A CENSURED OFFICER JUSTIFIED.

511

tion, without justice. During the remainder of his three months' service, when he held command at Hampton, he bore the load of odium with suffering that almost dethroned his reason, but with the dignity of conscious innocence. Then he entered the service for three years as a private soldier. He arose quickly to the position of a commander of a regiment, and performed signal service in Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi. In one of the severe battles fought on the Virginia Peninsula, which we shall consider hereafter, he was chosen by General Richardson to perform most perilous duty in front of a heavy battery of the foe, then hurling a hundred shot a minute. Whilst waving his sword, and shouting to his regiment, "At the double-quick! Follow me!" his right arm was torn from his shoulder by a 32-pound ball, that cut a man in two just behind him. Peirce was a gallant and faithful soldier during the whole war, and deserves the grateful thanks of his countrymen.

In contemplating the battle at Bethel in the light of contemporary and subsequent events, the historian is constrained to believe that the disaster on that day was chargeable more to a general eagerness to do, without experience in doing, than to any special shortcomings of individuals.

a December 11,

The writer visited the battle-ground at Great Bethel early in December, 1864, in company with the father of Lieutenant Greble and his friend (F. J. Dreer), who was with him when he bore home the lifeless body of his son. We arrived at Fortress Monroe on Sunday morning," and after breakfasting at the Hygeian Restaurant, near the Baltimore 1864. wharf, we called on General Butler, who was then the commander of the Department of Virginia and North Carolina. He was at his quarters in the fortress, and was preparing to sail on the memorable expedition against the forts at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, and the town of Wilmington, so famous as the chief port for blockade-runners. We were invited by General Butler to accompany him, and gladly embraced the opportunity to become spectators of some of the most stirring scenes of the war. Whilst waiting two or three days for the expedition to sail, we visited the battleground at Big Bethel, the site of Hampton, and the hospitals and schools in the vicinity of Fortress Monroe.

1 This is a view from the main street, looking northwest toward the old church, whose ruins are seen toward the left of the picture, in the back-ground. The three huts in front occupy the sites of the stores of Adler, Peake, and Armistead, merchants of Hampton. The one with the wood-sawyer in front was a barber's shop

512

a 1848.

THE DESOLATION OF HAMPTON.

Sixteen years before," the writer, while gathering up materials for his Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution, visited Hampton and the fortress, and traveled over the road from Yorktown to the coast, on which the battle at Great Bethel occurred. The aspect of every thing was now changed. The country, then thickly settled and well cultivated, was now desolated and depopulated. The beautiful village of Hampton, which contained a resident population of about fourteen hundred souls when the war broke out, had been devoured by fire; and the venerable St. John's Church, built in far-back colonial times, and presenting a picturesque and well-preserved relic of the past, was now a blackened and mutilated ruin, with the ancient brick wall around the yard serving as a part of the line of fortifications cast up there by the National troops. The site of the town

was covered with rude cabins, all occupied by negroes freed from bondage; and the chimney of many a stately mansion that was occupied in summer by some of the wealthiest families of Virginia, who sought comfort near the seaside, now served the same purpose for a cabin only a few feet square. Only the Court House and seven or eight other buildings of the five hundred that comprised the village escaped the conflagration lighted by General Magruder just after midnight on the 7th of August, 1861, when the National troops bad withdrawn to the opposite side of Hampton Creek. In that Court House, which had been partly destroyed, we found two young women from Vermont earnestly engaged in teaching the children of the freedmen. In the main street of the village, where we remembered having seen fine stores and

dwellings of brick, nothing was now to be seen but miserable huts, their chimneys composed of the bricks of the ruined buildings. It was a very sad sight. The sketches on this and the preceding page, made by the writer at the time, give an idea of the desolate appearance of the once flourishing town, over which the chariot of war rolled fearfully at the beginning of the struggle.

On Monday, the 12th of December, a cold, blustering day, we visited the Bethel battle-field, in company with Doctor Ely McClellan, of Philadelphia, then the surgeon in charge of the hospitals at Fortress Monroe, and Assistant Medical Director of the post. In a light wagon, drawn by two lively horses belonging to the doctor, we made a journey of about twenty-five miles during the short afternoon, attended by two armed outriders to keep off the "bushwhackers" or prowling secessionists with which the desolated country was infested. The road was fine, and passed over an

CABIN AND CHIMNEY.

1 This is a view from the Yorktown Road, and shows the front entrance to the church. Close by that entrance we observel a monument erected to the memory of a daughter of the Rev. John McCabe, the rector of the parish when the writer visited Hampton in 1853.

BIG BETHEL BATTLE-GROUND.

513

almost level country, gradually rising from the coast. Doctor McClellan was well acquainted with that region, and pointed out every locality of interest on the way. A few miles out from Hampton we passed a small freedmen's village. Then we came to the place, in a wood, where the collision between Bendix and Townsend occurred; and a mile or so onward we came to the site of Little Bethel and the ruins of Whiting's mansion.' A few miles farther brought us to the spot where the Union troops formed the line of battle for the final attack on the insurgents at Great Bethel. Near there was a brick house, used by General McClellan for head-quarters for a day or two in 1862; and by the road-side was a more humble dwelling, occupied by some colored women, one of whom was over eighty years of age. They lived near there at the time of the battle. "Law sakes alive!" said the old woman, 66 we was mighty skeered, but we reckoned all de time dat it was de Lord come to help us."

Half a mile farther on we came to the County Bridge at Great Bethel, where the stream, widening into a morass on each side, is only a few feet in width. We visited the remains of Magruder's redoubts and intrenchments, and of Big Bethel Church; and from the embankments of the principal redoubt, westward of the bridge, made the accompanying sketch of the battlefield. Returning we took the Back River road, which passed through a

1 See note 2, page 506.

2 In this view is seen the place of the County Bridge, occupied by a rude temporary structure. In the foreground are seen the remains of the redoubt, and on the right a wooded morass. In the road, to the right of the tall tree, near the center of the picture, was the place of Greble's battery, and to the left is seen the wood in which the Union troops took shelter. In the middle of the sketch the open battle-field is seen, on which Townsend was checked by a misapprehension; and in the distance, the chimney of a house destroyed by a shell sent from the battery from which this view was taken.

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514

HAMPTON AND VICINITY.

pleasant country, with fine-looking houses and cultivated fields, that seemed to have suffered but little from the effects of war. The twilight had passed when we reached the Southwest Branch, and the remainder of the journey we traveled in the light of an unclouded moon.

We spent Tuesday among the ruins at Hampton and vicinity, and in visiting the schools and hospitals, and making sketches. Among these was

a drawing of the two-gun redoubt (erected, as we have observed, by order of General Butler, at the eastern end of Hampton Bridge), including a view of the desolated town. Near the bridge, on that side of the creek, were the summer residences of several wealthy men, then occupied for public uses. That in which Doctor McClellan resided belonged to Mallory, the so-called "Confederate Secretary of the Navy." A little below it was the house of Ex-President Tyler; and near it the spacious and more ancient looking mansion of Doctor Woods, who was then with the enemies of the Government, in which several Quaker women, from Philadelphia, had established an

Orphan's Home for colored children. Tyler's residence was the home of several of the teachers of the children of freedmen, and others engaged in benevolent work.

On our return to Fortress Monroe in the evening, we received orders to go on board the Ben Deford, a stanch ocean steamer, which was to be General Butler's head-quarters in the expedition about to depart. At near noon the following day we left the wharf, passed out to sea with a large fleet of transports, and at sunset were far down the coast of North Carolina, and in full view of its shores. Our military company consisted of Generals Butler, Weitzel, and Graham, and their respective staff officers, and Colonel (afterward General) Comstock, General Grant's representative. We were the only civilians, excepting Mr. Clarke, editor of a newspaper at Norfolk. A record of the events of that expedition will be found in another volume of this work.

1 In this view the new Hampton Bridge and the remains of the old one are seen, with the ruined village beyond. It was sketched from the gallery of a summer boarding-house near the bridge.

INCIDENTS AT HAMPTON.

1861.

515

After the battle at Big Bethel, nothing of great importance occurred at Fortress Monroe and its vicinity during the remainder of General Butler's administration of the affairs of that department, which ended on the 18th of August, excepting the burning of Hampton on the 7th of that month. It was now plainly perceived that the insurgents were terribly in earnest, and that a fierce struggle was at hand. It was evident that their strength and resources had been underrated. Before any advance toward Richmond, or, indeed, in any other direction from Fortress Monroe might be undertaken, a great increase in the number of the troops and in the quantity of munitions of war would be necessary; and all that General Butler was enabled to do, in the absence of these, was to hold his position at Newport-Newce and the village of Hampton. On the 1st of July that village was formally taken possession of, and General Peirce was placed in command of the camp established there. Under his direction a line of intrenchments was thrown up, extending from Hampton Creek across to the marshes of Back River, a part of which, as we have observed, included the old church-yard walls. On these intrenchments the large number of fugitive slaves who had fled to the Union lines were employed. Troops from the North continued to arrive in small numbers, and the spacious building of the "Chesapeake Female Seminary," stand

many troops for the defense of Washington, that he was compelled to reduce the garrison at Newport-Newce, and to abandon Hampton. The latter movement greatly alarmed the "contrabands" there, under the protection of

July 26.

the Union flag; and when the regiments moved over Hampton Bridge, during a bright moonlit evening, these fugitives followed men, women, and children-carrying with them all of their earthly effects. "It was a most interesting sight," General Butler wrote to the Secretary of War, "to see these poor creatures, who trusted to the protection of the arms of the United States, and who aided the troops of the United States in their enterprise, thus obliged to flee from their homes, and the homes of their masters who had deserted them, and become fugitives from fear of the return of the rebel soldiery, who had threatened to shoot the men who had wrought for us, and to carry off the women who had served us to a worse than Egyptian bondage." It was in this letter that General Butler asked the important questions, "First, What shall be done with these fugitives? and, second, What is their state

d

d July 30.