CHAPTER VII.

HAMPTON, CARNIFEX FERRY, AND HATTERAS INLET.

RECAPTURE OF THE S. J. WARING.-RE-ENFORCEMENTS.-BURNING OF HAMPTON.-DECREE OF JEFF. DAVIS.-SOUTHERN DESPOTISM.-VALOROUS EXPLOIT.-CARNIFEX FERRY.-PETTY SKIKMISHES. FORTS HATTERAS AND CLARK.-SECRET EXPEDITION. BOMBARDMENT OF FORTS. SURRENDER OF COM. BARRON.-CAPTURE OF THE FANNY BY THE REBELS.-CONFLICT AT THE LIGHT HOUSE.

THE

THE rebel privateers were now active, plundering and destroying. The schooner S. J. Waring was captured by the rebel steamer, Jeff. Davis, and a prize crew put on board to take her into a rebel port. The steward, William Tillman, a heroic young man, in whose veins some drops of Ethiopic blood mingled with the Caucasian current, by the unassisted energies of his own arm, recovered the vessel, killing three of the rebels, and compelling the other two to assist him in working the schooner to its home in the North. Thus the recaptured prize, valued at many thousand dollars, was conveyed in safety from off the port of Charleston, to the harbor of New York.

The many infirmities of the venerable and revered Gen. Scott, now nearly eighty years of age, rendered it necessary, in his own view, that in the terrible conflict into which it was manifest that the nation was plunged, the active command of the army should be surrendered to a younger and more vigorous arm than his own. Major-General McClellan, the officer to whom we have before alluded, who had acquired some celebrity by his Report of the Crimean War, who had signalized himself on the field of Mexico, and who had just conducted a brilliant campaign in Western Virginia, was summoned to Washington to take command of the army of the Potomac. The eyes of the whole community were directed to this young general; and Gen. Burnside, at a public meeting in New York, paid the following beautiful tribute to his worth, which tribute inspired all hearts with confidence in the new commander.

"I have known Gen. McClellan most intimately, as students together, as soldiers in the field, as private citizens. For years we have lived in the same family, and I know him as well as I know any human being on the face of the earth. And I know that no more honest, conscientious man exists, than Gen. McClellan. I know that no feeling of ambition, beyond that of the good and the success of our cause, ever enters his breast. All that he does, is with a single eye, a single view to the success of this Government, and the breaking down of this rebellion. I know that

nothing under the sun, will ever induce that man to swerve from what he knows to be his duty. He is an honest, Christian-like and conscientious man; and now let me add one thing, that he has the soundest head, and the clearest military perception, of any man in the United States."

Even while our armies were on the retreat from Bull Run, orders were telegraphed from Washington, throughout the country, for large reënforcements. It is said that under the impulse which that disaster created, sixty thousand enlisted in two days. Gen. McDowell returned to his quarters at Arlington Heights, and the regiments rapidly resumed their old positions. The term of service of the gallant Massachusetts Sixth, who had enlisted for three months only, had now expired. Under the exigence Gen. Butler requested them to remain for ten days longer, and, as one man, they acceded to his request. The army of the Potomac was speedily increased by the addition of one hundred thousand men.

The rebels were greatly animated by the result of the conflict at Bull Run. Multitudes crowded their ranks, many were gathered by the energies of the most merciless conscription. Their batteries began to frown all along the Potomac. For some reason, which has never been satisfactorily explained, the rebels were permitted to rear these formidable ramparts upon the bluffs of the river, almost unassailed Our ascending and descending ships were compelled to run the gauntlet of these hostile batteries, until finally they became so numerous and formidable, that the passage of the river was effectually closed. For many months a nation, of twenty millions of people, were humiliated by the consciousness that their capital was beleaguered, and held in state of siege by a handful of rebels.

A few miles out from Fortress Monroe, on the road to Yorktown, was the village of Hampton, one of the oldest and most attractive villages of Virginia, containing about five hundred houses, many of them quite elegant. It was situated on the west side of a creek or arm of the sea, called Hampton river. Most of the rebels had retired from the place in consequence of its dangerous proximity to Fortress Monroe. Indeed, Gen. Butler had, at one time, occupied it with a small force, but he had withdrawn his troops, and stationed them on his own side of the river, which was crossed by a bridge, lest they should be cut off, by the formidable rebel force encamped a few miles distant at Yorktown.

At midnight of the 7th of August, the rebel General Magruder, with about 6,000 men, approached Hampton and set it on fire, in all quarters. His avowed object was to prevent the Union troops from occupying the buildings during the winter. Dwellings and shops were fired, without any warning, and many of the inhabitants, with great difficulty escaped from the flames. It was a new scene, for our once happy and peaceful country, in this horrid drama of civil war. The Union troops, though few in number, had a short but brisk conflict with the foe, and thus prevented them from crossing the river, and making an attack upon the Federal lines, though they could do nothing to save the village.

The dwellings were all of wood and burned like tinder, and the leaping, crackling flames, fanned by the high wind, in a few hours laid all in

ashes. Thus wantonly were the homes of nearly three thousand people destroyed. As a military measure it was entirely uncalled for, as Fortress Monroe, within its vast enclosure of seventy acres, presented all the accommodation the Union troops in that vicinity could require. The destruction was generally attributed to the potency of whiskey, that most mischievous of all powers. Never did fiends enter upon war with more ferocity, than these slaveholding rebels, fighting for the perpetuation and extension of ignorance and slavery. The terrified inhabitants of Hampton, who had not already left the place, many of whom were Unionists, as the torches were applied, fled in all directions. Some were seized and forced into the ranks of the rebel army.

Mr. Scofield, a Union man, originally from the North, with much difficulty effected his escape with his two motherless children, having, by this cruel conflagration, lost his home, his business, his earthly all. As he was fleeing for his life, he fell in with five little children, the family of a poor man, who were sitting on the river's brink, shivering in their night clothes, their despairing mother trying to console them; their father lost, they knew not where. It was but little after midnight when the torches were applied, and the region was illumined with the conflagration, as with the blaze of noon-day.

The rebels manifested in every way how terribly they were in earnest, while the United States Government continued disposed to treat them with great leniency, still hoping for conciliation. The course pursued, at this time, by the Border States, was very embarrassing; for, while they arrayed themselves on the side of the Government, they were ever threatening to pass over and join the rebels, unless their mild policy of war was pursued. Thus while the rebels struck the heaviest blows in their power, with all the frantic energies of desperation, the Government defended itself, as a father would ward off the assaults of an insane child. The rebels compelled every man capable of bearing arms, to enter their ranks; they rallied the slaves by thousands, to work in their intrenchments; would allow no one, under penalty of stripes and death, to speak for the Union, and introduced a general reign of terror, unexceeded by that in France under Danton and Robespierre. All the property of those who did not side with the rebels was confiscated, and a general decree of banishment was issued against them.

"We can not," said the New Orleans Delta, "afford to tolerate enemies in our midst, because, forsooth, they may have the discretion to keep silent, and to bear no arms in their hands. The man of Massachusetts, or the man of Kentucky, living and perhaps thriving in our midst, has no business, at this time, to be among us, if he allow a reasonable suspicion to exist that he is not also cordially with us."

The decree of Jeff. Davis, issued on the 14th of August, ordering this banishment, says, "I do hereby warn and require every male citizen of the United States, of the age of fourteen and upwards, now within the Confederate States, and adhering to the Government of the United States, to depart from the Confederate States within forty days from the date of this proclamation."

For many months, there were large numbers of Union people at the North, who had no suitable appreciation of the desperate nature of the conflict. With the lingerings of kindly sympathies for their Southern brethren, instead of regarding them as infuriate and desperate rebels, who were to be struck down by the swiftest and the hardest blows, they were disposed to treat them as alienated friends, who could be won back by remonstrance and conciliation. Their programme for the war, was first a show of power, then blank cartridges, and then, but not until every thing else had failed, shot and shell.

Thus our army on the Potomac, of two hundred thousand men, for seven months remained in their encampments, without striking an earnest blow. Another fact, which operated fearfully against our military efficiency, was the strong pro-slavery sympathies of many of our leading generals, which rendered them reluctant to avail themselves, in any degree whatever, of the services of colored men. These two mistakes cost us millions of money, and tens of thousands of valuable lives. Our soldiers had to fight with the spade in one hand, and the rifle in the other. This double toil, all unnecessary, filled the hospitals and the distant grave-yards of the army, with the noblest sons of our land. In view of this mode of conducting the warfare, so sparing of the blood, and of what was called the property, of our enemies, so reckless of the lives of our own troops, a Union man at the South, wrote frantically to the North,

66 When, in God's name, will you awake at the North? It seems to us here that you are all asleep. You are contending with an armed maniac, and yet you measure your strength, as if you had only to manage a halfgrown boy."

And one of the most influential of the Parisian journals remarked, "The refusal of the American Government, when struggling for existence, to avail itself of the proffered aid of four millions of allies, thus compelling those four millions to give their strength to the support of rebellion, excites the contempt of every military man in Europe."

Bitter experience at length taught the country, that it was folly to attempt to wage war in that spirit-that we must either fight with all our energies, or submit to the domination of the slaveholders.

By the middle of August, the batteries of the rebels commanded a large part of the Potomac, and, notwithstanding urgent reports were made to the Government, that unless they were dislodged, the navigation of the river would soon be completely closed, for some unexplained reason, no efforts were made for their demolition. On the afternoon of the 16th of August, two United States steamers, the Resolute and Reliance, were making a reconnoissance in the vicinity of Matthias Point. They saw a boat filled with barrels on the shore, probably placed there as a bait. A boat from the Resolute, with six men, was sent to the beach. The moment the boat touched the sand, a volley of musket balls, from the rebels in ambush, was opened upon them. Three men were instantly killed, literally riddled with balls, and a fourth severely wounded. The steamer immediately threw canister and shrapnel into the thicket where the treacherous foc were lurking, and they were put to flight. The survivors succeeded in

taking the boat back to the ship, with their dead comrades lying outstretched in the bottom, and almost floating in their own blood. One of them, John James Fuller, of Brooklyn, was pierced by ten balls; another by seven.

The New Orleans Delta, of August 20th, contains an article which strikingly shows how impossible it was for the great Western States, to accede to the slaveholders' demand of secession, and to allow the mouths of the Mississippi, through which was their main channel to the commerce of the world, to be held by a foreign and hostile power. Denouncing the Kentuckians for their loyalty, it says,

"We will not pay the 'blue grass' country of Kentucky for its loyalty to Lincoln, by opening our markets to its hemp fabrics. Let it lay in the bed it has chosen, until it awakes to a sense of its duty as well as of its interest. It is the clear duty of our government now to declare Kentucky under blockade. If, in the existing state of affairs, a sea separated us from that State, it would behoove us to close the ports of a people, who seek for themselves profit by impoverishing us, and enriching our foes. Kentucky and the West must be made to feel this war, and feel it until they cry, peccavi, I have sinned."

The right of secession being admitted, the whole commerce of the West, now with a population of 10,000,000, soon to increase to 100,000,000, would be, as this menace shows, at the mercy of a foreign power, who could at any time shut them up, like an imprisoned child, until they should cry peccavi. Peace, in this country, upon the basis of secession, is a manifest impossibility. With union we can have peace, with secession nothing but continued war.

The banishment of the loyal people from the Southern States often caused inconceivable suffering. The family of Mr. Drew, originally from Maine, was residing in Southern Arkansas, near the village of Fairview. The family consisted of husband, wife and three children, and were living in competence from the proceeds of a farm and a lumber yard. From the commencement of the troubles, Arkansas was in a lawless condition. Union men were shot and hung wherever found. Within three weeks eight men, including two Methodist preachers, were shot, for their loyalty to the United States Government. Mr. Drew was threatened with death, and was in such peril, that he fled by night, intending to make his way as best he could towards the North, directing his wife to settle up his affairs and follow him, with whatever she could save from the wreck of their little fortune.

Immediately upon Mr. Drew's escape, the rebels seized his lumberyard and all the available property, taking even the cow, the bread, the meal, the molasses, and the bacon, leaving not one mouthful of food for the mother and her children. They then ordered her to leave the State immediately. She collected the few remaining effects of clothing, &c., in four boxes, and hired a conveyance to take her partly on the way towards the free States. But the heartless rebels took from her one of her boxes, saying that three trunks were enough for a woman to travel with.

After many hardships, insults and dangers, she reached Cincinnati,