"Well, boys, this war has got to be fought out. You must be good soldiers and do your duty, and we must do the same!"
On our side two incidents were pathetic in their tragedy.
Among the killed was a private, a plain man to whom writing was a task. A few days before we marched he had managed to send a letter to his wife telling her that we would soon be at home. That was the last she heard from him, and when a few weeks later the regiment marched into the streets of his native city, the wife stood on the sidewalk waiting to welcome her husband. Some one had to take her away and tell her that he was dead.
Another of the killed was our senior captain. Before the days of labour troubles, when master and men worked side by side, he was owner of a manufactory, a man beloved by all his fellow-citizens, and not least by the men who worked under him. He was near middle age, of peaceful tastes, without military aspirations, and enlisted only because of a strong sense of duty. He knew his example would be followed, he could multiply himself thus. Workmen and neighbours flocked about him; he had been their captain in industry, they made him their captain in war. He might have been a field officer, but he judged himself unfit. To serve his country where he could serve best was his only ambition. There were smarter officers in the regiment, but none so beloved as this noble Christian the light of whose example shone ever with bright and benignant ray.
When we went down to the river that day, Captain D——'s company led the line and filled the first boat. The enemy's fire was at its hottest when they were shoved off. Caring always for others more than for himself, he commanded his men to lie down and shelter themselves, but his perilous duty was to direct the rowers and guide the course of the fleet. He stood up to do it better. The risk was fatal; his commanding figure became the mark for many rifles, and he fell before we were half way across.
Such a death for such a man was nothing less than martyrdom, all the harder because he knew that hundreds of hearts were eagerly counting the hours that lay between him and a joyful welcome home. But our dear captain was a type. There were hundreds like him in our army who never reached home.
In the same boat with the heroic captain was a man from the other regiment who had been a deserter. His conduct in action was to determine his fate. How he managed to get into that first boat I do not know. He must have run far ahead of his own company, but when we neared shore he sprang out where the water was waist deep and, waiting for no one, charged alone up the bank. It looked like sure death; but he escaped unhurt, and I believe was the very first to enter the enemy's works. Of course he secured his pardon.
In every battle there are a few heroes of the type with which Stephen Crane has made us familiar, whose ingenuity in finding safe places is amusing, and whose antics make life a burden to officers and file-closers. When we reached the boat-landing the ground was absolutely bare; there was not a bush, or tree, or rock; the only possible shelter from the leaden hail was a spring,—a mere mud hole, perhaps three feet in diameter. By lying down and curling himself up in the mud and water a man might fit into it. If the desirability of land is the measure of its value, then that mud hole was priceless, for it was occupied every minute and each occupant was envied by other would-be tenants. As I came down the hill I saw one of these fellows who had just been routed out. A bullet had pierced his arm as he rose from his muddy bed, and he was dancing with pain, clasping his wounded arm with his unhurt hand and muttering angry curses upon the officer who had disturbed his repose. The vacant place was instantly taken by an old gray-bearded fellow from my own company. Over him stood the major, punching the man with his sword, and accentuating each prod with an appropriate remark.
"Come, Peter [a prod], get out of this [prod]; your life is not worth any more than mine!" (final prod). And Peter slowly arose. It makes me laugh now, as it did then, to see his white, scared face gazing agape at the major, the mud and water dripping in festoons from his hair, his beard, and his clothes.
When we were half way across the stream a bullet struck the oar of one of our rowers, close to his hand with sharp ping and shock. For an instant the man seemed paralysed; he stopped rowing and our boat's head swung round, threatening collision with the craft beside us. In that other boat was a red-haired captain, a fiery little Irish gamecock. Quick as thought he grasped the situation, and leaning far over the gunwale with uplifted sword, he hissed at the frightened oarsman:—
"Row, damn you, or I'll cut your head off!"
Never can I forget the appealing glance of the poor fellow at that impending sword, nor his sudden transformation from helpless inertness to desperate energy.
After the capture of the earthwork, without waiting for the laying of the bridge and the crossing of other troops, our regiment was advanced in skirmishing order far out across the plain, until as night fell our line was established in front of the ruins of the Bernard Mansion. That night on the skirmish line is one of the pleasantest memories of my army life, but its story belongs elsewhere.
The last fight of our regiment had been fought. We were proud of our victory, and though the little battle is barely noticed in military histories, it has an interest which makes it memorable to those who were there. It was the prelude of a great drama. The advance of our division of the Sixth Corps was a reconnaissance in force with the object of checking, if possible, Lee's northward movement, and in our little battle at Franklin's Crossing at the Rappahannock, the first blood of the great Gettysburg campaign was shed.
Thegenerous sentiment which would crown every one who fell in our Great War with the hero's wreath may be excessive, yet a personal acquaintance with almost any random portion of that enormous death-roll will certainly make one feel that its length is its least significance.
Not long ago I made a pilgrimage to my native village. Of course the old cemetery had to be visited. I knew the place was full of ghosts of other days, but a strange thrill went through me as I found the frequent stones inscribed with the names of former schoolmates or comrades who had fallen in the war.
Here was one that said, "Captain R. S——, staff-officer—killed at the battle of the Wilderness." The silent stone recalled dear friends and neighbours and the sacrifice of their only son, the most high-spirited and pluckiest young fellow in the town, one of those ready and resourceful characters to whom the word "impossible" is a stranger. A little farther on, under the shadow of ancient cedars, were two marble shafts. One bore the name of gentle, reticent, but forceful W. P——, and the fateful words, "Fell at the Battle of Bull Run." How memory brings back the rush of feeling with which the tidings of his death came to us, his schoolmates from whom he had so lately parted!
The other monument, in its simple uprightness, seemed a fit memorial for a knightly soul. Noble Harry B——! We who knew him said to ourselves, How can the world spare such as he! But the legend on the marble told how he met his death while in command of a battery in Sheridan's great fight at Cedar Creek.
I wandered on till I came to an humble stone whose rudely pathetic inscription, telling how it was "erected to his memory by his wife," touched me deeply. Bluff, hearty Henry H—— was one of my own company who fell on the bloody field of Salem Heights. Just a plain man, only a private, no conspicuous hero, yet one of those faithfully courageous souls who, when thick-flying bullets are droning their deadly song, and the scorching breath of battle tries the line, never give captain or file-closers a moment's anxiety. You could always depend upon "Hank" to stand like a rock with his face to the foe, and to waste no shots on empty air. And one reason for the Homeric deadliness of our war was that both in the brown-clad ranks of the Southrons and among the blue-coated Men of the North there were thousands like him.
I turned from the place in pensive mood. Remembering the awful harvest of great battle-fields I said to myself: Only a small fraction of it is planted in such peaceful places as this, yet this is a fair example of its lesson. Every village graveyard throughout our broad land tells the same story. Death waited with grim confidence for the choice spirits in that war, and the best of us who took our share in it are not those who live to tell its story.
Then thought travelled afar to the banks of the Rappahannock and its camps and battle-fields. I dreamed that once more I stood amid the familiar, blue-clad throng, yet there was a difference. Past and present seemed to mingle. Here and there a face would vanish or a well-remembered voice fail, grow faint and far off, or suddenly become silent, and among these one, the first sought for, the most desired, the face and voice of my tent-mate. I awoke from my dream, remembering that he, too, now belongs to the army of the nobly fallen.
But ours was no common friendship. We had been schoolmates before we became comrades, then tent-mates, finally brothers like David and Jonathan.
We slept under one blanket; we shared our rations and our confidences; and if we did not fight side by side, that was in part because he was corporal at the right of the first platoon and my place was at the other end of the line, but also in part because he had a way of doing such startlingly original things in the face of danger.
His image rises before me now. There he stands, tall, erect, balanced on one foot while he nervously taps the ground with the other and looks at me with that mocking expression all his own, that premonitory grin provoked by some latent jest upon my moralising.
This bantering trick, so common with him, breaking out as it often did at most unexpected and often atrociously inappropriate moments, was an index of the side of his character most open to the general eye. Joe was but eighteen years old when he enlisted, just the age when the boy is passing into the man; a good six feet in stature, without an ounce of spare flesh, long armed, loose-jointed, at once too undeveloped and too full of individuality to wear any conventional garb with ease, so that Uncle Sam's shop-made and ill-fitting uniform hung upon his youthful but powerful frame with anything but martial impressiveness. This, however, troubled him little. An undue care for appearance was never one of his foibles, and the pomp and circumstance of war always smote his keen Yankee sense of the ludicrous. Yet he had withal the manner and the heart of a gentleman, and if you looked into those merry yet piercing eyes, or listened for five minutes to the original ideas expressed by that well modulated and pleasant voice with just a suspicion of "away-down-East" accent in it, you would be compelled to feel that in this boy there was the making of no common man.
For a long time Joe was a puzzle to his comrades. They could not understand why such a great boy, and one too, so unmilitary in his ways, should be a corporal. Some of the older men resented it. And then, his persistent practical joking, his careless independence and smiling indifference to rebuke or criticism was perplexing, not to say exasperating. Yet no one could positively dislike him. He might be provoking at times, yet every one knew him incapable of anything mean, and his untiring good-nature and open-handed generosity made warm friends for him from the very start.
The captain certainly showed himself a good judge of men when he made Joe a corporal, though it took time to justify the choice, and the honours of office sat but lightly upon the recipient. Not until our days of battle came did Joe show any care for military distinction, and he never bothered himself about the promotion which others sought so eagerly.
As everybody knows, the corporal's rank is lowest in the company, only a step above the position of a private, and the distinguishing badge is that of the "chevrons," two triangular stripes on the sleeves of the coat. So little did Corporal Joe prize his office that he would not at first wear these; but the time speedily came when he found them desirable. We were hurried into the field, and when at Hagerstown in Maryland we joined the brigade to which we were assigned, we found ourselves in a strictly guarded camp. The men were allowed to pass the gates only in squads in charge of a non-commissioned officer. And now Joe, seeing that the chevrons might be useful, instead of applying to the commissary for a regulation set, cut strips of light blue from the skirt of his overcoat and rudely sewed them on the sleeve of one arm only. Then he proceeded to the gate and attempted to pass the guard, who of course stopped him.
"You have no non-commissioned officer with you. Only a squad in charge of a serjeant or corporal can pass."
Joe held out the newly adorned arm, exclaiming, "Is notthatcorporal enough for you?"
The guard, a member of a veteran regiment, was perplexed yet obdurate.
"Yes, you may be a corporal, but where is your squad?"
Quick as a flash Joe wheeled and showed the other, the plain coat-sleeve.
"There! Isn'tthatsquad enough for you?"
And then the lieutenant in command of the guard, who had watched the whole performance broke into a hearty laugh and said,—
"You may pass. We will let you go as a non-commissioned squad."
It is to be feared that Joe was, for a long time, a thorn in the side of some of our company officers. Indeed I do not think that our orderly serjeant, a very business-like and soldierly German with a prejudice against the loose ways of our volunteer service, ever became reconciled to him.
We were a hastily enlisted regiment, and were rushed to the front and into active service imperfectly equipped. Our arms were at first old Harper's Ferry muskets with locks converted from flint to percussion. Want of respect for these antique weapons made us too careless of their condition: a grave military fault which was a grief and vexation to the orderly and also to our conscientious first lieutenant. At "inspection" one morning that officer found fault, justly enough, with Joe's gun. Taking it from its owner and holding it out before us all, he said sternly,—
"Corporal, what sort of an example is this to set before the company? Look at the disgraceful condition of this musket!—of what use would such a weapon be if we should be called into action?"
With his peculiar and provoking grin, and in that bland and childlike tone which he assumed so readily, Joe impudently answered,—
"Why, lieutenant, if we get into a fight I expect to rely on my bayonet!"
Looking back upon this and similar incidents of our earlier service, I often wonder how Joe kept his chevrons at all. But when the stress of hard service came and we entered the toil and hardship of the march through the enemy's country, Joe's real quality began to make itself felt too strongly, both by men and officers, to make it worth while, or indeed safe, to notice his little irregularities; for whoever else lagged or straggled it was never Joe; no matter how dangerous or disagreeable the picket or fatigue duty he was never the one to shirk or complain. The officers found that for real service here was one man absolutely dependable; the men were braced by his cheerful example, and they discovered moreover that Joe was a good one to go to in trouble. Had an improvident comrade devoured his three days' rations prematurely? Joe was always ready to divide his own remaining hard-tack. Was some extra load to be carried,—an axe, for instance?—he would cheerfully add it to his own. A sort of admiration for Joe began to appear, yet with reservations. For one thing there was no telling who would be the next victim of one of his pranks. Bill B—— remembers to this day how his supper was spoiled one evening by Joe's ghastly speculation about the method of the fattening of our pork. And I remember a night on the picket reserve when a circle of men lay asleep with their feet toward the embers of a dying fire, and Joe, ever-wakeful, quietly stealing out of the group, gathered a mighty armful of dry brush, gently deposited it upon the coals, and as the blaze mounted and the heat grew fierce, amused himself with the contortions of the roasted-out sleepers and with their drowsy profanity as they gradually awoke. He never swore himself, but I suspected at times that he took a sinful delight in the ingeniously blasphemous explosions of some of his comrades.
Then too, his ways were original. He had a genius for cookery, and the messes he concocted from meagre and sometimes unfamiliar materials were the wonder, and often the horror of his unsophisticated and conservative comrades; yet he was strangely fastidious withal. When a too greedy or too careless commissariat sent us boxes of ancient hard-tack, mementoes of last year's campaign, marked "White House" or "Harrison's Landing," whose mouldy contents were living exponents of the doctrine of evolution, Joe would not eat a single cracker without careful dissection and removal of every inhabitant, though we were near starving. And though careless of outward appearances, he was rigid in certain personal habits. So the men thought when they saw how, even in the dead of winter, he would have his frequent bath, even if he had to break the ice in some pond or stream for it.
Moreover, there were times when his tireless cheerfulness and strength seemed discordant and untimely. When you have been marching all day loaded like a pack mule with knapsack, haversack, canteen, cartridge-box, and gun; when every bone aches and every nerve is unstrung, it becomes an added bitterness to have in the ranks a mere boy whose vitality rises in jest and song above the common misery of stalwart men. At such times I have heard men swear at Joe with deep and apprehensive curses which showed that they felt him a little uncanny.
But I knew him as few others did. A kinder tent-mate no man ever had; my heart melts even now when I recall his unvarying gentleness and consideration; how, often after a weary day's march when at last halt was called and arms stacked and fuel must be sought for the camp-fire, he would look at me with gravely compassionate eyes and say, "You take care of the duds and get the coffee-pot ready, and I'll find the wood." Which meant, "Poor worn-out comrade, take it easy and rest, and let me do the work!"—though I think he was never too tired to enjoy the charge on the nearest fence and the scrimmage for the often too scarce rails. And always in all our rude house-keeping he would take to himself more than his share of the heaviest tasks. It was beautiful also to see his devotion to his absent father, between whom and himself an affectionate comradeship existed which was none too common in those days. His letters, almost all of them to his father, were more frequent than those of any man in the company. Much of the time he wrote daily; he used to say, "I keep my diary in this way." Under his light and effervescent manner there was strong and manly thoughtfulness which showed itself even in his jests. One of these is worth recording, not only as illustration of his originality, but for its inherent wisdom and its epigrammatic form.
On the march through the Virginia hill country, foraging, though forbidden by general orders, became the fashion. This precisely suited Joe's enterprising disposition, and by his dashing raids upon pigs and chickens he made a name for himself in the regiment. After one of these exploits, rather bolder than usual, a comrade whose conscience was tender in such matters ventured to remonstrate with him. The Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act was just then a subject of agitating discussion throughout the country and the camps, and I shall never forget either the finely simulated sternness or the remarkable adaptation of Joe's crushing reply to his scrupulous friend.
"See here! Don't you know that war is a suspension of the Ten Commandments?"
We could not but feel that there was something more than ordinary in this boy; yet even his few intimates—those who thought they knew him—were scarcely prepared for the revelation of his character which was to come with the test of battle.
On the day when we stormed the Marye's Hill, after we had gained the crest and the foe was fleeing before us, we pushed on through the woods that crowned the height until we came suddenly upon an open space dotted with the stumps of trees that had been felled for Confederate camp-fires. On the other side of this opening were two guns, the section of a battery which our enemies had hastily drawn up in a brave attempt to check our advance, and our captain had scarcely time to shout, "Lie down, quick!" before a volley of grape-shot whizzed and hummed about us and laid several of our men low. The lieutenant-colonel called for volunteers, and a thin and hasty skirmish line disappeared among the stumps. Another volley of grape and another came, and then, far to the front, more than half way between us and the enemy two rifle shots rang out, and the captain of the battery fell. The gunners, apparently dismayed at the loss of their commander and at such near and mysterious foes, hastily limbered up their pieces and hurried them away. We were as much astonished and mystified as they, until presently Joe, and a companion from another regiment whom he had picked up, rose from among the stumps and came sauntering into the line. Those two bold fellows had slipped out beyond the skirmish line, and, eyeing the enemy's guns like cats, they had dropped behind the stumps as soon as they saw the gunners about to fire; then, when the grape ceased rattling about them, up again and half running, half creeping, they had thus worked their way forward until they were within fifty yards of the battery; then, watching their chance both aimed together at the captain and brought him down.
The colonel thanked Corporal Joe before the regiment for silencing the battery, and that was all the reward he received, or indeed cared for.
Absolute fearlessness is rare. Perhaps it does not exist in the heart of a sane man. The bravest are usually like our heroic lieutenant-colonel, who, when an officer said to him one day, "Colonel, you don't seem to know what fear is," replied in his abrupt way,—
"All a mistake. I am always afraid, miserably afraid, whenever I go into battle, but of course it would never do to show it!"
Yet there are exceptional characters for whom the voice of the battle siren possesses irresistible fascination,—men whose overmastering delight in danger seems to scare their very fears and send them slinking away to hide in some obscure corner of their souls. After our days at Marye's Hill and Salem Heights, we began to see such a man in Joe, and from that time onward his career, which was marked by a continued series of daring exploits, confirmed the judgment. Moreover, it was characteristic of the man that his peril-defying deeds were never the result of any rage of battle. They were always either deliberately planned, or else the quick and cool acceptance of some desperate chance.
It was my good fortune to be with him in one of the mildest of these adventures. After the brilliant affair at Franklin's Crossing just before the northward march of the army toward Gettysburg, our regiment was sent out beyond the captured earthworks as skirmishers. Night was coming on by the time our line was established, and we found ourselves in a romantic but risky position.
We were occupying the grounds of the old Bernard House. Across the broad driveways and once pleasant lawns and gardens, now neglected and weed-grown, we Northern invaders had stretched our picket line. Just behind us, its ruined and fire-stained walls touched with the mystery of moonlight, lay all that was left of the once proud mansion. In days not so very long gone by, on just such nights as this, those hospitable halls and the noble grounds had been alive with the festive gathering of Virginia's wit and beauty. Their spirits seemed to haunt the scene, so silent now save for the low-toned orders and warnings of our officers. In front of the ruined mansion stood a grove of ancient and noble oaks. They served to hide us, but they were not to be trusted. They also furnished a dangerous screen through which the enemy might easily come upon us unaware. So the lieutenant-colonel evidently thought, for he came to our company and asked quietly for half-a-dozen volunteers to act as scouts.
I think the colonel came to our company because he knew Joe was there, and he instantly responded. But I have often wondered at the strange impulse which seemed to compel me and the others to step forth by his side. After the men once knew him, Joe never went begging for followers; there was an irresistible infection in his example, and an allurement in his cheerful fearlessness that not only made men forget peril, but made it seem a privilege to go with him. It was so afterward in affairs compared to which our adventure of that night was but a pleasure trip.
The colonel himself led us out to the further edge of the grove, posted us in couples behind trees, and gave us our instructions which were, "Watch carefully for any signs of the enemy. Their picket line is out there somewhere in front of you; if you see any movement do not fire, but come in quietly and report, and in any case come in quietly at daybreak."
He left us; we heard his retreating footsteps until he reached the line, and then we began to realise the situation. We were between two possible and quite probable fires. It was bright moonlight; our regiment as we afterwards discovered, was perilously advanced and isolated; if by any chance the enemy knew our position there would be every temptation to attack, and, if that happened, even if they should advance their skirmishers, we scouts would certainly catch it from both sides, and the worst danger was from our own men. Very few of them would know we were outside the line, and it was wholly unlikely that we could "come in quietly and report" without having a hundred rifles levelled at us. When we did come in at daybreak one of us narrowly escaped death at the hands of a comrade in his own company, who, in the gray light, mistook him for a "Reb" and tried to shoot him. The colonel knew we were likely to be sacrificed, and therefore his call for volunteers.
But Joe was in his element. "This is bully!" he exclaimed, as he surveyed the scene when we were left alone. "No officers will bother us here to-night; they think too much of keeping their precious skins whole to stir outside the line."
The prospect was certainly fascinating. Behind us the giant oaks through whose shadows the moonbeams sifted their uncertain rays; before us a sweet expanse of pale-green meadow, weird with the mingled effect of tenuous curling mists and moonlight, shot across here and there with mysterious hedgerows and indistinct tree clumps, the possible and as we found in the morning, the actual cover of the foeman's skirmishers—a strange combination of peaceful beauty and lurking death.
The sounds too, which came to us through the still and misty air were full of ominous significance. Through the dark of the grove, the anxious but subdued voices of our officers patrolling the line, keeping the wearied pickets awake and watchful; beyond through the moonlight across the meadow the distant rumble from the railroad, the noise of unloading cars and loading wagons and the shouts of teamsters at the station within the enemy's lines perhaps a mile away, warning us that by morning he would be heavily reinforced.
We watched as the night wore away, half-expecting, half-dreading what each moment might spring upon us, but all was as still as death in that pale field, until some time after midnight a strange white Shape came moving through the mists. We watched it anxiously, perhaps at that chill hour a little apprehensively, but as it drew near our fears were banished. It was a poor old worn-out war-horse turned loose to die. We watched him grazing quietly in the meadow, and then Joe's instinct for adventure awoke.
"I say, let's go and capture that old beast. What a lark it would be to drive him before us into the line in the morning and make the boys think we had taken a prisoner!"
"No, sir," I replied; "we don't know where the enemy's skirmishers are, but I for one am just as near them as I want to be!"
It was well for Joe that he had a more cautious comrade with him, for he yielded at last to the counsels of manifest prudence; but all night long he looked at that old white horse with longing eyes.
We had not more than safely reached our company in the morning before the foe discovered himself, and the venerable oaks grew vocal with singing bullets; but I shall always cherish the memory of that risky but harmless adventure in Joe's dear company, for he and I were soon to part.
I have often wondered if the shadow of his fate did not even then come over him at times! Recklessly cheerful as he always was in the face of danger or difficulty, there were moments when, to me at least, he showed another mood. In those gloomy days after the tragedy of the first Fredericksburg, when the issue of the great conflict seemed doubtful, he said to me one day:—
"You and I are young men; life is all before us, but what will our lives be worth in this country if the South succeeds? For my part I do not mean to live to see it."
We had in our company a lot of very young fellows, some of them less than eighteen years old, whose ardent patriotism and willing courage and endurance shamed many of their elders. We were talking one day about the readiness of these bright boys to face death and danger, when Joe said very solemnly:
"Yes! the more a man's life is worth, the less he cares for it."
A year had passed since our summer night's adventure under the oaks, and Joe had been made a commissioned officer in another regiment. Men of ours, whose time had expired, flocked to him to re-enlist under his command, and his company was largely composed of old comrades. His next real service was in that memorable and bloody siege of Petersburg. I met him once during the winter; he had been at home on furlough and I have always suspected that he came away with a heart wound,—the only wound he ever received until he met his death. We were boys when first we were thrown together, and bashful about such things, and intimate as I afterwards became with him he was always reticent about his love-affairs; but I had a feeling that one fair girl at home could have told why Joe returned to his perilous duty robbed of that light-heartedness which used to diffuse itself about him like an atmosphere. Was it that, or was it the gloom of the apparently endless conflict which had entered his soul? I could never be quite sure.
He told me in curt phrase all about the position of his regiment close by that famous redoubt to which the soldiers had given the significant name of "Fort Hell," and then he said, "Some day, I think soon, Grant is going to break through those lines, and when he does, I am going to distinguish myself or get killed!"
Shortly after his return to the post of duty I had a letter from him which showed an exaggerated gleam of his old humour. It told of the loss of a number of his men in the incessant picket firing and of his own narrow escapes, and then contrasting my prospects with his own, he said, "As for me I am wedded to the Goddess of Liberty, and, by Jove! the old girl met me half way and gave me my shoulder-straps for marrying her. I like my spouse; though it is well I am not of a jealous disposition, for the Old Lady has now near a million husbands and is on the lookout for more!
Then we heard of another of his characteristic escapades. It was evident that some change had taken place in the disposition of the enemy's troops. The officer in charge of the picket line was anxious to know what this meant, and Joe at once offered to investigate. Taking two men with him he pretended to desert to the enemy. The opposing lines were close together, and between them all was bare and open, so that no secrecy could be practised. Joe and his two companions sprang across the trenches and ran toward the Confederates, shouting as they neared them,—
"Say, Johnnies, will you take deserters?" The fire ceased and the answer came, "Yes, Billy, come on! come right in!"
Then Joe left his two men and went up closer for further parley.
"Johnnies, we want to come in, but we're rather afraid of you Twenty-second South Carolina fellows!" and the reply was,—
"Oh, you needn't be afraid, we're not the Twenty-second South Carolina, they were sent away from here yesterday. We're the Eighteenth Georgia!"
This was precisely the information he wanted, and with a little more artful parley he edged backwards, watching his chance, and then sending his men before him to their own lines, he ran back himself, reaching shelter barely in time, escaping unhurt through the storm of bullets which his baffled and enraged foes sent after him.
The great day came at last, the day of that awful assault on the Petersburg entrenchments. Joe had been on picket all night and, according to army rules would have been exempt from duty for the next twenty-four hours. But as he came in from his weary and perilous night watch, in the gray dawn he saw the preparation for the struggle and heard a call for volunteers. A "forlorn hope," an officer and thirty men, were wanted to lead the storming column and drive in the enemy's entrenched pickets. Joe at once offered himself; men were always ready to follow whither he led, and more than thirty came forward at once.
Out from the massed lines in the dim light of dusky dawn the devoted little band moved. Those who were with him said that, as they came to the picket posts,—rifle-pits with five or six men in each,—Joe would rush far ahead of his men straight up to the rifle-pit with drawn sword and imperious command.
"Throw down your arms and surrender!"
And thus by sheer boldness he actually captured a half-dozen groups of pickets in succession, until at last his summons was answered by a volley, and one bullet struck him in the breast. The wound, his first (unless it was that heart wound), was his last and mortal.
As we, his old comrades, far from the bloody field heard the news, we could scarcely believe it. Death in battle was common enough God knows, in those dreadful days; but somehow Joe had always seemed to bear a charmed life. It was hard to think of him among the slain. Yet there were many "I told you so's," and not a few with wise wag of prudent head declared, "It was bound to come to Joe, he was always rash; this time foolhardy."
But such talk was little heeded by those of us who knew Joe. We knew too well that even in most desperate moments he would think with melting heart of the brave men under his command, and take any risk to spare them. We also knew how thoroughly he believed that audacity was the right hand of success. Such men are the nerve of an army. There never are very many of them; very few survive a great war, for victories are won by their blood. They are literally offerings upon the altar of their country. Under Joe's rude jest about the Goddess of Liberty I knew there was the feeling that his life was devoted to the land he loved with passionate ardour.
When the news of Petersburg came, our old lieutenant-colonel, a grizzled veteran who had been through most of the great battles of the war came to me and eagerly asked,—"Had I heard from Joe?" I told him. The tears came into his eyes as he turned away exclaiming,—
"My God! Such men sacrificed!"
Browningin a well-known poem describes the Emperor Napoleon at Ratisbon. He is standing on a little mound watching the storming of the city by his army and waiting anxiously for the result. Suddenly
"Out 'twixt the battery smoke there flewA rider bound on boundFull galloping—"
"Out 'twixt the battery smoke there flewA rider bound on boundFull galloping—"
"Out 'twixt the battery smoke there flewA rider bound on boundFull galloping—"
"Out 'twixt the battery smoke there flew
A rider bound on bound
Full galloping—"
The rider is an aide, a mere boy; he is desperately wounded, "his breast all but shot in two," yet he conceals his hurt, he reaches the Emperor, flings himself from his horse and in proud tones announces the victory of the legions and proclaims the glory of Napoleon.
"The Chiefs eye flashed: but presentlySoftened itself as sheathesA film the mother eagle's eyeWhen her bruised eaglet breathes.'You're wounded!' 'Nay,' the soldier's prideTouched to the quick, he said'I'm killed, Sire!' and his Chief beside,Smiling the boy fell dead."
"The Chiefs eye flashed: but presentlySoftened itself as sheathesA film the mother eagle's eyeWhen her bruised eaglet breathes.'You're wounded!' 'Nay,' the soldier's prideTouched to the quick, he said'I'm killed, Sire!' and his Chief beside,Smiling the boy fell dead."
"The Chiefs eye flashed: but presentlySoftened itself as sheathesA film the mother eagle's eyeWhen her bruised eaglet breathes.'You're wounded!' 'Nay,' the soldier's prideTouched to the quick, he said'I'm killed, Sire!' and his Chief beside,Smiling the boy fell dead."
"The Chiefs eye flashed: but presently
Softened itself as sheathes
A film the mother eagle's eye
When her bruised eaglet breathes.
'You're wounded!' 'Nay,' the soldier's pride
Touched to the quick, he said
'I'm killed, Sire!' and his Chief beside,
Smiling the boy fell dead."
In his account of the battle of Gettysburg General Doubleday relates an incident which, as he says, is like this one of Ratisbon. "After the fierce fight in the railroad cut on the first day of the battle, an officer of the Sixth Wisconsin approached Lieutenant-Colonel Dawes, the commander of the regiment. The colonel supposed from the firm and erect attitude of the man that he came to report for orders of some kind: but the compressed lips told a different story. With a great effort the officer said: 'Tell them at home that I died like a man and a soldier!' He threw open his breast, displayed a ghastly wound and dropped dead at the colonel's feet."
The two incidents are indeed similar but with a profound difference of tone. The note struck by Napoleon's aide is the brilliant one of glory; that which vibrates in the Wisconsin officer's dying words is the proudly pathetic chord ofhome.
It was characteristic of our army,—nay, of our war and of both the contending armies,—Union and Confederate. Neither of us fought for conquest or for glory, but a heritage of clashing principles woven by no will of ours into the very beginnings of our nation's history, involving its very life, had come at last in our day to the inevitable and awful arbitrament of battle.
We who fought in that war were not professional soldiers: our gathered hosts, our regiments and companies were composed of friends and neighbours, segments of the clustering homes from which and for the sake of which we had gone forth, and we knew always that though far away we were not unwatched. In those creepy moments on the verge of battle when amid whizz of waspish bullets and angry echo of skirmish rifles the grim shadow of bloody strife rolled toward us, many a boy would hear in his soul the voice of his father's parting exhortation to play the man; many a young fellow would say to himself, as the image of the dear girl who shyly and tearfully bade him good-bye rose before him, "She shall never have reason to be ashamed of me;" and the husband, while his thoughts fly far away to the home where wife and children wait for him, would pray, "God protect them if I fall; but let me not disgrace them!"
The constant question in our hearts was, "What will the folks at home say about us?"
I have known sick men, really unfit for duty, who, when rumours of "a move" came, would keep out of the surgeon's way, and when their regiment was called into action would shoulder their rifles and drag themselves along with their comrades for fear some report that they had shirked might travel home. We fought with the feeling that we were under the straining eyes of those who loved us and had sent us forth, whose approval we valued more than life.
There was little talk about these things. We thought them in our hearts. We knew our comrades were thinking them, but only some very special or confidential occasion brought such thoughts to our lips. When "dying for home and country" is an event quite likely to happen in the way of your ordinary duty of next week or to-morrow, it becomes at once a matter too trite to be interesting as a subject of conversation, and too solemn for common talk, with men of Anglo-Saxon breed. Now this deep, widespread, though seldom-spoken sentiment explains, as nothing else can, the enormous sacrifices which were constantly and willingly made in our war,—especially when along with it due account is taken of the character of our armies. By far the largest number of enlistments were made at the age of eighteen (which often meant seventeen or even sixteen), and the average age of our men was twenty-five years. The Nation gave its best; the dew of its youth, the distilled essence of American manhood flowed into the armies of both North and South. And when we who went forth with those hosts read the statistics which show that the death-harvest of battle alone—to say nothing of the far larger reaping of disease and exhaustion—reached the awful figures of two hundred thousand, an indescribably solemn feeling comes over us: for we know well that it was not the easily spared who gave their lives; we know that the dreadful vintage of our battle-fields was rich with the blood of the young, the bright, the brave, the promising.
Military critics may show, to their own satisfaction at least, how battles might have been fought less expensively, but the significant fact remains that, with the exception of Bull Run, which after all was but a small affair between two newly gathered and as yet unorganised armies, there was never a complete rout; there was not one decisive victory on either side; there was no Waterloo, the war ended simply by the exhaustion of the South, and the long succession of battles was fought by men who did not, who would not know when they were beaten. Lee and Longstreet and Hill; Grant, Sherman, Sheridan and Meade are names that will never look contemptible among the world's military leaders, yet the men who followed even more than the generals who led, made our war what it was.
A few instances taken from the story of regiments which I happened to know may help to make this clear. These incidents are typical of the fighting and the sacrifice which was common to both armies. None of them are really exceptional unless it be that of the First Minnesota, and even that might be paralleled in sacrifice several times in both Union and Confederate armies.
The story of the First Minnesota at Gettysburg seems almost an anachronism in this nineteenth century. It carries one back to the heroic ages with a suggestion of the Iliad or of the Spartans at Thermopylæ. Its truly modern phase is the matter-of-fact manner in which our military historians pass it by with barest mention as a mere tactical incident of a wholesale battle-field, and the consequent ignorance of the American public concerning one of the most romantic incidents of our history.
Minnesota was too young in those days to have many native sons, and her generous quota of volunteers was filled with scions of that truest American Aristocracy, the Commonwealth Founders whose motto is "Westward Ho!" Out of Eastern homes, scattered all the way from Maine to Michigan, these bold spirits had come to the North Star State to carve careers for themselves, and their country's call to arms met with quick and whole-souled response. The First Minnesota regiment was fortunate in its commanders. Three colonels had risen from it to the command of brigades, two of them regular army officers under whose rigid schooling the regiment gained a high reputation for discipline and efficiency. But Colville who commanded at Gettysburg, was a typical Westerner, tall, ungainly, with strong and homely face of the Lincoln stamp. It is said that when his turn for promotion came he at first refused, thinking himself unfit; but the moment of supreme trial showed his mistaken modesty.
Perhaps you have seen a thunder-cloud lie black and threatening in the west on a sultry summer day. Slowly it masses its lurid bulk, while you ask yourself anxiously where and when it will strike. So Meade and his generals, unprepared as yet with their scattered corps slowly arriving, watched Lee's army on the second of July, the really decisive day of Gettysburg; for Pickett's grand charge on the morrow was but a last desperate attempt to retrieve an already lost cause.
About four o'clock in the afternoon the marshalled storm marched forth roaring in the fury of Longstreet's tremendous assault upon the exposed line of our Third Corps, and from then until dark, along the Emmettsburgh Road, in the Peach Orchard, about Throstle's farm-house, amid the Rocks of the Devil's Den, up and over Round Top, to and fro through the bloody Wheat Field such a combat raged as the world had not seen since Waterloo.
Away at the rear, a mile behind the battle's outmost edge, on the slope of that ridge against which the storm spent itself at last, Battery C, Fourth United States Artillery, goes into position, and the First Minnesota, weakened now by the detachment of two companies for other duty, is ordered to its support. The eight companies number two hundred and sixty-two men: a slender battalion, for their dead and wounded have been left behind on a score of hard-fought fields.
Unlike many of our battles Gettysburg was fought in the open country, and from the vantage ground upon which the little regiment stood the scene of strife was spread before them in full view. With eager eyes and anxious hearts they watch the fury of the oncoming tempest. For half an hour it sways hither and thither; the pressure upon our too extended lines is becoming fearful. Can the Third Corps men endure it? No; slowly, grimly, stubbornly fighting they are borne backward. There is a bad break yonder at the Peach Orchard, a very wrestle of demons about Bigelow's guns at Throstle's; in the Wheat Field the ripening grain is sodden with the wine of that dark harvest which the Pale Reaper is gathering; he is triumphant now. The moments have counted out almost an hour of deepening disaster. The advanced guard of the storm, the wrack sent hustling before the gale, is sweeping up the slope. Around the flaming battery, past the silent solid line of the First Minnesota pours the pallid throng of wounded and of fugitives, the fragments of torn regiments, and behind it all, with awful impact, the storm advances, rolling inward like an oncoming tide. Its advancing waves are breaking at the very foot of the slope, when a new spirit appears upon the scene. Hancock has come. Without waiting for the reinforcements following at his order, he rides alone into the very vortex of the hellish din. His masterful presence is like magic. Order begins to shape itself out of the confusion, a new line of resistance is quickly patched from rallied regiments rendered hopeful by word that help is coming. But before the new line is complete, while as yet a yawning gap is unfilled, from behind a clump of trees the Confederate brigades of Wilcox and Barksdale suddenly emerge. They see their opportunity and, flushed with victory, with wild yells they charge directly at the gap in the new line. Consternation seizes every one. The gunners of the battery begin to desert their pieces; the First Minnesota is left alone. But that regiment has never been known to disobey an order, and its men stand firm. It is one of those moments big with fate whose issue can be met only by lightning-like decision and supreme sacrifice. Hancock's glance lights upon the little lonely unbroken regiment. Instantly he is beside Colville. Pointing to the advancing masses, he says,—
"Do you see those lines? Charge them!"
Colville's answer is the command, "Attention, battalion! Forward, double quick!"
Every man knew what it meant. It was a call to death, but not one hesitated. Down the gentle slope they go in perfect order, two hundred and sixty against three thousand. The Confederate line, blazing with fire is now only a short hundred yards away. The ranks of the little regiment are rapidly thinned, but they go forward faster and faster. One of them said,—
"We were only afraid there wouldn't be enough of us left by the time we reached them to make any impression on the enemy."
At the bottom of the slope is a little brook, its bed dry with summer heat, its banks lined with bushes. The enemy reach it first, and the rough crossing somewhat disorders their front line. Colville seizes his desperate chance: "Charge!" He roars the command, and down come the bayonets in level gleaming row, and at full run the men of the North dash straight at the faces of the astonished foe. One who saw it all says,—
"The men are not made who will stand before bayonets coming at them with such speed and such evident desperation."
The front line of the enemy recoils, breaks, its men flee backward and throw the second line into confusion. The brook's bed is empty now. Again Colville clutches the moment: "Halt! Fire!"
It is frightfully short range, the volley is feeble only in volume, for every shot tells and there is a hideous gap in the disordered brown ranks.
Then the heroes fling themselves into the bed of the brook. It is a good extempore rifle-pit. They have but one care now, they will obey, not only the letter but the spirit of their orders, they will hold back that threatening mass while they can, and sell their lives dearly. They fire carefully, calmly, every shot meant to hit and hurt; and for a few moments longer fear of that desperate little wasp's nest in the brook holds thousands in check. But only for a few moments. The wasp's nest must be exterminated, and from the front of them, from the right of them, from the left of them, a concentrated and increasingly fatal fire rains. Fainter and fainter come the answering ring of rifle-shots from the little brook. The bed is no longer dry, it runs with blood.
But at last Hancock's reinforcements arrive. He has not forgotten his forlorn hopes. Not a regiment but a brigade, two of them, three of them he hurries to the rescue, and "the First Minnesota is relieved."
Fifteen minutes ago they were two hundred and sixty-two. Now there areforty-sevenable to stand up and be counted! But not one is "missing." No prisoners have been taken from their ranks, none have shirked or deserted. Only one man of the colour-guard remains, but he carries out their gloriously torn flag in triumph. Colville is desperately wounded, all the field officers have fallen, only one captain is left. Two hundred and fifteen, out of two hundred and sixty-two, lie along the slope or in the bloody little brook. This is the high-water mark of heroic sacrifice. General Hancock said of it:—
"There is no more gallant deed in history. I was glad to find such a body of men at hand willing to make the terrible sacrifice that the occasion demanded. I ordered those men in because I saw that I must gain five minutes' time. Reinforcements were coming on the run, but I knew that before they could reach the threatened point, the Confederates, unless checked, would seize the position. I would have ordered that regiment in if I had known that every man would be killed. It had to be done."
One might have thought the First Minnesota extinguished. Far from it. At nightfall the two outlying companies came in, and with the forty-seven survivors a miniature battalion was formed in command of the brave surviving captain. On the eventful morrow, the day of final victory, the First Minnesota was again in the thick of the storm where the topmost waves of Pickett's charge spent their fury. And as though conscious that common work was no longer fit for them, they bore themselves with exaltation. A shot cut away the staff of their precious colours and killed the last man of the colour-guard. Instantly the standard was seized by another hand and borne far forward into the thick of the fight; a flag was wrested from the enemy, and after the battle their shattered staff was spliced with the captured one. But their captain and sixteen good men were added to the roll of sacrifice.
One reason why such an exploit as that of the First Minnesota is not better known, is that sacrifices only a little less extreme were all too common in our war, and upon both sides. Colonel Fox, in his carefully compiled book on "Regimental Losses," gives a list of sixty-four Union regiments, and a similar and equally gruesome one of Confederates, who suffered losses in single battles ranging from eighty to fifty per cent of their number, and he remarks that these frightful sacrifices are not those of massacres or blunders, but such as were met with in hard stand-up, give-and-take fighting.
Now a loss of thirty per cent is considered severe, and forty per cent extreme, in modern warfare.
The gallant British Light Brigade which Tennyson's noble poem has made immortal went into their famous charge at Balaklava six hundred and seventy-three strong. Their loss was two hundred and forty-seven, or not quite thirty-seven per cent. None the less do they deserve the crown which genius has given them. They were as truly martyrs to duty as though every one had fallen.
The severest regimental loss in the war between France and Germany fell upon the Sixteenth German Infantry at Mars-le-Tour. Forty-nine per cent of their number were killed, wounded, or missing. But the German regiments are three thousand strong, comparable only to our brigades. And this sacrifice of the brave Germans brings to mind the strikingly similar one of my old comrades of the Vermont Brigade at the battle of the Wilderness.
Brigades in our army were commonly composed of half-a-dozen regiments more or less, often from widely separated States; but there were exceptions. The Sixth Army Corps would scarcely have known itself without the Jersey Brigade in its first division, and the Vermont Brigade in its second. Both became famous, and their integrity as exclusively State organisations was broken only once, when for nearly a year the regiment in which I served was brigaded with the Vermonters. It was not a kind or judicious act on the part of the military authorities to assign us thus, but I shall always think it a piece of good fortune that I once marched and fought with those Green Mountain men, and friendships made among them are cherished still.
The brigade was like a great family whose consciousness of proud and romantic traditions and whose singular cohesiveness reminded one of the Scottish Clans. But its material was most thoroughly American. The men had the qualities of mountaineers, their reserve, independence, and resourcefulness, and among the officers were men of high character and culture, some of whom, like Senator Proctor, have since become distinguished in civil life.
Stalwart fellows those Vermonters were; above the average in both intelligence and stature, tireless on the march, cool, bitter, and persistent fighters.
At well named Savage's Station, one of their regiments had been badly cut up in an affair which did highest credit to its grit and discipline, but at the time when we were with them the brigade as a whole had become noted rather for losses inflicted on the enemy than for those suffered. None who saw and shared in it, can ever forget their wonderful fight at Bank's Ford, where at surprisingly small cost to themselves they repulsed and fearfully punished Early's Confederate division and saved the Sixth Corps from black disaster.
But such reputations were perilous in our army. The demand for sacrifice was sure to reach men like these. A year and a day from the time when they threw off Early's flank attack at Bank's Ford, the Vermonters found themselves in the midst of the bloody storm-centre of the most weird, confused, and difficult of the battles of the Army of the Potomac.
"The Wilderness" is a region the like of which can be found only along the Southern Atlantic seaboard. For miles, abrupt ridges of clay or gravel cut with ragged ravines are covered with dense growth of woods and brush; now scraggy oak, now hedge-like thickets of dwarf pine,—a gloomy, intricate, intractable region.
But its very difficulties were Lee's advantage. His men knew the Wilderness; many of them had grown up within it or on its borders. His plan of battle was simple, daring, and full of peril to his foes.
The road southward from the Fords of the Rapidan by which Grant's army was compelled to move leads through this region. In the midst of the forest the north and south road is crossed by two others running nearly east and west. Down these intersecting roads Lee poured his columns, striving to strike the dangerously extended Union line in flank, break it into fragments, and while entangled in the Wilderness play havoc with it.
At the most important of these road-junctions, at the vital point of the Union line, the position which must be held at any cost, on the afternoon of the fifth of May Getty's Division of the Sixth Corps was posted with the Vermont Brigade in front. They await the arrival of Hancock with the Second Corps, hoping then to push the enemy, now retarded in their advance by skirmishers and by the difficult nature of the ground, away from the danger-point, back into more open country where more even battle can be had. General Grant grows impatient; he orders Getty to attack at once without waiting for Hancock. The narrow road is the only place where artillery can be used. It is occupied by a battery; the infantry brigades must feel and fight their way through the thicket on either side. Suddenly the opposing lines meet. Volleys leap like sheaves of lightning from the brush, men fall by scores, there are charges and counter-charges; but in that Wilderness maze where foes phantom-like appear and disappear the bayonet is useless. The battle settles down to a grim trial of endurance. To stand up is death; the opposing lines, only a few yards distant from each other, lie down and fight close to the ground. Neither can advance, because neither will give way. The men of the South, on their native heath, taking advantage of every foot of familiar ground, creeping up here or there where smallest advantage appears, are bent on hewing a path to the Brock Road. The Vermonters, upon whom now the weight of the battle is falling, will not yield an inch. Then was seen the close clanship of those men of the Green Mountains. Like brothers their five regiments stick together, each ready to help each without confusion, with quick comprehension of every emergency, cool, desperate, deadly in the blows they give a common enemy. But their ranks are melting mournfully in the savage heat of the weird combat; from the Vermont officers especially the Southern rifles are taking ghastly toll; for while the men fight lying down, the officers must be on their feet moving from place to place along the line. One who was there with them says, "One after another of the officers fell not to rise again, or was borne bleeding to the rear. The men's faces grew powder-grimed and their mouths black from biting cartridges; the musketry silenced all sounds, and the air of the woods was hot and heavy with sulphurous vapour; the tops of the bushes were cut away by the leaden storm that swept through them."
For two horrible hours this went on, until the arrival of the advanced division of the Second Corps brought relief. Fresh troops were sent in to hold the road, and the Vermonters were ordered to withdraw. This was easier said than done. Each side was holding the other as in a vice. Finally a daring but costly charge by one regiment, concentrating the enemy's fire upon it alone, made possible the retirement of the others in good order. The Vermont Brigade had held the road until reinforcements made it secure for that day at least, but at frightful cost. "Of five colonels of the brigade only one was left unhurt. Fifty of the best line officers were killed or wounded; a thousand Vermont soldiers fell that afternoon."
Darkness closed the battle for that day, but night brought little rest. The wounded had to be sought—too often vainly sought in the dark amid the thickets; from suspicious skirmish lines frequent gleam and rattle of nervous, fitful volleys flashed, startling the darkness, and at the dawn of day the battle opened with renewed fury. Again the bereft and decimated brigade was called to perilous and responsible duty, which they nobly fulfilled; and when the second evening came, they could count their total loss. Out of less than twenty-eight hundred who had gone into battle over twelve hundred had fallen, among whom were three-fourths of the officers on duty. The greater part of this loss fell within the two hours of the first day's fight in the woods.
It was then that the colonel of the Second Regiment was wounded, went to the rear, had his hurt dressed, returned to his post, and as he went along the line speaking words of cheer to his men was struck by a second bullet and instantly killed. His place was taken by the lieutenant-colonel, "a boy in years but of approved valour," who also was presently stricken down with a death wound, leaving the regiment without a field officer. It is worth noting that these two young officers both rose from lieutenancies to the command of their regiment, and both came out of those choice homes in which more than almost anywhere else on earth culture and conscience meet. They were sons of New England ministers. The faces of some of those fallen Vermonters rise before me to-day. There was the colonel of the Sixth, in whose regiment, along with a few comrades, I found myself at the time of the final onset of the Confederates at Bank's Ford. A thrill of admiration always goes through me whenever I think of the superbly calm courage with which he held us down in the sunken road in face of that charging whirlwind which, had it reached us, would have swept us away like chaff. I can hear his voice even now, as when the foe was almost upon us it rang out above the noise of battle in clear command, "Rise! Fire!"
Alas, he was one of the Wilderness victims: a Christian gentleman, reverenced and beloved by his men and fellow-officers. And the captain of that company whose line we lengthened, he too met a pathetically heroic death. Early in the afternoon's fight in the woods he received a severe wound in the head: a wound which, as one of his comrades told me, was more than enough to have sent most men out of the battle. His men all loved him, and they begged him to go to the rear and have his hurt cared for. But with the blood streaming down his face, and the anger of battle in his strong soul, he sternly refused, saying, "It is the business of no live man to go to the rear at a time like this!" A few moments later, and again he was struck by a bullet in the thigh. He retired a short distance, took off his sash, bound up his second wound, returned to his place in the line, and while cheering his men a third bullet found this hero's heart and silenced his voice forever.
The sacrifice of the Vermont Brigade was not one of numbers only. Ghastly incidents abounded in that Wilderness battle-field. One of them, told me in a letter from a Fifth Corps comrade, is unique in its horror. He was severely wounded, and, finding himself useless on the line of battle, tried to make his way to the rear. After several narrow escapes from capture, he came to a little open field. Here a number of others, like himself wounded, were gathered, and faint from loss of blood and from hunger they sat down together and tried to eat a little from shared rations of such as had any.
The little field, scarce a hundred yards across, had been the scene of conflict earlier in the day, and hundreds of dead and mortally wounded lay scattered about it.
Close by where they sat down lay a young soldier from a Connecticut regiment, frightfully shot in the breast so that his lungs protruded. His life was slowly, painfully ebbing away.
My friend and his comrades, forgetting their own hurts at the sight, tried to do what they could for him. They raised him up, put a blanket under him, and propped him against a tree so that he could breathe a little easier. By feeble motions he made them understand that he wanted something from his pocket. They searched and found a photograph of some loved one at home, which he eagerly grasped with both hands and held before his dying eyes while big tears rolled down his cheeks. But he seemed satisfied, he wanted nothing more, and my friend and his companions moved away to a little distance where they could eat their lunch undisturbed by the gruesome sight of the mangled dying man.
Presently a Georgian strayed into the field. He was wounded in the toe and was making a terrible fuss about it, limping along and using his musket for a crutch, but he stopped now and then to search the bodies of the dead for plunder. There were such ghouls, a few of them, in both armies. He came to the young Connecticut soldier; they could see him snatch the picture from the dying man's hands, they heard a smothered exclamation which sounded like, "Oh, don't!" and then they saw the brute strike the dying man with the butt of his musket.
My friend, who was an officer, sprang to his feet, wounded as he was, and emptied his revolver at the man, who at the first shot took refuge behind the tree. Then the officer called for a loaded musket, and a singular duel began, the villain behind the tree and my friend in the open exchanging shots ineffectually, when the Georgian, reloading in nervous haste, sprang his ramrod. It flew out of his hand and fell just out of reach. Unwilling to expose himself he clawed for it with his musket barrel, but in vain. At this juncture another wounded Confederate wandered into the horrible little field. He had not seen the prelude, he saw only a comrade in trouble, and going boldly to his help was about to hand him his ramrod; but from a dozen mangled men still able to handle a rifle threatening voices warned him to desist and let the two have it out alone. A few more wild attempts to hook the rammer toward him, and then in desperation he suddenly lunged his body toward it. My friend says, "He looked at me sideways with a scared look, as he reached out, but I just laughed to myself and fired. He fell dead, and I fainted and knew no more till I found myself in the hospital."
The road from the Wilderness leads straight to Spottsylvania. Mere localities; lonely, obscure, faintly marked on the maps they were and are still. Yet once, for just eight days their slumber was broken by the reverberations of continuous gigantic battle; and scarcely another week in modern history has borne such fruitage of sacrifice. Official reports, which seldom err by excess, tell us that our army lost 36,000 men during those eight days. What the South lost no one knows, for General Lee had issued a special order forbidding his officers to keep the count. But figures after all are an inane expression of such an immolation. These weremenwho fell,—young men, our best. After that week and after Cold Harbor, which quickly followed, the Army of the Potomac, the generous host of volunteers for home and country's sake, was never the same.
One regiment always comes to mind when Spottsylvania is named. It is indeed only one out of many distinguished for heroic losses; but I knew it well. Its members were fellow-citizens from my own State; the regiment entered service at the same time with our own. We marched together in the Sixth Army Corps; our first battles were alike; we both left our dead on the plains below Fredericksburg and at bloody Salem Heights.
The Fifteenth New Jersey was a choice regiment recruited from the flower of the manhood of the northern counties, and peculiarly full of that high sentiment which consecrated patriotism in 1862. It was officered largely by promotions from the veteran Jersey Brigade to which it was assigned, and after it took the field was commanded by a very able regular army officer. A light loss at Fredericksburg, a very severe one at Salem Church, where the regiment though as yet unseasoned bore itself with a steadiness and gallantry that excited general admiration, then a year of hard campaigning with but little serious fighting, and the Wilderness was reached.
The Fifteenth entered the week of battles with four hundred and twenty-nine men and fourteen line officers, beside field and staff. Of those eight days in the Wilderness and at Spottsylvania only one passed in which they met with no loss. During the fierce fighting on the fifth and sixth of May, though holding a responsible and exposed position, they suffered surprisingly little. On the seventh, another small loss met them on the skirmish line. They marched out of the Wilderness poorer by one sadly missed captain and perhaps twenty men. The eighth brought the Jersey Brigade as the advance guard of the Sixth Corps to Spottsylvania. At once, with no time to rest, they were plunged into the first of that remorselessly persistent series of terrific assaults which have made the name of "The Bloody Angle" forever famous. This first was but a reconnaissance ordered by General Warren to "develop that hill." For the Fifteenth it meant a charge across a treacherous morass, through timber slashings protecting and hiding the enemy's works, up to and over the very parapet, then back again; and it cost them over a hundred good men. The ninth brought duty on a perilous skirmish line, with a loss which included their colour-serjeant, killed by the same sharpshooter who slew General Sedgwick, the beloved commander of the Sixth Corps. The tenth, another battle again before the Bloody Angle, and another severe loss. The modest narrative of the regiment's historian says of May 11th:—
"There was musketry firing through the early morning, and several times the roll of discharges rose high, but we were left in quiet for several hours and made up our regimental reports. Then three brigades, including our own, were ordered to hold themselves in readiness for a charge, and were drawn up in order. During the night the enemy had made their fortification in our front most formidable. We looked up at the frowning works and flaunting battle-flags and felt that the attempt to capture them would be a march to death." But the assault was postponed and "the day was one of comparative quiet," and, for a wonder, a day of no losses for the Fifteenth regiment.
Seven days of ceaseless battle have now reduced the regiment by nearly one-third. Less than three hundred men remain in the ranks. It has been moreover a week of pitiless, unbroken strain, of wearing anxiety, of sleepless nights passed in worrying marches or in nervously exhausting picket duty close to the lines of an alert enemy. Imagine if you can seven days and nights with scarce a moment's respite from the crack of cannon or the threatening rattle of musketry, seven days when you are seldom out of sight of the swollen corpses of the dead or out of hearing of the wails of the wounded; seven horrible days, only one of which has gone by without seeing from half-a-dozen to a hundred of your comrades shot down, and ask yourself how fit you would be to take part in a desperate assault, a veritable march to death on the morrow?
Yet with this preparation and this anticipation thousands of men lay down in the chilling rain that night to get what rest they could. An officer whom I know well—he came home in command of the regiment—told me that on this night he and three others, two captains and two lieutenants, were huddled together under a shelter tent, trying to get a little rest and escape from the pitiless storm. One of the captains, seeing troops filing by, spoke up:
"Well, there goes the Second Corps; we are in for another light to-morrow, and it will be a nasty one. But I feel as though I would come out all right. I don't believe the bullet is yet moulded that will kill me!"
The other captain replied sadly, "I don't feel that way. I do not believe I shall be alive to-morrow night."
The two lieutenants said nothing; they only listened and thought.
Before the next night both the captains lay dead on the field, their bodies riddled with bullets, one of the lieutenants had a leg shot off and a shoulder shattered. The fourth of the group, who told me the story, escaped with a bullet-hole through his coat.
The 12th of May was ushered in with a tremendous assault by the whole of the Second Army Corps, led by Hancock. The assault was at first a sweeping success, but inside the captured work another entrenchment was encountered behind which the Confederates massed their forces, and then the real combat of the day began. It is an old story; we have all heard how the armies, locked in deadly embrace, fought hand to hand so that several times during the day the trenches had to be cleared of the dead to give foothold for the living, and how great oak-trees were actually severed by riddling bullets so that they fell as if cut down by a woodman's axe.
The morning was not far gone before all our army was engaged either within the salient, or in attempts to relieve the pressure there by fresh assaults on other portions of the line. In one of these the Fifteenth regiment met its culminating sacrifice. At one side of the Bloody Angle was an earthwork as yet untried by assault. Let us take a peep at it. To do so we must first force our way through a belt of dense pine thicket full of dead branches that tear clothes and flesh. At the edge of the thicket we come upon an open space. It is perhaps two hundred yards wide. Look across! At the farther side you see first a row of abatis—trees felled with their branches pointing outward and toward you, trimmed to sharpened points, and if you could examine closely you would find many fiendish "foot-locks" cunningly made to catch and trip any one trying to force his way through this savage fence. Beyond the abatis and above it rises a yellow earthwork, the top laid in logs, with the topmost log raised a few inches so that the defenders can fire through without exposing themselves. Here and there you see the muzzles of cannon gaping through embrasures, arranged in angles to sweep the open field with flank fire. The horrible, the hopeless task of the Jersey Brigade, with the Fifteenth regiment in the lead, is to capture that earthwork. The attempt seems hopeless, but attack, attack everywhere is the word to-day; no joint in the enemy's harness must be left unsmitten. Spottsylvania was not a place where only easy things were tried.