Regenstein Speech To The Atlanta UDC

 

My Family's Fate on the Day Lee Surrendered

A Speech Delivered by Lewis Regenstein to the

Atlanta United Daughters of the Confederacy

One hundred and forty five years ago, on 9 April, 1865, Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Union Commander Ulysses S. Grant, marking the effective end of the South's struggle for independence.

It was a fateful day for the South, and in particular for my great grandfather and his four elder brothers, all of whom were fighting for the Confederacy on that very day, except for two who had been wounded or captured.

While Lee was surrendering at Appomatox, a 2,500 man unit attached to Sherman's army, known as Potter's Raiders, was heading towards my family's hometown of Sumter, South Carolina. Sherman had just burned nearby Columbia, and it was feared that his troops were headed to Sumter to do the same.

My then 16 year old great grandfather, Andrew Jackson Moses, rode out to defend his hometown, along with some 157 other teenagers, invalids, old men, and the wounded from the local hospital. It was a mission as hopeless as it was valiant, but Sumter's rag-tag defenders did manage to hold off Potter's battle-seasoned veterans for over an hour before being overwhelmed by this vastly superior force outnumbering theirs by some 15 to one.

Jack's widow Adele, in her 1919 application for a pension, further describes some of these events. She states that "on a scouting expedition with Charley Jones during Potter's Raid, when the latter killed a Union soldier, both were eagerly sought for by the Federal troops, and had a price set on their heads." As my Mother , Jack's grand-daughter, has written, "Many times my father told me the story of how the Yankees surrounded the house and told Jack's Mother, Danae (Octavia), that they would catch "that son of yours and hang him from the highest tree' in the front yard. And she answered, ‘You'll have to catch him first.'"

OCTAVIA HARBY MOSES

Jack's Mother, Octavia, was a veritable legend within the family and in Sumter. She married Andrew Jackson Moses at age 16, bearing 17 children (three of whom died in infancy), and outliving most of them. The five eldest sons fought for the South from beginning of the war to its end.

Her Father Isaac Harby was proud of the role in the American Revolution of his father-in-law, Samuel Mordecai, whom he described as "a brave grenadier in the regular American Army, and fought and bled for the liberty he lived to enjoy and to hand down to his children."

Her husband's family patriarch was Myer Moses, the "founding father", a colonial merchant who served in the American Revolution as a private in Bentham's Company of Militia. He was living in Charleston when it was besieged by the British, and his home was burned and one of his children killed, in May, 1780. According to James William Hagy's "This Happy Land: The Jews of Colonial and Antebellum Charleston,"...Rachel Moses, daughter of Mrs. Myer Moses...had the misfortune to be killed, along with her nurse, by a cannonball during the siege. She may have been the only Jewish female to die as a result of military action during the Revolution.

In her memoirs, Octavia wrote of the occupation of Sumter, "On Sunday, April 9, 1865, Potter's Raiders occupied Sumter," Octavia Moses writes: They entered many houses and took what they wanted...They looted the stores and burned the jail and Court house. After my husband was nearly killed by .... soldiers who demanded liquor..., we asked for protection and took some officers in our house in order to insure it. We were afraid to undress our children at night, as we did not know when the torch might be applied; we had them dressed in several suits of clothing '

The family took other precautions as well: "...we had provisions and weapons hidden away...My husband had already sent into the woods a wagon with four mules, laden with every kind of food. This was taken there by a faithful servant, Dick Moore, who returned with it safely to us, after the Raiders had left. ...On Tuesday, April 11, Potter's raiders departed, but not before burning many buildings and 196 bales of our cotton..."

Joe Wilder and others tell of the Yankees' zealous plundering in search of alcohol, and he says that "The ... troops murdered old Mr. Bee while they were here on account of some wine, and if it had not been for a guard coming in, ... troops would have killed Jackson Moses, thinking he had liquor concealed."

News of the war was slow to travel then, Octavia Moses observed: " In those times, we had no telegraph, and we did not know until some time after that on April 9, Lee had surrendered, nor that my eldest son was killed on that very day, at Blakely, Alabama, while standing at his gun, after his company had surrendered at the close of a nine days fight."

After the war, Octavia devoted her life to memorializing "The Lost Cause," and in 1869 was unanimously elected president of the "Ladies Monumental Association," in Sumter, a forerunner of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Succeeding her in her crusade was her eldest daughter Rebecca, who wrote that "Daughters and grand daughters were all taught by her that this was a sacred duty."

LEADING THE HOMEFRONT

When the War broke out, Octavia and Andrew Jackson Moses "encouraged their sons, equipped them for the army, and sent them forth to battle with love and cheer to sustain them," writes their eldest daughter Rebecca H. Moise. "As the War continued, from time to time another son would go forth -but never a restraining word was uttered, though none knew whether the hand of Death would be laid upon them ‘ere they could return to the dear home."

The writings of members of the Moses family mirror the constant anxiety and bouts of anguish felt throughout the South while the war was raging.

They had two sons at the War's first major engagement, the Battle of First Manassas, where one, Josh, was wounded. "The news of the battle...came like a stroke of lightning over the land," Octavia writes. "After being nursed in Virginia by one of the many families that took our soldiers in like sons in their own circle, he was invalided home." In her unpublished "Narrative," Rebecca writes of how Octavia, "grateful for Josh's life, became the comforter and consoler of many less strong, whose loved ones were also wounded or whose sons and brothers had been killed. "It was the first bloody battle of the War, and well do I remember the horror, the dread, the terror that seemed to creep into the very heart of our town and make each soul await with bated breath the record of the fight. Then the wild screams, the broken-hearted moans of wives and mothers and sisters, of sweethearts and friends! We grew accustomed to these things after awhile, but at all times our feelings were tense with anxiety."

Octavia was very active on the Homefront in support of the Confederacy. As she put it, "When the War broke out, ...like every other Southern woman, I immediately began work for the soldiers: "I organized a sewing society, to cut and make garments for them. Many boxes of clothes and provisions were sent off, not only to my own sons, but to any others who needed them. I made it a point to try and meet every train that brought soldiers through our town, and, with others, frequently walked from my home, sometimes at two o'clock in the morning, to take food to our men as they passed through. We always greeted them with the wildest enthusiasm, and no thought of defeat ever entered our minds.

During all this time, I was working unceasingly for our soldiers - getting up entertainments [meetings] to furnish means and, like other women, I cut up my carpets and piano cover for them, sent them blankets, etc....Whenever the boys were fortunate enough to get home on short furloughs, they were the guests of the town - everybody feted them and nothing was too much to do in their honor."

Octavia's daughter Rebecca adds that "For our own soldiers, she felt that nothing she could do would be too much - they deserved all that was possible:

"With young children clustering round her knees, with her home filled with aged and helpless relatives who had refugeed there from Charleston and other points, she yet found time to work unceasingly for "the men behind the guns."

"The History of Sumter County" related how "The women of Stateburg and Sumter formed themselves into the Soldier's Relief Associations ...They knitted socks, ravelled lint for dressing wounds, rolled bandages, and sent boxes of supplies to the larger centers of Charleston and Columbia...At the depot in Sumter, the ladies set up a long table beside the tracks, where in fair weather, hot food was served to soldiers on the crowded troop trains passing through . . . Later in the war, when hurrying soldiers did not have time to stop, the ladies handed out packaged lunches, while their little daughters filled the canteens with fresh water. Even in the small hours after midnight, Mrs. Octavia Moses and other devoted women would walk to the depot, taking food for the soldiers."

With provisions in short supply, "the busy women of Sumter,"doing all they could to support the war effort, "stitched by hand the garments for their families as well as for the soldiers. They made imitation coffee from okra seeds and parched peanuts, and dim, evil-smelling candles from tallow and myrtle berries. They devised hats from corn shucks, and new dresses from old window curtains. They sent their silver to the Confederate government, the church bells to the foundries to be cast into cannon, and cut their carpets into blankets for the soldiers. They held fairs and bazaars to raise money for the various war activities."

When hospitals were established in Sumter, Octavia writes, "Our ladies, of course, took immediate charge, and the soldiers were fed and nursed with all the means of our command, and all the tenderness of Southern women." She also showed compassion for the Union troops who had been taken prisoner: "When I heard that the Northern prisoners would be brought through our town and that they were nearly in a starving condition, I immediately exerted myself to obtain a large quantity of provisions...to give to them..."

The death of their eldest child, Josh, was a particularly hard blow to his parents, one from which they never fully recovered. Rebecca recounts the family's reaction upon learning that he had not been captured along with his company, as they had thought for weeks: "Little did [his] mother know that he had been shot down, after his company had surrendered, and been buried by the enemy, with three of his comrades, who had fallen by his side. Not for six weeks after Appomattox, did the news of his death come to her; for when the prisoners were released from Ship Island, it only then became known to her that he was not there. But soon she showed that her courage was truly spartan - for she it was who rallied the broken spirits of all around her, imparted fresh hope to her defeated sons, and taught her daughters all the practical accomplishments, in which 'before the war' the cultured women of the South were somewhat lacking."

Octavia "passed from this mortal existence," as her obituary noted, on 15 December, 1904, at he age of 82.

THE OTHER MOSES BROTHERS

Well, that's the story of the occupation of Sumter, but the other Moses brothers were also in great danger elsewhere on that same day that Lee surrendered.

The eldest brother, Joshua Lazarus Moses, as mentioned earlier, was killed a few hours after Lee, unbeknownst to the troops elsewhere, had surrendered. Josh was commanding an artillery battalion that was firing the last shots in defense of Mobile, before being overrun by a Union force outnumbering his 13 to one. In this battle, Fort Blakeley, one of his brothers, Horace, was captured, and another, Perry, was wounded.

Joshua had also been in the thick of the fighting in the War's opening battle, when Fort Sumter was attacked in April, 1861. Josh was the last Confederate Jew to fall in battle, one of the more than 3,000 who fought for the South. His first cousin, Albert Moses Luria, was the first, killed at age 19 at the Battle of Seven Pines (Fair Oaks) in Virginia on 31 May, 1862.

The fifth brother, Isaac Harby Moses, having served with distinction in combat in Wade Hampton's cavalry, later rode home from North Carolina after the Battle of Bentonville (North Carolina), the War's last major battle, where he commanded his company, all of the officers having been killed or wounded. He never surrendered to anyone, his Mother proudly observed in her memoirs.

Earlier, on 10 March, 1865, as a member of a company of Citadel Cadets, he had his horse shot out from under him, and was attacked by a Union soldier wielding a sword.

He was among those who fired the very first shots of the conflict, when his cadet company opened up on the Union ship, Star of the West, which was attempting to resupply the besieged Fort Sumter in January, 1861, 3 months before the War officially began.

LAST ORDER OF THE LOST CAUSE

Over two dozen members of the extended Moses family fought in the War, and it sacrificed at least nine of its sons for The Cause. Family members served and worked closely with such legendary generals as Robert E. Lee, James Longstreet, and Wade Hampton, and firing some of the first and last shots of the War in its opening and closing battles.

They fought on horseback and on ships, in the trenches and in the infantry. They built fortifications, led their men in charges, and one had responsibility for provisioning an entire army corps of some 50,000 men.

This officer, the best known of the Moses family Confederates, was Major Raphael Moses, General Longstreet's chief commissary officer, whose three sons also fought for the South. The uncle of the five Moses brothers, Major Moses ended up attending the last meeting and carrying out the Last Order of the Confederate government .

He was ordered to deliver the last of the Confederate treasury, $40,000 in gold and silver bullion, to help feed and supply the defeated Confederate soldiers in the Augusta hospital, and straggling home after the War -- weary, hungry, often sick, shoeless and in tattered uniforms. With the help of a small group of determined armed guards, Moses successfully carried out the order from President Jefferson Davis, despite repeated attempts by mobs to forcibly take the bullion.

THE VALOR OF THE CONFEDERATES

Like their comrades-in-arms, the Moses' were fighting, for their homeland -- not for slavery, as is so often said, but for their families, homes, and country. Put simply, most Confederate soldiers felt they were fighting because an invading army from the North was trying to kill them, burn their homes, and destroy their cities.

The hard-pressed Confederates were usually heavily outnumbered, outgunned, and out-supplied, but rarely outfought, showing amazing courage, skill, and valor.

That is why, in this time when the South is so often vilified, native Southerners still revere their ancestors' courage, and rightfully take much pride in this heritage.

 

Lewis Regenstein, a Native Atlantan, is a writer and author. Author's e-mail: regenstein@mindspring.com