiced a hundred fold! Hooker, among the desperate fugitives of the Eleventh Corps, a mile away, hears and rejoices. A hundred and twenty thousand soldiers feel that some good is being done at last. [Hiram] Berry and [David] Birney, Sickles and [John] Geary see, from the burning sky, a new daylight spring up in the dusk and they place their legions at Pleasonton's back with the thought that once more the army is saved.

It is too dark to see the ruins of parapets, the old graveyard and the well full of war relics on Fairview crest, and I go back to Cato. That sleepy citizen puts his whip down with a meaning and we leave behind us Jackson's stone, the Dowdall clearing, the old Wilderness church, and come to the Wilderness store. In less than an hour the horses have taken us from one battle-field to another. Just down the road is the place where Lee whipped Hooker, and here in this upland forest is the place where, a year later, Lee tried so hard to throttle [Ulysses] Grant.

G.M.

An early post-war image of Wilderness Church. (Central Rappahannock Heritage Center via Pat Sullivan)

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