14th OVI / 3rd Arkansas Civil War Reenactors

3rd Arkansas at Appomattox

THIRD ARKANSAS REGIMENT AT APPOMATTOX.

By Capt. A.C. Jones, Three Creeks Ark.

From the Confederate Veteran, Vol. XXIII, pp.313-315

In nearly all of the accounts I have read of the closing scenes of the Confederacy the writers have confined themselves to descriptions of the ceremonial of surrender, exhibiting papers between Generals Lee and Grant at the McLean House. In this article I wish to record the experiences as well as the feelings and emotions of some of the men who constituted the rank and file of the Confederate army.

By way of introduction, I will state that my rank was that of captain of Company G, 3d Arkansas Regiment. I was severely wounded at the Wilderness, my right arm broken and resected. I returned to the regiment and reported for duty about the time of the mine explosion at Petersburg, finding the regiment only a fragment of its former strength, but the little band as true and loyal as ever. The field officers were all absent, Colonel Manning a prisoner, the other two wounded and disabled. Being the senior officer, I assumed command and continued in charge until the collapse. In the interval between my return to the regiment and the end we participated in several of the hottest fights of the war, in one of them leaving over half our number on the field. The evacuation of Richmond found us located on the Charles City road, seven miles from the city. Hurried by rail to Petersburg, we reached that place just in time to hear the shouts of the enemy as they occupied the town. It is not my intention to rehearse our experiences on the retreat. Field's Division being the rear guard, we were kept busy most of the time skirmishing with the enemy. One amusing incident I shall relate.

The failure to issue rations at Amelia Courthouse, as expected, left us for thirty-six hours without a mouthful to eat. In this condition we approached the little town of Farmville. Looking away to the right, we could plainly see heavy columns of the enemy moving toward the heights beyond the river, evidently with the intention of cutting us off. So it became a race. Some effort had been made to gather a little food in the town, and there were a few barrels of meal and a few middlings of meat scattered along the sidewalks. Without orders, the men charged that meal, with which they filled their pockets and any other available receptacles. The meat was seized upon and slashed into pieces as they ran. Several of the men stuck their bayonets into middlings and bore them proudly aloft.

Well, we crossed the river and burned the bridge just in time to stop a cavalry charge on our rear and intercepted the enemy and repulsed two charges, all the time buoyed up with the thought of the feast in store for us if we. could get time to enjoy it.

This was our last scrimmage with the enemy, in which we fired our last gun. Our march the following day was unmolested. We camped within three miles of Appomattox and arrived within a mile of that place shortly after sunrise the day of the surrender. We immediately formed line of battle, facing to the rear, and commenced, as usual, to build breastworks. Up to this time there was not a man in the command who had the slightest doubt that General Lee would be able to bring his army safety out of its desperate straits; but rumors of the end began to fly thick and fast. There seemed to be something ominous in the air. About eight o'clock General Lee passed through the lines, going toward the town. He looked about as usual except that he wore a bright, new uniform. A few minutes afterwards I was standing in the road directing the moving of a rail fence to be used in building works, when, to my astonishment, a squad of Yankee cavalry, led by an officer carrying a white flag, appeared. In passing I distinctly heard him say: "Those men had as well quit work." A few minutes after an order came from somewhere to suspend work. Some hours of suspense passed when the surrender was announced, not officially, but from a source we could not doubt. When the news came, notwithstanding I had been partially prepared, to me it was a mental shock that I am unable to describe, just as if the world had suddenly come to an end. Lying flat upon the ground with my face to the earth, I went almost into a state of unconsciousness. Aroused from this condition by the excited voices of the men, I found that a number of them, led by Dick McDonald, a boy of eighteen, were insisting upon destroying the guns, swearing that the Yankees should not have them. With some difficulty I prevented this, and soon we all calmed down to a realization of the situation.

One peculiar thing about what followed was the fact that from the moment of the surrender all the general officers of the army disappeared from view, and all business transactions with the Federals were conducted through the regimental officers. As such I was required to make a muster roll of the men and officers. Being furnished the printed blanks, I signed the parole papers of one hundred and forty-five. This was the little remnant left of at least twelve hundred men enlisted first and last. Our dead were buried in six States-Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee. Some were in prison, many in hospitals, many maimed for life, and, so far as I know, not one traitor to reflect disgrace upon his comrades.

By this time we had heard the conditions of surrender, the main point of which was that we were free to go to our homes. We awaited anxiously our discharges, but we had another ordeal to pass through upon which we had not counted. On the third day I had orders to march the regiment to town, and on our arrival we found the other three regiments of the brigade-the 1st, 4th, and 5th Texas-drawn up in line on side of the street, faced by a line of Federals on the other. A mounted officer rode up and privately gave me instructions: "Align your men, stack your arms, march your men away, and you are discharged." Never in all my life have I so reluctantly obeyed an order. In a broken voice I gave the usual orders: "Front! Order arms! Stack arms! Right face! Forward! March."

This was our hour of intense humiliation. A soldier and his gun become inseparable. Whatever may be lacking in equipment or other necessaries, his gun must always he kept bright and clean and ready for use. He sleeps with it, and it becomes almost a part of himself. So long as we carried our guns we felt something of the dignity of soldiers; but when we tramped away leaving these behind, we felt like a lot of hoboes stranded upon an alien shore.

Some one has written a book called "The Man without a Country." The theme is highly suggestive, and never was the idea more completely illustrated than in the tragic scenes through which we were passing. For four long years we had fought for our country; we had endured hardships and privations and wounds without a murmur; we had been as loyal and true to its flag as in the old days to the Stars and Stripes: and now in a moment the whole fabric had dissolved into thin air and vanished forever, and we, its subjects, with nothing but the dirty rags upon our backs and over a thousand miles from home, were turned loose upon a country already starved to the limit.

It is not my purpose to detail the difficulties the men encountered in getting to their homes, but it will perhaps be of interest to follow their fortunes for a single day.

A consultation was held as to whether it was best to scatter out or to stick together. The latter we decided upon for the time, and I was asked to continue in command, the men promising to obey my orders. We set out on our long tramp for home, passing for miles through the encampments of the enemy. And here I wish to say that we have no cause to complain of the conduct of those men, as they treated us with the utmost respect and courtesy. We went about eight miles and camped at nightfall, when _I began to realize fully the problem we were up against. We had barely food enough left of what the Federals had given for one scant meal, with no provision whatever for the morrow. I repaired to the nearest farmhouse and found a family of nice people with an old man in charge. They were in a state of alarm, being apprehensive of a raid by the soldiers on their very scanty supply of provisions. I reassured them on this point and told the old man that I came to him for information and advice. I wished to know if there was not a mill somewhere in that country where it was possible to get some meal. He very promptly answered that there was a mill five miles off the road, where no soldiers had been, and said that the owner ought to help the soldiers, as he had kept out of the war by being detailed as a miller. With this information I returned to camp and gave orders to march at daybreak. We covered the distance to that mill in an almost incredibly short time and found the man in charge sullen and indisposed to accommodate us. He said he had no meal on hand. I took a squad of men and entered the mill house, finding no meal, but five or six barrels of shelled corn, which he refused to grind, saying the mill was out of order and wouldn't grind. Just then Jesse Hill, one of the boys of Company E, spoke up: "Captain, there is nothing the matter with the mill. I am a miller; I can run the mill if you wish it." So I told him to take the men necessary and grind the corn. We used about half the corn and divided the meal, giving to each man about one and a half gallons. This was the last ration issued to the 3d Corps Regiment by an improvised commissary, as two days afterwards the organization broke up into groups and continued making their way as best they could.

Now, as to the seizing of that corn, under ordinary circumstances it would have been simple robbery. Whether the circumstances justified the act is a question of ethics that I leave to others to answer. My conscience has never worried me on the subject; and as to my old friend and comrade Jesse Hill, who ground the corn, I see him occasionally, a good man and citizen, as he was a good and true soldier, and well deserving the enjoyment of the fruits of a well-spent life