Army scenes on the Chickahominy

Army scenes on the Chickahominy
Harper''s pictorial history of the Civil War. (Chicago : Star Publishing Co. 1866)

Thursday, February 8, 2018

The New York Times from the Peninsula, 1862- Pt. II

More reports from New Kent in the New York Times coverage of the Peninsula Campaign.

A Virginia Court-house--Its Characteristics-- Paucity of Union Sentiment--Army Depredations--The Case of Col. Van Wyck Cumberland Landing--Important Reconnoissances.

NEW-KENT COURT-HOUSE, Va., Friday, May 16, 1862. 
New-Kent Court-house is a type of all the county seats I have met with thus far in Virginia; half a-dozen wooden houses clustering about a brick Court-house and jail, a post-office, a tavern and a country, store. Five families constituted the population of this place, and they are still represented by the elder members and the females, the young men having disappeared with the general draft the Southern army has demanded. The jail and store of New-Kent are now but a mass of ruins, having been burnt by the rebel authorities at their evacuation. They contained corn, and the order was to destroy this, which the rebel soldiers took the readiest way of doing by destroying buildings and all. The tavern now does double duty, as a prison and a hospital, our sick soldiers occupying the upper part, and two Confederate officers being confined in the basement.

THE BURDENS OF VIRGINIA.
The tavern, though but a rude, unfinished looking building, is of interest, in its way, as the centre about which the scattered population of the country has been accustomed to gather. In its bar-room the local great men have met over their pipes and whisky to discuss the coming crop and talk politics, thus nursing their local pride until exaggerated notions of State Rights have finally wrought their ruin, desolating their homes, and sweeping away their possessions with the rude passage of a war, for which their own acts have helped to open the way. Virginia bears a heavy responsibility for this rebellion, which her efforts might have stayed, and heavily is she paying for her mistake -- her crime. The theatre of strife, the battlefield of contending armies, she has borne more than her share of the burdens of the Confederacy, and now groans in prospect of a submission to the just requirement of the authority she has defied and outraged. Whether it be the suggestions of a guilty conscience or the mistake of a deluded people, there is a false notion among her citizens that the whole expenses of the war are to be saddled upon the South, and the people of that section stripped of their property and reduced to Slavery to pay the debt. I heard an intelligent resident of this neighborhood make such a complaint to Gen. CASEY this morning, and such is undoubtedly a common impression, which has its share in the motive inducing the hard-pressed rebels to prolong resistance. 
If there is much hearty Union sentiment in Virginia I have failed to meet with it. At the best, it is as in this town, where the people seem disposed to submit with patience to what is inevitable, and yield quietly to the rule they are in no condition to contend against. Still, their case is apparently one which will yield to kind and judicious treatment, though the first experience of subjection is not the time for developing healthy symptoms. An army is never a love-provoking institution, and there are inconveniences and trials attending the presence of the best intentioned troops, which makes their occupation irritating to a community. It is natural that men whose wheat fields have been trampled down, whose stores and stock have strangely disappeared, and whose slaves have acquired sadden notions of independence, should not see, at a glance, the blessings of Union and the fatherly love which is working their emancipation from the tyranny of secession. But it is ever the habit of the patient to make wry faces at the drugs which are working his case; and we need bate nothing of heart or hope on their account. 
Many of the complaints of depredations on the part of our army are, no doubt, exaggerated, if not wholly false; but it cannot be denied that the most liberal allowance on this score will still leave much connected with the passage of our troops that is to be regretted. Strict individual honesty is not the virtue of armies, and there are, moreover, some too convenient notions on the subject of rebel right to property current among our troops, which the authorities are making a vigorous endeavor to eradicate. They will succeed, if earnest and impartial effort promises success. For the just recognition of the principle of respect for private property, they are entitled to commendation, though it may be that, in individual instances, they have drawn taut the reins of authority too suddenly, visiting simple mistakes with the punishment of crimes. Col. VAN WYCK, of the Fifty-sixth New-York, (M.C.,) is among those who have suffered in this way, finding himself under arrest in consequence of some well-intentioned efforts to provide for his sick and hungry soldiers by making use of property to which, as he conceived, the United States had acquired a good title. The Colonel is especially careful to see that his men are well looked after, and it is to be regretted that his kindness of heart should have led him into any difficulty with the Provost-Marshal. The matter is fortunately now in a fair way of adjustment, and Col. VAN WYCK is already released from the stigma of any intentional violation of the army regulations. 
It is about two miles through the woods from this point to Cumberland, which is simply a landing on the Pamunkey, though one possessing natural advantages which at the North would make it the seat of a thriving city. The river is there divided by an island, the main channel being about four or five hundred feet in width, and having a depth, it is said, of sixty feet close in shore. From the water a magnificent plain of two thousand acres of cleared land stretches off to the woods bounding it in the distance. This is the property of man named TOLAND -- or rather of his wife* -- whose few storehouses and slave-huts on the water's edge constitute the entire settlement of Cumberland. 
The Toland residence overlooks the plain from a high hill, which rises abruptly at one aide, affording precisely such a view of the 2,000-acre farm below as one gets of a level ball-room floor from the high gallery at its end. As I looked down from this point upon our troops encamped in the wheat-fields below, I thought it must have been from such a position that XERXES reviewed his army of a million of souls before he led them forth to battle. 
TOLAND is a slave-breeder; on his plantation you have the institution presented in one of its worst aspects. With him human beings have been literally treated as cattle, his whole stock of seventy-one slaves springing from a single woman, who now, at less than sixty years of age, finds herself surrounded by three generations of offspring, without ever having been bound by the marriage relation to thwart the purposes of her master in his anxiety to improve his stock. Mr. TOLAND proposes to dispose of his estate to me for $20 an acre, providing that I would take his slaves off his hands at a low price, saying that he is getting too old to farm. I might have been disposed to consider the proposition had not my brief experience in Virginia convinced me that "niggers are mighty unsartin property." But few, indeed, are left to yield to the seductions of freedom which the presence of a Northern army bring, those left behind being mainly those who are either too old or too young to be subject to temptation. 
We remain inactive in the portion of the army at this place, no enemy appearing near enough to tempt us to effort. A reconnoissance made by Gen. PECK this morning, four or five miles beyond here, toward the Chickahominy, revealed traces of two rebel regiments, who had apparently encamped last night on this road to Richmond, toward which they must have withdrawn. SATURDAY, May 17 -- A.M. 
A reconnoissance(sic) was made yesterday by Capt. GEARHART, of the Eighth Illinois Cavalry, who advanced with twenty men seven miles beyond here on the road to Richmond, crossing the Chickahominy at Bottom's Bridge. There they met with the Sergeant and Adjutant of the First Virginia Cavalry, the first of whom was taken prisoner by Lieut. SMITH, the Adjutant escaping to the woods. In chasing these two men Capt. GEARHART came with his handful of men upon a squad of thirty rebel horsemen, who were driven in on a larger body of 120, supported by a force of some 2,500 men, two or three miles further toward the Chickahominy. It is supposed that the rebels have a strong rear guard in this direction, and a reconnoissance in force is to be made by Gen. COUCH's Division this morning to ascertain the strength of the enemy. The prisoner taken by Lieut. SMITH reports that one of their men was wounded by Capt. GEARHART's Cavalry, and another is supposed to have suffered from their attack, as a second horse was seen without a rider. None of our men were injured. 
PIERREPONT.


-New York Times, May 21, 1862



"Pierrepont," was William Conant Church


* Toler, Susan

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