With Fire and Sword

"Under the circumstances," I said, "I being Union, and you being Union, why not look the other way a moment and let me try the time required to reach yonder clump of trees." "No, not a thought of it," he answered almost hotly. "You are my prisoner, I will do my duty." The subject was dropped, and in half an hour Fritchie and I were inside a stone cell in Lexington jail. "You can lie down on the stone floor and sleep if you want to," the jailer said, crustily. The two young officers said a cheery good-by and went away.

Before daybreak the door of our cell opened again and the gruff jailer called, "Which of you is Adjutant Byers." Then he pushed a basket and blanket in to me, and a little note. The basket was full of good warm food and the little note, in a woman's hand, said: "With the compliments of the captain's wife."

I think tears came to the eyes of both of us there in that cell that night. It was among the few kindnesses I ever experienced in the Confederacy. Of course it was a woman's act. The captain had gone to his home near by and told his wife about his prisoners, and here was the remembrance. The world is not so bad after all, we said to each other, Fritchie and I.

The next day the jailer paraded us out in the corridor, and I think all the people in the county came to see us, to remark on us, and touch us with their hands. Most of these men, women, and children had absolutely never seen a Northern man before, and a Yankee soldier was a greater curiosity than a whole menagerie of polar bears. I saw the ignorance of the "poor white trash" of the South that day. Not one in twenty of them knew what the war was about. The negroes had a more intelligent notion of affairs than did the people of the Carolinas.

In a few days Fritchie and I were conducted back to our prison pen near Columbia, South Carolina.

Shortly they moved us once more. This time to the high-walled yard of the lunatic asylum, inside the city. As they marched us through the streets we could see how beautiful the little capital of South Carolina was. It had handsome shops and residences, and beautiful shade trees everywhere gave it a most attractive appearance. It was almost the best known city of the South and here the fatal heresy of secession had been born. As we went along the streets a mob of people gathered around us, hooting and hissing their hatred at us, just as they had done that first time we were taken through the town. A few wanted the guards to give them a chance to hang us. It was a sorry sight – this band of ragged, helpless, hungry loyalists being led like slaves and animals through the hooting, threatening crowd. That mob, thirsting for our blood, did not dream what was about to happen.

Here now in Columbia we were walled in just as we had been at Macon, and our lives continued in much the same hardship as before. Only here I do not recall that any prisoner was murdered. It is right to say, too, that the outrages so often committed on prisoners here and elsewhere in the South were not by the regular Confederate soldiers, but by home guards usually set over us. It seems now, when I recall it, that life was not quite so bad here. We soon had some boards given us; so we built sheds to live in. As for myself, I, with three or four comrades, lived in a little wedge tent. It was very cold and midwinter now. I scarcely slept at night, but walked about to keep warm. It was on one of these midnight tramps that it occurred to me to write the song, "Sherman's March to the Sea." I recur to it here because it gave its name to the great campaign it celebrates.

The story of how it came to be written cannot perhaps be wholly without interest. During the days that Sherman's army was tramping from Atlanta toward Savannah we prisoners were not permitted to have any news from the outside of any kind whatever. There was a fear that if we knew what was going on a mutiny might follow. We were constantly being told by our guards that Sherman's invading army was being headed off or destroyed. In the beginning we feared these stories to be true, but the uneasy actions and sullen looks of our captors soon began to belie their statements. As said, three or four of us prisoners occupied a little wedge tent. A negro had recently been allowed to come into the prison pen mornings to sell bread to those who had any money with which to buy. Our little mess got a small loaf now every morning; not more for the bread, though we needed that badly enough, than for a certain little roll of paper carefully hidden away in the middle of the loaf. It was a Columbia morning newspaper printed on soft thin paper and of extremely small size. Our loyal negro had easily enough been persuaded to hide a copy of this paper in the bread for us as often as he could have the chance unobserved. A knowing wink from him told us when to eat our loaf of bread inside the tent and with one of us watching at the door while another read in a low voice the news from the invading army. The paper rolled up was not larger than a walnut.

It was full of misrepresentations and reports of disasters to Sherman, to mislead the Georgians and lessen their alarm. Yet between the lines we easily enough read that Sherman was surely marching on, and victorious. His columns were coming nearer to us; and how we longed night and day that he might capture the prison! At last we saw that there was no hope. He was passing us, – though, but many miles away.

Then one morning, when we unrolled the little paper in the bread and read it, we knew that he had reached the sea. Savannah had fallen. The consternation of the Southerners was tremendous. But, next, they pretended that they could box Sherman up in Savannah and capture his whole army.

One December night when I was tramping up and down the prison pen in the dark, trying to keep warm, I reflected on the tremendous importance of what Sherman had done. And I wondered what so curious a campaign would be called. It was not a series of battles – it was a great march. And then the title, and almost the words, of the song came to me.

The next morning when my tent comrades were out of doors shivering over a little fire I remained in our little heap of straw, and completed the verses.

I went out to the fire and read them to my comrades. A Lieutenant Rockwell happened to be present and asked permission to make a copy of the verses. He, with many others, slept on the ground under the hospital building. One had to crawl on his hands and knees to enter there. There was a most capable Glee Club among the officers, and they had by some means secured a flute, violins, and bass viol for accompaniments. They kept their instruments under the house, too, where they slept.

Every afternoon this Glee Club was permitted to sing and play on the little elevated porch of the hospital. The only condition was that Southern songs should be sung, not less than Northern songs. There was no trouble about that. The songs of our captors were better than no songs. Besides, these singers made music. All the crowd of prisoners, eight hundred now, often stood in front of the little porch to enjoy the singing. Almost hundreds of the Rebels, too, together with many ladies of Columbia, climbed up onto the walls, where the guards stood, and applauded the singers as much as any.

One drizzly afternoon I was standing by a little persimmon tree in the midst of the crowd listening to the songs, when Major Isett, leader of the Glee Club, said: "Now we will have a song about Sherman." To my astonishment, it was my "Sherman's March to the Sea."

It was received in a tremendous fashion. Everybody cheered and hurrahed. The news of Sherman's victories was fresh upon them. In five minutes' time the good fortune of my song was settled. The name of the author was loudly called for; someone saw me by the little tree, and I was quickly hauled to the front and up onto the platform. In a few moments an unknown officer among the many prisoners became a sort of prison hero.

Everybody wanted the song, everybody sang it; and clever penmen made a good thing making copies at twenty dollars apiece, Confederate money. As a little compliment to me the captain of the prison allowed me to sleep on the floor of the hospital room. To me that was important, as shall appear. Later in this narrative, too, will be seen how an exchanged prisoner, by the name of Tower, who had an artificial leg, carried the song in this wooden limb through the lines to our soldiers in the North, where it was sung everywhere and with demonstration. In a week it had given its name to the campaign, and a million copies of it soon passed into circulation.

Lieutenant Rockwell, who had asked my leave to copy the verses that first morning, was a composer, and there in the dust under the old hospital he had, unknown to me, written the first music to which the song was ever sung. Later, it had many other settings, but that one, though difficult, remained the best. The song has often since been sung to the air of "The Red, White, and Blue." This is the history of the song, which I print here as a part of this narrative.

SHERMAN'S MARCH TO THE SEAOur camp fires shone bright on the mountainsThat frowned on the river below,While we stood by our guns in the morningAnd eagerly watched for the foe —When a rider came out from the darknessThat hung over mountain and tree,And shouted, "Boys, up and be ready,For Sherman will march to the sea."Then cheer upon cheer for bold ShermanWent up from each valley and glen,And the bugles re-echoed the musicThat came from the lips of the men.For we knew that the stars in our bannerMore bright in their splendor would be,And that blessings from Northland would greet usWhen Sherman marched down to the sea.Then forward, boys, forward to battle,We marched on our wearisome way,And we stormed the wild hills of Resaca, —God bless those who fell on that day —Then Kenesaw, dark in its glory,Frowned down on the flag of the free,But the East and the West bore our standards,And Sherman marched on to the sea.Still onward we pressed, till our bannersSwept out from Atlanta's grim walls,And the blood of the patriot dampenedThe soil where the traitor flag falls;But we paused not to weep for the fallen,Who slept by each river and tree;Yet we twined them a wreath of the laurelAs Sherman marched down to the sea.O, proud was our army that morningThat stood where the pine darkly towers,When Sherman said: "Boys, you are weary,This day fair Savannah is ours."Then sang we a song for our chieftainThat echoed over river and lea,And the stars in our banner shown brighterWhen Sherman marched down to the sea.

[Sherman's March to the Sea. – From Eggleston's Famous War Ballads. – General Sherman, in a recent conversation with the editor of this collection, declared that it was this poem with its phrase, "march to the sea," that threw a glamour of romance over the campaign which it celebrates. Said General Sherman: "The thing was nothing more or less than a change of base; an operation perfectly familiar to every military man, but a poet got hold of it, gave it the captivating label, 'The March to the Sea,' and the unmilitary public made a romance out of it." It may be remarked that the General's modesty overlooks the important fact that the romance lay really in his own deed of derring-do; the poet merely recorded it, or at most interpreted it to the popular intelligence. The glory of the great campaign was Sherman's and his army's; the joy of celebrating it was the poet's; the admiring memory of it is the people's. – Editor.]

As stated, I slept nights now on the floor of the prison hospital. This added comfort, however, did not tempt me to stay in prison, if I could get away. Once more we heard that the prisoners were to be carted away to some safer place, out of the line of Sherman's army, now turned North and moving rapidly toward us. A night or two before this move of prisoners really commenced Lieutenant Devine of Philadelphia joined me in an effort to get away. The walls of the least used room of the hospital were made of joined boards. By the use of an old case knife, hacked into a saw, or auger, we managed to cut a hole sufficiently large to permit us to pull ourselves through and out into an attic above a little porch. We repaired the boards as best we could and crept out into the dark hole. It was the attic of the same porch on which our Glee Club stood when they sang my song. It was a little cramped up place we were in, where we could neither sit erect nor lie at full length. There were no guards inside the prison hospital; the night was very dark; the sick prisoners seemed to be sleeping. A dim lamp hung from the ceiling. We were not detected. The next night at midnight, when the prisoners were being marched away, two of them were missing. What a night and day and part of another night that was for us, crooked and cramped as we were, in the top of that little porch.

At the next midnight, when every soul, prisoners, guards and all, seemed to be gone far away and dead silence was upon the place, Devine and I crept down from our hiding place. The big gate was closed and locked. By the aid of a scantling I managed to get up onto the high brick wall. My surprise was immense to see guards waiting for us outside, and to know that we were discovered. One of the guards rushed up to his post at the top of the wall, but he was too late to shoot; we were already in hiding among the empty board huts and barracks.2

In a moment the big gate opened and a hundred men rushed in, looking for the escaping Yankees. They howled, they cursed at us, they set the barracks on fire. Then amid the mêlée and excitement in the dark my comrade and myself pulled our gray blankets about us, picked up a water bucket each, and pushed up to the guard at the gate. We were "going for water," we said. "The lieutenant says the fire must be put out." Without waiting a reply we hurried out in the darkness. There were some vain shots after us.

Shortly we heard the tramp of horses coming toward us. A friendly culvert in the road into which we dodged afforded us protection while a whole company of Johnny Rebs rode over our heads. What would they have thought, that night, had they known it as they went skipping along with arms and jingling sabers, to confront Sherman's advance guards?

We were gone. After a while, in the outskirts of the city, we saw a light in a cabin and a negro walking up and down by the window. Every negro we knew to be a loyal friend. This one we called out among some rose bushes in the dooryard. Instantly, and without fear, we told him who we were and that we were in his power. There is not a question but he would have been well rewarded had he betrayed us to the Confederate soldiers in the city that night. Few words were spoken. That morning two escaped prisoners were secreted under some bean stalks in the garret of the negro's cabin. The negro's sick wife lay in the single room below. Had we been discovered now that negro would have been hanged from his own door lintel. And well he knew it.

Sherman's army was already pounding at the gates of the town. He was crossing the river and his shells reached to the capital. This much we knew from what we could hear in the yard below, for the negro's cabin stood at the edge of a green lawn where General Chestnut had his headquarters. We broke a little hole through the siding of the house, and now could see what the general and his staff were doing. We also could hear much that was said. Once we thought ourselves discovered, for we observed two or three of the general's negro servants standing in a group on the grass looking steadily toward the spot where our little improvised window was. What on earth were they looking at?

It was not much the old negro could give us to eat. A little dried beef and some cold corn bread; that was all, save that once he brought us a gallon of buttermilk. He had no cow, but he would not tell us where this, to us, heavenly nectar had come from.

There was much hurrying of officers back and forth at General Chestnut's headquarters, and plainly we could see there was great excitement. Our own negro was kept going back and forth into the town to pick up for us whatever news he could of the fight going on at the river. After awhile the cannonading grew louder, and it seemed to us the conflict must be right at the outskirts of the town. Then we saw General Chestnut hurriedly ride on to the headquarter's lawn, and we distinctly heard him say to an officer, "Sherman has got a bridge down. The game's up. We must evacuate." In a few minutes the sound of the guns increased, and then we saw General Chestnut call his slaves to him to bid them farewell. It was a touching scene, amid the dramatic surroundings. He seemed very kind, and some of them in their ignorance wept. "You will be free," he said. "Be good." I thought, he too was affected as he mounted his horse and, followed by his staff, rode away. He was hardly out of sight when our negro protector came running toward the cabin. He was tremendously excited. A tall, old cylinder hat he had picked up on the way was on his head, his eyes bulged out, his hands waved like windmills; he was celebrating. In a moment the black face and the cylinder hat shot up the ladder and through the hatch-way to where we were.

"God Almighty be thanked!" he cried in a loud voice. "Massa, the Stars and Stripes are waving above the capital of South Carolina. Praise to the God Almighty!"

Sure enough, Union troops, had entered, and a flag from my own State had been run up on the State House. Instantly we bade him hurry and bring some Union soldiers to us. In his absence Devine and I stood shaking each other's hands and thanking God for our deliverance. No slave who had his chains knocked off that day by the coming of the Union army felt more thankful than we, freed from the wretchedness and horrors of fifteen months of imprisonment. Now we could see the Confederate cavalry evacuating the town. Whole companies passed, each trooper having a sheaf of oats slung to his saddle bow. Shortly our black friend returned, and with him two Union soldiers. "It is time to drink, boys," they cried out, as they fairly forced us to partake of the whisky in their canteens. When we all went down into the yard I was sure we would be recaptured, for the Rebel rear-guard was passing close to our cabin. The flying troops, however, had fish of their own to fry, and were in too much haste to be looking after us. Now, too, we were surrounded by General Chestnut's black servants, who were hopping about, giving thanks for their freedom. I asked one of them what it was they had been looking at so attentively the day before, when I had seen them gazing right at our hiding-place. "Ha ha! massa! we just knowed you was up there all the time. Reckon you didn't like that ar buttermilk what we'uns sent you." Our negro friend then had made confidents of them, and we had been fed, without knowing it, on some of the good things from General Chestnut's kitchen. Should the general ever read this little book, I hope he will cease wondering what became of his buttermilk that day at Columbia.

Now, our two soldiers escorted us to a street where some of the army had halted and stacked arms. A Union flag hung over a stack of muskets, and no human being will ever know with what thankful heart-beatings and tears we gathered its silken folds into our arms. Now we knew that we were free. The terrible days were indeed over, and God's rainbow illumined our sky.

In half an hour the victorious veterans of Sherman's army, their great leader riding before, with bands playing and banners flying, entered the captured city. My comrade and I stood on a high door-step and saw them pass. Someone pointed us out to Sherman, and for a moment the whole moving army was halted till he greeted the freed prisoners. We two comrades lived a month in that short seventeenth day of February, 1865, in Columbia. I think we shook hands with a thousand soldiers, even with many soldiers we had never seen before. It seemed to us that everybody must be as glad to see us as we were to see them.

That night Columbia was burned to the ground amid untold horrors. The conflagration had commenced from bales of cotton that the enemy had fired and left in the street to prevent falling into the Union hands. A big wind rose toward evening and the burning cotton flakes were flying all over the city. It was a terrible spectacle that night. My comrade and I walked about the streets till nearly morning. Whole squares and streets were crumbling to ashes and tall buildings tumbled down everywhere. Here and there, too, there was a terrific explosion. It was Moscow done over on a smaller scale. A division of Union troops, under Hazen, was sent into the town to fight the flames and to arrest every man discovered firing houses or walking around without a pass. So it happened that my comrade and myself, though but innocent spectators, were at midnight arrested and taken to provost headquarters. We very soon explained ourselves and were released and sent to comfortable quarters, where we slept till late the next day. It was four nights since we had had any sleep at all.

But the sights of that awful night will never fade from my memory. Most of the citizens of Columbia had sons or relations in the Rebel army. Half of them were dead, the army itself was flying everywhere, and in the blackness of this terrible night their fortunes were all lost, their homes were all burning up. Many wandered about wringing their hands and crying; some sat stolid and speechless in the street watching everything that they had go to destruction. A few wandered around, wholly demented. Some of the invading soldiers tried earnestly to extinguish the flames; others broke into houses and added to the conflagration. Numbers of the Federal prisoners, who only a few weeks before had been marched through the streets like felons, had escaped, and what average human nature led them to do never will be known. There were fearful things going on everywhere. It was reported that an explosion occurred in one house and that twenty-four soldiers, carousing there, were lost in the ruins. Most of the people of Columbia would have been willing to have died that night, then and there. What had they left to live for? This, too, was war.

When the army entered in the afternoon, Lieutenant Devine and I, as related, stood on the high steps of a mansion and watched it pass. Shortly after a very charming young woman, a Mrs. C – , seeing us, came down and invited us into her father's house and gave us food. It was the first real food we had had for many, many months. The lady's father was a rich jeweler, and, though a Southerner, was a Union man. Her own husband, however, was somewhere in the Southern army. My comrade and I spent an entertaining hour in the mansion, and then went and walked about the city.

At six o'clock the awful cry, "The town is burning up, the town is burning up!" was heard everywhere. Devine and I at once thought of Mrs. C – and our friends of the afternoon, and hurried to their home to offer help. The flames were already across the street from there. Mrs. C – 's father was weeping in the drawing-room. Once he took me by the arm and led me to where we could see his own business establishment burning to the ground. "There goes the savings of a life," said he, in bitterness. "There is what the curse of secession has done for us; there is what Wade Hampton and the other political firebrands have done for South Carolina." My comrade and I at once began carrying some of the more valuable goods out of the house for them, doing everything possible to help them save some remnant from their beautiful and luxurious home. We ran up and down the mansion stairs until we were almost dead with exhaustion. Everything we could save we piled into a phaeton that stood by the yard. Once the lady cried that her child was still in the house, burning up. Her shrieks pierced even the noise of that fearful night. Her alarm was without cause, for I soon found the child safe in the arms of a faithful slave nurse. She had simply carried it out of danger.

When the walls of the house seemed about to fall, Devine and I took the loaded buggy, he pulling in the shafts, I pushing behind, and, followed by the weeping family on foot, we drew it for a mile or more to the outer edge of the town. Here we left them in safety by a little wood, yet not knowing if we would ever see them again. Many of our soldiers were burnt up that night.

The next day Sherman's army left the ruins of the city behind them and marched away. They had, however, left supplies of rations for their unfortunate enemies. A train of empty wagons was also furnished for those fugitives who wished to follow the army and work their way North. Hundreds, possibly thousands, left the smoking ruins of their homes and traveled along with us in every conceivable conveyance that was heard of. Black and white, slave and free, rich and poor, joined in the procession behind the army. Mrs. C – and her father's family were among them.