Charles Woolsey's War

A. D. C. AT HEADQUARTERS, ARMY OF THE POTOMAC

From Oct., 1862 to Lee's Surrender, April 9, 1865

January 13, 1897.

Dear G. W. B. :

It so happens that other than a battered and of course, "blood-stained" engine of war, a rusted regulation cavalry sword, that now for a matter of thirty years has hung over C. W. W.'s shaving table, peacefully pointing to the radiator, there is-extant-little or no evidence of the existence of Lieutenant Woolsey, or that a lad of that name ever had any hand in the suppression of the rebellion.

If, by chance, he did "fit into" the war, it was so long ago that no one now remembers him or his exploits. Nearly all the fighting Generals with whom, by a concatenation of happy accidents, this young person was permitted to come so intimately in contact during the field operations have been brevetted to higher rank than any conferred on earth. They have surrendered to the All-Conqueror.

It is a pity that there were not quite enough graduates (outside of rebeldom) from West Point to go round! Such were the exigencies of the hour, incidental to a volunteer army, that everybody in the service, so to speak, had at the outset to do a little of everything. It grew out of this strange state of affairs, that the willing but inexperienced lad who thirty years later is the writer of these lines, really did have thrust upon him and at the very outset, duties sometimes involving enormous responsibility. Not once, but many a time did this youth of twenty-two, absolutely without other military training than a brief practice at the manual of arms in a New York city militia regiment, have given to him, verbally as a rule, but sometimes written, and rarely sealed, orders for the movement of troops?"orders of march," or quickly-given orders of manoeuvres under fire, orders for the quick placing of batteries of artillery, for the filling up of gaps in line of battle, for the sudden changes of position of tens of thousands of men at a time, for the reversal of orders previously delivered, for night advances, for daybreak assaults, for retreats, for reinforcements; for the manifold operations of large bodies of troops ; in fact, orders such as in the days of the Napoleonic wars would have been confided alone to the discretest, most skilled and grey-bearded veterans of Napoleonic campaigns. All young officers on the staff had just such duties as these to perform a hundred times over, until at last, as a matter of course, they learned their business pretty thoroughly. It happened that young C. W. W. being staff-officer (A. D. C.) to the Adj't.-General of the Army of the Potomac (and thus technically in one of the administrative departments of the service), was with his chief passed on to the military family of each of the three great commanders who succeeded McClellan, and was probably on duty at these Headquarters longer than any other young American officer not a graduate of West Point.

C. W. W. remained, technically, as A. D. C. (once for a brief time as Acting Assistant Adjutant-General) for the whole period of his military experience. When General Grant was given command of all the armies, Captain C. W. W. accompanied his beloved chief and warm friend, Seth Williams, to General Grant's headquarters. Williams was made Inspector-General of all the armies, and just previous to the last campaign of the war, he, with his own staff officers, visited all the military posts on the Atlantic coast, south of Yorktown. An ocean steamer, the old "Daniel Webster," was placed at his disposal, and every post, including St. Augustine, Florida, was visited. Every able-bodied U. S. soldier at all these posts was ordered to inspection at dress parade, and on each and every occasion C. W. W. did the actual work of counting, and, in writing, filed his share of the trenchant criticism necessary, as to the general condition of the troops. Thus, he believes it no exaggeration to state that he tapped on the stomach-in the process of counting every single private and subaltern then "present for duty," on the whole South Atlantic stretch of military posts, many thousands in all -- "101! 2! 3! 4! . . . 199! 200! 201! 2! 3! 4! 5! 6! (sotto voce, two hundred and six ! hold your piece straight! where's your shoe?) 7! 8! 9! 209 ! (Hold your tongue or you're reported!) (212! your cap's filthy ! shame on you !) 215! (your canteen is upside down!) 216! (this is no time to spit tobacco juice!) 220! (excellent!) 222! (silence! not a word!) 224! (no excuse for such filth !) 226! (sotto voce: "good for you" !) 235! Ugh!

He had under his pen at all times a power of tremendous scope; his work was far too great, too exacting, for any one man. His corps of skilled adjutants and clerks, the complete print ing press which was part of his bureau, and the admirable telegraphic department, which all through the war did such efficient work, saved him something of the great burden of business. Even these aids, though, were powerless to avert the complete collapse which came suddenly to his once tireless brain. Just after the strain of the war was over he died of brain fever at Boston. No man of all the forces, whose names he kept upon his voluminous records, was more respected and beloved than himself throughout the whole vast area occupied by the Army of the Potomac. His gentle strength, his self-effacing courage in the presence of disaster, his indomitable power for ceaseless work, were an incentive and an example that is seldom set. To one especially, who knew him intimately and loved him well, his fragrant memory has been for many a year, and must be to the end of life, a perpetual stimulation and source of strength. On the application of General Williams, C. W. W., while still in the field, was brevetted to the rank of Captain, and at the close of the war, two additional brevets-those of Major and Lieutenant Colonel, were bestowed upon him. Under each of the three military administrations of this army-that of Burnside, of Hooker, and of Meade, General Seth Williams, knowing Woolsey's strong desire for active field service, had issued a special order, or conveyed to C. W. W. the verbal command from the Commanding General, directing the young officer to report for temporary duty as A. D. C. to the; Commandant of the Army. On the occasion of. all the great battles or movements of troops he always served with the personal aides with exactly their duties, including even the duty periodically of "officer of the day," a post of high importance at the Headquarters of the Army. It meant the receiving and passing upon all despatches or messengers arriving at night, the reception of all visitors and the general care of the camp by day. When Williams, accompanied by his aide, C. W. W., was promoted to the office of Inspector-General and the two took up their abode in the military family of General Grant, Woolsey was again permitted to report directly to General Grant, from whom he received frequent orders for very important work involving movements of troops or material, sometimes of great magnitude. When Burnside and Hooker were relieved of their commands, their personal staffs were retired with them, but in these changes of army commanders, the great administrative departments, with the Adjutant General's at their head, remained as a rule intact. The heads of the Commandants might be cut off, but the machinery of the army must continue. Thus it was that C. W. W. was passed on from one administration to another, . . . and for years through a stroke of good fortune was retained at Headquarters through three successive administrations.

After awhile, having of necessity thoroughly learned the duties, he was more or less intimately associated with all of the important operations after McClellan's removal, and, incidentally, came to have an acquaintance with all the Generals of higher rank and with a great many officers of all arms throughout the army. An undue number of lines in this account have been given to this unimportant particular, but they are to define, by request, C. W. W.'s peculiarly lucky situation. Among the pleasant details of his duty were more than one private interview-long ones-with the President of the United States, on the occasion of Mr. Lincoln's visits to the Army. He thus met the Secretary of State, all the great Generals of the Atlantic coast above Fortress Monroe, many Senators and other high functionaries and distinguished guests. His position took him on duty to every Corps and Division Commander in the field many times over. It gave him active military duty that was often most exciting, often very hazardous, frequently entirely confidential and private in nature; it opened to him much of the romance of the Secret Service, the unwritten story of the Spy and Detective Bureaux; it sometimes put him in actual command of small bodies of men; it often sent him to bring up re-inforcements, and placed him in positions of large responsibility, especially on those occasions when, as at Gettysburg, it became part of his duty to use every effort to re-form lines of infantry falling back in disorder from the front. "To form on the colors," even when out of reach of the musketry fire, was always a difficult matter with a mass of demoralized, discouraged men. C. W. W. had this to do several times. His lucky star brought to him, at the close of the war, the good fortune of being one of the twenty officers only, present at the surrender in the little house at Appomattox. Incidentally. it gave him the especial satisfaction of being directed to make a "fair copy" from the original terms of the surrender as dictated by Gen­eral Grant, for the information of the Army of the Potomac. This document, in C. W. W.'s handwriting, must be on file somewhere in the War Department. It gave him sole charge, with one clerk, of what was known as the " Daily Memoranda "--a consolidated daily statement of every occurrence of importance or of great interest, made up from the reports of all the Brigade, Division and Corps commanders in the Army-sent in to Headquarters every twenty-four hours. These volumes-there must have been ten or twelve thick ones-are also on file in the War Bureau. The practice was found  impracticable on the march, and after awhile was abandoned. It gave him a privilege that he recalls with keenest satisfaction, the chance to go half way to the opposite lines under two different flags of truce. In one case the flag was a towel, which he now rather regrets not having preserved. The use of these flags was, on one occasion, to meet General Lee's mes­senger and arrange for the subsequent meet­ing at which the surrender occurred, on that happy day when that great Southern soldier, out-generated and exhausted, was forced to seek our lines and sue for terms. That WHITE rag! --it was so refreshing to change from "red" or "yellow" to white!-served as the signal for the close of the war.

It was then, with this towel, that we washed our hands of the whole business, and presently went home to stay; stopping only in Washing­ton long enough for the "march past" on the occasion of the final review. The other flag of truce was used the year, before, after the worst fiasco before Petersburg--the explosion of the mine in front of Burnside's command-and in connection with the rescue of the few wretched soldiers who, although exposed for more than thirty hours to an enfilading fire from rebel infantry massed behind breastworks, and from rebel batteries on either flank, were found still breathing on that shot-riddled, maggot-infested, midsummer battlefield. This flag had also to do with the belated burial of the red-wet hillocks of humanity, mostly the trunks of human forms, with which the wide space was covered. C. W. W., at this distance, wonders how it could have happened that in an insane desire to " see service," he actually got permission to go out into those trenches with the storming party, in the advance, under fire, when the fight was hottest and deadliest; and why it was that unslain, not a hair of his head touched, without a spatter of blood, he was able to creep and crawl back again to our breastworks over the heaped bodies of the colored noblemen, who obeyed their orders all that day, even if someone had blundered," and who by hundreds were shot down like dogs in the trenches. The stupidities in the "order of march " on that day are matters of history, for they led to an abortive court-martial. It was one of the most abominable blunders of the whole war.

A now exacting, but attractive woman (whose "ambrotype"--to use an ante-bellum word today obsolete-was carried in the left vest pocket of the writer during nearly the whole period of the war, and which, in its blue-velvet case, no doubt served as a life preserver), at this particular writing stands with her equally exacting and delightful daughter of nineteen, at the writer's elbow. They unreasonably insist that he shall tell the story of how he was taken prisoner in one of the operations before Petersburg, late in the war. It was the occasion of the reconnaissance-in-force known as the advance on "Hatcher's Run." The Army of the Potomac moved out in a manner represented by two diverging spokes from the hub of a wheel. From the head of one of the advancing columns, (one of the "spokes "), General Meade directed C. W. W. to take a sealed despatch to the officer in command at the head of the other column. Aides generally chose their own routes and had much latitude in the matter of escort. They soon learned that the fewer in the escort, the better for all concerned. Instead of stemming the advancing tide of infantry back to the hub, so to speak, this aide, with a single orderly, attempted to cross the unknown enemy's country, or the space lying between the heads of the two '- spokes." After four or five miles of uninterrupted travel he came to signs of what he hoped were the federal troops of the other " spoke." Their blue coats convinced the orderly and his superior officer that the posse of cavalry ahead of them, ignorant of anyone coming behind them, were our own people, and the order was given to pass them as quickly as possible. They were the rebel Fitz-Hugh Lee's cavalry patrolling the roads in the vanguard of Wade Hampton's command, and who, without Meade's knowledge, had come in between the two columns, in heavy force. They were the mounted outposts of the enemy who, earlier in the day, had captured a lot of regulation Yankee blue overcoats and were masquerading as Union troops. "One was taken and the other left." Woolsey, a rod or two in advance, was "gobbled"; completely surrounded with quite too many carbines levelled at him to withdraw at the moment. He was more or less gently led in the direction of Richmond, and much cheerful, if profane, conversation followed. The damned Yankee was fairly bagged. The orderly, as he screamed: "No! they're not our men!" wheeled about and escaped, reporting at home that the Lieutenant would never come back. But he did ! Our young friend watched his chance, and in a moment of convivial glee over his taking, by his captors, when one of them at his left leaned over from his horse and embraced him, in an affectionate, if profane, word of welcome to Dixey, he got out his revolver from an inside pocket with his sealed despatch, tried to discharge it into the breast of his companion, and then (all in much less time than it takes to write these two lines) striking the man a fearful blow in the face with his wet-capped pistol which refused to go off, and which he is sorry to have lost in the rumpus, turned his fortunately excellent horse, and galloped at top-speed  in the direction of Boston, the place of his birth.

In the meantime he had been robbed of all his belongings except, strangely enough, one of his pistols, and the despatches which were never delivered. The talismanic "ambrotype " no doubt saved his life, for in his rapid falling to the rear, the ten or twelve gentlemen from Georgia shot at him again and again, following up as fast and as far as they dared. They should have made him walk! His capture had one good outcome, for he was, on his return in the course of the night, after having lost his way in the woods for hours, able to inform the Commanding General of the presence in the gap of Wade Hampton's command with infantry as well as cavalry. This information changed the whole course of the movement. A good pair of quartermaster's blankets replaced his stolen plunder, and a good tin cup filled the aching gap made by the theft of his silver one in the rifled saddlebags.  Among a multitude of highly important orders and messages carried by C. W. W., he took to the front the order for the storming of the heights back of Fredericksburg, and the order to Meade from Hooker for the retreat from Chancellorsville. Meade was intensely indignant-even insubordinate in his comment.

C. W. W. was given more varied duties, on verbal orders, from General Meade, at and after the battle of Gettysburg, than from any other commander . . ..

But on the whole, one of the most pleasing orders he ever had given him was the one to place in line of battle, under fire, Tyler's whole command of heavy artillery at Bowling Green, Va., May 19th, 1864, to fill up a gap which, for a time, threatened fearful disaster to the whole army. The men, by hundreds, when word of what was to be done reached the company commanders, abandoned hats, knapsacks, coats, everything but their pieces with full complement of cartridges (and never saw their belongings again), and the whole immense line rushed in most forgiveable bad alignment, singing, screaming, bellowing, cheering, sweating, the line surging and bending like a snake, but the roar of their multitudinous voices never letting up for an instant until it was drowned in the rattle of musketry. There would come brief gaps in the rattle of the guns, when the men's voices would be heard again, only to be overborne by a louder roar from the stronger lungs of the rifled field batteries.  All this time C.W.W. was with the troops, under fire, and by nighttime the losses among these same men were found to be very great. But the joyful thunder of that great cheer that went up, as a whole Division of fresh troops made good the dangerous gaps in the line of battle, was in itself a reinforcement, and we held our own that night and went at it again in the morning. To the young chap who took this order, there was the keenest possible satisfaction. He had often, on the march, set whole Corps, or even a Right or heft Grand Division, in motion, but he never "put in " so many troops in line, under fire, as on this occasion. To touch the spring that set them going and made them sing that song was delightful!

C. W. W. could, he supposes, dear G., spend a useless hour-far better devoted to the cultivation of "Symphoricarpus Racemosus "--in unfolding before you a musty and forbidding pile of photographic field-maps, yellowed to illegibility, such as were distributed for the private information of certain confidential staff officers at the Army Headquarters. Maps! Maps! Maps! They were a great part of an aide's existence in those far-away days now so vaguely mapped behind us all.

From a dusty upper shelf in the long-ago abandoned Witchwood "workshop," he thinks he could unearth a thick volume or two of faded files of "General" and "Special Orders," such as were printed daily, (but not by typewriters in those days), in the camps of Burnside, Hooker and Meade, and which formed part of the daily administration of the manifold affairs of their now historic commands; . . . but at these dry statistics C. W. W. stops. He has no "incidents of the war to relate," beyond the very unimportant personal details already given. The best he could do would be to show you a camp-stool from the officers' mess-room at Fort Sumter,--for General Williams, as Inspector-General of all the Armies, with his devoted subordinate, went into Charleston with the troops-just in time to sack Fort Sumter. He could exhibit a grapeshot from Yorktown, a bit of a rebel flag which floated and for a time gloated over Richmond. He could oiler for your inspection a sabre which he took from a battlefield, and that has on it this engraved inscription: "Captured by Daniel Driscoll from Stuart's cavalry at Tunstall's station." He could show a pathetic trifle or two from this or from that battlefield. He could frighten you with some barbaric knives made by Southern village blacksmiths to cut the Nation's throat with. These he picked up on a smoking field from which the "Louisiana Tigers" had just been driven, but the soil of which these whelps of hell had left reeking with the blood of Massachusetts. He could, if you particularly wanted to give him a sleepless night, tell you all about the ghastly horrors of the first few hours (before the sound of human voices stopped entirely) just after Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, The Wilderness, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, and many another. He might (by word of mouth, but cannot commit these sickening things to paper) tell you of the fearful anguish of the semi-slain left on fields without water or food or even saws to make their own amputations-and this some­times for days. He could tell you of men's lives that were sucked out by maggots, and of burials that consisted of spade-heaped mounds of human shreds and tatters of human forms, of putrid-heads alone, of mangled arms and legs and stomachs; of men who at Gettysburg cried to him as he passed (powerless to help), "Water! Water! for God's sake!" of disabled men who were dying of thirst with perhaps curable flesh wounds, who actually refused to drink water brought to them from the stream near by, because it was too red. C. W. W. saw these things himself, and is too old and steady not to be a credible witness.