Interactive panoramas: Fort Morgan on Alabama's Gulf Coast

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          South side of Fort Morgan, facing the Gulf. (Click on image for full-screen version.)

On a sun-splashed morning, two men fished in the surf, a couple walked slowly on State Rt. 180 and a handful of visitors surveyed the immense brick walls of historic Fort Morgan, one of the Rebels' defenses along Alabama's Gulf Coast. Several miles down the two-lane road  to the fort, vacation homes dot the landscape near white sand beaches, where hundreds of tourists enjoyed perfect summer weather. Nearly 151 years earlier, the scene along this coast was much different ...

                           Slaves and New England masons constructed the fort in 1834.

... For the 500-plus Rebel soldiers garrisoned at the fort, life was bleak. Fort Morgan was a key outpost guarding strategic Mobile Bay, but its remote location led scores of men there to turn to an age-old demon: alcohol. "Many of the soldiers here were drunk all the time," a living historian at the fort told me during my recent visit.  The interactive panorama above shows the "murder ditch." If an enemy got this far, the fort's defenders might fire, say, canister from the embrasures, making life quite difficult for attackers ...

                  ;Interior of the fort, which also was used during Spanish-American War 
                                                          and World Wars I and II.

When Admiral David Farragut's 18-ship fleet tried to slip past the fort and into Mobile Bay on Aug. 5, 1864, one of his vessels, the ironclad U.S.S. Tecumseh, was sunk by a mine with a loss of nearly 100 sailors. The wreck of the ship still lies today upside down at the bottom of Mobile Bay, apparently untouched by archaeologists since the late 1960s. After an 18-day siege by forces that included the 2nd Connecticut Light Artillery, the Yankees captured the fort on Aug. 23, 1864. The four-story citadel in the fort's interior -- the barracks where many of the enlisted men lived -- was heavily damaged during the 1864 siege and later torn down. Little evidence of it remains today. ...

View of cramped quarters for soldiers at Fort Morgan.

1864 image of the ruins Fort Morgan. (Library of Congress)

On April 30, 1863, Fort Morgan's Confederate commander was decapitated when a cannon tube exploded after it was test-fired. "I immediately went over and found that his head was entirely severed from his body and scattered some distance," a comrade wrote in a brutally honest letter to Lieutenant-colonel Charles Stewart's wife that July. "...I believe the piece that struck him, from observation made by other officers, myself, weighed over 200 pounds -- after hitting him it struck against some sandbags and fell into the ditch below. I am satisfied that he never knew what hit him." Pieces of the officer's head, Charles Collins noted in the letter to his Stewart's wife, were gathered and placed in his coffin. A partial dental plate was also collected -- it may be seen today in Fort Morgan's museum along with a transcript of Collins' letter...


                               Rebel chaplain Noble DeVotie drowned near here in 1861.

... On Feb. 12, 1861, two months before the war started, a Rebel chaplain drowned in Mobile Bay, on the north side of the fort. An Alabama Historical Association marker (below) near the site notes that 23-year-old Noble Leslie DeVotie, a former student at the University of Alabama and a founder of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, was the "first Alabama soldier to die in Civil War." Of course, the war did not officially begin until the Rebels bombarded Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor on April 12, 1861. DeVotie's body was recovered three days after he drowned.

Confederate chaplain Noble Leslie DeVotie drowned near the fort on Feb. 12, 1861.

                                  For more images of my visit to Fort Morgan, click here.

Photo journal: A day at Fort Morgan on Alabama's Gulf Coast

The main entrance to Fort Morgan notes the year the fortress was named.

Original plans for Fort Morgan.
(Library of Congress)

"Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" Admiral David Farragut famously said after one vessel in his 18-ship fleet was sent to the bottom of Mobile Bay as the Union navy steamed past Fort Morgan on Aug. 5, 1864. Four days later, Union troops that included the 2nd Connecticut Light Artillery landed on the east side of Fort Morgan to begin a siege that ended with the Rebels' surrender on Aug. 23, 1864. The Confederates' commander was killed and the fort's barracks were so badly damaged that they were later torn down. (The wreck of the U.S.S. Tecumseh, the Union vessel sunk by a mine during Farragut's attack, lies in Mobile Bay today.) 

U.S. troops occupied Fort Morgan during the Spanish-American War, World War I and World War II before it was deactivated in 1946 and turned over to the state of Alabama. I shot these images during an early-morning visit to Fort Morgan, 22 miles from Gulf Shores, Ala., on the Gulf Coast.

A living historian walks through the main entrance to Fort Morgan.

A visitor's shadow eerily appears on a wall of a casemate.

A tourist slips into the powder magazine, which held more than 60,000 pounds of powder during the
 Union navy's siege in August 1864.

Impressive brickwork in an inner area of the fort.

If necessary, fort defenders could  fire through the embrasures.

A view through an embrasure shows the "murder ditch," which could be vigorously defended
with cannon fire if an enemy  penetrated the fort's defenses.

The Confederate national flag flies near Fort Morgan's  museum, but for how long?

'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 Federals famously 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 and wrote about the
experiences for the Philadelphia Times.
His Petersburg story was published in the
 Times on Sept. 5, 1881.

"...he 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 was 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.

"...every 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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'A place full of pitiful memories': A reporter's 1881 Bull Run visit

Union soldiers at the dedication of a Federal war memorial on Henry House Hill in June 1865.
(Library of Congress | CLICK ON ALL IMAGES TO ENLARGE.)

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A hodge-podge of shopping malls, housing developments and industrial parks long ago overwhelmed suburban Washington. Ah, to have seen the landscape of rolling hills, woods, ravines and lush fields in the area as Philadelphia Times correspondent George Morgan did when he visited Bull Run, 30 miles west of the capital, in the summer of 1881.

"Riding north on the road to Sudley Springs one sees the clearly marked outlines of a fort in a cornfield, and, passing further, the eye is attracted by the beautiful line of the Blue Ridge far away to the northwest," Morgan wrote in a Page 1 story published in the Times on July 11, 1881. He described the immediate area near the Bull Run battlefield as a "pleasant country of farms."

In 1881-82, Morgan lived a charmed life as a reporter, touring Civil War battlefields at Franklin, Cold Harbor, Chickamauga, Lookout Mountain and elsewhere. The ugly effects of war -- bullet-scarred trees, earthworks and entrenchments -- were often evident. Morgan discovered evidence of the human toll, too. In the woods at Chickamauga, the reporter and his guide found a pair of skulls, undoubtedly victims of the September 1863 battle. Morgan's descriptive accounts of his battlefield trips were published in the Times and other U.S. newspapers, including The National Tribune, a popular publication for Civil War veterans.

Fortunately for Morgan, he had an excellent guide at Bull Run: the man who lived on Henry House Hill, the heart of the battlefield. A former slave named Shedrick, who apparently witnessed Bull Run's aftermath, served as Morgan's driver. Here's the correspondent's complete Bull Run account, written nearly 20 years after the armies clashed there on July 21, 1861:

---

Special Correspondence of The Times

MANASSAS, Va. July 9

The lapse of twenty years has left the fields and wooded hills upon which the Battle of Bull Run was fought much as they were when on that hot Sunday in July, 1861, the young armies of the people for the first time joined in combat. At this spot this month twenty years ago the raw nucleus of the Grand Army of the Potomac fell upon the equally undisciplined enemy and forced him through thick woods, across ravines, on hillsides and into what promised to be utter rout, but accident of war turned the tide of battle and under vigorous counter-attack the assailants fled dismayed to the banks of the Potomac. What the writer wishes to set down in plain terms is the appearance of the battle-field now and the impression that the surroundings make upon an admirer of those who fought.

Bull Bun is best reached from Manassas village, a pretty place, which shelters snugly on level land a few hundred people, who, being at a point on the Virginia Midland Railroad, thirty miles west of Washington, take the trade of the country for a considerable distance around. Riding north on the road to Sudley Springs one sees the clearly marked outlines of a fort in a cornfield, and, passing further, the eye is attracted by the beautiful line of the Blue Ridge far away to the northwest. At the end of a six-mile trot through a pleasant country of farms, the most interesting part of the battlefield, Henry Hill, is reached.

The field's key-point

A war-time image of the ruins of the original Henry House.
(Library of Congress)

The Henry House stands upon Henry Hill, a flat, bare crest, the field's key-point, whence came the first great outburst of battle and across which forwards and backwards the contending lines surged from noon until the day was lost. The house is a pleasant structure, with marks of newness about it, and it is made inviting by a lawn in which there is a large elm and several small locust trees. The eye of the approaching visitor does not rest upon these trees, however, delightful as they appear, for the objects of prominence are a little God's-acre grove in front of the house and a rude monument in its rear.

"Coase I wuz heah just arter de fightin'," said Shedrick, the darkey driver, as we climbed the hillside road to the house; "'coase I wuz, en I seed moah dead uns stretched stiff in dat ar oat field ober dar den I eber seed afore nor sence. Dar's Mars Henry, he kin tell ye."

Under the elm sat an elderly gentleman bending over what I afterwards saw were Latin textbooks. His soft hand, heartily extended, pointed as a sure index to its owner as one concerned with the windrows of learning rather than with those long lines of fallen grain in the trail of the reaper which at that moment was seen swinging slowly down a distant Fairfax hill. From the warmth of his welcome Mr. [Hugh Fauntleroy] Henry, who is a professor in the Alexandria Academy, soon made his visitor feel in its fullness that which has been so much praised -- the hospitality of the old-time Virginian.

A glance from a hilltop

   PANORAMA: Confederates troops under Stonewall Jackson were positioned here on
       Henry Hill during First Bull Run. (Click at upper right for full-screen experience.)

William Sherman

"Be so kind as to stand under this tree," he said; "this point is the best from which to study the battle-field. General [William] Sherman so regarded it when he called here some time ago. I was sitting in the place where you saw me reading to-day when I observed the General approaching across the field. He came to the house, and standing here pointed out with wonderful accuracy the various positions held during the battle. Sir, that ridge beyond the Bull Run stream is in Fairfax county. Look to the east. On this side of that Fairfax ridge lay the Federal army on the night before the battle. The country there was partly cultivated then as it is now, but, turning your eyes further to the north, you see a forest extending to the stream. Through that forest, now of larger growth, the Federals, who were to turn [Pierre] Beauregard's left, moved, cutting their road as they went, to Sudley Springs, which you see in the distance there to the north. Then crossing Bull Run they come down directly upon this point. There remain few evidences of that movement. The oak and pine stands as it did then.

Confederate Colonel Barnard Bee,
 mortally wounded at Bull Run.

"Now mark, sir! The Confederate Colonel [Nathan] Evans, 'Shanks,' as they called him, faced [Daniel] Tyler just down there at the stone bridge, on the Warrenton pike. Is it clear to you? Well, sir, Evans, suspecting something wrong, faced up stream and, with Colonels [Barnard] Bee and Barton, threw himself into that field just beyond the valley. You see that field now; it is still clear. To make a long story short, when the Federal attacking column, clumsily handled, struck Evans they thought Beauregard's whole army was in their front. If they had pushed forward they would have crushed Beauregard. No doubt about it. Evans, with a handful of men, held them for an hour and a half and, when he was forced back, he retreated to this plateau, where the fiercest fighting was done. The Confederates ran past this house towards General Jackson, who had just posted his brigade at that ridge a few hundred yards to the northeast of the house. Jackson's men were lying flat on the ground, but Jackson was on his horse. He sat there as still and steadfast as this monument. Now and then he waved his hand to his men, among whom shells were falling and around whose heads bullets were flying like bees in harvest time. A soldier of that brigade was here a few years ago and he told me that he thought it too hot to stay. He was slipping back, when Jackson, seeing him, lifted his hand. The fellow dropped into his place."

Where Jackson became 'Stonewall'

As he talked Mr. Henry led his visitor beyond the lawn into a field where grew long grass, daisies, dandelions, dock weeds, blue thistle and thickly-matted blackberry briars. Slightly in advance and at the further edge of the field was a line of young pines which have sprung up since the battle, making the field narrower now than it was then. Beyond this growth of small pines stretches a wide belt of oak timber, then standing. Eating blackberries as we walked along we came to a slight ridge near the woods. It needed no one to explain that this was where Jackson stood "like a stone wall." From this spot, where his horse's hoofs made their memorable mark, I could trace, by the red road-bed leading to Sudley Springs, one line of Federal approach, and immediately below, in the little valley of Young's Branch, I could see the Warrenton pike that brought Union help from the Stone bridge across Bull Run. Far away in beautiful undulations roll pleasant fields and sternly in the background still grow the very oaks that once were bruised and shattered in the shock of battle.

Battle-field fancies

A group of mostly civilians at the June 1865  dedication of the Federal war memorial at Bull Run.
(Library of Congress)

Standing where Jackson stood, it is easy to re-people this beautiful crest, and with slight effort fancy fills in the picture. Panting after a hot run of a mile and a half, Bee's men and Barton's huddle panic- stricken at the edge of the woods. The rebels are routed. The hard-worked men of the North, driving constantly forward, cross Warrenton road, push up the hill and reach the plateau. Their batteries sweep the crest and send death-dealing bolts, hissing hot, into the woods.

Bee is in sore extremity. His face is streaked with the smut of powder. His eyes are wild. His sword is in constant motion above his head. His voice is husky, for shouts of command long since gave place to whispers of entreaty. Over the field he comes in search of his badly-smitten runaways.

"General," he exclaims, reaching Jackson, "they are beating us back."

"Sir," replies Jackson, "we will give them the bayonet."

Again Bee's sword waves encouragement to his troops, and in a rain of bullets he runs forward, saying to some who are with him: "There is Jackson, standing like a stone wall!"

Instantly thereafter Bee smites his breast, and, stumbling, falls backward upon clump of briars. To and fro across his body fly the bits of lead, regiment meets regiment in fierce charge and the thick of the fight is on. A dozen rocks in the midst of a tangle of pine bush mark the spot where Bee died, and a few steps distant a similar mound designates the place of Barton's fall. One conviction forces itself upon the visitor who walks from point to point in this field -- that the people never have done justice to the heroism of the Union soldiers who through no fault of their own lost the battle here.

"May I ask what has become of the hall In your house?" said General Sherman to Mr, Henry. "The house had to be rebuilt," was the reply, " and it was remodeled."

"I thought so," said Sherman, with a grim smile.

"I was in that hall, but it got too hot for me."

It is not pleasant for the gentleman who, with an aged sister, made deaf by the battle and so remaining now, occupies the Henry mansion to tell of the fighting in and around the house. In the graveyard grove is a tombstone with the inscription:

JUDITH HENRY
Killed near this spot by the explosion of shells in her dwelling - during the battle on the 21st of July, 1861, When killed she was in her 85th year and confined to her bed by infirmities of age. Her husband, Dr, Isaac Henry, was a surgeon in the United States Navy, on board the frigate Constellation.

A cropped enlargement of the Henry House Hill photo from June 1865 reveals the inscription
 on the war memorial. (Library of Congress)

When the artillery began to rock the hill and shot came tearing through the house Mrs. Henry's invalid son took his mother in his arms and bore her across the field down the hill to a sheltered place. Two daughters of the house followed. When the tide of battle momentarily rolled away to the right the party returned to the house, but scarcely had they reached the lawn when a fiercer storm than ever circled around. Mrs. Henry was shot in several places, one of the daughters was made deaf for life and the terrible shock hastened the son's death.

Great locust trees that then stood around the lawn wore broken off and swept down, and from their stumps the lesser locusts now standing have grown. In a grove ot these trees, on a grass-covered mound in the rear of the house, is monument of rough red granite, whereupon are scratched the names of visiting veterans. The shaft is capped with shells, one of which was hurled by "Long Tom" from Fairfax Heights far across Bull Run. Though the monument was put up by Union soldiers the bones of five Confederates are buried beneath. Pushing aside some hollyhocks, now in flower around the mound, I was able to read the inscription:

In Memory of
The Patriots
Who Fell at Bull Run,
July 21, 1861

Down at the Bridge

A war-time image of the Stone House at Bull Run astride the Warrenton Turnpike.
(Library of Congress)

With taut reins Shedrick led his horses down the farm road leading from the plateau, and crossing Young's Branch, we emerged upon the Warrenton pike. The Stone House known to history still stands at the intersection of the Sudley Springs and Warrenton roads, and we drank from the same well whence thirsty hundreds drew refreshing draughts twenty years ago. From the Stone House along  the pike to the stone bridge across Bull Run it is a long mile, the road being up hill and down and twice crossing the rivulet.

"The Yankees retreated along this road after the fighting on the Henry farm, didn't they, Shedrick?"

"I's free to say, sir, dat day kind o' made fur de bridge."

"But didn't they run?"

"No, sah; when de rebels got de Union gemmon on the go back dey kind o' went along dis road toards de bridge. '

"But what's the difference between 'on the run and 'on the go back'?"

"Heap o' difference, sah, heap o' difference."

This cute distinction appeared to tickle Shedrick, who, at the time of the battle, was a slave and who, in his respect for the North, could not be induced to admit that those who set him free were driven in wild flight across the bridge now before our very eyes. Tho bridge looks old, but steadfast. A wall of stone is on either side and the road-bed on the bridge is of red clay, just as on the pike itself. The stream that passes under the bridge is now narrow and sluggish, but a rain storm sends the waters roaring down between the high walls of red rock and the dry undergrowth of summer in the run's race track is frequently submerged. To the east is Fairfax county, filled upon this side with fields and thick woods, in the depths of which the bones of men and horses are found to this day. To the west, along the road that took us thither, stretch the undulating lands of Prince William county. Things are somewhat desolate at the bridge, but it is a novelty to sit on the stone buttress and read of war's deadly doings while from the dank grass and dark water below the bull-frog mocks the drum.

Where the Porter trouble began

Union General Fitz-John Porter.

A year after the first battle the second battle of Bull Run was fought upon the same ground. But in the second battle the positions of the opposing forces were reversed. Henry Hill and the adjoining Bald Hill are the points from which the operations during the second battle can best be studied. Far to the west stretch the Bull Run Mountains and in the distance the Blue Ridge. Thoroughfare Gap, through which Jackson marched and in which Ricketts disputed Longstreet's passage, looks like a notch in a huge saw. Bones have been found within the last few years in the Gap, but it behooves the searcher for such uncanny relics to beware lest he himself be turned to bones, for in the Bull Run Mountains the rattlesnake lurks. There are slight traces of Jackson entrenchments on the Highlands near Groveton, and the unused railroad cut, in which there was such fierce fighting, remains today as it was in August, 1862.

The Fitz John Porter case has caused a number of army officers to visit the Henry House and some adjacent points recently, and not long ago General Warren passed several days in the vicinity preparing maps for use in the trial. The people of the vicinity are interested in the development of the case, almost all taking sides with Porter, who, as a Manassas man put it, "is merely the scapegoat of a lost battle."

A year or so ago Senator Don Cameron found himself at the Henry farm, and, having examined the two battlefields, he said to Mr. Henry: "What will you take for your property? I've a notion to buy it." The reply was that the spot was too dear to be bought: a place full of pitiful memories for the owner and of sad reflection for the friends of those whose gathered ashes rest at Arlington.

G.M

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'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.)

---

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 about a 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 — on a tour of Southern battlefields — rode with the 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 didn't see much 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 with a little darkey and a big dog at the door of each."

Modern development encroaches today on the Stones River National Battlefield, which comprises a fraction of ground fought over in 1862-63. A swath of once-open land near the infamous Slaughter Pen is now occupied by a hospital. Ground where Union General Joshua Sill suffered a mortal wound is the parking lot for a bank. Developers have obliterated the site of opening action on Dec. 31, 1862. In its place, we find a fast-food restaurant, a service station and other urban schlock.

Thus this descriptive account by Morgan, published on Page 1 of the Philadelphia Times on Aug. 28, 1882, fills in gaps in our imaginations:

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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

                PANORAMA: Where Union General Philip Sheridan's soldiers held the line
               for two hours on Dec. 31, 1862 -- battling until they had no more bullets.
                                     (Click at upper right for full-screen experience.)

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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)

             PANORAMA: Where Union officer Julius Garesche, an aide to commander 
          William Rosecrans, was decapitated by Confederate artillery on Dec. 31, 1862. 
                                   (Click at upper right for full-screen experience.)

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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

                                  PANORAMA: Stones River (Tenn.) National Cemetery. 
                                       (Click at upper right for full-screen experience.)

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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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