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 WAR PAPERS. 
 
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 Keatonville : \y!/qat a Rummer kno 
 
 PREPARED BY COMPANION 
 
 Brevet Major 
 
 CHARLES E. BELKNAP, 
 
 U. S. Volunteers, 
 
 READ AT THE STATED MEETING OF JANUARY 4, 1893. 
 
 *E 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2013 
 
 http://archive.org/details/bentonvillewhatbOObelk 
 

 kntanrilk : What a i'ummcv ^nattr^ gttwnt it. 
 
 March 18, 186^/ 
 
 Commander and Companions : It is not my purpose to 
 write the strategic details of a battle. So far as I know, the 
 battle of Bentonville has not been written by others than one 
 who commanded a corps in the Confederate Army. I intend 
 to give you my recollections of the battle, which to Sherman's 
 army was the most important of the many events of the 
 campaign in the Carolinas. 
 
 Brigade, division, corps, and army commanders write up, 
 from official documents, campaigns and battles and make what 
 may be termed official history. Want of space between the 
 covers of the book prevents personal mention of the men who 
 fired the muskets. But the men who fired the muskets 
 and swung the sabres have their own stories to tell. The 
 graduate from the college, the farm, shop, and lumber camp 
 fought side by side in the ranks, each a student of war, no 
 two seeing with the same eyes. 
 
 I give you the recollections of a captain, pleading guilty 
 to the charge of being a Bummer, and explaining how I became 
 one. 
 
 Sherman's army left Atlanta in the fall of 1864, with but 
 twelve days' rations of hard bread, coffee, salt, and sugar in the 
 trains. This, with what the men carried in their haversacks, 
 was the visible supply. Meat in all its various form's, fodder 
 for the animals, and breadstuff's to piece out the hard tack 
 must be gathered from the country through which we passed. 
 To do that systematically men were detailed from each regi- 
 ment, placed under command of a commissioned officer, and 
 
 
sent out each day to the front and along the flanks. The 
 competition of so many different details, especially in a coun- 
 try where peanuts and cotton were the staple farm products, 
 coupled with the opposition of the enemy's cavalry and Georgia 
 Home Guards, soon forced the consolidation of the foragers, 
 as they were then called, into brigade and division details, 
 for mutual protection, and I have known a brigade detail 
 to scatter for the same reason. 
 
 I found myself commanding a brigade detail consisting 
 of ninety men and three commissioned officers, mounted upon 
 the best stock to be found in the country. Our duties consisted 
 in foraging and fighting anything and everything that came in 
 our way, picking up rebel stragglers and deserters, hunting out 
 the roads, and acting as scouts and guides. Letters from the few 
 post-offices in the country, maps hanging on the walls of village 
 and country homes, newspapers old or new, all were taken and 
 sent to headquarters. 
 
 The term " Forager" was not large enough to designate this 
 new addition to the army, and the word " Bummer" was born. 
 I know some people at this distance from the war who look 
 upon the bummer as " a trick of sins." The term has. fallen 
 into disgrace. To-day the walking delegate of the Saloon- 
 Keepers' Union is known upon the streets as a bummer. One 
 step down in the social scale and we have tramp, tramp, tramp. 
 
 Bummer was a title born to Sherman's army on the march to 
 the sea. In the scramble for corn and bacon its pedigree was 
 lost, and he who seeks to claim it now is liable to receive a bad 
 title. 
 
 However, the Bummer in his degree of rank commanded all 
 the corn-cribs and fodder-stacks in Georgia and the Carolinas. 
 He made of his pi-ofession high art, and high art is always 
 morality. 
 
 The variety of work and duties called the best men from the 
 
ranks -men of known endurance and courage. Strict discipline 
 was maintained, and there were no stragglers. Men were not 
 safe out of sight of the columns. There was not a single day 
 during the month of March, 1S65, that my detail was not 
 fighting or skirmishing with some part of the enemy's forces. 
 
 Nearly the entire distance between Savannah and Goldsboro 
 the cavalry of our army was to the left of our marching infantry 
 columns, the fronts of different army corps being covered by 
 the mounted Bummers. They often knew the location of the 
 different Confederate commands better than their own. Many a 
 gallant fight was made for hogs and hominy that was never 
 reported at headquarters. 
 
 The battle of Avery sboro was fought on the 16th of March, a 
 victory for our men. During the night the enemy retreated. 
 It was a cold, wet, miserable night, the rain falling in 
 torrents. The country was acres of mud and ponds of water- 
 The enemy had a few wagons. These they filled with their 
 wounded men and left them stalled in the mh-e along the 
 road. Having but a few pieces of artillery, they outmarched 
 us and were soon lost in the forests of the country. 
 
 The 17th and iSth were fine spring days, the country 
 very poor in supplies and the enemy having the first pick. On the 
 1 8th my detail fought Dibbrell's brigade of cavalry, driving 
 them back mile after mile, keeping the road clear for 
 the division that was following — " Carlin's." It was a series of 
 running fights from one piece of woods to another. There were 
 many turpentine stills, and they were invariably fired, send- 
 ing up dense black columns of smoke, good as signal flags 
 to indicate our course and location to those who followed. 
 At one of these stills we found four dead and one mortally 
 wounded man, lying where they fell, their comrades leaving 
 too hurriedly to give them attention. 
 
 Dibbrell's brigade at this time was very badly demoralized ; 
 
not more than six hundred strong, poorly supplied with 
 ammunition, driven all the way from Tennessee, they were 
 but mere fragments left of companies, or regiments, while 
 their commander, to use a Georgia saying, " cavorted mag- 
 nanimously." One-half of his men were always a little too 
 fast, and the other half a little too slow. 
 
 A few of my men were armed with Springfield rifles, 
 the balance with Colt's revolving rifles and Spencer carbines. 
 
 Late in the afternoon I halted my command to await the 
 advance of the division. It not coming up, we fell back two 
 miles, going into camp at headquarters of the division. The 
 stubborn resistance of the enemy during the latter part of 
 the day convinced me that they were planning a repetition 
 of the action of the 16th. I also, gained some information 
 from citizens and the wounded man captured at the tur- 
 pentine still. I reported in person to Gen. Carlin, who 
 sent the information to Gen. Sherman, who did not credit 
 it. My command had made and drank their coffee — they 
 had little else — and were rolled in their blankets, sleeping, 
 when I returned, after midnight, from headquarters, having 
 received the countersign for the next five days, and orders 
 to move out at three o'clock next morning and join the 
 division next night at Cox's bridge, twenty-five miles north. 
 We did camp there, but it was four days later. Gen. Carlin's 
 last words to me were, "If you cannot drive the enemy, 
 flank them." 
 
 At three o'clock the men were aroused, horses fed, coffee 
 made, and before four o'clock the command filed out of the 
 woods into the main road, the men tired, sore, cross, and ugly, 
 but every one in his place. The road led through forests of pine 
 with but little cleared land. A few men were sent out as an 
 advance-guard. When about two miles out, and just as it 
 began to grow light, the advance surprised a sleeping picket-post 
 
of a few men huddled about a small fire at the side of the i"oad, 
 their ragged gray blankets wrapped about their shoulders. 
 They dropped everything that was not tied to them, and ran into 
 the woods, escaping us in the darkness. Their guns were bent 
 out of shape, and, with their other effects, thrown into the fire. 
 Supposing that these men belonged to Dibbrell and that we 
 were near his camp, we pushed on, hoping to surprise them. 
 The road ran down a hill, across a swamp with deep water and 
 tangled brush on each side. I led the advance-guard, and 
 passing out of the swamp found the picket-line along the edge of 
 the swamp. It then had become quite light. The pickets on 
 the road discharged their guns as they started on the run for the 
 reserves. My men fired a few shots at these pickets as we 
 spurred our horses forward and up the hill, when, to our surprise, 
 we came in full sight of a line of earthworks, not more than forty 
 rods away. As far as I could see to the right and the left the 
 dirt from thousands of shovels was flying in the air. The alarm 
 caused by the picket-firing had created confusion in the enemy's 
 camp — officers shouting to their men to fall in line, and the men 
 throwing away their shovels and securing their guns. Realizing 
 at once that we were unexpected and unwelcome callers, I 
 retired my command to the opposite side of the swamp, dis- 
 patching one of my best men with information of my discovery 
 at once to Gen. Carlin, but he never reached his destination. 
 He must have been killed by a bushwhacker, for he is still one 
 of the missing. 
 
 Leaving a lieutenant with thirty men as a skirmish-line at 
 this crossing of the swamp, I moved to the left with the bal- 
 ance, and about a mile from there found a small corn-cracker 
 grist mill with a good supply of corn. The mill was in charge 
 of a young woman, who dipped the corn into the hopper with 
 a gourd, and carried away the meal in a bag to her home, a few 
 rods distant. One man was left at the mill to keep it grinding, 
 
and with the balance we crossed the dam, that also served as a 
 highway, turned to the right a half mile or so, and again struck 
 the rebel picket line, and had the good fortune to capture two 
 of them, who gave us the information that Gen. Joe Johnson's 
 army was all there. They had marched all night to get into 
 position, and there were ten thousand infantry then in the front 
 line building breastworks. 
 
 In driving this picket line we had come near two pieces of 
 light artillery. They opened fire on us, throwing shells higher 
 than the tops of the pine trees through which we passed. This 
 artillery fire was the first alarm to Carlin's division. The two 
 prisoners were mounted and sent under guard to Carlin, but 
 became lost on one of the many blind roads and did not reach 
 Carlin until he had come up with his division and attacked the 
 enemy. 
 
 I only digress to say that Buell's brigade, from which my com- 
 mand was recruited, charged the works when I first discovered 
 them in the early morning, losing a full one-third of their 
 numbers, many of the men falling inside the earthworks. 
 
 I withdrew my command from this advanced position, with- 
 out loss, to the grist mill, crossing to the south side of the 
 stream and placing my men behind a rail fence that skirted the 
 stream and mill-pond. The animals were taken into a dense 
 swamp to our left, in water knee-deep. Every man was free 
 to become a fighter. 
 
 The disposition of men and animals was but fairly made, 
 when there came down through the pines on the opposite side 
 of the pond, at a sharp trot, a battalion of troopers in gray. 
 They were led along the edge of the mill-pond by an officer 
 mounted on a fine gray horse. The head of the column turned 
 to cross to our side of the pond, when the order to fire was 
 given. The crash of fifty rifles from the men in ambuscade 
 seemed to have emptied fifty saddles, as if every man had 
 
picked his game. An instant, and then came the second vol- 
 ley, every man firing at will, the shots falling like rain-drops 
 on the roofs of our canvas tents in the night. 
 
 The surprise was complete, the confusion beyond description. 
 Horses plunged through the woods in flight, men and horses 
 mingled stretched upon the green slope. There seemed no 
 escape from the repeating-rifles. The gallant commander cling- 
 ing to his saddle with the last moment of life, the frantic animal 
 sprang from the road into the pond, and both disappeared be- 
 neath the water. His disappearance from the sight of man was 
 one of war's mysteries. It seemed but a moment, when all was 
 over — the dead, the dying, the wounded strewing the ground, 
 the few escaping into the friendly woods hurried along by the 
 cheers of the victorious Bummers. It was war, but war is 
 an unknown quantity. A troop of cavalry, proba' ly belong- 
 ing to the same command just defeated, found a crossing 
 through the swamp to our right and rear. Guided by the 
 firing and the cheers of our men, they fell upon our 
 flank, the first warning coming in the shape of leaden messen- 
 gers. It needed but a glance : coming straight for us was a 
 long line of "Johnnies," using their carbines as thev came 
 across the field. Nobody waited for orders. The best time 
 made by professional sprinters was slow compared with that 
 made by the Bummers as they ran for the swamp to the left 
 where we had placed our horses. It was every man for him- 
 self, and the "Johnnies" for the hindmost. The swamp 
 gave shelter and safety to all but four of the men, they could 
 not outrun rebel lead. My own horse was picketed at the edge 
 of the swamp, an animal I had ridden many hundreds of miles 
 and to whom I was warmly attached. I thought I saw a chance 
 to save him. Mounting, I gave him the spurs. He fairly flew 
 alo g the edge of the swamp towards our main lines. I used my 
 revolver as I never had a chance to use it before. My horse 
 
IO 
 
 was giving his life to save mine. I could feel his body 
 quiver as the deadly bullets struck him. The noble animal 
 carried me safely out of danger, into the friendly shelter of 
 a regiment going into position to protect the flank of the 
 army ; with a jet of hot blood spurting from a wound in 
 his .neck, he dropped on his knees and fell over dead before 
 I could remove saddle and bridle. In a few hours' time I 
 had changed places and found myself with nothing of my com- 
 mand except personal equipments. With the saddle on my 
 own back I set out, mentally offering many kingdoms for a 
 horse. 
 
 This ended the Bummers' fight at Bentonville, but those 
 who fought and got away did heaps of duty on following 
 days.