"It does a fellow good to feel a little frisky,"
"It does a fellow good to feel a little frisky,"
sang, or rather shouted, a little Corporal, whom we have met before in these pages, as he made ridiculous efforts to infuse life into heels clodded with mud.
"Talk as you please about old Pigey, boys, he's a regular trump on the whiskey question. He'll cut red-tape any day on that. Don't you see the boys?" continued the Corporal, addressing a crowd reposing at full length upon the freshly cut pine boughs, conspicuous among whom was the Adjutant;—pointing as he spoke to several men in uniform, but boys in years, who were being forced and dragged along by successive groups of their comrades.
"Couldn't stand the Commissary—stomachs too tender. Ha! ha! Pigey and myself are in on that."
"What is up now, Corporal?" queried the Adjutant.
"Nothing is up; it's all down," retorted the Corporal,in a half serious air, as he saluted the Colonel respectfully. "You see, Adjutant, they are bits of boys at any rate, just from school, and the Commissary was too much for their empty stomachs. I was sent back to hurry up the stragglers, and while we were catching up as rapidly as possible, old Pigey came ploughing up the mud alongside of us, followed by that sucker-mouthed Aid. I saw at once that Division Head-quarters had a good load on. With a patronizing grin, said the General stopping short alongside of a wagon belonging to another corps, and that was fast almost up to the wagon-bed, while the mules were fairly floating, 'What's in that wagon?' and without waiting for answer, 'whiskey, by G—d,' he broke out, snuffing at the same time towards the wagon. 'Boys, unload a couple of barrels,' he continued, good-humoredly, as if trying to make up for the outrage he has just committed upon the Regiment. The driver protested, and the wagon guards said that it could not be taken without an order; but it was after three, and old Pigey ripped and swore that his order was as good as anybody's, and the guards were frightened enough to let our boys roll out two barrels. No pigeon-holing on a whiskey scent! One barrel he ordered up to his head-quarters, and the head of the other was knocked in, and he told us to drink our fill, and at it the boys went. Tin cups, canteens, cap-covers, anything that would hold the article, were made use of, and they are a blue old crowd, from the General down. The boys had had nothing but a few hard tack during the day, and it was about the first drink to some, and from the way it tastes it must have been made out of rotten corn and not two months old, and altogether straggling increased considerably."
"Straggling! why they are wallowing like hogs in the mud, Adjutant! It is a shame, and if some one of my superiors will not prefer charges against the General and his Adjutant, I will. Men of mine are drunk that I never knew to taste a drop before," indignantly exclaimed the Western Virginia Captain, as, with hat off, face aglow with perspiration, eyes flashing, and boots that indicated service in taking the soundings of the mud on the march, he came panting up with rapid strides. "Now, sir, fourteen of my best men are drunk—the first drunken man I have had during the campaign—and I'll be shot to death with musketry, sooner than punish a single man of them."
"But discipline must be kept up," said the Adjutant.
"Discipline! do you say, Adjutant?" retorted the Captain. "If you want to see discipline go to Division Head-quarters. Why old Pigey is prancing around like a steed at a muster,—crazy! absolutely crazy! His cocked hat is more crooked than ever, and the knot of his muffler is at the back of his neck, and the ends flying like wings. Just a few minutes ago he stopped suddenly while on a canter, right by one of my men, lying along the road-side, that he had made drunk, and chuckled and laughed, and lolled from side to side in his saddle, and then at a canter again rode to another one and went through the same performance. And his Adjutant-General—why one of my men not ten minutes ago led his horse to Head-quarters. He was so drunk, actually, that his eyes looked like those of a shad out of water a day,—his feet out of the stirrups, the reins loose about his horse's neck, his hands hanging listlessly down, and the liquor oozing outof the corners of his sucker mouth. And there he was, his horse carrying him about at random among the stumps, and officers and men laughing at him, expecting to see him go over on the one side or the other every moment. Now, it is a burning shame. And I, for one, will expose them, if it takes the hide off. Here are our Colonels confined just for no offence at all,—for doing their duty, in fact,—and this man, after having Court-martialed all that he could of his command, trying to demoralize the rest by whiskey. Now, sir, the higher the rank the more severe the punishment should be. Just before we started Burney had an order read that we were about to meet the enemy, and that every man must do his duty. And here is a General of Division, in command of nine thousand men, as drunk as a fool."
"Let Pigey alone on the whiskey question, Captain," interrupted the Corporal, who had in the meantime been refreshing his inner man by a pull at his canteen. "He's a regular trump—yes," slapping his canteen as he spoke, "a full hand of trumps any time on that topic. Like other men, he drinks to drown his grief at our poor prospect of a fight."
"A fine condition he is in to lead men into a fight;—but not much worse than at Fredericksburg," slowly observed the Preacher Lieutenant, who, as one of the crowd, had been a listener to the story of the Captain. "Drunkenness has cursed our army too much. But we cannot consistently be silent in sight of conduct like this on the part of Commanders. The interests of our men"——
"Have a care, Lieutenant," quietly observed the Adjutant, "how you talk. 'The interests of the men' have placed our Colonels under guard in the Sibley."
"Not bolts, nor bars a prison make," resumedthe Preacher more spiritedly, "and I would sooner have a quiet conscience in confinement, than the reproach of disgraceful conduct and command a Division."
Corduroying the entire route had not been proposed, when the army commenced its movement; but it became apparent to all that progress was only tolerable with it, and without it, impossible. On the day after the above conversation, the army commenced to retrace its steps. Some days, however, intervened before the smoke ascended from their old huts, and the men in lazy circles about the camp fires rehashed their recollections of the "mud march."
Like our repulse at Fredericksburg, it was, as far as our Commander-in-Chief was concerned, a misfortune and not a fault. A change in command was evident, however, and the substitution of the whole-hearted, dashing Hooker for the equally earnest but more steady Burnside, that took place in the latter part of January, occasioned no surprise in the army. The new Commander went much farther, than old attachments had probably permitted his predecessor in going, in removing McClellanism. Grand Divisions were abolished; rigid inquiries into the comforts and conveniences of the men were frequent, and senseless reviews less frequent. Bakeries were established in every Brigade, and fresh bread and hot rolls furnished in wholesome abundance, to the great benefit of the Government, for hospital rolls were thereby depleted, and reports for duty increased. Rigid discipline and daily drills too were kept up, as "Old Joe" was a frequent visitor, when least expected. His constant solicitude for the welfare of the men, manifestedby close personal attention, which the men themselves were witness to, rather than by concocted newspaper reports, by which the friends of the soldier in their loyal homes might be imposed upon, and the soldier himself not benefited, endeared him to his entire command.
One clear, cold morning, during these palmy days of the army, the men of the regiment nearest the Surgeon's Quarters were greatly surprised by the sudden exit of a small-sized sheet iron stove from the tent occupied by the Surgeon and Chaplain, closely followed up by the little Dutch Doctor in his shirt sleeves, sputtering hurriedly—
"Tam schmoke pox!" and at every ejaculation bestowing a vigorous kick. At a reasonably safe distance in his rear was the Chaplain, in half undress also, remonstrating as coolly as possible,—considering that the stove was his property. The Doctor did not refrain, however, until its badly battered fragments lay at intervals upon the ground.
"Efry morn, and efry morn, schmoke shust as the Tuyfel. I no need prepare for next world py that tam shmoke pox. Eh?" continued the Doctor, facing the Chaplain.
"Come, Doctor," said the Chaplain, soothingly, "we ought to get along better than this in our department."
"Shaplain's department! Eh! By G—t! One Horse-Doctor and one Shaplain enough for a whole Division!"
The sudden appearance of Bill, the attendant upon the Colonels in the Sibley, at the Adjutant's quarters, had the effect of transferring hither the crowd, who were enjoying what proved to be afinal dissolution of partnership between the Chaplain and the Doctor.
"I know your errand, Bill," remarked the Adjutant, looking him full in the face. "An orderly has just handed me the General Order. But what is to become of the Lieutenant-Colonel?"
"You only have the order dismissing the Colonel, then. There was a message sent about ten o'clock last night, a little after the General Order was received at the Sibley, stating that at day-break this morning the Colonel should be escorted to Aquia under guard, and that before leaving he should have no intercourse whatever with any of his command. Old Pigey also tried further to add insult to injury, by stating that the Lieutenant-Colonel, who cannot, from weakness, walk twenty steps, even though it would save his life, would be released from close confinement, and might have the benefit of Brigade limits in our new camp ground for exercise. You know that is so full of stumps and undergrowth that a well man can hardly get along in it."
"So an officer of the Colonel's merit and services," remarked the Adjutant, "was dragged off before daylight, and disgraced for what was in its very worst light but a simple blunder, made under the most extenuating of circumstances. Boys, if there be faith in Stanton's pledged word, matters will be set right as soon as the record of the case reaches the War Department. I am informed that he denounced the whole proceeding as an outrage, and telegraphed the General; and we all know that the General has been spending a good portion of the time since the trial in Washington."
"And he came back," observed Bill, "yesterday morning, in a mood unusual with him before threeo'clock in the afternoon. He had his whole staff, all his orderlies and the Provost Guard out to stop a Maine Regiment from walking by the side of the road, when the mud was over shoe top in the road itself,—and he flourished that thin sword of his, and raved and swore and danced about until one of the Maine boys wanted to know who 'that little old Cockey was with a ramrod in his hand,—' and that set the laugh so much against him that his Aids returned their pistols and he his sword, and he sneaked back to his marquee, and issued an order requiring his whole command to stand at arms along the road side upon the approach of troops from either direction."
"Which," remarked the Adjutant, "if obeyed, would keep them under arms well nigh all the time, and would provoke a collision, as it would be an insult to the troops of other commands, to whom the road should be equally free. But it is a fair sample of the judgment of Pigey."
end of chapter decoration
The Presentation Mania—The Western Virginia Captain in the War Department—Politeness and Mr. Secretary Stanton—Capture of the Dutch Doctor—A Genuine Newspaper Sell.
Presentations by men to officers should be prevented by positive orders; not that the recipients are not usually meritorious, but the practice by its prevalency is an unjust tax upon a class little able to bear it. A costly sword must be presented to our Captain,—intimates a man perhaps warmly in the Captain's confidence. Forthwith the list is started, and with extra guard and fatigue duty before the eyes of the men, it makes a unanimous circuit of the command. Active newspaper reporters, from the sheer merit of the officer, may be, and may be from the additional inducement of a little compensation, give an account of the presentation in one of the dailies that fills the breasts of the officer's friends with pride, while the decreased remittance of the private may keep back some creature comfort from his wife and little ones. Statistics showing how far these presentations are spontaneous offerings, and to what extent results of wire-working at Head-quarters, would prove more curious than creditable.
Our Brigade did not escape the PresentationMania. Never did it develop itself in a command, however, more spontaneously. The plain, practical sense of our Brigadier was the more noticeable to the men, on account of its marked contrast to the quibbles and conceit of the General of Division. The officers and men of the Brigade had with great care and cost selected a noble horse of celebrated stock upon which to mount their Brigadier, and, on a pleasant evening in March, a crowd informally assembled was busied in arranging for the morrow the programme of presentation. The General of Division, so far in the cold in the matter, was just then making himself sensibly felt.
"Colonel," said an officer, who from the direction of Brigade Head-quarters neared the crowd, addressing a central figure, "you might as well take the General's horse out to grass awhile."
"Explain yourself," say several.
"Pigey has his foot in the whole matter nicely. The General, you know, just returned this evening from sick leave. Well, he and his friends, who came with him to see the presentation ceremonies, had not been at Head-quarters an hour before that sucker-mouthed Aid made his appearance, and said that he was directed by the General Commanding the Division to place him under arrest. The fellow was drunk, and the General hardly deigned to notice him. As he staggered away, he muttered that there were fifteen charges against him, and that he would find the General's grip a tight one."
Amid exclamations, indicating that the perplexity of the matter could not prevent a sly smile at the ludicrous position in which the Brigadier and his friends from abroad were placed, the officer continued—
"But the General brings good news from Washington. The Colonel and Lieutenant-Colonel of the 210th return at an early day."
"Yes, sir, that is so," broke in our Western Virginia Captain, who had just returned from enjoying one of the furloughs at that time so freely distributed. "At last the War Department, or rather Mr. Secretary Stanton, for all the balance of the department, as far as I could learn, thought the delay outrageous, fulfils its promise. After the Lieutenant-Colonel had been at home on a sick leave for some time, and we all thought the matter about dropped; what should I see one day but his name, with thirty-two others, in a daily, under the head of 'Dismissals from the Army.' There it was, dismissed for doing his duty, and published right among the names of scoundrels who had skulked five times from the battle-field; men charged with drunkenness, and every offence known to the Military Decalogue. My furlough had just come, and I started for Washington by the next boat, bound to see how the matter stood. The morning after I got there, I posted up bright and early to the War Department, but a sergeant near the door, with more polish on his boots than in his manners, told me that I had better keep shady until ten o'clock, as business hours commenced then. I sat down on a pile of old lumber near by, and passed very nearly three hours in wondering why so many broad-shouldered fellows, who could make a sabre fall as heavy as the blow of a broad-axe, were lounging about or going backward and forward upon errands that sickly boys might do as well. As it grew nearer ten, able-bodied, bright-looking officers, Regulars, as I was told, educated at Uncle Sam'sexpense to fight, elegantly shoulder-strapped, passed in to drive quills in a quiet department, 'remote from death's alarms,' and I wondered if some spirited clerks and schoolmasters that I knew, who would have been willing to have gone bent double under knapsacks, if the Surgeon would have accepted them, would not have performed the duty better, and have permitted the country to have the benefit of the military education of these gentlemen."
"I see, Captain, that you don't understand it," interrupted an officer. "Our Regular Officers are not all alike patriotic up to the fighting point; and it is a charitable provision that permits one, say,—who is married to a plantation of niggers, or who has other Southern sympathies or affinities, or who may have conscientious scruples about fighting against our 'Southern brethren,'—to take a snug salary in some peaceful department, or to go on recruiting service in quiet towns, where grasshoppers can be heard singing for squares, and where he is under the necessity of killing nothing but time, and wounding nothing but his country's honor and his own, if a man of that description can be said to possess any. In their offices, these half-hearted Lieutenants, Captains, and Colonels, are like satraps in their halls, unapproachable, except by passing bayonets that should be turned towards Richmond."
"Well, if I don't understand it," resumed the Captain, "it is high time that Uncle Sam understood it. If these men are half-hearted, they will write no better than they fight, and I guess if the truth could be got at, they are responsible for most of the clogging in the Commissary and Quarter-Master Departments. But you've got me off my story. At ten o'clock I staved in, just as I was,my uniform shabby, and my boots with a tolerably fair representation of Aquia mud upon them. Passing from one orderly to another, I brought up at the Adjutant-General's office, and there I was referred to the head clerk's office, and there a pleasant-looking, gentlemanly Major told me that the matter would be certainly set straight as soon as the court-martial records were forwarded; that they had telegraphed for them again and again; and that at one time they were reported lost, and at another carried off by one of General Burnside's Staff Officers. As I had heard of records of the kind being delayed before, I intimated rather plainly what I thought of the matter, and told him that I wanted to see the Secretary himself. He smiled, and told me to take my place in the rear of an odd-looking mixed assemblage of persons in the hall, who were crowding towards an open door. It was after two o'clock and after I had stood until I felt devotional about the knees, when my turn brought me before the door, and showed me Mr. Secretary himself, standing behind a desk, tossing his head, now on this side and now on that, with quick jerks, like a short-horned bull in fly time, despatching business and the hopes of the parties who had it from their looks, about the same time. Right manfully did he stand up to his work; better than to his word perhaps, if reports that I have heard be true."
"A pretty-faced, middle-aged lady approached his desk, and I thought that I could see a rather awkward effort at a smile hang around the upper corners of his huge, black beard, as his eye caught her features through his spectacles, and he received her papers. But the gruff manner in which he told herthe next moment that he would not grant it, showed I was mistaken.
"'But I was told, Mr. Secretary,' said the woman, in tremulous tones, 'that my papers were all right, and that your assent was a mere formality. I have three other sons in the service, and this boy is not'——
"'I don't care what you have been told,' retorted the Secretary, in a manner that made me so far forget my reverence that my toes suddenly felt as if disposed to propel something that, strange to say, had the semblance of humanity, and was not distant at the time. 'You had better leave the room, madam!' continued the same voice, somewhat gruffer and sterner, as the poor woman burst into tears at the sudden disappointment. 'You only interrupt and annoy. We are accustomed to this sort of thing here.'
"I looked at him as he took the papers of another for examination, and wondered whether we were really American citizens—sovereigns as our politicians tell us when on the stump, and whether he was really a public servant. But I couldn't see it.
"Now, civility is a cheap commodity, and, in my humble opinion, the least that can be expected of men filling public positions is that they should possess it in an ordinary degree.
"Three o'clock came, but it was not my turn yet. In fact, the treatment of the lady had so disgusted me, that I was quite ready to leave when a servant announced that business hours were over. That evening, I found out to my great satisfaction that men considerably more influential than myself had held the Secretary to the promises he had made them, and that notwithstanding all his backing and filling the order for their return would be issued."
The disappointment of the morrow was a standing topic in camp and on the picket line for the ensuing three weeks. The only doubt that existed with the Court convened for the trial of the Brigadier appeared to be whether the numerous charges excelled most in frivolity or malice, as a slight reprimand for writing an unofficial account of an engagement,—an offence of which several members of the Court had, by their own confession, repeatedly been guilty,—was the sole result of its labor. His restoration to command, the presentation, and the return of the Colonels followed in rapid succession amid the rejoicings of officers and men.
—Amid the waste of meadow and woodland that characterized the face of that country, the houses of the farmers, or rather, to use the grandiloquent language of the inhabitants, "the mansions of the planters," were objects of peculiar interest. In their quaint appearance and general air of dilapidation, they stood as relics of the civilization of another age. Centuries, seemingly, of important events in the law of progress are crowded into years of our campaigning. The social status of a large country semi-civilized—whether you regard the intelligence of its people or the condition of its society—is being suddenly altered. The war accomplishes what well-designing men lacked nerve and ability to execute—emancipation. The blessings of a purer civilization will follow as naturally as sunshine follows storm.
And yet here and there these old buildings would be varied by one evidently framed upon a Yankee model. Such was what was widely known in the army as "the Moncure House." On a commanding site at the edge of a meadow several miles in length,and that seemed from the abrupt bluffs that bordered it to have been once the bottom of a lake, this two-story weather-board frame was readily discernible. Its location made it a prominent point, too, upon the picket line, and it was favored above its fellows by daily and nightly occupancy by officers of the command. At this period the Regiment almost lived upon the picket line. An old wench, with several chalky complexioned children, whose paternal ancestor was understood to be under a musket of English manufacture perhaps, somewhere on the south side of the Rappahannock, occupied the kitchen of the premises. She was unceasing in reminding her military co-lodgers that the room used by them as head-quarters,—from the window of which you could take in at a glance the fine expanse of valley, threaded by a sparkling tributary of the Potomac,—was massa's study, and that massa was a preacher and had written a "right smart" lot of sermons in that very place. In the eyes of Dinah the room was invested with a peculiar sanctity. Not so with its present occupants, who could not learn that the minister, who was a large slaveholder, had remembered "those in bonds as bound with them," and who were quite content that artillery proclaiming "liberty throughout the land" in tones of thunder had driven away this vender of the divinity of the institution of slavery.
In this room, on seats rudely improvised, for its proper furniture had long since disappeared, some officers not on duty were passing a pleasant April afternoon, when their reveries of other days and rehashes of old camp yarns were interrupted by the sudden advent of an officer who a week previously had been detailed in charge of a number of men to formpart of an outer picket station some distance up the river. His face indicated news, and he was at once the centre of attraction.
"Colonel!" exclaimed he, without waiting to be questioned, "two of our best men have been taken prisoners, and the little Dutch Doctor——"
"What has happened to him?" from several at once.
"Was taken prisoner and released, but had his horse stolen."
His hearers breathed freer when they heard of the personal safety of the Doctor, and the officer continued—
"And the loss of our men and his horse has all happened through the carelessness,—to treat it mildly,—of the exhorting Colonel. He is in command of the station, and yesterday afternoon the Doctor was on duty at his head-quarters. In came one of the black-eyed beauties that live in a house near the ford, about half a mile from the station, boo-hooing at a terrible rate—that the youngest rebel of her family was dying with the croup—and that no doctor was near—and all that old story. The Colonel was fool enough to order the Doctor to mount his horse and go with the woman. Well, the Doctor had got near the house, when out sprang two Mississippi Riflemen from the pines on either side of the road and levelled their pieces at him. The Doctor had to dismount, and they sent him back on foot. Luckily the Colonel, who, as black Charley says, has been praying for a star for some time past, had borrowed the Doctor's dress sword on the pretence that it was lighter to carry, but on the ground, really, that it looked more Brigadier-like, or he would have lost that too. I was on duty down by the river hardly two hours after it happened, and asthere is no firing now along the picket line the soldiers were free-and-easy on both sides. All at once I heard laughter on the other side, and looking over, I saw a short, thick-set Grey-back riding the stolen horse near the water's edge. Presently two other Grey-backs sprang on either side of the horse's head, and with pieces levelled, in tones loud enough for us to hear, demanded his surrender.
"'Why, shentlemen Rebels, mein Gott, you no take non compatants, me surgeon,' said the Grey-back on the horse, in equally loud voice.
"'No, d—n you! Dismount! We don't want you. You can be of more service to the Confederate cause where you are. But we must have the nag.'
"'Mine private property,' he replied, as he dismounted.
"'In a horn,' said one of the Grey-backs, pointing to the U. S. on the shoulder of the beast. 'That your private mark, eh?'
"'You no shentlemen. By G—t, no honor,' retorted the Grey-back who personated the Doctor, as he swelled himself and strutted about on the sand in such a high style of indignation as to draw roars of laughter from both sides of the river.
"That rather paid us with interest for the way we sold them the day before. You know they have been crazy after our dailies ever since the strict general order preventing the exchange of the daily papers between pickets. Well, that dare-devil of a law student, Tom, determined to have some fun with them. So when they again, as they often had before, came to the river with hands full of Richmond papers, proposing exchange, Tom flourished a paper also. That was the old signal, and forthwitha raw-boned Alabamian stripped and commenced wading toward a rock that jutted up in the middle of the river. Tom stripped also, and met him at the rock. Mum was the word between them, and each turned for his own shore, the Grey-back with Tom's paper, and Tom with several of the latest Richmond prints. A crowd of Rebel officers met their messenger at the water's edge and received the paper. The one who opened it, bent nearly double with laughter, and the rest rapidly followed as their eyes lit on the stars and stripes printed in glowing colors on the first page of the little religious paper that our Chaplains distribute so freely in camp, called 'The Christian Banner.' One old officer, apparently of higher rank than the rest, cursed it as he went up the bank as a 'd——d Yankee sell,—' which did not in the least lessen our enjoyment of Tom's success.
"But with our two men and the Doctor's horse they have squared accounts with us since, and all through the fault of the Colonel."
In response to inquiries as to how, when, and where, the officer continued—
"There was a narrow strip of open land between a belt of woods and the river. The Colonel posted our two men on the inside of the woods, where they had no open view towards the enemy at all. That rainy night this week the Rebs came over in boats and gobbled them up. The Colonel attributed their loss to their own neglect, and next morning their place was supplied by four old soldiers, as he called them, from his own Regiment. That same day at noon, in broad daylight, they were taken."
"And if he were not a firm friend at Division Head-quarters there would be a dismissal fromthe service for cause," said an officer of the crowd.
"Our Corps Commander is too much of a soldier to let it go by," resumed the officer, "if our Brigadier can force it through Division Head-quarters, and bring it to his notice."
The order that introduced into the service the novelty of carrying eight days' rations on a march, had been discussed for some time in the Regiment. That night the Regiment was withdrawn from the picket line, and preparations were forthwith made for a practical illustration of the order on the morrow.
end of chapter decoration
The Army again on the Move—Pack Mules and Wagon Trains—A Negro Prophetess—The Wilderness—Hooped Skirts and Black Jack—The Five Days' Fight at Chancellorsville—Terrible Death of an Aged Slave—A Pigeon-hole General's "Power in Reserve."
It was some weeks after a Rebel Picket, opposite Falmouth, had surprised one of our own, who had not as yet heard of the change in the usual three days' provender for a march, by asking him across the river "whether his eight days' rations were mouldy yet?" that the army actually commenced its movement. While awaiting the word to fall in, this mass of humanity literally loaded with army bread and ammunition resembled, save in uniformity, those unfortunate beings burdened with bundles of woe, so strikingly portrayed in the Vision of Mirza. To the credit of the men, it must be stated, however, that the greatest good-humor prevailed in this effort to render the army self-sustaining in a country that could not sustain itself.
Another novel feature in the movement was the long strings of pack mules, heavily freighted with ammunition, which were led in the rear of the different Brigades. Wagon trains were thereby dispensed with, and the mobility of the army greatly increased.Stringent orders were issued also as to the reduction of baggage, and dispensing with camp equipage and cooking utensils.
In lively ranks, although each man was freighted with the prescribed eight days' provender and sixty rounds of ball cartridge, our Division, of almost 9,000 men, moved, followed by two ambulances to pick up those who might fall by the way, in the rear of which were five additional ambulances for the especial use of Division Head-quarters. For a General of whom reporters had said that "he was most at home in the field," the supply of ambulances, full of creature comforts, was unusually heavy. On we moved over the familiar ground of the Warrenton Pike, in common with several other Army Corps in a grand march; our Division, with its two ambulances; our General with his five,—and our proportionate number of pack horses and mules. The obstinacy of the latter animal was sorely punished by the apparent effort during that march to teach it perpetual motion. Halt the Division did statedly, but there was no rest for the poor mule. Experience had taught its driver that the beast would take advantage of the halt to lie down, and when once down no amount of tugging and swearing and clubbing could induce it to rise. Hence, while the command would enjoy their stated halts by the wayside, these strings of mules would be led or driven in continuous circles of steady toil. Despite the vigilance of their drivers, a mule would occasionally drop, and his companions speedily follow, to stand a siege of kicks, cuffs, and bayonet pricks, and to be reduced, or what would be more appropriate in their case, raised at length by the application of a mud plaster to the nostrils, which would bringthe beast up in an effort to breathe freely; from which may arise the slang phrase of "bringing it up a snorting."
Onward they marched, those wearers of the cross, the square, the circle, the crescent, the star, the lozenge, and the tripod; emblemed representatives of the interests of a common humanity in the triumphal march that the world is witness to, of the progress of Universal Emancipation. Landed aristocracies of the Old World may avow their affinity to the aristocracy of human flesh and blood that has so long cursed the New; but now that the suicidal hand of the latter has caused the forfeit of its existence, we are the centre of the hopes, fears, and prayers of the universal brotherhood of man in the effort to blot out for ever the only foul spot upon our national escutcheon.
"De Lor bress ye. I know yez all. Yez, Uncle Samuel's children. Long looked for come at las," said an old wench on the second day of our march, enthusiastically to the advanced ranks of our Division, as they wound around the hill in sight of Mt. Holly Church, on the main road to Kelly's Ford, curtesying and gesturing all the while with her right hand, as if offering welcome, while with her left she steadied on her head the cast-away cover of a Dutch oven. A pair of half-worn army shoes covered her feet, and the folds of her tow gown were compressed about the waist, beneath a black leathern belt, the brass plate of which bearing the letters "U. S.," wore a conspicuous polish.
"Massa over yonder," continued she, in response to a query from the ranks, pointing as she spoke across the river. "Hope you cotch him. Golly he'um slyer than a possum in a hen-roost."
The anxiety of the wench for the capture of her master, and her statement of a pre-knowledge of the visit of the troops, were by no means exceptional. Rarely indeed, in the history of the Rebellion, has devotion on the part of the slave to the interest of the master been discovered. The vaunted fealty that would make his cause their own, lacks practical illustration. An attempt to arm them will save recruits and arms to Uncle Sam. Nat Turner's insurrection developed their strong faith in a day of freedom. Their wildest dreams of fancy could not have pictured a more auspicious prelude to the realization of that faith than the outbreak of the Rebellion. Well might
"Massa tink it day ob doom,But we ob Jubilee."
"Massa tink it day ob doom,But we ob Jubilee."
The face of the country at this point was adorned by the most beautiful variety of hill and dale. Compared with the region about Aquia, it had been but little touched by the ravages of war. When it shall have been wholly reclaimed under a banner, then to be emphatically "the Banner of the Free," an inviting door will open to enterprising business.
A few miles further on we rested on our arms upon the summit of a ridge overlooking that portion of the Upper Rappahannock known as Kelly's Ford. The brilliant cavalry engagement of a few weeks previously, that occurred upon the level ground in full view above the Ford, invested it with peculiar interest. Who ever saw a dead cavalryman? was a question that had been for a long time uttered as a standing joke. Hooker's advent to command was attended by a sharp andstirring order that speedily brought this arm of the service to a proper sense of duty. Among the first fruits of the order was this creditable fight. While no excuse can be given for the slovenly and ungainly riding, rusty sabres, and dirty accoutrements, raw-boned and uncurried horses that had too often made many of our cavalry regiments appear like a body of Sancho Panzas thrown loosely together; it would still be exceedingly unfair to have required as much of them as of the educated horsemen and superior horseflesh that gave the Rebel cavalry their efficiency in the early stages of the war. Since then the scales have turned. Frequent successful raids and resistless charges have given the courage, skill, and dash of our Gregg, Buford, Kilpatrick, Grierson, and others that might be named, honorable mention at every loyal fireside.
While on the top of this ridge, Rush's regiment of lancers, with lances in rest and pennons gaily fluttering beneath the spear heads, cantered past the regiment. Their strange equipment gave an oriental appearance to the columns moving toward the ford. With straining eyes we followed their movement up the river and junction with the cavalry then crossing at a ford above the pontoons. The Regiment had been almost continually broken up for detached service, at different head-quarters, or for the purpose of halting stragglers. With many of the men, their service appeared like their equipment, ornamental rather than useful, and in connexion with their foraging reputation, won for them the expressive designation of "Pig Stickers."
Darkness was just setting in when our turn came upon the pontoon bridge, and it was quite dark when we prepared ourselves, in a pelting rain, forrest for the night, as we thought, in a meadow half a mile distant from the road. At midnight, in mud and rain, we resumed the march, in convoy of a pontoon train, and over a by-road which from the manner its primitive rock was revealed, must have been unused for years. The streams forded during that night of sleepless toil, the enjoined silence, broken only by the sloppy shuffle of shoes half filled with water, and the creaking wagons, the provoking halts that would tempt the eyes to a slumber that would be broken immediately by the resumption of the forward movement, have left ineffaceable memories. A somewhat pedantic order of "Accelerate the speed of your command, Colonel," given by our General of Division, as the head of the Regiment neared his presence towards morning, reminded us of the "long and rapid march" that the Commander-in-Chief intended the army to make.
On the last day of April we crossed the Rapidan, fording its breast-deep current, considered too strong for the pontoons, and wondering, especially as the cannonading of the evening previous indicated resistance ahead, that our advance was not at this point impeded. Artillery planted upon the circling hills of the opposite shore would have made the passage, if even practicable, perilous to the last degree. As it was, however,in puris naturalibus, with cartridge-box on the musket barrel, and the musket on the shoulder, clothing in many instances bundled upon the head, the troops made the passage. The whys and the wherefores of no opposition—the confidence of Old Joe having stolen a march upon Johnny Reb—and the usual surmises of the morrow—increased in this instance by our having surprised and captured some Rebel pickets when just abouthalting, constituted ample capital for conversation during our night's rest in a pine grove two miles south of the ford.
With the Army of the Potomac the merry month of May had a lively opening. After a march from early dawn, we found our Division, about the middle of the forenoon, massed in a thick wood in the rear of a large and imposing brick building, which, with one or two buildings of minor importance, constituted what was designated upon our pocket maps as the town of Chancellorsville. The region of country was most appropriately styled "The Wilderness." A wilderness indeed, of tall oaks, and a dense undergrowth known as "black-jack." There were but few open places or improved spots. In one of the largest of these, at a point where two prominent roads forked, stood the large building above mentioned. The day previous General Lee and his staff had been hospitably entertained within its walls. Now our fine-looking Commander and his gay and gallant staff were busily engaged in its lower rooms, while the ladies of the house of Secesh sympathies kept themselves closely in the upper story,—their curiosity tempting them however, to occasional peeps from half-opened shutters at the blue coats below.
At twelve, precisely, just as we had taken a position in the open ground abreast of the house, the sharp report of a rifled piece, followed quickly by the fainter explosion of a shell, was heard upon our left. Another and another succeeded,—indicating that the wood was being shelled preparatory to an advance in that direction. Slowly we filed to the left, proceeding by a narrow winding wood-road until the head of our column had almost reached theriver. A sudden order at this stage for the right about created considerable surprise, which ceased shortly after, as the sharp rattle of musketry, now as if picket firing, and now swelling into a volleyed roar, told us of a Rebel movement upon our flank. That our advance upon them in that direction had been quite unexpected, was apparent from their hastily abandoned camp grounds; rows of tents left standing, but slit from ridge-pole to pins; abandoned caissons and ammunition; and the tubs in which their rations of flour were kneaded, with undried dough in the corners. That they had rallied to regain their lost ground, was also apparent.
"What's the matter, Dinah?" shouted one of our boys to an active young wench, who was wending her way from the direction of the firing as rapidly as the frequent contact of an extensive hooped skirt with the undergrowth would allow.
"Dunno zackly, massa! Don't like de racket at all down yonder," she replied, making at the same time vigorous efforts to release the hold some bushes appeared to have upon her, upon either side. A sudden roar of artillery, apparently nearer by, brought matters to a crisis, and screaming "Oh, Lor," she loosened her clothing, and sprang out of the skirt with a celerity that showed the perfection of muscular development, and won shouts of applause from the ranks.
A sharp engagement was in progress upon a lower and almost parallel road. The roar of cannon, the explosion of shells, the rattle of musketry,—now ragged as if from detached squads,—and now volleyed as from full ranks, mingled with the shrill cheers or rather demoniac yells of the Rebels, pealing their banner cry of "Hell," in their successive charges, andthe gruff hoarse shouts of our troops, as they duly repulsed them, formed a most martial accompaniment to our march. The unity of sound of well executed volleys, told us how Sykes's Regulars attacked, whilst marching by the flank, halted at the word, faced to the left with the precision of an ordinary drill, and delivered their fire with murderous exactness.
A few stray bullets flying in the direction of a temporized corral of pack-horses in a corner of the wood in the rear of the brick house, frightened their cowardly drivers, who commenced a stampede to the rear; and as we emerged from the road to our old position, the beasts were rapidly divesting themselves of their packs, in their progress through the undergrowth. In conjunction with this the frequent and fierce charges of the Rebel massed columns, favored by the smoke of the burning woods, made a panic imminent among the troops upon the lower road. The quick eye of old Joe saw the danger in a moment, and rushing from the house and springing upon his horse, he dashed down that road unattended, his manly form the mark of many a rebel rifle. Shouts of applause greeted him, and the continuous rattle of our musketry told us of the regained confidence of the men, and the renewed steadiness of our line.
It was now four in the afternoon—the usual time with the Rebels for the execution of their favorite movement—charging in massed columns. On they came in their successive charges, howling like fiends, and with a courage that would have adorned an honorable cause. The steady musketry, but above all the terrific showers of canister from cannon that thundered in doublets from right to left along theline of our batteries, could not be withstood, and they fell back in confusion. The nature of the ground did not permit an advance of our forces, and we were compelled to rest content with their repulse. An hour later our Division moved by still another road to the left, to a ridge in the neighborhood of Banks's Ford. Upon its wooded summit, with no sound to break in upon us save the screaming of whip-poor-wills, which the boys with ready augury construed to mean "whip-'em-well," and picket firing, that would occasionally appear to run along the line, we passed a comfortable night.
Breastworks were the order of the day following, and at noon we were enjoying our coffee in a cleared space, behind a ridge of logs and limbs that fronted our entire Division, and which we would have been content to hold against any attacking force. Cannonading continued at intervals, with occasional musketry firing. As it was considerably to our right, we were not disturbed in our enjoyment of supplies of provisions obtained from vacated Rebel houses in the neighborhood. Our amusement was greatly contributed to, by the sight of some of the men dressed in odd clothing of a by-gone fashionable age. But perhaps the most interesting object was a Text-book upon the Divinity of Slavery, written by a Reverend Doctor Smith, for the use of schools; its marked lessons and dirty dog-ears shewing that it had troubled the brains and thumbs of youthful Rebels. Instilled into infant minds, and preached from their pulpits, we need not wonder that they, with the heartless metaphysics of northern sympathy, should consider slavery "an incalculable blessing," and should now be in arms to vindicate their treason, its legitimate offspring.
Cannonading had been frequent during the day; its heavy booming at times varied by the light rattle of the rifle. From four until elevenp. m.it was a continuous roar, save about an hour's intermission between five and six. At first sounding sullenly away to the right, then gradually nearing, until at nightfall musketry and artillery appeared to volley spitefully almost upon our Division limits. It was apparent that our line had been broken, and apprehending the worst we anxiously stood at arms and awaited the onward. Nearer and nearer the howling devils came; louder and louder grew the sounds of conflict. The fiercest of fights was raging evidently in the very centre of the ground chosen as our stronghold. If ever the Army of the Potomac was to be demoralized by the shock of battle, that was the time. But the feeling was not one of fear with our citizen soldiery—the noblest type of manhood—rather of eagerness for the troops in reserve to be called into the contest. Just before six we heard an honest shout, as the boys would call the cheers of their comrades. It grew fainter; the firing became more distant—slackened and ceased at six, to be resumed again at seven, upon another and more remote line of attack.
The terrible distinctness of this alternate howling and cheering—as perceptible to the ear during the thunders of the fight, as the silver lining that not unfrequently fringes the heavily-charged cloud is to the eye,—is a striking illustration of the power of the human voice. We were to have another, however, and that of but a single voice, which from the agony of soul thrown into it, and its almost supernatural surroundings, must eternally echo in memory.
About three hundred yards distant from the left of our Brigade line, in an open field, on elevatedground, stood a large and comfortable looking farm-house. In the morning it had been occupied; but as its inmates saw our skirmishers prostrating themselves on the one side in double lines that ran parallel to our breastworks, and the Rebel advance at the same time attain the edge of the wood upon the opposite side,—and the skirmishing that occasionally occurred along the lines giving promise of a fight that might centre upon their premises,—they packed up a few valuables and left for a place of safety. But not all. We read of noble Romans offering their lives in defence of faithful slaves. That species of self-sacrifice is a stranger to our Southern chivalry. In the garret of the building, upon some rags, lay an old woman, who had been crippled from injuries received by being scalded some months before, and had thus closed a term of faithful service which ran over fifty years, of the life of her present master and of that of his father before him. Worn out, and useless for further toil, she had been placed in the garret with other household rubbish. Her poor body crippled,—but a casket, nevertheless, of an immortal soul,—was not one of the valuables taken by the family upon their departure. As the thunders of the thickening fight broke in upon her loneliness, her cries upon the God of battles, alone powerful to save, could be heard with great distinctness. Isolated and under the fire of either line, there was no room for human relief. Her strength of voice appeared to grow with the increasing darkness, and above the continuous thunder of the cannon were the cries—"God Almighty, help me!" "Lord, save me!" "Have mercy on me!" shrieked and groaned in all the varied tones of mortal agony. Long after the firing had ceased, in fact until we moved atearly dawn, our men behind the works and in the rifle pits in front could hear with greater or less distinctness, as if a death wail coming up from the carnage of the field, the piteous plaints of that terror-stricken soul. Rumor has it, that before the building was fired by a shell in the middle of the following forenoon, her spirit had taken its flight; but whether or not, it could not mitigate the retributive justice to be measured out by that God over us all to whom vengeance belongs, upon the heads of the ingrates who had left her to her fate.
We moved, as we have before mentioned, at early dawn on one of those fair, bright Sabbath days so happily spoken of by "good old George Herbert;" marching by the right flank along our works, with a hurried step. It was between five and six when we neared the front,—passing on our way out, hosts of stragglers and disorganized regiments of the Eleventh Corps. They had suffered badly—some said, behaved badly—and some said, posted in such a way that they could not but behave badly. The merits of the case must remain for decisive history. Conceding equally good generalship to both, it is not amiss to say, that what happened under Howard might not have happened under Sigel. The desultory firing along our changed front showed too plainly the ground we had lost the day before. In the wood, alongside of the road fronting the right centre of our line, our Regiment lay at arms,—listening to awfully exaggerated stories from stragglers,—watching the posting of artillery in our immediate front, the entry of Brigades into the wood upon our left, and their exit under skilful artillery practice,—and now and then dodging at the sound of the stray shells sent as return compliments from Rebel batteries.
"Good-bye, Colonel; these brass-bull pups willroar bloody murder at Johnny Reb to-day," said a fine-looking, whole-souled Lieutenant, in command of an Ohio battery, pointing to his pieces with pride, as he hurried by at a trot, to relieve a battery on our left centre.
Poor fellow! How blind we are to futurity! His pieces were scarcely in position before a shell struck the caisson at which he was adjusting fuses, and his head, picked up at the distance of a hundred yards, was all that remained unshattered of his manly figure, after the explosion.
Files of wounded upon foot, full ambulances, and stretchers laden with the more serious cases, passed us here.
"I am done for, fellows," said a slightly built, pale-faced sergeant, resting upon his elbow, and pointing to his shattered side, as he was carried by on a stretcher; "but stick to the old flag; it is bound to win."
His passage along the line was greeted with cheers, that must have sounded gratefully to ears fast closing to earthly sounds.
But why individualize? The heroism that may be told of such a day, is but a drop compared with the thousand untold currents of unselfish patriotism and high resolve that well up in the bosoms of our Union soldiers. Not that daring deeds are not performed by Rebel ranks, but—