Civil War Memories
of
John Herbert Claiborne, 1828-1905.
On the 19th of April, 1861, D. A. Weisinger, major of the Fourth Virginia Battalion, made up exclusively of Petersburg troops, was ordered to hold his command in readiness to move at a minute's notice. On the morning of the 20th the command was called out, and marched to the Norfolk and Western depot, where they found a train awaiting them, the engine fired up and puffing steam, as if awaiting, with the same impatience as the men, the order to start. The destination, of course, was "unknown to the rank and file," but it was an open secret that Norfolk was the destination and the taking of the Navy Yard the duty assigned.
The troops got off about noon amidst the cheers and tears and prayers of the hundreds who had assembled to see them leave. This was war, suddenly and in earnest, and amongst a people who had known for a third of a century only the blessings of peace, and who had seen only the martial parade and heard only the fife and drum of a holiday soldiery. The excitement incident to the scenes of that day cannot be described, as mother, wife, sister caught hold of the soldier hurrying away to battle, and pressed the last loving kiss to his lips, and as the soldier himself gathered his loved ones in his arms and folded them to his heart in one last embrace. Imagination may paint, but no pen can depict the overwhelming emotions which crowded that hour.
Before the battalion embarked on the cars, the Rev. Dr. Platt, before referred to in these memoirs, and who himself had been a soldier in the Mexican War, made a short address, and offered prayer that "God would cover the heads of the boys in the day of battle." The companies were then drawn up in double order, the rear rank confronting the first, and the citizens passed through the line, bidding a final farewell, and begging such blessings upon the soldiers as their tumultuous hearts would permit them to frame.
There was no element of humor on the occasion at the time, but a recollection of some of the scenes afterwards made me smile in the days that followed. As the days grew into years, those callow boys, scarred and seamed into veterans by war's rough usage, could recount by the bivouac fire, with a laugh, many a joke upon each other which had its birth upon that solemn morning. "Judgment day," it was yclept in soldier's vernacular, as it was not believed that any day other than the Judgment could ever be ushered in with such overwhelming and stupendous excitement in any class of people, high or low, white or colored.
Late in the afternoon we reached the South Branch of the Elizabeth River, a few miles from Norfolk, and the troops were ordered out of the train, a line was formed parallel with the road, and for the first time the ball cartridge was rammed home in the bright pieces which heretofore had only fired blank cartridges in salute. I do not know what were the feelings of any others, but for myself I confess that I realized, as I had not done before, that war was upon us, and that an unpleasant duty was ours. This feeling was intensified to some extent when Captain Dodson, commanding Co. E, the crack company of the battalion, in a few well-chosen words of encouragement cautioned the men to be "steady, to look along the line of their piece, and to fire low."
We had expected to go into battle and to encounter resistance, either before getting to Gosport or in driving the Federals from the Navy Yard by assault--a desperate undertaking for some four hundred green troops, whatever their spirit and courage, against marines and trained soldiers of the Regular Army, of whose number we were ignorant, but presumably in force sufficient to hold and protect the valuable property which we coveted and were contending for. But there was to be no fight yet, thanks to a strategy of Mahone, then president of the Norfolk and Petersburg R. R. He had empty cars run to and fro all day for several miles outside of Norfolk, conveying to the Federals the idea of the frequent arrival of troops in numbers. They, ignorant of what these numbers were, and indisposed to try issue with an unknown foe, hurriedly fired the Navy Yard, spiked most of the guns, and left for the safe retreat of Fortress Monroe. This maneuver of Mahone showed the instinct of the soldier, into which he developed as soon as opportunity offered--and opportunities were many before the war was over. It is mild encomium to say that no opportunity was ever lost, and that he developed into one of Lee's most active and trusted lieutenants.
We reached Norfolk about dark, to find the enemy gone on board the vessels which they had not burned or scuttled, and steaming down the river for Old Point Comfort. That night the battalion was quartered in a large empty building in the city, whilst the staff rested in quiet at the National Hotel. Indeed that was headquarters for a week or more, although on the next day the battalion was moved out in the neighborhood of the old Fair Grounds. A few days afterwards it was ordered into quarters at Berkley, then little more than a village of straggling houses, and located at the U. S. Marine Hospital, which, on the evacuation of Norfolk, the Federals had left comparatively empty. To this point headquarters were also transferred, where we made ourselves quite comfortable, though not in a style comparable to our first quarters of the first week of our first service in the war between the States.
The Fourth Battalion as it left Petersburg consisted of four companies of infantry and one company of artillery, and numbered, rank and file, about four hundred men.
The companies were--
The City Guards--Capt. John P. May and Lieuts. Chas. E. Waddell and F. M. Wright.
A Grays--Capt. Jno. Lyon and Lieuts. Robert Bowden and Thos. P. Pollard.
B Grays--Capt. Thos. A. Bond and Lieuts. L. L. Marks and S. G. White.
Petersburg Rifles--Capt. Daniel Dodson and Lieuts. R. R. Banks and Jno. R. Patterson.
The staff consisted of Maj. D. A. Weisiger, commanding; Lieut. W. F. Carter, quartermaster: Lieut. Samuel Stevens, commissary, and Capt. Jno. Herbert Claiborne, assistant surgeon.
Light Artillery attached to battalion--Capt. J. N. Nichols and Lieut. Edward Graham. This battery was detached from the Fourth Battalion on the day following our arrival at Norfolk, and I saw no more of it until the 9th day of June, 1864. The story of that day will be told later.
The Fourth Battalion as it left Petersburg on the 20th of April, 1861, was made up of the flower of the manhood of the Cockade City. After four years of service it had been so decimated by disease, by death, by promotion, and by transfer that it showed scarcely more than a skeleton of the original body. It was the nucleus upon which was formed the famous Twelfth Virginia Regiment, whose banner bore the device of almost every field on which the Army of Northern Virginia grappled with the enemy, from Seven Pines to Appomattox, and whose flag, stained with the smoke of battle and shredded by ball and shell, was never surrendered, but torn into slips and buried in the bosoms, right over the hearts, of the veteran survivors.
On being formed into a regiment, two other companies from Petersburg--the Lafayette Guards, Capt. D. N. Jarvis and Lieut. J. E. Tyler, and the Archer Rifles, Capt. F. H. Archer, Lieuts. J. R. Lewellyn, Douglas Chappell, and D. W. Paul--were attached to it, and also a company from Richmond, the Richmond Grays, and a company from Greenesville county, Capt. Everard Field.
Major Weisiger was raised to the rank of colonel, with F. A. Taylor, of Gloucester County, as lieutenant-colonel, and Maj. E. Brockett as major. Colonel Weisiger retained the same staff, which went up a grade with him, the lieutenants being raised to the rank of captain, and the surgeon to the rank of major. Dr. J. W. Claiborne, who was a private in Co. E, the Petersburg Rifles, was promoted to the rank of captain and made assistant surgeon. The regiment was then ordered to an entrenched camp, about two miles below Norfolk, which it held, with the Sixth Virginia Regiment, commanded by Col. Wm. Mahone, until the evacuation of Norfolk in the following spring.
The days spent at these quarters were gala days, and soldiering an idle, and mostly a pleasant, pastime. Guard mounting every morning and dress parade every evening filled the role of duty. Secure and commodious tents, with plank floors, and chimneys during the winter, made everything very cosy and comfortable in quarters--and as for the menu, the regulation ration was not considered. Located near the market of Norfolk, with its rich stores of fish, flesh, and fowl, with products not yet depleted, and boxes from home supplementing any possible want, the inner man did not suffer; and with books, papers, and periodicals to while away the idle moments, and the frequent visits of the girls to the camps to enliven the scene, soldier life for the first year of the war was very, very tolerable. There was little sickness, and no casualty or death occurred in the whole command to mar its symmetry from April, 1861, to December of the same year, when I was ordered to another field.
The coming campaign of the following year attested the travesty and the simulation of war of our first year of service. From the opening of the campaign of 1862, and from thenceforth to the tragic end at Appomattox, the Twelfth Virginia knew nothing more of ease, of rest, of comfort; saw no more holiday soldiering--but WAR, WAR, in all of its terrible earnestness, its privations, its sufferings, in cold and heat, in hunger and sickness, in bivouac, in battle, in wounds, in death. And when overpowered, and the last order from their commander came, "surrender," the little handful left, bereft of all but honor, threw down their arms, still bright and burnished, and accepted the honorable terms which the valor and endurance of the Confederate soldier had exacted from the victors, and returned to their homes to exhibit the same courage and fortitude in peace in rebuilding their broken fortunes. Here at Appomattox I met again, for the first time in three years, my old comrades, or those of them who had survived those bitter years, and as I had marched with them in all the pride and hope of their early days of soldiering, so I sat down with them at the last in the dust and ashes of final defeat.
Soon after the campaign of 1862 opened on the Peninsula, I received my orders to secure a suitable building in Petersburg and open a hospital with four hundred beds, and to purchase a large amount of ice, as much as could be had, and to house it. I rented a large and comparatively new tobacco factory, known as Ragland's, which stood at the corner of Jones Street and West Washington, just opposite the residence of Hon. W. B. McIlwaine. It was a three-story building, commodious and well ventilated, and furnished regulation space for about four hundred beds. This I soon fitted up and put in commission. It could not have been better fitted for hospital purposes if it had been built with that view, and had never before seen any hospital civil or military, which surpassed it in its appointments. I was made surgeon in charge, and Drs. R. E. Lewis, and G. W. Claiborne, my brother, were sent me as assistant surgeons. Dr. John Chappell was made apothecary and mustered in as hospital steward, and Mr. T. R. Moore chief ward master, and Mr. Jos. Todd commissary, both mustered in as hospital stewards. These gentlemen retained their places as long as I was surgeon in charge, for eighteen months or two years, and a more faithful and efficient corps of men could not have been secured. In about twelve months my brother was transferred to the Navy as assistant surgeon, but the other gentlemen held their places until the end of the war.
About six months prior to this a hospital after the pavilion order had been established at West End Park, then the Fair Grounds, known as the Confederate States Hospital, of which Dr. Blackwood Strachan was the first surgeon in charge. Some six months afterwards he was transferred to the field, and the surgeon and assistant surgeons in charge were often changed. During the winter of 1861--'62 the North Carolina Hospital was organized and commissioned in Cameron's Factory, and the South Carolina Hospital in Osborne and Chieves' Factory, now John H. Maclin & Son's, and the Virginia Hospital in Watson and McGill's Factory, then known as Robert Leslie's.
In 1862 Dr. Peter Hines, in charge of the North Carolina Hospital, being senior surgeon, was made Surgeon of the Post, and all the hospitals were under his care, and all reports and requisitions were made through him. In 1863 he was ordered to Raleigh and I was appointed Senior Surgeon, or Post Surgeon, a position which I held until the retreat of Lee's army in April, 1863, with the exception of three months of sickness, when Dr. Douglass, of Georgia, took my place.
My family, which had been refugeeing in Louisburg, North Carolina, during my absence from home early in the war, were now brought home, and my life was as comfortable as the privations and perils of war permitted. Rations were light, provisions of all sorts scarce, luxuries unknown, and clothing without suspicion of style or fashion. Cut off by the blockade from foreign supplies, we were dependent upon home resources, already overtaxed and imperfect, for almost everything. Only cornbread, peas, and sorghum were plentiful. The latter took the place of molasses, and at the same time was known as "long sweetening," in the place of sugar, for our coffee, which consisted of parched rye or dried sweet potatoes. It was also the saccharine element of the "pies" without which the soldier's menu was never complete, and for which his appetite seemed insatiable, they being the first investment from his meagre pay. Only the blockade runners, or their intimate friends, could indulge in the luxuries of eating and drinking, or in the display of fine clothes.
A great many adventures were made in shipping cotton and tobacco from this city and from Richmond through the blockade at Wilmington; and when a vessel successfully made the voyage to Nassau, the nearest British port, and more successfully returned, laden with articles of prime demand, the Government very properly was the first purchaser, and thus supplies for the Army, and especially for the hospitals, were often gotten. Hospital supplies were especially difficult to procure, and our refined and Christian enemies, who had made such articles as chloroform, morphine, quinine, and indeed everything which could solace human suffering or save human life,--whether of man, woman, or child,--contraband of war, gloated over the capture of a blockade-runner carrying such cargo, as ghouls ravishing the graves of the dead. However, we kept, during the last year of the war, and especially during the siege of Petersburg, fairly supplied with some of these essentials. I had men in my service whilst I was chief of all the Military General Hospitals, during the siege, who discovered that cupidity had not been eliminated from the Christian virtues of all of our enemies, and many a good trade was effected, nearer home than Nassau, of tobacco, snuff, and cotton yarns for quinine, morphine, and chloroform.
US Legacies Magazine
Copyright 2002 U.S. Legacies
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