Captains of the Civil War | Page 5

the
bombardment of the Confederate longshore positions the next New
Year (1869.) and witnessed the burning and evacuation of Pensacola
the following ninth of May.
While Charleston and Pensacola were fanning the flames of secession
the wildfire was running round the Gulf, catching well throughout
Louisiana, where the Governor ordered the state militia to seize every
place belonging to the Union, and striking inland till it reached the
farthest army posts in Texas. In all Louisiana the Union Government
had only forty men. These occupied the Arsenal at Baton Rouge under
Major Haskins. Haskins was loyal. But when five hundred state
militiamen surrounded him, and his old brother-officer, the future
Confederate General Bragg, persuaded him that the Union was really at
an end, to all intents and purposes, and when he found no orders, no
support, and not even any guidance from the Government at
Washington, he surrendered with the honors of war and left by boat for
St. Louis in Missouri.

There was then in Louisiana another Union officer; but made of sterner
stuff. This was Colonel W. T. Sherman, Superintendent of the State
Seminary of Learning and Military Academy at Alexandria, up the Red
River. He was much respected by all the state authorities, and was
carefully watching over the two young sons of another future
Confederate leader, General Beauregard. William Tecumseh Sherman
had retired from the Army without seeing any war service, unlike
Haskins, who was a one-armed veteran of the Mexican campaign. But
Sherman was determined to stand by the Union, come what might. Yet
he was equally determined to wind up the affairs of the State Academy
so as to hand them over in perfect order. A few days after the seizure of
the Arsenal, and before the formal secession of the State, he wrote to
the Governor:
"Sir: As I occupy a quasi-military position under the laws of the State, I
deem it proper to acquaint you that I accepted such position when
Louisiana was a State of the Union, and when the motto of this
seminary was inserted in marble over the main door: "By the liberality
of the General Government of the United States. The Union--esto
perpetua." Recent events foreshadow a great change, and it becomes all
men to choose .... I beg you to take immediate steps to relieve me as
superintendent, the moment the State determines to secede, for on no
earthly account will I do any act or think any thought hostile to, or in
defiance of, the old Government of the United States."
Then, to the lasting credit of all concerned, the future political enemies
parted as the best of personal friends. Sherman left everything in
perfect order, accounted for every cent of the funds, and received the
heartiest thanks and best wishes of all the governing officials, who
embodied the following sentence in their final resolution of April 1,
1861: "They cannot fail to appreciate the manliness of character which
has always marked the actions of Colonel Sherman." Long before this
Louisiana had seceded, and Sherman had gone north to Lancaster, Ohio,
where he arrived about the time of Lincoln's inauguration.
Meanwhile, on the eighteenth of February, the greatest of all surrenders
had taken place in Texas, where nineteen army posts were handed over

to the State by General Twiggs. San Antonio was swarming with
Secessionist rangers. Unionist companies were marching up and down.
The Federal garrison was leaving the town on parole, with the band
playing Union airs and Union colors flying. The whole place was at
sixes and sevens, and anything might have happened.
In the midst of this confusion the colonel commanding the Second
Regiment of United States Cavalry arrived from Fort Mason. He was
on his way to Washington, where Winfield Scott, the veteran
General-in-Chief, was anxiously waiting to see him; for this colonel
was no ordinary man. He had been Scott's Chief of Staff in Mexico,
where he had twice won promotion for service in the field. He had been
a model Superintendent at West Point and an exceedingly good officer
of engineers before he left them, on promotion, for the cavalry. Very
tall and handsome, magnificently fit in body and in mind, genial but of
commanding presence, this flower of Southern chivalry was not only
every inch a soldier but a leader born and bred. Though still unknown
to public fame he was the one man to whom the most insightful leaders
of both sides turned, and rightly turned; for this was Robert Lee, Lee of
Virginia, soon to become one of the very few really great commanders
of the world.
As Lee came up to the hotel at San Antonio he was warmly greeted by
Mrs. Barrow, the anxious wife of the confidential clerk to Major
Vinton, the staunch Union officer in