University of Virginia Library

"SANITARY REGULATIONS.

In addition to the rigid enforcement of the foregoing regulations,
quinine was at times issued to be taken as a prophylactic
in daily doses of three grains, and in default of quinine a decoction
of the bark of the cherry tree and dogwood with whiskey,
equal parts, was used. The good effect of these precautions was
soon visible in the improved health of the troops, which was
alarmingly bad upon General Hagood's taking command, and
we tided over the sickly season without the efficiency of the command
becoming at any time seriously impaired. Most of the
picket stations were upon rice swamps and some of the camps,
as at Rantowles, were in localities heretofore considered deadly
pestilential. The laws of malaria are subtle and but little understood.
Mr. Davis, in discussing the fact of the comparative
exemption of the troops on both sides from its effects during the
war, for this exemption seems also to have occurred in other
malarial sections, is reported to have said:[24] "That the excitement

of war itself was a prophylactic." We had none of the
excitement and all of the monotony of stationary camps.

To guard against the propensity of all troops to accumulate
impedimenta when long in camp, and to endeavor to secure
mobility to the command, the following was made a standing
order:

Schools of instruction by recitation were established in each
regiment and independent corps, followed by reviews and drills
in presence of the brigadier general commanding; and boards
were organized and kept in laborious session for the examination
of officers under the Act of Congress to relieve the army of
incompetent incumbents.

In the discharge of these unobtrusive but important duties,
General Hagood's service in the Second Military District wore
away. No event of military interest beyond an occasional collision
of pickets marked this time. When the enemy advanced upon

General Walker in the Third District in October, 1862, General
Hagood received an urgent dispatch from him calling for
assistance. Moving the Seventh South Carolina Battalion to the
railroad, General Hagood stopped and emptied a passing train
and dispatched the Seventh to Walker's assistance. It reached
him in time to materially assist in the decisive repulse of the
enemy at Pocotaligo. General Hagood, by permission of General
Beauregard, followed with other re-enforcements but arrived
after the battle.

In April, 1863, after the repulse of the enemy's fleet in the
attack on Fort Sumter, their ironclads rendezvoused in the North
Edisto Inlet, where they lay for some time with an infantry force
of some 2,500 or 3,000 men, encamped close by on Seabrook's
Island. General Beauregard organized a force to attempt to sink
the ironclads or drive them to sea, and capture the troops on Seabrook's.
He raised General Hagood's force by special re-enforcements
about 3,000 good infantry, with ten or twelve field guns,
and sent him a naval force of over 100 men with torpedo barges.
The plan was for the torpedo barges to get amongst the fleet just
before day, and as soon as they were routed, and upon condition
that they were, the infantry was to attack. The barges rendezvoused
safely in a creek not over a mile from the fleet on the
previous night; and the land forces were brought unsuspected
within short striking distance. Everything was in readiness for
the next day's work, when the order was countermanded, and
the troops directed to return with all speed to Charleston, to
proceed, most of them, to Pemberton's assistance, then hard
pressed in Vicksburg. A sailor from the naval force deserted
that evening to the enemy, betraying the plan of concealment of
the barges and they with difficulty escaped. Afterwards, while
in North Edisto, the enemy adopted huge rafts of timber as
fenders to each ironclad by way of precaution against the
approach of their diminutive enemies, the torpedo boats. An
instance of special gallantry occurring at this time deserves to be
recorded.

When the troops above referred to landed on Seabrook Island,
Captain Walpole, commanding the Scouts on Johns Island, dispatched
the fact to General Hagood, and received in reply the
order: "Get me a prisoner." It was between sundown and dark,

and taking Sergeant Gervais and Evans Fripp with him, Walpole
made his way through the enemy's chain of videttes and
charging in at full speed upon a regiment which had stacked
arms and was going into bivouac, discharged their six-shooting
rifles right and left, shooting down two men and wounding a
third, whom Walpole, a very active and strong man, jerked up,
as he ran, to the croup of his horse; and the party made their
escape, having obeyed the order to "get a prisoner." He was an
intelligent sergeant and gave all the information wanted before
he died from his wound, which proved mortal next day.

[ILLUSTRATION]

Yankee Ironclad in North Edisto April, 1863 (a monitor).

A few days after General Hagood was relieved of the command
of the Second District, an effort was made by the enemy to pass
up the Pon Pon River in gunboats to Jacksonboro and there
destroy the Charleston and Savannah railroad bridge. They
passed Willtown chiefly from the inefficiency with which the field
battery at that point was worked. The guns were in barbette
entrenchment upon a commanding bluff with the river obstructed
by piling under their fire, and should have turned the boats back.
They passed on, but Captain Walter, of the Washington Artillery,
stationed, as before mentioned, on the western side of the
river near Jacksonboro, came up rapidly with a section of his
battery, and unlimbering in an open old field, went into action
with the two gunboats just as they had reached within sight of

the bridge. He turned them back and sunk one of them, which
the enemy abandoned.[25]

Black's First Regiment of First South Carolina Cavalry
served for a short time after Hagood's taking command, in the
Second District. They were ordered to Virginia and Aiken's
Sixth South Carolina Cavalry took their place.[26] These with two
companies of the Third (Colcock's) under Major Jenkins composed
Hagood's mounted force for the remainder of the time.
The Washington Artillery (Walter's) and the Marion Artillery
(Parker's) were with him all the time. Shultz's Battery was
with him part of the time. The Seventh South Carolina Battalion,
afterwards of Hagood's Brigade, McCullough's Sixteenth
South Carolina, afterwards of Gist's Brigade, and Smith's
Twenty-sixth South Carolina, afterwards of Elliott's Brigade,
constituted his infantry force, details from which also acted as
heavy artillery for the siege guns in position. Other regiments
were with him for short periods. The Stono Scouts under Walpole
were also with him from first to last. Lieutenant-Colonel
Del. Kemper commanded the field batteries and the staff was:

• Captain P. K. Moloney—Assistant Adjutant General.

• Major G. B. Lartigue—Quartermaster.

• Major R. G. Hay—Commissary Subsistence.

• Lieutenant Isaac Hayne—Ordnance Officer.

• Lieutenant Ben Martin—Aid-de-camp.

• Captain Carlos Tracy—Volunteer Aide.

Service in the Second District had all the monotony of garrison
life, with something of its advantages. The families of the
officers to some extent were enabled to visit them from time to
time, the ladies finding shelter in the unoccupied summer residences
of the planters in the little hamlet of Adams Run. It was
a fine fish and game country, and, with railroad facilities for
drawing supplies from home, our tables were fairly furnished for
Confederate times. The troops were supplied from the resources

of the District, and at first these were ample. Towards the last,
however, these supplies became scant. Agricultural operations
had been greatly interfered with by the propinquity of hostile
armies, and the supply of beef cattle and sheep, at first large,
became exhausted. Hogs there were none. But few of the
planters continued to work the plantations south of the railroad.
Among these, however, was Hawkins S. King. He continued
to the last to carry on his several plantations, and truly his homestead
appeared to be a perfect Goshen, whose abundance he dispensed
with a lavish generosity. He obtained with the brigade
staff the sobriquet of "The King of St. Pauls."

General Hagood, however, chafed at his life of inactivity—
while the great game of war was being played so grandly in
Virginia and in the west, his friends and former comrades being
actors in the drama, and received in the spring of 1863 a promise
from General Beauregard to send him into one or the other of
these fields with the first brigade that left the department. Gist
claimed his seniority and got the brigade sent to Pemberton in
June, 1863. Two or three weeks afterward other troops were
ordered in that direction and General Hagood was placed in
command of the brigade organized to go. He left Adams Run
and had reached Charleston on his way, when a dispatch from
Richmond directed Evans's Brigade, lately arrived from North
Carolina, to be substituted in his place. General Beauregard,
when remonstrated with by General Hagood, under a misapprehension
of the source of this order, said he knew not what
induced the unusual course of the War Department in interfering
in this matter. Evans did not desire to go, but was unpopular
with Beauregard's chief of staff, and one of the colonels of
the brigade made for Hagood, who was very intimate with General
Gordon, preferred just then to remain where he was. The
conclusion on General Hagood's mind, whether justly or not, was
that the change had its inspiration in this "power behind the
throne," which was generally believed by those who served with
General Beauregard during this period to be sometimes without
the General's consciousness "stronger than the throne itself."
This belief and the equally general belief of Gordon's unworthiness
operated injuriously both with the officers and men. In the
following summer Captain Beauregard, a brother of the General's

and aid-de-camp on his staff, resigned his commission, and, calling
to say good-bye to General Hagood, told him that he had himself
informed his brother of the common estimate of Gordon's character,
and of its injurious influence upon the General himself.
But Beauregard either knew his chief of staff better, or thought
he could not do without him, for he retained him until he was
compelled to give him up by subsequent action of the War
Department. General Gordon immediately after the war signalized
himself by a very able and heartless attack in the
Northern papers upon Mr. Davis, with whom he had some personal
feud; and has since acquired some notoriety as the commander-in-chief,
by contract for a twelvemonth, of the Cuban
Insurgents.

General Hagood had to stomach his disappointment and return
to Adams Run, expecting another monotonous summer within its
precincts. He shortly after applied for a ten days' leave of
absence to arrange his private affairs, and while at home received
a dispatch from department headquarters ordering him to report
at once in Charleston. Gilmore had developed his batteries
against the south end of Morris Island, and the siege of Charleston
had begun.

Note.—In the winter of 1863 the ladies of Nelson's country sent him a flag for
his battalion, with a request that General Hagood should, for them, make the
formal presentation. This was the last incident of the kind the writer remembers
to have witnessed in the war. They were frequent at an earlier period; perhaps
no one of the earlier regiments marched to the war without some such memorial
of the dear ones at home to nerve them for the fray. These flags were generally
beautifully embroidered State flags and were really used in but few engagements.
The use of a general flag was ordered and as soon as the regiments got into the
larger armies they were required to lay these aside for the regular Confederate
battle flags.

General Hagood's address to the battalion in presenting the ladies' banner is
appended as characteristic of the times. He said:

"I am commissioned, soldiers of the Seventh Battalion, by the ladies of the section
of the State in which your corps was raised, in their name to present you with this
banner.

"For two long years our fair Southern land has been drenched in blood; her plains
have been torn with the rush of contending hosts; her hills have echoed and re-echoed
with the dread voice of battle. The world has beheld with amazement a struggle in
which a million and a half of armed men have been engaged, with almost a continent
for a battlefield. Upon the one side it has seen a gigantic foe, trebling its
adversary in numbers and wealth, and with all the appliances of war at its command,
again and again, with a pertinacity rarely equaled, advancing to the onset.
Upon the other it has seen a people cut off from all save the sympathies of the
brave, standing desperately by their hearthstones and again and again repelling the
insolent foe. We have met them upon our deserted fields; we have fought them
by the light of our blazing homes; in rags, and with imperfect weapons, we have
encountered their serried hosts. In defeat as in victory our high purpose has never
quailed, and in the darkest hour of this unequal war a murmur of repining at its
hardships has never passed the lips of a Southern man; it has never entered into
his heart to conceive a termination to his efforts short of absolute and unqualified
success. It is a spectacle, soldiers, which may well challenge comparison with the
heroic struggles of classic fame, and upon this grand page of history you, too, have
written your names. Upon the weary march, in the comfortless bivouac, and upon the
field of battle, you have borne your part. Beneath the old oaks of Pocotaligo you
have seen a comrade's glazing eye `look fondly to heaven from a deathbed of fame,'
and sadder, far sadder, in tent and hospital, afar from the gentle ministering of
home, you've seen a comrade's spirit flutter its way to God, crushed out by the
merciless requirements of war.

"But while the sons of the South have vindicated the blood they have inherited
from patriot sires, her daughters have illustrated all that is admirable in the
attributes of woman. No Joan has arisen from among them to gird on the harness
of battle, no Charlotte Corday to drive the dagger home to the tyrant's heart. There
has been no need for them to unsex themselves, nor will there ever be a dearth of
manhood requiring such a sacrifice while woman remains the true and holy creature
which God made her. But it is scarce an exaggeration to say that the voluntary
efforts of our women, themselves laboring under cruel and unaccustomed privations,
have clothed our armies, and organized all of comfort that exists in our hospitals. No
high bred Dame of Chivalry ever belted her knight for battle with a more devoted
spirit than that with which the humblest Southern woman has sent her loved ones
to this war. She has checked the cry of wailing over the slaughtered corpse of her
husband, to prepare her first born to take his place; and when disaster has befallen
our arms and the heel of the oppressor has ground into the dust the souls of the few
men who have remained to bear his yoke, the spirit of patriotism has survived in
the women. Insult and injury have failed to crush it—until the indignant utterances
of the civilized world have compelled the oppressor for very shame to desist.[27]

"It is from such women as these, soldiers of the Seventh Battalion, that I present
you with this beautiful banner. Wrought by fair hands, consecrated by the pure
and tender aspirations of wife, and mother, and sister, which cluster in its folds, it
is committed to your keeping.

"Colonel Nelson, it is narrated in martial story that a general, desiring to hold
a pass upon which much depended, posted in the defile a battalion whose metal he
knew, and left them with this stern and simple charge: `Here,' said he, `colonel,
you and your men will die.' And the order was literally obeyed. There they died!
In a like spirit, and with a like confidence, I say to you: `In defense of this flag you
and your men will die.' "