There is nothing of landscape there equal to the banks of the upper Mississippi, or to some parts of the Hudson river. It has none of the wild grandeur of the White Mountains of New Hampshire, nor does it break itself into valleys equal to those of the Alleghanies in Pennsylvania. But all those are beauties for the tourist rather than for the resident. In Kentucky the land lies in knolls and soft sloping hills. The trees stand apart, forming forest openings. The herbage is rich, and the soil, though not fertile like the prairies of Illinois, or the river bottoms of the Mississippi and its tributaries, is good, steadfast, wholesome farming ground. It is a fine country for a resident gentleman farmer, and in its outward aspect reminds me more of England in its rural aspects, than any other State which I visited. Round Louisville there are beautiful sites for houses, of which advantage in some instances has been taken. But, nevertheless, Louisville though a well-built, handsome city, is not now a thriving city. I liked it because the hotel was above par, and because the country round it was good for walking; but it has not advanced as Cincinnati and St. Louis have advanced.
And yet its position on the Ohio is favourable, and it is well circ.u.mstanced as regards the wants of its own State. But it is not a free-soil city. Nor indeed is St. Louis; but St. Louis is tending that way, and has but little to do with the "domestic inst.i.tution."
At the hotels in Cincinnati and St. Louis you are served by white men, and are very badly served. At Louisville the ministration is by black men, "bound to labour." The difference in the comfort is very great. The white servants are noisy, dirty, forgetful, indifferent, and sometimes impudent. The negroes are the very reverse of all this; you cannot hurry them; but in all other respects,--and perhaps even in that respect also,--they are good servants. This is the work for which they seem to have been intended. But nevertheless where they are, life and energy seem to languish, and prosperity cannot make any true advance. They are symbols of the luxury of the white men who employ them, and as such are signs of decay and emblems of decreasing power. They are good labourers themselves, but their very presence makes labour dishonourable. That Kentucky will speedily rid herself of the inst.i.tution I believe firmly. When she has so done, the commercial city of that State may perhaps go a-head again like her sisters.
At this very time the Federal army was commencing that series of active movements in Kentucky and through Tennessee which led to such important results, and gave to the North the first solid victories which they had gained since the contest began. On the 19th of January one wing of General Buell"s army, under General Thomas, had defeated the secessionists near Somerset, in the south-eastern district of Kentucky, under General Zollicoffer, who was there killed. But in that action the attack was made by Zollicoffer and the secessionists.
When we were at Louisville we heard of the success of that gun-boat expedition up the Tennessee river by which Fort Henry was taken. Fort Henry had been built by the Confederates on the Tennessee,--exactly on the confines of the States of Tennessee and Kentucky. They had also another fort, Fort Donnelson, on the c.u.mberland river, which at that point runs parallel to the Tennessee, and is there distant from it but a very few miles. Both these rivers run into the Ohio.
Nashville, which is the capital of Tennessee, is higher up on the c.u.mberland; and it was now intended to send the gun-boats down the Tennessee back into the Ohio, and thence up the c.u.mberland, there to attack Fort Donnelson, and afterwards to a.s.sist General Buell"s army in making its way down to Nashville. The gun-boats were attached to General Halleck"s army, and received their directions from St. Louis.
General Buell"s head-quarters were at Louisville, and his advanced position was on the Green River, on the line of the railway from Louisville to Nashville. The secessionists had destroyed the railway bridge over the Green River, and were now lying at Bowling Green, between the Green River and Nashville. This place it was understood that they had fortified.
Matters were in this position when we got a military pa.s.s to go down by the railway to the army on the Green River,--for the railway was open to no one without a military pa.s.s;--and we started, trusting that Providence would supply us with rations and quarters. An officer attached to General Buell"s staff, with whom however our acquaintance was of the very slightest, had telegraphed down to say that we were coming. I cannot say that I expected much from the message, seeing that it simply amounted to a very thin introduction to a general officer to whom we were strangers even by name, from a gentleman to whom we had brought a note from another gentleman whose acquaintance we had chanced to pick up on the road. We manifestly had no right to expect much; but to us, expecting very little, very much was given.
General Johnson was the officer to whose care we were confided, he being a brigadier under General M"Cook, who commanded the advance.
We were met by an aide-de-camp and saddle-horses, and soon found ourselves in the General"s tent, or rather in a shanty formed of solid upright wooden logs, driven into the ground with the bark still on, and having the interstices filled in with clay. This was roofed with canvas, and altogether made a very eligible military residence.
The General slept in a big box about nine feet long and four broad which occupied one end of the shanty, and he seemed in all his fixings to be as comfortably put up as any gentleman might be when out on such a picnic as this. We arrived in time for dinner, which was brought in, table and all, by two negroes. The party was made up by a doctor, who carved, and two of the staff, and a very nice dinner we had. In half-an-hour we were intimate with the whole party, and as familiar with the things around us as though we had been living in tents all our lives. Indeed I had by this time been so often in the tents of the northern army, that I almost felt ent.i.tled to make myself at home. It has seemed to me that an Englishman has always been made welcome in these camps. There has been and is at this moment a terribly bitter feeling among Americans against England, and I have heard this expressed quite as loudly by men in the army as by civilians; but I think I may say that this has never been brought to bear upon individual intercourse. Certainly we have said some very sharp things of them,--words which, whether true or false, whether deserved or undeserved, must have been offensive to them. I have known this feeling of offence to amount almost to an agony of anger.
But nevertheless I have never seen any falling off in the hospitality and courtesy generally shown by a civilized people to pa.s.sing visitors. I have argued the matter of England"s course throughout the war, till I have been hoa.r.s.e with a.s.severating the rect.i.tude of her conduct and her national unselfishness. I have met very strong opponents on the subject, and have been coerced into loud strains of voice; but I never yet met one American who was personally uncivil to me as an Englishman, or who seemed to be made personally angry by my remarks. I found no coldness in that hospitality to which as a stranger I was ent.i.tled, because of the national ill-feeling which circ.u.mstances have engendered. And while on this subject I will remark, that when travelling I have found it expedient to let those with whom I might chance to talk know at once that I was an Englishman. In fault of such knowledge things would be said which could not but be disagreeable to me; but not even from any rough western enthusiast in a railway carriage have I ever heard a word spoken insolently to England, after I had made my nationality known.
I have learned that Wellington was beaten at Waterloo; that Lord Palmerston was so unpopular that he could not walk alone in the streets; that the House of Commons was an acknowledged failure; that starvation was the normal condition of the British people, and that the Queen was a bloodthirsty tyrant. But these a.s.sertions were not made with the intention that they should be heard by an Englishman.
To us as a nation they are at the present moment unjust almost beyond belief; but I do not think that the feeling has ever taken the guise of personal discourtesy.
We spent two days in the camp close upon the Green River, and I do not know that I enjoyed any days of my trip more thoroughly than I did these. In truth for the last month, since I had left Washington, my life had not been one of enjoyment. I had been rolling in mud and had been damp with filth. Camp Wood, as they called this military settlement on the Green River, was also muddy; but we were excellently well-mounted; the weather was very cold, but peculiarly fine, and the soldiers around us, as far as we could judge, seemed to be better off in all respects than those we had visited at St. Louis, at Rolla, or at Cairo. They were all in tents, and seemed to be light-spirited and happy. Their rations were excellent,--but so much may, I think, be said of the whole northern army from Alexandria on the Potomac to Springfield in the west of Missouri. There was very little illness at that time in the camp in Kentucky, and the reports made to us led us to think that on the whole this had been the most healthy division of the army. The men, moreover, were less muddy than their brethren either east or west of them,--at any rate this may be said of them as regards the infantry.
But perhaps the greatest charm of the place to me was the beauty of the scenery. The Green River at this spot is as picturesque a stream as I ever remember to have seen in such a country. It lies low down between high banks, and curves. .h.i.ther and thither, never keeping a straight line. Its banks are wooded; but not, as is so common in America, by continuous, stunted, uninteresting forest, but by large single trees standing on small patches of meadow by the water-side, with the high banks rising over them, with glades through them open for the horseman. The rides here in summer must be very lovely. Even in winter they were so, and made me in love with the place in spite of that brown, dull, barren aspect which the presence of an army always creates. I have said that the railway bridge which crossed the Green River at this spot had been destroyed by the secessionists.
This had been done effectually as regarded the pa.s.sage of trains, but only in part as regarded the absolute fabric of the bridge. It had been, and still was when I saw it, a beautifully light construction, made of iron and supported over a valley, rather than over a river, on tall stone piers. One of these piers had been blown up; but when we were there, the bridge had been repaired with beams and wooden shafts. This had just been completed, and an engine had pa.s.sed over it. I must confess that it looked to me most perilously insecure; but the eye uneducated in such mysteries is a bad judge of engineering work. I pa.s.sed with a horse backwards and forwards on it, and it did not tumble down then; but I confess that on the first attempt I was glad enough to lead the horse by the bridle.
That bridge was certainly a beautiful fabric, and built in a most lovely spot. Immediately under it there was also a pontoon bridge.
The tents of General M"Cook"s division were immediately at the northern end of it, and the whole place was alive with soldiers, nailing down planks, pulling up temporary rails at each side, carrying over straw for the horses, and preparing for the general advance of the troops. It was a glorious day. There had been heavy frost at night; but the air was dry, and the sun though cold was bright. I do not know when I saw a prettier picture. It would perhaps have been nothing without the loveliness of the river scenery; but the winding of the stream at the spot, the sharp wooded hills on each side, the forest openings, and the busy, eager, strange life together filled the place with no common interest. The officers of the army at the spot spoke with bitterest condemnation of the vandalism of their enemy in destroying the bridge. The justice of the indignation, I ventured very strongly to question. "Surely you would have destroyed their bridge?" I said. "But they are rebels," was the answer. It has been so throughout the contest; and the same argument has been held by soldiers and by non-soldiers,--by women and by men. "Grant that they are rebels," I have answered. "But when rebels fight they cannot be expected to be more scrupulous in their mode of doing so than their enemies who are not rebels." The whole population of the North has from the beginning of this war considered themselves ent.i.tled to all the privileges of belligerents; but have called their enemies Goths and Vandals for even claiming those privileges for themselves.
The same feeling was at the bottom of their animosity against England. Because the South was in rebellion, England should have consented to allow the North to a.s.sume all the rights of a belligerent, and should have denied all those rights to the South! n.o.body has seemed to understand that any privilege which a belligerent can claim must depend on the very fact of his being in encounter with some other party having the same privilege. Our press has animadverted very strongly on the States government for the apparent untruthfulness of their arguments on this matter; but I profess that I believe that Mr. Seward and his colleagues,--and not they only but the whole nation,--have so thoroughly deceived themselves on this subject, have so talked and speechified themselves into a misunderstanding of the matter, that they have taught themselves to think that the men of the South could be ent.i.tled to no consideration from any quarter. To have rebelled against the stars and stripes seems to a northern man to be a crime putting the criminal altogether out of all courts,--a crime which should have armed the hands of all men against him, as the hands of all men are armed at a dog that is mad, or a tiger that has escaped from its keeper. It is singular that such a people, a people that has founded itself on rebellion, should have such a horror of rebellion; but, as far as my observation may have enabled me to read their feelings rightly, I do believe that it has been as sincere as it is irrational.
We were out riding early on the morning of the second day of our sojourn in the camp, and met the division of General Mitch.e.l.l, a detachment of General Buell"s army, which had been in camp between the Green River and Louisville, going forward to the bridge which was then being prepared for their pa.s.sage. This division consisted of about 12,000 men, and the road was crowded throughout the whole day with them and their waggons. We first pa.s.sed a regiment of cavalry, which appeared to be endless. Their cavalry regiments are, in general, more numerous than those of the infantry, and on this occasion we saw, I believe, about 1200 men pa.s.s by us. Their horses were strong and serviceable, and the men were stout and in good health; but the general appearance of everything about them was rough and dirty. The American cavalry have always looked to me like brigands. A party of them would, I think, make a better picture than an equal number of our dragoons; but if they are to be regarded in any other view than that of the picturesque, it does not seem to me that they have been got up successfully. On this occasion they were forming themselves into a picture for my behoof, and as the picture was, as a picture, very good, I at least have no reason to complain.
We were taken to see one German regiment, a regiment of which all the privates were German and all the officers save one,--I think the surgeon. We saw the men in their tents, and the food which they eat, and were disposed to think that hitherto things were going well with them. In the evening the colonel and lieutenant-colonel, both of whom had been in the Prussian service, if I remember rightly, came up to the general"s quarters, and we spent the evening together in smoking cigars and discussing slavery round the stove. I shall never forget that night, or the vehement abolition enthusiasm of the two German colonels. Our host had told us that he was a slave-owner; and as our wants were supplied by two sable ministers, I concluded that he had brought with him a portion of his domestic inst.i.tution. Under such circ.u.mstances I myself should have avoided such a subject, having been taught to believe that southern gentlemen did not generally take delight in open discussions on the subject. But had we been arguing the question of the population of the planet Jupiter, or the final possibility of the trans.m.u.tation of metals, the matter could not have been handled with less personal feeling. The Germans, however, spoke the sentiments of all the Germans of the western States,--that is, of all the Protestant Germans, and to them is confined the political influence held by the German immigrants. They all regard slavery as an evil, holding on the matter opinions quite as strong as ours have ever been. And they argue that as slavery is an evil, it should therefore be abolished at once. Their opinions are as strong as ours have ever been, and they have not had our West Indian experience.
Any one desiring to understand the present political position of the States should realize the fact of the present German influence on political questions. Many say that the present President was returned by German voters. In one sense this is true, for he certainly could not have been returned without them; but for them, or for their a.s.sistance, Mr. Breckinridge would have been President, and this civil war would not have come to pa.s.s. As abolitionists they are much more powerful than the republicans of New England, and also more in earnest. In New England the matter is discussed politically; in the great western towns, where the Germans congregate by thousands, they profess to view it philosophically. A man, as a man, is ent.i.tled to freedom. That is their argument, and it is a very old one. When you ask them what they would propose to do with 4,000,000 of enfranchised slaves and with their ruined masters,--how they would manage the affairs of those 12,000,000 of people, all whose wealth and work and very life have hitherto been hinged and hung upon slavery, they again ask you whether slavery is not in itself bad, and whether anything acknowledged to be bad should be allowed to remain.
But the American Germans are in earnest, and I am strongly of opinion that they will so far have their way, that the country which for the future will be their country, will exist without the taint of slavery. In the northern nationality, which will reform itself after this war is over, there will, I think, be no slave State. That final battle of abolition will have to be fought among a people apart; and I must fear that while it lasts their national prosperity will not be great.
CHAPTER VII.
THE ARMY OF THE NORTH.
I trust that it may not be thought that in this chapter I am going to take upon myself the duties of a military critic. I am well aware that I have no capacity for such a task, and that my opinion on such matters would be worth nothing. But it is impossible to write of the American States as they were when I visited them, and to leave that subject of the American army untouched. It was all but impossible to remain for some months in the northern States without visiting the army. It was impossible to join in any conversation in the States without talking about the army. It was impossible to make inquiry as to the present and future condition of the people without basing such inquiries more or less upon the doings of the army. If a stranger visit Manchester with the object of seeing what sort of place Manchester is, he must visit the cotton mills and printing establishments, though he may have no taste for cotton and no knowledge on the subject of calicoes. Under pressure of this kind I have gone about from one army to another, looking at the drilling of regiments, of the manoeuvres of cavalry, at the practice of artillery, and at the inner life of the camps. I do not feel that I am in any degree more fitted to take the command of a campaign than I was before I began, or even more fitted to say who can and who cannot do so. But I have obtained on my own mind"s eye a tolerably clear impression of the outward appearance of the northern army; I have endeavoured to learn something of the manner in which it was brought together, and of its cost as it now stands; and I have learned--as any man in the States may learn, without much trouble or personal investigation--how terrible has been the peculation of the contractors and officers by whom that army has been supplied. Of these things, writing of the States at this moment, I must say something. In what I shall say as to that matter of peculation I trust that I may be believed to have spoken without personal ill-feeling or individual malice.
While I was travelling in the States of New England and in the North-west, I came across various camps at which young regiments were being drilled and new regiments were being formed. These lay in our way as we made our journeys, and therefore we visited them; but they were not objects of any very great interest. The men had not acquired even any pretence of soldierlike bearing. The officers for the most part had only just been selected, having hardly as yet left their civil occupations, and anything like criticism was disarmed by the very nature of the movement which had called the men together. I then thought, as I still think, that the men themselves were actuated by proper motives, and often by very high motives, in joining the regiments. No doubt they looked to the pay offered. It is not often that men are able to devote themselves to patriotism without any reference to their personal circ.u.mstances. A man has got before him the necessity of earning his bread, and very frequently the necessity of earning the bread of others besides himself. This comes before him not only as his first duty, but as the very law of his existence.
His wages are his life, and when he proposes to himself to serve his country that subject of payment comes uppermost as it does when he proposes to serve any other master. But the wages given, though very high in comparison with those of any other army, have not been of a nature to draw together from their distant homes at so short a notice, so vast a cloud of men, had no other influence been at work.
As far as I can learn, the average rate of wages in the country since the war began has been about 65 cents a day over and beyond the workmen"s diet. I feel convinced that I am putting this somewhat too low, taking the average of all the markets from which the labour has been withdrawn. In large cities labour has been higher than this, and a considerable proportion of the army has been taken from large cities. But taking 65 cents a day as the average, labour has been worth about 17 dollars a month over and above the labourers" diet. In the army the soldier receives 13 dollars a month, and also receives his diet and clothes; in addition to this, in many States, 6 dollars a month have been paid by the State to the wives and families of those soldiers who have left wives and families in the States behind them. Thus for the married men the wages given by the army have been 2 dollars a month, or less than 5 a year, more than his earnings at home, and for the unmarried man they have been 4 dollars a month, or less than 10 a year below his earnings at home. But the army also gives clothing to the extent of 3 dollars a month. This would place the unmarried soldier, in a pecuniary point of view, worse off by one dollar a month, or 2 10_s._ a year, than he would have been at home; and would give the married man 5 dollars a month, or 12 a year more than his ordinary wages for absenting himself from his family. I cannot think therefore that the pecuniary attractions have been very great.
Our soldiers in England enlist at wages which are about one half that paid in the ordinary labour market to the cla.s.s from whence they come. But labour in England is uncertain, whereas in the States it is certain. In England the soldier with his shilling gets better food than the labourer with his two shillings; and the Englishman has no objection to the rigidity of that discipline which is so distasteful to an American. Moreover, who in England ever dreamed of raising 600,000 new troops in six months, out of a population of thirty million? But this has been done in the northern States out of a population of eighteen million. If England were invaded, Englishmen would come forward in the same way, actuated, as I believe, by the same high motives. My object here is simply to show that the American soldiers have not been drawn together by the prospect of high wages, as has been often said since the war began.
They who inquire closely into the matter will find that hundreds and thousands have joined the army as privates, who in doing so have abandoned all their best worldly prospects, and have consented to begin the game of life again, believing that their duty to their country has now required their services. The fact has been that in the different States a spirit of rivalry has been excited.
Indiana has endeavoured to show that she was as forward as Illinois; Pennsylvania has been unwilling to lag behind New York; Ma.s.sachusetts, who has always struggled to be foremost in peace, has desired to boast that she was first in war also; the smaller States have resolved to make their names heard, and those which at first were backward in sending troops have been shamed into greater earnestness by the public voice. There has been a general feeling throughout the people that the thing should be done;--that the rebellion must be put down, and that it must be put down by arms.
Young men have been ashamed to remain behind; and their elders, acting under that glow of patriotism which so often warms the hearts of free men, but which perhaps does not often remain there long in all its heat, have left their wives and have gone also. It may be true that the voice of the majority has been coercive on many;--that men have enlisted partly because the public voice required it of them, and not entirely through the promptings of individual spirit.
Such public voice in America is very potent; but it is not, I think, true that the army has been gathered together by the hope of high wages.
Such was my opinion of the men when I saw them from State to State cl.u.s.tering into their new regiments. They did not look like soldiers; but I regarded them as men earnestly intent on a work which they believed to be right. Afterwards when I saw them in their camps, amidst all the pomps and circ.u.mstances of glorious war, positively converted into troops, armed with real rifles and doing actual military service, I believed the same of them,--but cannot say that I then liked them so well. Good motives had brought them there. They were the same men, or men of the same cla.s.s that I had seen before.
They were doing just that which I knew they would have to do. But still I found that the more I saw of them the more I lost of that respect for them which I had once felt. I think it was their dirt that chiefly operated upon me. Then, too, they had hitherto done nothing, and they seemed to be so terribly intent upon their rations!
The great boast of this army was that they eat meat twice a day, and that their daily supply of bread was more than they could consume.
When I had been two or three weeks in Washington, I went over to the army of the Potomac and spent a few days with some of the officers.
I had on previous occasions ridden about the camps, and had seen a review at which General Maclellan trotted up and down the lines with all his numerous staff at his heels. I have always believed reviews to be absurdly useless as regards the purpose for which they are avowedly got up,--that, namely, of military inspection.
And I believed this especially of this review. I do not believe that any Commander-in-chief ever learns much as to the excellence or deficiencies of his troops by watching their manoeuvres on a vast open s.p.a.ce; but I felt sure that General Maclellan had learned nothing on this occasion. If before his review he did not know whether his men were good as soldiers, he did not possess any such knowledge after the review. If the matter may be regarded as a review of the general;--if the object was to show him off to the men, that they might know how well he rode, and how grand he looked with his staff of forty or fifty officers at his heels, then this review must be considered as satisfactory. General Maclellan does ride very well.
So much I learned, and no more.
It was necessary to have a pa.s.s for crossing the Potomac either from one side or from the other, and such a pa.s.s I procured from a friend in the War-office, good for the whole period of my sojourn in Washington. The wording of the pa.s.s was more than ordinarily long, as it recommended me to the special courtesy of all whom I might encounter; but in this respect it was injurious to me rather than otherwise, as every picket by whom I was stopped found it necessary to read it to the end. The paper was almost invariably returned to me without a word; but the musket which was not unfrequently kept extended across my horse"s nose by the reader"s comrade would be withdrawn, and then I would ride on to the next barrier. It seemed to me that these pa.s.ses were so numerous and were signed by so many officers, that there could have been no risk in forging them. The army of the Potomac into which they admitted the bearer lay in quarters which were extended over a length of twenty miles up and down on the Virginian side of the river, and the river could be traversed at five different places. Crowds of men and women were going over daily, and no doubt all the visitors who so went with innocent purposes were provided with proper pa.s.sports; but any whose purposes were not innocent, and who were not so provided, could have pa.s.sed the pickets with counterfeited orders. This, I have little doubt, was done daily. Washington was full of secessionists, and every movement of the Federal army was communicated to the Confederates at Richmond, at which city was now established the Congress and head-quarters of the Confederacy. But no such tidings of the Confederate army reached those in command at Washington. There were many circ.u.mstances in the contest which led to this result, and I do not think that General Maclellan had any power to prevent it.
His system of pa.s.ses certainly did not do so.
I never could learn from any one what was the true number of this army on the Potomac. I have been informed by those who professed to know that it contained over 200,000 men, and by others who also professed to know, that it did not contain 100,000. To me the soldiers seemed to be innumerable, hanging like locusts over the whole country,--a swarm desolating everything around them. Those pomps and circ.u.mstances are not glorious in my eyes. They affect me with a melancholy which I cannot avoid. Soldiers gathered together in a camp are uncouth and ugly when they are idle; and when they are at work their work is worse than idleness. When I have seen a thousand men together, moving their feet hither at one sound and thither at another, throwing their muskets about awkwardly, prodding at the air with their bayonets, trotting twenty paces here and backing ten paces there, wheeling round in uneven lines, and looking, as they did so, miserably conscious of the absurdity of their own performances, I have always been inclined to think how little the world can have advanced in civilization, while grown-up men are still forced to spend their days in such grotesque performances. Those to whom the "pomps and circ.u.mstances" are dear--nay, those by whom they are considered simply necessary--will be able to confute me by a thousand arguments. I readily own myself confuted. There must be soldiers, and soldiers must be taught. But not the less pitiful is it to see men of thirty undergoing the goose-step, and tortured by orders as to the proper mode of handling a long instrument which is half-gun and half-spear. In the days of Hector and Ajax, the thing was done in a more picturesque manner, and the songs of battle should, I think, be confined to those ages.
The ground occupied by the divisions on the further or south-western side of the Potomac was, as I have said, about twenty miles in length and perhaps seven in breadth. Through the whole of this district the soldiers were everywhere. The tents of the various brigades were cl.u.s.tered together in streets, the regiments being divided; and the divisions, combining the brigades, lay apart at some distance from each other. But everywhere, at all points, there were some signs of military life. The roads were continually thronged with waggons, and tracks were opened for horses wherever a shorter way might thus be made available. On every side the trees were falling, or had fallen.
In some places whole woods had been felled with the express purpose of rendering the ground impracticable for troops, and firs and pines lay one over the other, still covered with their dark rough foliage, as though a mighty forest had grown there along the ground, without any power to raise itself towards the heavens. In other places the trees had been chopped off from their trunks about a yard from the ground, so that the soldier who cut it should have no trouble in stooping, and the tops had been dragged away for firewood, or for the erection of screens against the wind. Here and there in solitary places there were outlying tents, looking as though each belonged to some military recluse; and in the neighbourhood of every division was to be found a photographing-establishment upon wheels, in order that the men might send home to their sweethearts pictures of themselves in their martial costumes.
I wandered about through these camps both on foot and on horseback day after day, and every now and then I would come upon a farm-house that was still occupied by its old inhabitants. Many of such houses had been deserted, and were now held by the senior officers of the army; but some of the old families remained, living in the midst of this scene of war in a condition most forlorn. As for any tillage of their land, that under such circ.u.mstances might be p.r.o.nounced as hopeless. Nor could there exist encouragement for farm-work of any kind. Fences had been taken down and burned; the ground had been overrun in every direction. The stock had of course disappeared; it had not been stolen, but had been sold in a hurry for what under such circ.u.mstances it might fetch. What farmer could work or have any hope for his land in the middle of such a crowd of soldiers? But yet there were the families. The women were in their houses, and the children playing at their doors, and the men, with whom I sometimes spoke, would stand around with their hands in their pockets. They knew that they were ruined; they expected no redress. In nine cases out of ten they were inimical in spirit to the soldiers around them. And yet it seemed that their equanimity was never disturbed. In a former chapter I have spoken of a certain general,--not a fighting general of the army, but a local farming general,--who spoke loudly and with many curses of the injury inflicted on him by the secessionists. With that exception, I heard no loud complaint of personal suffering. These Virginian farmers must have been deprived of everything,--of the very means of earning bread. They still hold by their houses, though they were in the very thick of the war, because there they had shelter for their families, and elsewhere they might seek it in vain. A man cannot move his wife and children if he have no place to which to move them, even though his house be in the midst of disease, of pestilence, or of battle. So it was with them then, but it seemed as though they were already used to it.
But there was a cla.s.s of inhabitants in that same country to whom fate had been even more unkind than to those whom I saw. The lines of the northern army extended perhaps seven or eight miles from the Potomac, and the lines of the Confederate army were distant some four miles from those of their enemies. There was, therefore, an intervening s.p.a.ce or strip of ground about four miles broad, which might be said to be no man"s land. It was no man"s land as to military possession, but it was still occupied by many of its old inhabitants. These people were not allowed to pa.s.s the lines either of one army or of the other; or if they did so pa.s.s they were not allowed to return to their homes. To these homes they were forced to cling, and there they remained. They had no market, no shops at which to make purchases even if they had money to buy; no customers with whom to deal even if they had produce to sell. They had their cows, if they could keep them from the Confederate soldiers, their pigs and their poultry; and on them they were living--a most forlorn life. Any advance made by either party must be over their homesteads. In the event of battle they would be in the midst of it; and in the meantime they could see no one, hear of nothing, go no whither beyond the limits of that miserable strip of ground!
The earth was hard with frost when I paid my visit to the camp, and the general appearance of things around my friend"s quarters was on that account cheerful enough. It was the mud which made things sad and wretched. When the frost came it seemed as though the army had overcome one of its worst enemies. Unfortunately cold weather did not last long. I have been told in Washington that they rarely have had so open a season. Soon after my departure that terrible enemy, the mud, came back upon them, but during my stay the ground was hard and the weather very sharp. I slept in a tent, and managed to keep my body warm by an enormous overstructure of blankets and coats; but I could not keep my head warm. Throughout the night I had to go down, like a fish beneath the water, for protection, and come up for air at intervals, half-smothered. I had a stove in my tent, but the heat of that when lighted was more terrible than the severity of the frost.
The tents of the brigade with which I was staying had been pitched not without an eye to appearances. They were placed in streets as it were, each street having its name, and between them screens had been erected of fir-poles and fir-branches, so as to keep off the wind.
The outside boundaries of the nearest regiment were ornamented with arches, crosses, and columns constructed in the same way; so that the quarters of the men were reached, as it were, through gateways.
The whole thing was pretty enough, and while the ground was hard the camp was picturesque, and a visit to it was not unpleasant. But unfortunately the ground was in its nature soft and deep, composed of red clay, and as the frost went and the wet weather came, mud became omnipotent and destroyed all prettiness. And I found that the cold weather, let it be ever so cold, was not severe upon the men. It was wet which they feared and had cause to fear, both for themselves and for their horses. As to the horses, but few of them were protected by any shelter or covering whatsoever. Through both frost and wet they remained out, tied to the wheel of a waggon or to some temporary rack at which they were fed. In England we should imagine that any horse so treated must perish; but here the animals seemed to stand it. Many of them were miserable enough in appearance, but nevertheless they did the work required of them. I have observed that horses throughout the States are treated in a hardier manner than is usually the case with us.
At the period of which I am speaking, January, 1862, the health of the army of the Potomac was not as good as it had been, and was beginning to give way under the effects of the winter. Measles had become very prevalent, and also small-pox--though not of a virulent description; and men, in many instances, were sinking under fatigue.
I was informed by various officers that the Irish regiments were on the whole the most satisfactory. Not that they made the best soldiers, for it was a.s.serted that they were worse, as soldiers, than the Americans or Germans; not that they became more easily subject to rule, for it was a.s.serted that they were unruly;--but because they were rarely ill. Diseases which seized the American troops on all sides seemed to spare them. The mortality was not excessive, but the men became sick and ailing, and fell under the doctor"s hands.
Mr. Olmstead, whose name is well known in England as a writer on the southern States, was at this time secretary to a Sanitary Commission on the army, and published an abstract of the results of the inquiries made, on which I believe perfect reliance may be placed.
This inquiry was extended to two hundred regiments, which were presumed to be included in the army of the Potomac; but these regiments were not all located on the Virginian side of the river, and must not therefore be taken as belonging exclusively to the divisions of which I have been speaking. Mr. Olmstead says, "The health of our armies is evidently not above the average of armies in the field. The mortality of the army of the Potomac during the summer months averaged 3 per cent., and for the whole army it is stated at 5 per cent." "Of the camps inspected, 5 per cent.," he says, "were in admirable order; 44 per cent. fairly clean and well policed. The condition of 26 per cent. was negligent and slovenly, and of 24 per cent. decidedly bad, filthy, and dangerous." Thus 50 per cent. were either negligent and slovenly, or filthy and dangerous. I wonder what the report would have been had Camp Benton at St. Louis been surveyed! "In about 80 per cent. of the regiments the officers claimed to give systematic attention to the cleanliness of the men; but it is remarked that they rarely enforced the washing of the feet, and not always of the head and neck." I wish Mr. Olmstead had added that they never enforced the cutting of the hair. No single trait has been so decidedly disadvantageous to the appearance of the American army, as the long, uncombed, rough locks of hair which the men have appeared so loth to abandon. In reading the above one cannot but think of the condition of those other twenty regiments!
According to Mr. Olmstead two-thirds of the men were native-born, and one-third was composed of foreigners. These foreigners are either Irish or German. Had a similar report been made of the armies in the West, I think it would have been seen that the proportion of foreigners was still greater. The average age of the privates was something under twenty-five, and that of the officers thirty-four. I may here add, from my own observation, that an officer"s rank could in no degree be predicated from his age. Generals, colonels, majors, captains, and lieutenants, had been all appointed at the same time and without reference to age or qualification. Political influence or the power of raising recruits had been the standard by which military rank was distributed. The old West Point officers had generally been chosen for high commands, but beyond this everything was necessarily new. Young colonels and ancient captains abounded without any harsh feeling as to the matter on either side. Indeed in this respect the practice of the country generally was simply carried out. Fathers and mothers in America seem to obey their sons and daughters naturally, and as they grow old become the slaves of their grandchildren.
Mr. Olmstead says that food was found to be universally good and abundant. On this matter Mr. Olmstead might have spoken in stronger language without exaggeration. The food supplied to the American armies has been extravagantly good, and certainly has been wastefully abundant. Very much has been said of the cost of the American army, and it has been made a matter of boasting that no army so costly has ever been put into the field by any other nation. The a.s.sertion is, I believe, at any rate true. I have found it impossible to ascertain what has. .h.i.therto been expended on the army. I much doubt whether even Mr. Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury, or Mr. Stanton, the Secretary-at-War, know themselves, and I do not suppose that Mr.
Stanton"s predecessor much cared. Some approach, however, may be reached to the amount actually paid in wages and for clothes and diet, and I give below a statement which I have seen of the actual annual sum proposed to be expended on these heads, presuming the army to consist of 500,000 men. The army is stated to contain 660,000 men, but the former numbers given would probably be found to be nearer the mark.
Dollars.
Wages of privates, including sergeants and corporals 86,640,000 Salaries of regimental officers 23,784,000 Extra wages of privates; extra pay to mounted officers, and salary of officers above the rank of colonel 17,000,000 ----------- 127,424,000 or 25,484,000 sterling.
To this must be added the cost of diet and clothing. The food of the men, I was informed, was supplied at an average cost of 17 cents a day, which, for an army of 500,000 men, would amount to 6,200,000 per annum. The clothing of the men is shown by the printed statement of their war department to amount to 3 dollars a month for a period of five years. That, at least, is the amount allowed to a private of infantry or artillery. The cost of the cavalry uniforms and of the dress of the non-commissioned officers is something higher, but not sufficiently so to make it necessary to make special provision for the difference in a statement so rough as this. At 3 dollars a month the clothing of the army would amount to 3,600,000. The actual annual cost would therefore be as follows:--