This is the last entry in a 4-part series. Check out the Introduction and Parts 1, 2, and 3.
In the aftermath of the Battle of Globe Tavern, the encounter between Dennis Dailey and Johnson Hagood became the talk of the Army of the Potomac. Brig. Gen. Edward S. Bragg, Dailey’s brigade commander, later recalled the scene, which he witnessed from his vantage point behind the earthworks. He wrote, “A braver or less discreet [man] in battle never lived. Without waiting for orders or considering [the consequences] he put spurs to his horse and, dashing across the few rods that lay between us and the unsuspecting rebels, rode up to the colors of the foremost regiment, seized the staff and with an audacity that seemed more sublime the more you think of it, [said], ‘Gentlemen, you are my prisoners.’”
Colonel Theodore Lyman, a staff
officer for Maj. Gen. George Meade, learned about the incident only days after it happened.
Even though he had not been there to witness it, Lyman had heard enough
gossip that he felt as if he could describe the incident with authority:
The officer [Dailey] approached General Hagood and either demanded or seized the flag he held in his hand, when Hagood shot him mortally with a pistol, and shouted to his men to run. Some did so, others (about 300) gave themselves up, and others were shot down as they ran. The conduct of Hagood is denounced as treacherous, but this all depends on the details of the affair, which remain to be proved. The next time I think we shall go on shooting till some official announcement of surrender is made!
Amazingly, Dailey survived his injury. While recovering from
his wound, he received promotion to major, and in 1865, he participated in the
final battles of the Petersburg Campaign. Dailey he received a brevet promotion
to lieutenant colonel “for gallant and meritorious services at the battle of
White Oak Road in Virginia,” another engagement in which he was wounded, and he mustered out on July 14, 1865. Two
years later, Dailey moved to Council Bluffs, Iowa, where he lived out the rest
of his life. The governor of Iowa appointed him to the office of district attorney and he
charted a long career as a prosecutor. In 1874, he married a woman named Mary
E. Warren, and they raised seven children.
Although it is largely forgotten today, the Dailey-Hagood affair made it into the war’s earliest histories. In fact, William Swinton’s 1866 Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac mentioned it in a footnote. The Confederates told tales about the incident as well. They, likewise, credited Dailey for his daring deed. “All agreed, however,” recollected staff officer Thomas J. Mackey, who published his version of events in McClure’s Magazine, “that no braver deed was ever done than that of the Yankee captain who fell, still grasping that flag.”
Most early accounts from former Confederates mistakenly believed that Dailey had been killed by Hagood’s gunshot wound. In 1878, the Philadelphia Inquirer published an article written by a Confederate captain claiming that Hagood’s pistol shot had ended the life of the Yankee officer.
Fifteen years later, Dailey decided to set the record straight, at least for
Hagood anyway. He wrote Hagood a letter, introducing himself and informing him that he had survived the pistol shot. Dailey also had a financial reason to make contact. He planned
to apply for a federal pension, and he needed proof that he had sustained a
gunshot wound during the war. What better way to prove that his wound existed, he thought, than to contact the enemy soldier who had shot him.
Dailey sent this letter:
Council Bluffs, Ia., Aug. 7, 1879.
Gen. Hagood: I am the person whom you shot on the 21st day of
August, 1864, at what is known with us as the battle of the Globe (or Yellow)
Tavern, on the Weldon Railroad. Doubtless you remember the circumstances. In
the many comments on the event of your shooting me, etc., I have been
repeatedly reported as dead from the effects of the shot. The last report of the
event, together with an account of that battle, that has been brought to my
notice was one published in the weekly Philadelphia Enquirer of some week in
June, 1878. The article was by a Capt. Young, of the Confederate service. In
this publication I was reported as being shot dead at that time.
Your address has been sent me by Senator [John B.] Gordon. What I want
is this: That if you do not deem it inconsistent or improper, you will furnish
me with a certificate stating the facts and circumstances of your firing at and
wounding a Federal officer on the occasion as above, and if you ever heard the
name and rank of such officer, state upon information. My rank at the time was
that of Captain, and I was then upon Gen. Cutler’s staff, who commanded the
division with which yours came in contact.
I am making application for pension, desire to use your
certificate in that way. Should you see fit to favor me with it, be kind enough
to sign and verify the same before the clerk of one of your courts of record,
who will affix his seal to the same. With the wound inflicted as above, and one
afterwards received on the 31st of March, 1865, at Gravely Run, I am almost
totally disabled. The ball from your pistol entered my right side and
penetrated to my backbone, from which place it was, after a long time,
extracted. Your certificate will be of great value to me. Should you see fit to
favor me with it, please do so at your very earliest convenience.
I am very respectfully yours,
D. B. Dailey.
Johnson Hagood was easy to locate. Since the war, he had
returned to politics. Like many white South Carolinians, he resented postwar
Reconstruction, and he led a fierce campaign of violence against African
American voters and against white Republican politicians. During the Election of 1876,
he won the race for Comptroller General. His electoral victory, one of several big victories for the Democrats, helped spell an end to Reconstruction in South Carolina.
Hagood received Dailey’s letter, and immediately replied to it.
Columbia, S. C, Aug. 18, 1879.
Capt. D. B. Dailey, Council Bluffs, Iowa:
My Dear Sir- Your communication of the 7th instant,
requesting from me a sworn statement of the facts connecting you and myself
with the combat, on the 21st of August, 1864, upon the Weldon road, with the
view of being used by you in an application for a pension, was received a few
days ago.
Enclosed you will find an affidavit of the facts as I saw
them, and which in all important particulars I believe to be correct. It is
made out from memoranda taken at the time.
I have never before given a detailed statement of the
incident to any one, nor have any of the publications upon the subject
emanated, directly or indirectly, from me. Capt. Young, to whom you refer, was
not a member of my brigade, and I do not now recollect ever having met him. His
account is based upon the general army rumor of the day. I made a very brief
official report of the part my brigade took in the action, which may or may not
now be in Washington among the papers of the Confederate War Office.
Will you permit me to express the little pleasure given me by
the receipt of your letter—the knowledge that your wound had not proved mortal.
We were both, under different circumstances, endeavoring to do our duty, and
your gallant bearing made a profound impression upon me. It will be a matter of
great satisfaction to me if I shall have contributed in the least by the
statement enclosed to your obtaining from the government the recognition of
your services which they so well deserve.
I am, very respectfully,
Johnson Hagood.
Hagood’s affidavit was, likewise, laudatory to Dailey. Here’s a segment of it:
The attempt of this officer to secure the surrender of a
whole brigade came very near succeeding. It was one of the most dashing feats
witnessed by deponent on either side during the war. Upon the chance of
securing a prize for the side he served, Captain Dailey doubly staked his life,
for he was while in the Confederate line in as much danger from the fire of his
own men as from his enemy.
Deponent further says that he makes this affidavit at the
request, received through the mail, of D. B. Dailey, of Council Bluffs, Iowa,
who informs him that he is the Capt. Dailey referred to; that he is disabled
from this and other wounds, and is applying for a pension from the United
States Government.
Deponent has never known Captain Dailey, except on the battle
field as described; has no pecuniary interest whatever in the application by
him for a pension, and complies with the request for a statement of facts in
the hope, most sincerely entertained, that it may benefit a brave soldier.
Hagood didn’t waste time before telling his former comrades about what had happened. He let friends know that the unknown Union officer he had shot at Globe Tavern had survived. In 1880,
one year after Dailey had contacted him, Hagood ran for governor and won in a landslide.
His former staff officer, Thomas J. Mackey, was a circuit judge, holding court
at Columbia. He called on the newly-elected governor to congratulate him. Mackey
said that Hagood was “highly elated” to see him, and as soon as Mackey took his
seat, Hagood said: “You recollect that Federal officer that I was obliged to
shoot in the battle of Yellow Tavern, to recover the flag? Well, thank heaven,
I did not kill him! He is still living. Here is a letter that I have just
received from him. Please read it.”
According to Mackey, Hagood invited Dailey to visit the
State House. Apparently, Hagood had the flag of the 27th South
Carolina on display there. He thought it would be appropriate to give Dailey another chance to hold it as a gesture of reconciliation. Dailey politely refused the invitation, citing
health problems that prevented him from traveling.
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| This is Johnson Hagood, circa. 1887. |
Now, to be clear, the recollections of Mackey and Hagood (whose memoir was published posthumously in 1910) need to be viewed with some care. Both men had gone to great lengths to restart their political careers amid an era of racial and sectional tension. I’m sure northerners had not forgotten that it had been Hagood who held command of Battery Wagner the day after the 54th Massachusetts attacked it, and it been Hagood who refused to return the body of Col. Robert Gould Shaw to Union lines. To insult the abolitionists, Hagood ordered the garrison at Wagner to dig a trench grave for the dead of the 54th Massachusetts. When Union authorities asked for Shaw’s body under a flag of truce, Hagood personally delivered the rebuff, “We have buried him with his niggers!” In the post-Reconstruction years, Hagood wished to create an impression that he was making nice with the people who had ended his dream of a slaveholders’ Confederacy.
But even with all this taken into consideration, Hagood did, in all
likelihood, find it exhilarating that Dailey had survived. Despite the intense
hatred of Yankees the war had engendered in him, he probably experienced what many war veterans
eventually experience, begrudging respect for his former opponents. It is
common phenomenon for veterans—especially those among the defeated faction—to
view their former adversaries as respectable fighters, so long as considerable time
has passed. Defeated veterans can often find it helpful to establish meaning for their own sacrifices by
focusing on the bravery it took to survive combat. After a cause has been
vanquished and forgotten, all that veterans have left are the memories of
battle. Defeated veterans can tell themselves they fought a good fight
because the adversaries they faced were equally tough. It was no shame losing a war, they could tell themselves, if their foes displayed admirable fighting qualities. Thus, Hagood could claim
bravery for himself because he believed he confronted a brave man at Globe
Tavern.
But I wonder if Dailey felt the same. In his own recollection of events, Dailey did not go out of his way to praise Hagood. I imagine that he may have, to some degree, resented Hagood’s intervention. After all, at the moment he grabbed the 27th South Carolina’s flag, Dailey had the surrender pretty much wrapped up. Hagood’s last-minute interference deprived Dailey of his trophy and cursed him with a painful wound that lasted the rest of his life. The comment made by Theodore Lyman strikes me as a most interesting interpretation of the entire affair. Lyman wrote, “The next time I think we shall go on shooting till some official announcement of surrender is made!”
Civil War armies tended to follow semi-official customs about surrendering. Surrenders could not happen until a general agreed to it. But what if no general was present? How could anyone stop a trapped unit from getting slaughtered? Lyman seemed to think that Dailey had done the morally agreeable thing, ordering the whole brigade to surrender simply because it would spare the lives of the men trapped in the moat. Without a doubt, it was the principled thing to do. But such action ruffled the feathers of Hagood, who refused to tolerate an enemy officer issuing orders to his troops. Hagood believed that, in war, he was equal to his opponents, that, as brigade commander, he alone retained the right to decide whether his men fought, fled, or surrendered. To him, surrendering was an act of negotiation. But the incident at Globe Tavern suggests that his assumption was a fallacy. The act of surrendering frequently rejects the principle of choice. It enforces inequality rather than equality. The defeated, by nature, must accept the will of the victor. From his position of triumph, Dailey granted mercy and Hagood took advantage of it.
Both men died the same year. Hagood died on January 4, 1898,
and was buried at the Church of the Holy Apostles in Barnwell. Dailey died two
months later, on March 25, and was buried at Walnut Hill Cemetery in Council
Bluffs.
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| This is Dennis Dailey's headstone in Council Bluffs. |
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