The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner | Page 4

adversity, he still lives to denounce falsehood and wrong.
Truly the old hero, in all he says and does, "gives the world assurance
of a man."--I allude to Gen. J. A. Early.
When Fort Powhatan was abandoned, I was ordered to the command of
a battery at Acquia Creek on the Potomac. Although situated upon the
frontier, few incidents occurred there to vary the monotony of our lives.
Occasionally some of the gunboats guarding the river would steam in,
and exchange a few shots with us; and we witnessed frequent
skirmishes between them and Walker's afterwards famous battery of
flying artillery; but ammunition being extremely scarce at that period in
the Confederacy, the orders to us were peremptory to be very sparing in
the use of it.[1]
The battery at Acquia Creek was constructed at the terminus of the
railroad from Fredericksburg, and was manned by an infantry company
acting as artillerists. Besides this force, permanently stationed at the
battery, and quartered near it, a company of infantry from military
headquarters was sent every evening to guard against a night attack. A
company called the "Tigers," took their turn at this service, and we
would gladly have dispensed with their "protection." Utterly
undisciplined, they were more dangerous to friends than to foes.
Mutinous and insubordinate, they were engaged in constant collisions
with each other and with the companies so unfortunate as to be
quartered near them; and their camp was a pandemonium. In addition

to other sources of quarrel and contention, several women (vivandiéres,
they called themselves) followed the company. The patience of Gen.
M.[2] who commanded the division, was finally exhausted. He
summoned the Captain of the "Tigers" into his presence; and after
severely reprimanding him for the misconduct of his men, insisted that
the "vivandiéres" should be sent away. The captain urged many reasons
for keeping them; the chief one being the good moral effect of their
presence! but the General was inflexible. Even gallantry to the sex must
be sacrificed to the truth; and a proper regard for the latter demands the
statement that a reformation commenced with the departure of the
women; and our friends the "Tigers" eventually became well-behaved
soldiers.
We passed many months of inglorious inactivity here until the spring of
1862, when the line of the Potomac was abandoned. While the Federal
forces had remained comparatively quiet in this part of the Confederacy,
they had achieved many important successes elsewhere. Fort Donelson,
on the Cumberland River, and Roanoke Island in North Carolina had
been captured, with large garrisons; and New Orleans and Savannah
were threatened. General Joseph E. Johnston, who at the time
commanded the Army of Northern Virginia, determined to fall back to
the line of the Rappahannock; and all the batteries on the Potomac were
abandoned between the 8th and 10th of March, 1862; the guns being
removed to other quarters.
The monotonous service at the batteries had tried the patience of all
who were attached to them; and we rejoiced at the prospect of more
active duty. The reverses sustained by the Confederate arms were not to
be disguised, nor were our convictions of great danger to the country to
be removed by the politic proclamation issued by the Confederate
Government, to the effect that a contraction of the lines could exercise
no material influence upon the issue of the war. But as it was deemed
necessary by the military authorities to abandon the situation, we were
not at all sorry to depart; for although we had seen no active service,
insatiate war had claimed many victims, who had perished ingloriously
by the malarial fevers of that marshy district. The naval officers were
especially elated at the change. Their duties and their authority being

alike undefined, there resulted a deplorable want of harmony between
them and the military. This was, indeed, the inevitable consequence of
the anomalous position held by the former; and this want of concert of
action subsequently contributed, in some measure at least, to the
disastrous issue of the conflict below New Orleans.
We having been trained in the strict discipline of a man of war, wanted
"savoir faire" in dealing with the fastidious young captains, and the
equally sensitive "high privates"; while they no doubt looked upon us
as a domineering, tyrannical set of exclusives and wished that we were
on board the Federal gunboats in the river, or farther. My personal
intercourse, however, was always very pleasant with them. Capt.
Brown, commanding the company of North Carolinians at the battery,
had graduated at the U. S. Naval School a year or two previous to the
war, and was a strict disciplinarian. Two years after our separation, I
fell in with him accidentally; and he then gave me a sad account of the
changes wrought by death and