Campfire and battlefield

Mr. F. G. de Fontaine, a celebrated Southern war correspondent, writes that the most popular songs with the soldiers of the Confederate armies were negro melodies, such as "Old Folks at Home" and "My Old Kentucky Home." This is our reason for publishing the pacific and kindly words of the most celebrated negro melody, among songs that breathe threatening and slaughter. It is not difficult to understand why such songs were popular with men raised in the South. They would bring forcibly to mind the distant home, and the dear associations of early life on the old plantations. "Old Folks at Home" was written by Stephen Collins Foster. He wrote between two and three hundred popular songs—more than any other American. Among the most familiar of his compositions are "Old Uncle Ned," "Massa's in the Cold, Cold Ground," "Old Dog Tray," and "My Old Kentucky Home." Mr. Foster was finely educated, was proficient in French and German, was an amateur painter of ability, and a talented musician. It is said that he received fifteen thousand dollars for "Old Folks at Home."

The most popular war songs of the South were "Dixie" and "The Bonnie Blue Flag." Like "Dixie," the "Bonnie Blue Flag" began its popular career in New Orleans. The words were written by an Irish comedian, Mr. Harry McCarthy, and the song was first sung by his sister, Miss Marion McCarthy, at the Variety Theatre in New Orleans in 1861. The tune is an old and popular Irish melody, "The Irish Jaunting Car." It is said that General Butler, when he was commander of the National forces in New Orleans in 1862, made it very profitable by fining every man, woman, or child, who sang, whistled, or played this tune on any instrument, twenty-five dollars. It has also been said that he arrested the publisher, destroyed the stock of sheet music, and fined him five hundred dollars.

NORTHERN SONGS.

John Brown was hanged in December, 1859, and a little more than a year after this time the celebrated marching-tune, "John Brown's Body," came into being. It is a singular fact that the composer of the stirring and popular air of this song is unknown. Possibly it had no composer, but, like Topsy, "it was not born, but just growed." This seems to be the most reasonable theory of its origin. The words of the song, as given in this collection, with the exception of the first stanza, were written by Charles S. Hall, of Charlestown, Mass. "John Brown's Body" was the most popular war song among the Northern soldiers on the march and around the campfire. In fact, it became the marching song of the armies of the Nation. It was equally popular in the cities, villages, and homes of the North. The Pall Mall Gazette, of October 14, 1865, said: "The street boys of London have decided in favor of 'John Brown's Body' against 'My Maryland' and 'The Bonnie Blue Flag.' The somewhat lugubrious refrain has excited their admiration to a wonderful degree."

Another army song that became almost as popular in England as in this country is "When Johnny Comes Marching Home." It was written and composed by Mr. Patrick S. Gilmore, leader of the celebrated Gilmore's Band. The words do not amount to much, but the tune is of that rollicking order which is very catching. Without doubt the author built up the words of this song to suit the air, on the same principle that in Georgia they build a chimney first and erect the house against it. This rattling war song has kept its hold on the ears of the people to the present time. Mr. Gilmore afterward composed an ambitious national hymn which has never attained the popularity of his war song.

George F. Root was born in Sheffield, Mass., August 30, 1820, and he was the founder of the music-publishing firm of Root & Cady. His celebrated "Battle Cry of Freedom" was first sung by the Hutchinson family at a mass meeting in New York City. It is said that during the terrible fight in the Wilderness, on May 6, 1864, a brigade of the Ninth Corps, having broken the enemy's line by an assault, became exposed to a flank attack and was driven back in disorder with heavy loss. They retreated but a few hundred yards, however, re-formed, and again confronted the enemy. Just then some gallant fellows in the ranks of the Forty-fifth Pennsylvania began to sing:

The refrain was caught up instantly by the entire regiment and by the Thirty-sixth Massachusetts, next in line. There the grim ranks stood at bay in the deadly conflict. The air was filled with the smoke and crackle of burning underbrush, the pitiful cries of the wounded, the rattle of musketry, and shouts of men; but above all, over the exultant yells of the enemy, rose the inspiring chorus:

This song was often ordered to be sung as the men marched into action. More than once its strains arose on the battlefield. With the humor which never deserts the American, even amid the hardships of camp life and the dangers of battle, the gentle lines of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" were fitted to the tune of the "Battle Cry of Freedom," and many a regiment shortened a weary march, or went gayly into action, singing:

The author of "Tenting on the Old Camp-Ground" is Walter Kittridge, who was born in the town of Merrimac, N. H., October 8, 1832. He was a public singer and a composer, as well as a writer of popular songs and ballads. In the first year of the civil war he published a small original "Union Song-Book." In 1862 he was drafted, and while preparing to go to the front he wrote in a few minutes both words and music of "Tenting on the Old Camp-Ground." Like many other good things in literature, this song was at first refused publication. But when it was published, its sale reached hundreds of thousands of copies.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE PENINSULA CAMPAIGN.

COMMAND GIVEN TO McCLELLAN—HIS PLANS—APPOINTMENT OF SECRETARY STANTON—ON THE PENINSULA—BATTLE OF WILLIAMSBURG—ON THE CHICKAHOMINY—THE BATTLE OF FAIR OAKS—EFFECT OF THE SWAMPS—LEE IN COMMAND—STUART'S RAID—NEAREST APPROACH TO RICHMOND—ACTION AT BEAVER DAM CREEK—BATTLE OF GAINES'S MILLS—BATTLE OF SAVAGE'S STATION—BATTLE OF CHARLES CITY CROSS-ROADS—BATTLE OF MALVERN HILL—CRITICISMS OF PENINSULA CAMPAIGN.

Within twenty-four hours after the defeat of McDowell's army at Bull Run (July 21, 1861), the Administration called to Washington the only man that had thus far accomplished much or made any considerable reputation in the field. This was Gen. George B. McClellan. He had been graduated at West Point in 1846, standing second in his class, and had gone at once into the Mexican war, in which he acquitted himself with distinction. After that war the young captain was employed in engineering work till 1855, when the Government sent him to Europe to study the movements of the Crimean war. He wrote a report of his observations, which was published under the title of "The Armies of Europe," and in 1857 resigned his commission and became chief engineer of the Illinois Central Railroad, and afterward president of the St. Louis and Cincinnati. He had done good work in Northwestern Virginia in the early summer, and now, at the age of thirty-five, was commissioned major-general in the regular army of the United States, and given command of all the troops about Washington.

For the work immediately in hand, this was probably the best selection that could have been made. Washington needed to be fortified, and he was a master of engineering; both the army that had just been defeated, and the new recruits that were pouring in, needed organization, and he proved preëminent as an organizer. Three months after he took command of fifty thousand uniformed men at the capital, he had an army of more than one hundred thousand, well organized in regiments, brigades, and divisions, with the proper proportion of artillery, with quartermaster and commissary departments going like clockwork, and the whole fairly drilled and disciplined. Everybody looked on with admiration, and the public impatience that had precipitated the disastrous "On to Richmond" movement was now replaced by a marvellous patience. The summer and autumn months went by, and no movement was made; but McClellan, in taking command, had promised that the war should be "short, sharp, and decisive," and the people thought, if they only allowed him time enough to make thorough preparation, his great army would at length swoop down upon the Confederate capital and finish everything at one blow. At length, however, they began to grow weary of the daily telegram, "All quiet along the Potomac," and the monotonously repeated information that "General McClellan rode out to Fairfax Court-House and back this morning." The Confederacy was daily growing stronger; the Potomac was being closed to navigation by the erection of hostile batteries on its southern bank; the enemy's flag was flying within sight from the capital, and the question of foreign interference was becoming exceedingly grave. On the 1st of November General Scott, then seventy-five years of age, retired, and McClellan succeeded him as General-in-Chief of all the armies.

Soon after this his plans appear, from subsequent revelations, to have undergone important modification. He had undoubtedly intended to attack by moving straight out toward Manassas, where the army that had won the battle of Bull Run was still encamped, and was still commanded by Gen. Joseph E. Johnston. He now began to think of moving against Richmond by some more easterly route, discussing among others the extreme easterly one that he finally took. But, whatever were his thoughts and purposes, his army appeared to be taking root. The people began to murmur, Congress began to question, and the President began to argue and urge. All this did not signify; nothing could move McClellan. He wanted to wait till he could leave an enormous garrison in the defences of Washington, place a strong corps of observation along the Potomac, and then move out with a column of one hundred and fifty thousand men against an army that he believed to be as numerous as that, though in truth it was then less than half as large. It is now known that, from the beginning to the end of his career in that war, General McClellan constantly overestimated the force opposed to him. On the 10th of January, 1862, the President held a long consultation with Generals McDowell and Franklin and some members of his cabinet. General McClellan was then confined to his bed by an illness of a month's duration. At this consultation Mr. Lincoln said, according to General McDowell's memorandum: "If something was not soon done, the bottom would be out of the whole affair; and if General McClellan did not want to use the army, he would like to borrow it, provided he could see how it could be made to do something."

Immediately upon McClellan's recovery, the President called him to a similar council, and asked him to disclose his plan for a campaign, which he declined to do. Finally the President asked him if he had fixed upon any particular time for setting out; and when he said he had, Mr. Lincoln questioned him no further. A few days later, in a letter to the President, he set forth his plan, which was to move his army down the Potomac on transports, land it at or near Fort Monroe, march up the peninsula between York and James rivers, and attack the defences of Richmond on the north and east sides. The President at first disapproved of this plan, largely for the reason that it would require so much time in preparation; but when he found that the highest officers in the army favored it, and considered the probability that any general was likely to fail if sent to execute a plan he did not originate or believe in, he finally gave it his sanction, and once more set himself to the difficult task of inducing McClellan to move at all. And yet the President himself still further retarded the opening of the campaign by delaying the order to collect the means of transportation. Meanwhile General Johnston quietly removed his stores, and on the 8th of March evacuated Centreville and Manassas, and placed his army before Richmond. This reconciled the President to McClellan's plan of campaign, which he had never liked.

The order for the transportation of McClellan's army was issued on the 27th of February, and four hundred vessels were required; for there were actually transported one hundred and twenty-one thousand men, fourteen thousand animals, forty-four batteries, and all the necessary ambulances and baggage-wagons, pontoons and telegraph material. Just before the embarkation, the army was divided into four corps, the commands of which were given to Generals McDowell, Edwin V. Sumner, Samuel P. Heintzelman, and Erasmus D. Keyes. High authorities say this was one of the causes of the failure of the campaign; for the army should have been divided into corps long before, when McClellan could have chosen his own lieutenants instead of having them chosen by the President. General Hooker said it was impossible for him to succeed with such corps commanders. But his near approach to success rather discredits this criticism.

Another element of the highest importance had also entered into the problem with which the nation was struggling. This was the appointment (January 21, 1862) of Edwin M. Stanton to succeed Simon Cameron as Secretary of War. Mr. Stanton, then forty-seven years of age, was a lawyer by profession, a man of great intellect, unfailing nerve, and tremendous energy. He had certain traits that often made him personally disagreeable to his subordinates; but it was impossible to doubt his thorough loyalty, and his determination to find or make a way to bring the war to a successful close as speedily as possible, without the slightest regard to the individual interests of himself or anybody else. He was probably the ablest war minister that ever lived—with the possible exception of Carnot, the man to whom Napoleon said, "I have known you too late." It is indicative of Mr. Lincoln's sagacity and freedom from prejudice, that his first meeting with Mr. Stanton was when he went to Cincinnati, some years before the war, to assist in trying an important case. He found Mr. Stanton in charge of the case as senior counsel, and Stanton was so unendurably disagreeable to him that he threw up the engagement and went home to Springfield. Yet he afterward gave that man the most important place in his cabinet, and found him its strongest member.

One division of the army embarked on the 17th of March, and the others followed in quick succession. General McClellan reached Fort Monroe on the 2d of April, by which time fifty-eight thousand men and one hundred guns had arrived, and immediately moved with this force on Yorktown, the place made famous by the surrender of Cornwallis eighty years before. The Confederates had fortified this point, and thrown a line of earthworks across the narrow peninsula to the deep water of Warwick River. These works were held by General Magruder with thirteen thousand effective men. General Johnston, who was in command of all the troops around Richmond, says he had no expectation of doing more than delaying McClellan at Yorktown till he could strengthen the defences of the capital and collect more men; and that he thought his adversary would use his transports to pass his army around that place by water, after destroying the batteries, and land at some point above.

McClellan, supposing that Johnston's entire army was in the defences of Yorktown, sat down before the place and constructed siege works, approaching the enemy by regular parallels. As the remaining divisions of his army arrived at Fort Monroe, they were added to his besieging force; but McDowell's entire corps and Blenker's division had been detached at the last moment and retained at Washington, from fears on the part of the Administration that the capital was not sufficiently guarded, though McClellan had already left seventy thousand men there or within call. The fears were increased by the threatening movements of Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley, where, however, he was defeated by Gen. James Shields near Winchester, March 23.

General Johnston had to contend with precisely the same difficulty that McClellan complained of. He wanted to bring together before Richmond all the troops that were then at Norfolk and in the Carolinas and Georgia, and with the large army thus formed suddenly attack McClellan after he should have marched seventy-five miles up the peninsula from his base at Fort Monroe. But in a council of war General Lee and the Secretary of War opposed this plan, and Mr. Davis adopted their views and rejected it. Johnston therefore undertook the campaign with the army that he had, which he says consisted of fifty thousand effective men.

McClellan spent nearly a month before Yorktown, and when he was ready to open fire with his siege guns and drive out the enemy, May 3d, he found they had quietly departed, leaving "Quaker guns" (wooden logs on wheels) in the embrasures. There was no delay in pursuit, and the National advance came up with the Confederate rear guard near Williamsburg, about twelve miles from Yorktown. Here, May 4th, brisk skirmishing began, which gradually became heavier, till reinforcements were hurried up on the one side, and sent back on the other, and the skirmish was developed into a battle. The place had been well fortified months before. The action on the morning of the 5th was opened by the divisions of Generals Hooker and William F. Smith. They attacked the strongest of the earthworks, pushed forward the batteries, and silenced it. Hooker was then heavily attacked by infantry, with a constant menace on his left wing. He sustained his position alone nearly all day, though losing one thousand seven hundred men and five guns, and was at length relieved by the arrival of Gen. Philip Kearny's division. The delay was due mainly to the deep mud caused by a heavy rain the night before. Later in the day, Hancock's brigade made a wide circuit on the right, discovered some unoccupied redoubts, and took possession of them. When the Confederates advanced their left to the attack, they ran upon these redoubts, which their commanding officers knew nothing about, and were repelled with heavy loss. Hancock's one thousand six hundred men suddenly burst over the crest of the works, and bore down upon the enemy with fixed bayonets, routing and scattering them. McClellan brought up reinforcements, and in the night the Confederates in front of him moved off to join their main army, leaving in Williamsburg four hundred of their wounded, because they had no means of carrying them away, but taking with them about that number of prisoners. The National loss had been about two thousand two hundred, the Confederate about one thousand eight hundred. This battle was fought within five miles of the historic site of Jamestown, where the first permanent English settlement in the United States had been made in 1607, and the first cargo of slaves landed in 1619.

Gen. William B. Franklin's division of McDowell's corps had now been sent to McClellan, and immediately after the battle of Williamsburg he moved it on transports to White House, on the Pamunkey, where it established a base of supplies. As soon as possible, also, the main body of the army was marched from Williamsburg to White House, reaching that place on the 16th of May. From this point he moved westward toward Richmond, expecting to be joined by a column of forty thousand men under McDowell, which was to move from Fredericksburg. On reaching the Chickahominy, McClellan threw his left wing across that stream, and sweeping around with his right fought small battles at Mechanicsville and Hanover Junction, by which he cleared the way for McDowell to join him. But at this critical point of time Stonewall Jackson suddenly made another raid down the Shenandoah Valley, and McDowell was called back to go in pursuit of him.

Johnston resolved to strike the detached left wing of the National army, which had crossed the Chickahominy, and advanced to a point within half a dozen miles of Richmond, and his purpose was seconded by a heavy rain on the night of May 30th, which swelled the stream and swept away some of the bridges, thus hindering reinforcement from the other wing. The attack, May 31st, fell first upon Gen. Silas Casey's division of Keyes's corps, which occupied some half-finished works. It was bravely made and bravely resisted, and the Confederate suffered heavy losses before these works, where they had almost surprised the men with the shovels in their hands. But after a time a Confederate force made a detour and gained a position in the rear of the redoubts, when of course they could no longer be held. Reinforcements were very slow in coming up, and Keyes's men had a long, hard struggle to hold their line at all. They could not have done so if a part of Johnston's plan had not miscarried. He intended to bring in a heavy flanking force between them and the river, but was delayed several hours in getting it in motion. Meanwhile McClellan ordered Sumner to cross the river and join in the battle. Sumner had anticipated such an order as soon as he heard the firing, and when the order came it found him with his corps in line, drawn out from camp, and ready to cross instantly. He was the oldest officer there (sixty-six), and the most energetic. There was but one bridge that could be used, many of the supports of this were gone, the approaches were under water, and it was almost a wreck. But he unhesitatingly pushed on his column. The frail structure was steadied by the weight of the men; and though it swayed and undulated with their movement and the rush of water, they all crossed in safety.

Sumner was just in time to meet the flank attack, which was commanded by Johnston in person. The successive charges of the Confederates were all repelled, and at dusk a counter-charge cleared the ground in front and drove off the last of them in confusion. In this fight General Johnston received wounds that compelled him to retire from the field, and laid him up for a long time. The battle—which is called both Fair Oaks and Seven Pines—cost the National army over five thousand men, and the Confederate nearly seven thousand. It was a more destructive battle than any that, up to that time, the Eastern armies had fought. A participant thus describes the after appearance of the field: "Monday, June 2d, we visited the battlefield, and rode from place to place on the scene of conflict. We have often wished that we could efface from our memory the observations of that day. Details were burying the dead in trenches or heaping the ground upon them where they lay. The ground was saturated with gore; the intrenchments, the slashing, the rifle-pits, the thicket, many of the tents, were filled with dead. In the Fair Oaks farmhouse, the dead, the dying, and the severely wounded lay together. Along the Williamsburg road, on each side of it, was one long Confederate grave. An old barn, near where the One Hundred and Fourth Pennsylvania volunteers first formed, was filled with our dead and wounded; and farther to the right, near the station, beside an old building, lay thirteen Michigan soldiers with their blankets over them and their names pinned on their caps. Near the railroad, by a log house, the dead and wounded were packed together. Both were motionless; but you could distinguish them by the livid blackness of the dead. We could trace the path of our regiment, from the wood-pile around by the intrenchments to its camp, by the dead still unburied. Those that died immediately could not be touched, but were covered with ground where they lay; the wounded, who crawled or were carried to the barns, tents, and houses, and who died subsequently, were buried in trenches. Our little tent was still standing, though pierced by several bullets. Beside it lay two dead men of the Ninety-eighth, whom we could not identify; for the sun, rain, and wind had changed their countenances. On the bed lay a dead Confederate. At the left of our camp, in the wood, where the Eighty-first, Eighty-fifth, and Ninety-second New York volunteers and Peck's brigade fought with Huger, the dead were promiscuously mixed together, and lay in sickening and frightful proximity; strong and weak, old and young, officer and private, horse and man—dead, or wounded in the agonies of death, lay where they fell, and furnished, excepting the swaths on the Williamsburg road, the darkest corner on that day's panorama."